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Russia, Ukraine, and the Future of the CIS
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20643 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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10 / 1992 |
6,271 Words |
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Stephen Blank
Stephen Blank is professor at the Strategic Studies Institute,
U.S. Army War College, in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.
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The successor to the USSR, the commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), is about to die. And there will be few mourners at its interment. But that is not an occasion for rejoicing. This would-be confederation or commonwealth, formed in the wake of the failed coup of August 1991 and ensuing breakup of the USSR, has had a troubled life. Its existence has been punctuated by unending conflicts among and in some cases within republics over basic political, security, and defense issues. Indeed, the members' failure to resolve fundamental defense issues before creating the CIS is probably the major cause of its impending demise, a demise that underscores the complex problems associated with defense of the former USSR, particularly its ethnic borderlands. Nowhere has this failure to resolve both defense and national issues been more apparent than in Russia's conflict with Ukraine. This conflict highlights the CIS' failure to resolve basic security issues and casts serious doubt on its future viability. But the CIS' demise will likely intensify nationalist tensions and conflicts across the old USSR.
Roots of the Russo-Ukrainian Conflict
The Russo-Ukrainian and other conflicts, of course, did not begin with the proclamation of the CIS. They are rooted in decades-long struggles and movements. But they cannot be understood without at least looking at the general causes for the disintegration of the Soviet empire. We can postulate a series of major causes of the breakup of the empire under Gorbachev.
(1)The USSR became increasingly dysfunctional. That system could not provide the public with economic growth, social welfare, and even military security, as it was then constituted. And the overall constitution of the USSR inhibited any chance of a positive change. In Marxist terms, the state had become a fetter on the further development of the economy.
(2)The ideological legitimacy that justified the aspiration to totalitarian rule collapsed, not least among key elites who no longer believed in their own rhetoric.
(3)Demographic, social, economic, cultural, and political factors, coupled with Breshnev's neglect of reform, eroded and discredited Great Russian hegemony in the republics and created the underlying structural basis of socioeconomic crisis. Already under Brezhnev, the regime could meet challenges only by repression. Gorbachev's early efforts to reimpose and even extend that hegemony could not be sustained without a willingness to use massive
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