Yesterday on Foreign Policy Christian Caryl published one of those “Russia-more-isolated-now-than-ever-thanks-to-their-own-policies-of-confrontation” type of articles.  We are beginning to see this topic come around and around ever since the Ukraine smackdown, but the trend has been building over the past number of years – I would say well before the war with Georgia.  What I like about Caryl’s piece is that he points out that it certainly doesn’t have to be this way, and that Russia’s missteps with its neighbors could be easily corrected should the leadership ever get it right.

Russia’s ability to get in its own way remains a cause for
much head-scratching in the region. “When they tried to stop NATO enlargement,
whom did they discuss it with? The United States and Germany,” notes
Kadri Liik, Director of the International Center for Defense Studies in Tallinn,
Estonia. “But in fact the biggest driving force of NATO enlargement [was] the
countries themselves. Russia tried to discuss these countries over their heads,
and it backfired.”

Something comparable is now happening again with energy.
Moscow’s apparent willingness to use energy supplies in its political disputes
with some of its neighbors is now driving
the European Union to seek greater diversification of supply and alternate
pipeline routes. “Russia uses coercion more than attraction,” says Moshes, the Helsinki-based analyst.

So is this just a symptom of poor policymaking — or an
expression of a deeper problem? Some worry that this tendency is deeply rooted
in the present authoritarian government in Moscow — one whose intense
nationalism demands the constant search for enemies, external and internal, to
legitimize its own actions. “That kind of regime cannot by definition enjoy ‘normal’
relations with its neighbors,” notes Motyl, the Rutgers professor. Whatever the
reason, one can only hope that Russia is able to find
a way back to healthy relations with its former satellites — for its own
sake, one might add, as much as theirs.

Last 5 posts by Robert Amsterdam

• Practicing Legal Nihilism - November 24th, 2009
• Energy Blast - Nov 24, 2009 - November 24th, 2009
• Today in Russian Business - Nov 24, 2009 - November 24th, 2009
• RA's Daily Russian News Blast - Nov 24, 2009 - November 24th, 2009
• Russia's China Envy - November 23rd, 2009