Russia. A History

The final cause of growing tension was Washington’s decision to revive the ‘Star Wars’ project of the 1980s—the construction of a missile defence system. Warning that ‘rogue states’ like North Korea and Iran were developing nuclear weapons and ballistic delivery systems, the United States stepped up its research and development on a national missile defence (NMD) to repulse such limited attacks. Despite the rhetoric about Iran and North Korea, the NMD not only violated the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty (which allowed each side to construct a missile defence system around a single site—a missile complex in the American case, Moscow in the Russian case) but also created the spectre that subsequent development could neutralize Chinese and ultimately Russian deterrence. Despite test failures and questions about technical feasibility, and despite the much-acclaimed personal ties between Yeltsin and President Bill Clinton, Washington continued to work on the project—to the dismay of Russia and even some American allies in Europe, who feared a unilateral dismantling of the nuclear arms structure constructed over the previous three decades. Although the Clinton administration deferred a final decision on development and deployment (because of international criticism and early test failures), the project remained alive and elicited enthusiastic support from conservative quarters, notably the then presidential candidate, George W. Bush.

Marginalized in the West, Russia increasingly turned its attention to the former Soviet republics—the ‘near abroad’ (the very term implying a special relationship). Although Russia played a leading role in creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in 1991 and adopting the collective security treaty of 1992, the Yeltsin government took little notice of the former ‘fraternal republics’ during his first term in office. That changed dramatically in the mid-1990s. Apart from disenchantment with the West, Russia now recognized the importance of economic ties with the CIS: these countries were once integral elements of a single system and offered markets where Russian products were still competitive. Moscow also claimed a strong interest in the fate of ethnic Russians, twenty-five million of whom found themselves outside the Russian Federation and appealed for protection. Ethnicity also raised delicate border issues, as in the Crimea, which Khrushchev had ‘given’ to Ukraine in 1954 but which had a Russian majority that identified with Moscow, not Kiev. Finally, Islamic fundamentalism also posed a growing threat not only to the newly independent states of Central Asia, but also to the Caucasus (above all, Chechnya) and potentially to other Muslim republics in the Russian Federation. Moscow had some incentive to exaggerate the threat of Islamic radicalism in order to refurbish its leadership and influence in the newly independent states of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Russia also chose to play the ‘Chinese card’. The time was opportune: Beijing shared its concern about Islamic radicalism (especially among the Muslim Uigur population of Xinjiang province) and opposed ‘unipolarity’ (a code word for American hegemony). The improvement in Sino-Russian relations commenced under Gorbachev and accelerated sharply in the second half of the decade. The turning point came in April 1996, when Russia, China, and three Central Asian states (Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan) met in Shanghai and agreed to establish the ‘Shanghai Five’, which was to promote economic cooperation, coordinate foreign policy, and make reciprocal military reductions and the like. Above all, Beijing and Moscow were determined to resist American pretensions to global dominance, to repulse Western meddling in their internal affairs (whether human rights or secession-prone regions like Xinjiang and Chechnya), and to combat Islamic radicalism. This collaboration proved all the more attractive as American engagement (and especially a willingness to become embroiled in far-off Central Asia) waned, creating a vacuum and need for joint action by the two regional powers—China and Russia.

From the Abyss to Renewal