MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov.) It has seemed of late that the post-Soviet space, which is a geographic community of the new states formed after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, has been being pulled in three directions.
Russia, the United States and the European Union, which are the key players in the region, are fighting each other for dominance.
In the absence of clear rules of the games, many young regional states are becoming battlegrounds for external political forces and are falling victim to their not always selfless interests.
This week Moscow tried to formulate some of the rules in the hope of turning the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) first into an arena for fair competition and then, God willing, into a region of "predictable partnership based on mutual respect."
Grigory Karasin, the new Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, advanced this idea in an interview with the daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta. Many Russian political scientists took this as a statement setting forth certain principles of Russia's CIS policy.
It seems that the new deputy minister is advocating a strict policy and hard line. He categorically rejects the use of force by an external state or center of power to uphold its interests and protect its projects in the region. To his mind, fair competition and an ideological struggle are acceptable, but external pressure to force a state along a specific path of development is not.
Moscow is saying that it is opposed to the "export" of democracy, and in this respect it is pointing the finger at Washington.
"We cannot accept methods of forced "democratization" in the post-Soviet space, be they 'color revolutions' or information and political pressure put on the authorities," Karasin said.
The high-ranking diplomat thus rejected U.S. attempts to present the color revolutions in the CIS as a triumph of Western-style democracy over outdated and corrupt regimes. Moscow sees many elements of anti-constitutional coups in these revolutions. The new leaders were brought to power by well-organized street anarchy, which was lavishly funded from abroad. Russia's suspicions are being confirmed by developments in these countries, where the authorities are becoming openly authoritarian, the opposition is being persecuted, and the "disloyal" mass media are disappearing without a trace.
Moscow does not in any way reject the right of non-CIS states and international centers of power to help the CIS states improve internal security, integrate into the global economy and generally answer the call of globalization.
"This is normal, in principle," Karasin said. "The involvement in the CIS of the U.S., the EU and other players is no longer seen as extraordinary." The diplomat said that the task in this situation was to find a balanced approach to the rivalry that would improve Russia's relations with Western partners.
In other words, competition is good, but trying to neutralize Russia's influence in countries with which it has close spiritual and economic ties and in which over 25 million ethnic Russians live, is quite another matter. It is this other aspect that an influential group of neo-conservative Americans, who are trying to turn the CIS into the battlefield for a new cold war, are exploiting.
In July the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations approved a decision on the State Department budget, which directly links American financial injections in the region with resistance to "the strengthening of Russia." "An authoritarian Russia poses a growing threat to the region's states in transition to democracy. Resisting the threat should be made a priority of U.S. foreign policy," the Senate committee warned.
This is an extremely frank admission. The committee approved the allocation of $565 million in 2006 for programs in the former Soviet states. One can only guess how much of this money will be spent imposing American-style democracy, with no regard for national traditions.
There is nothing new in this attitude. Under the Brezhnev Doctrine [Leonid Brezhnev was Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party], the countries belonging to the socialist camp were only to have limited sovereignty. Russia wants to preclude the cloning of this humiliating doctrine in the third millennium.
