Moscow — Outside the Chechen village of Samashki, two distinct types of Russian soldiers man separate checkpoints. A group of Interior Ministry troops, some in black masks, threateningly display their weapons, peering suspiciously into a stopped car as one of them gruffly checks its passengers' identifications. Down the road, a group of khaki-clad soldiers belonging to the Russian army also flag down the car — to politely bum some matches before waving it on.
Sound odd? Consider also the Russian troops, aside from committing widely publicized atrocities against civilians, who have also been known to sell their weapons to the enemy for dollars. This is the unreal reality of post-Soviet Russian behavior, where the same soldiers are as likely to shoot you as share a bottle of vodka with you or ask you to have their picture taken,
Yet oddities among the troops pale in comparison to the muddled thinking of their Moscow masters about the so- called "near abroad," as Russians call the former Soviet Republics. In short, Russia seems to have no firm strategic priorities for these regions. Since 1991, policy has been adrift as various ministries struggle to define what they want in their own backyards. "Russia has no military doctrine because it has no geopolitical strategy," says analyst Andrei Piontkovsky.
Piontkovsky, a researcher at the Moscow center for Strategic Studies, says Russia's leadership is suffering from an acute "conceptual vacuum" created by the breakup of the USSR and a centuries-old identity crisis in which most Russians for the first time see their country as a nation state, and not an empire. It is this poverty of clear post-Cold War priorities, not a rekindled desire to restore a lost empire that has led Russia into the mire of Caucasian and Central Asian battlefields.
Russia's post-Soviet military adventures are a case study in confusion and contradiction, directed, at least in the beginning, not by Moscow, but by local military commanders. "In the absence of an official political line, the Russian military was often forced to act as it saw fit in these ethnic conflict situations," says Dmitry Danilov, director of military- political studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Europe Institute. The field generals have acted "basically without any political or ideological convictions, but with definite, often corrupt, economic interests connected with one or another group and the local elite," concurs Piontkovsky.
Russian troops supplied both sides with weapons and did some shooting themselves before stopping a brutal war between Abkhazian separatists and Georgia, where they remain as self-appointed peace keepers. In Tajikistan, a 25,000- strong Russian garrison helps the neocommunist Dushambe regime guard the old Soviet border against Afghan-based opposition fighters — an eclectic mix of pro-democracy and Islamic groups
dcked out of the country with Russian help in a bloody 1992 power struggle. Their motivation for helping Tajikistan's leaders? Close personal ties linking military brass and local party hacks and a share of the local economic spoils, including a thriving narcotics trade.
Why the invasion of Chechnya? Some say to regain Grozny's refineries and pipelines, although there is no verdict. Meanwhile, the war — which Defense Minister Pavel Grachev predicted would last two hours — lingers on after claiming the lives of at least 20,000 civilians and thousands of Russian soldiers.
Out of the chaos of the past, some analysts see the outlines of a policy slowly emerging as a result of lessons learned in Tajikistan and Abkhazia. Danilov says Moscow realized in mid-1993 that using brute force and political machinations to quell ethnic uprisings is bad policy, but conflicts continue and foreign criticism grows. Even without a clear political policy, Russia has at least attained U.N. approval for its peacekeeping operations while reserving the right to act alone — on the basis of bilateral agreements with Commonwealth of Independent States governments — if necessary.
But who exactly is carving the new geostrategic policies remains a mystery. Logic — not a reliable tool nowadays for Kremlin watching — and presidential orders dictate the Foreign Ministry should call the shots. But a Western diplomat, when asked whether the Foreign or Defense Ministry wears the pants in policy making, says: "Both and everybody else. Nobody knows, it's a real mess." Piontkovsky agreed, saying "Nobody, it's being made completely by accident." Concerning the invasion of Chechnya, Danilov says the military "played first fiddle" in decision making.
For all the unknowns, Russia's immediate concerns in the two regions appear clear enough: emigration, stability, and, largely overstated, fears of Islamic fundamentalism. "I think they want peace and quiet. They want the Russians to stay there and (they want to) keep the Turks and Muslim crazies out," a Western diplomat says about Central Asia. Central Asia, especially Kazakhstan, is home to many of the 25 million Russians who live outside the Russian Federation.
According to Russia's Federal Migration Service, 250,000 people officially immigrated to Russia from the near abroad in 1994, and up to 915,000 are expected this year. "They're 100 percent bug-eyed scared of 10 million Russians coming across the border saying feed me, clothe me," the Western diplomat adds.
But despite the talk about Muslim fundamentalism, the actual danger of, say, Iranian radicals swaying the approximately 50 million, mainly secular, Muslims of the former Soviet Union is considered very low. "The idea that some kind of religious revival has swept the governments of the CIS is a farce," Danilov says, "Now, the danger of Islamic fundamentalism to our Central Asian republics is exaggerated. There are no social groups that accept this fundamentalism, but maybe there could be in two or three generations."
Although the words "Mujahedin" and "Muslim” occur frequently in Russian news reports about Tajikistan, the Kremlin does not seem overly concerned about religious radicals, citing instead "instability" and "peace" as reasons to stay on. Defense Minister Pavel Grachev informed Tajikistan this year that no more Russian troops would be sent to help guard the Afghan border, and Russia has been pushing peace talks between the Tajik government and the opposition.
Cultural ties, say the experts, far outweigh religion when it comes to actually moving troops or sending aid. "If Russians sympathize with Armenians, it's not because they see conflict between the Lord God and the Lord Allah, but because they sympathize with the Armenian culture," Danilov says.
Not surprisingly, some observers say oil is the largest factor in Russia's Caucasian calculations, especially since Azerbaijan will begin pumping enormous reserves of oil from its Caspian Sea fields next year. Then, if the oil is flowing Moscow's way, Russia is likely to take greater steps to settle simmering conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and Georgia, as well as Chechnya — a strategy to please Western investors in Azerbaijan's international consortium.
Despite the feats of the diehard Western Cold Warriors, Russia is not likely to attempt a revival of the empire of the Romanov Czars or the former Soviet Union. Recent developments — bilateral goodwill and trade treaties between Moscow and CIS states, visits by Russian politicians pledging better relations between the old center and the periphery — indicate Moscow understands political and economic measures that best suit whatever goals it has. Observers on all sides see this as natural and beneficial for everyone involved.
Ironically, the scariest sign so far of a reawakened Russian bear, Chechnya, may be the best evidence that Russia has no desire to re-conquer its old, far-flung territories. "The only positive thing about the war in Chechnya is that it tested the imperial consciousness of the Russian people, and the result was negative," Piontkovsky says. Polls show that 70 percent of Russians — including many in the armed forces — disapprove of a war pitched as an attempt to save Russian territorial integrity.
Even fewer would approve of, and fight in, a war to reclaim the wider czarist or Soviet borders. "Russia isn't capable, in the good sense, of reviving the empire," Piontkovsky says. "More than government decisiveness, and more than an army, you need the consensus of tens of millions of Russians who would be willing to kill and die to restore the empire."
Restoring the empire is equally unpopular with those who would form the cutting edge of a military drive. "Although many military officers I talk to are nostalgic about the old times, they're not interested in reestablishing the union as it was," a Western diplomat says.
Looking back at events since 1991, another Western diplomat says despite Western fears, Russia has so far behaved reasonably well in the chaos of the near abroad, and will probably continue to do so. "The reasonable optimist position has won out every time. I don't think they have any sinister intentions," he says.
