Moscow’s ‘near abroad’ troubles
Source: By Sunanda K. Datta: The Free Press Journal
Despite its understandable chagrin over last Sunday’s referendum in Crimea, the West needs to bear two things in mind. First, Crimea was not part of Ukraine until 1954, when the Supreme Soviet, acting at the instance of the party general secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, himself a Ukrainian, transferred it from the Soviet Union. Second, Russia is not the only country to base its foreign policy on the concept of what Moscow calls Near Abroad. The United States has done so far more emphatically, for nearly 200 years.
India would feel more secure if it, too, could manage its “near abroad.” Every large country is surrounded by small, and perhaps, sovereign states, whose governments must accommodate the security needs of the central power.
The US articulated this in 1823, when James Monroe, the fifth president, drew a cordon sanitaire around the two Americas, forbidding any foreign power to intervene in regional affairs. China has tried to solve the problem by swallowing up parts of its “ near abroad”, but is still embroiled in controversies over the Paracel and Spratly Islands, arguments with Vietnam and the Philippines, territorial disputes with Japan, Bhutan and India, and claims regarding the South China Sea. Although annexed, Tibet and injiang have not been pacified. Many of the “core interests” that Beijing speaks of refer to the “near abroad.” Countries need a glacis – an open field of fire for defensive purposes – such as surrounds Calcutta’s Fort William.
The US was the first nation to formalise and articulate the concept that Russia is trying to uphold in the Crimea and Ukraine against determined inroads by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union. But, as often happens, governments, like people, practise the least what they preach the loudest.
The nation that invented the Monroe Doctrine and enforced it for nearly two centuries, affects not to understand why Moscow feels vulnerable. Subsequent American presidents have refined and expanded Monroe’s formulation. Some (Theodore Roosevelt, 1904) asserted the right unilaterally to intervene in small Caribbean and South American nations to stabilise their economic affairs, others (John F Kennedy 1962) to “isolate the Communist menace.” The 1928 Clark Corollary clarified the US didn’t need to hide behind the skirts of the Monroe Doctrine: Military intervention was its self- evident right. In 1954, John Foster Dulles specifically targeted the Soviet Union for allegedly violating the Monroe Doctrine, especially in Guatemala.
The Monroe Doctrine was further enhanced by claims of America’s “manifest destiny.” On the ground, this was facilitated by constructing the Panama Canal, which permitted US naval domination of both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The manner in which this was achieved bears reiteration in light of the furore over the Crimean referendum. Bluntly stated, Washington promised to support a bunch of secessionist Colombian politicians on condition they allowed the US to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Panama ( then part of Colombia) and exercise what amounted to sovereign control over it. The treaty concluded in 1903 between John Hay, the US secretary of state, and Philipe Bunau- Varilla, a French commercial adventurer in Washington’s pay, who had bought up a number of Colombian politicians, granted the US “ in perpetuity the use, occupation and control of a zone of land” and further allowed it “ all the rights, power and authority within the same…. which the United States would have if it were sovereign of the territory… to the exclusion of the exercise by the republic of Panama of any such sovereign rights, power or authority.” The American position was that Panama retained titular jurisdiction, but nothing more. Almost all that Panama was able to secure after more than 70 years of agitating against the treaty was that its flag would fly with the Stars and Stripes.
The US felt obliged to dismember Colombia and create Panama to reinforce control over its “near abroad.” That was also the rationale for buying Alaska, deposing Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani, and annexing Texas and California. The same logic explained Kennedy almost plunging the world into nuclear war over the Soviet missiles in Cuba.
Geopolitically speaking, undivided (or British) India is India’s “ near abroad.” That includes not only Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, but also Sri Lanka, probably Myanmar and possibly, parts of Tibet. I would have included Sikkim if India had not in this one respect self- defeatingly followed the Chinese example of annexing a fragment of the “near abroad.” The main question revolves around Pakistan, which is yoked with India in the American consciousness, like unreconciled Siamese twins. As I noted in Waiting for America: India and the US in the New Millennium, sometimes the hyphenation is symbolic, like Harry Truman lavishing exactly the same hospitality on Liaquat Ali Khan immediately after Jawaharlal Nehru’s first US visit; sometimes substantial, like successive administrations building up Pakistan militarily.
“Parity was extended to create the myth that if India’s neighbours were not its equal in every way (despite their combined area and population being a fraction of India’s), this invested India with a special responsibility to shrink to their level in all regional transactions.” Indians did not repudiate this theory, perhaps seeing in it a tribute to their own pre- eminence.
In January 2002, China’s foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, advised Jaswant Singh that “ as a big country,” India should “ play a more positive role” in the subcontinent. No one asked Tang what concession big China made to smaller Vietnam, to the even weaker Philippines or to Tibetans and Uighurs.
Some facts have changed, but as I wrote then, “Pakistan’s domestic product is oneeighth India’s; it has one- seventh the population and one- fifth the area. Pakistan’s armed forces are only between two- and- ahalf to three times smaller than India’s because the military has been built up at the expense of social welfare. While India has sustained its parliamentary democracy through regular elections at several levels – from village council to Parliament – Pakistan had already known three prolonged spells of military rule before General Pervez Musharraf seized power.” et, Kissinger dared to argue that a strong and stable Pakistan presented India with a psychological challenge! Andrei Kozyrev, who became Russia’s foreign minister in 1991, coined the term ‘Near Abroad’ to mean the 14 countries that became independent when the Soviet Union disintegrated. But Vladimir Putin emphasised the political and economic content by using Near Abroad interchangeably with “sphere of influence." The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation that came into effect in 2010 under the third president and current prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, justifies intervening militarily in the Near Abroad to protect Russian minorities. A Russian passport- holder living in Georgia or Ukraine has exactly the same legal claim on Moscow as a Russian citizen living in Russia. Medvedev is on record stating he would "protect the life and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they are" and 85 per cent of Crimeans are Russian.
But the real point is that Russia may never have felt it necessary to act if NATO’s relentless eastward push had not raised the bogey of more anti- Russian and pro- Western coups like the one in Kiev in all Near Abroad capitals.
Despite its understandable chagrin over last Sunday’s referendum in Crimea, the West needs to bear two things in mind. First, Crimea was not part of Ukraine until 1954, when the Supreme Soviet, acting at the instance of the party general secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, himself a Ukrainian, transferred it from the Soviet Union. Second, Russia is not the only country to base its foreign policy on the concept of what Moscow calls Near Abroad. The United States has done so far more emphatically, for nearly 200 years.
India would feel more secure if it, too, could manage its “near abroad.” Every large country is surrounded by small, and perhaps, sovereign states, whose governments must accommodate the security needs of the central power.
The US articulated this in 1823, when James Monroe, the fifth president, drew a cordon sanitaire around the two Americas, forbidding any foreign power to intervene in regional affairs. China has tried to solve the problem by swallowing up parts of its “ near abroad”, but is still embroiled in controversies over the Paracel and Spratly Islands, arguments with Vietnam and the Philippines, territorial disputes with Japan, Bhutan and India, and claims regarding the South China Sea. Although annexed, Tibet and injiang have not been pacified. Many of the “core interests” that Beijing speaks of refer to the “near abroad.” Countries need a glacis – an open field of fire for defensive purposes – such as surrounds Calcutta’s Fort William.
The US was the first nation to formalise and articulate the concept that Russia is trying to uphold in the Crimea and Ukraine against determined inroads by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union. But, as often happens, governments, like people, practise the least what they preach the loudest.
The nation that invented the Monroe Doctrine and enforced it for nearly two centuries, affects not to understand why Moscow feels vulnerable. Subsequent American presidents have refined and expanded Monroe’s formulation. Some (Theodore Roosevelt, 1904) asserted the right unilaterally to intervene in small Caribbean and South American nations to stabilise their economic affairs, others (John F Kennedy 1962) to “isolate the Communist menace.” The 1928 Clark Corollary clarified the US didn’t need to hide behind the skirts of the Monroe Doctrine: Military intervention was its self- evident right. In 1954, John Foster Dulles specifically targeted the Soviet Union for allegedly violating the Monroe Doctrine, especially in Guatemala.
The Monroe Doctrine was further enhanced by claims of America’s “manifest destiny.” On the ground, this was facilitated by constructing the Panama Canal, which permitted US naval domination of both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The manner in which this was achieved bears reiteration in light of the furore over the Crimean referendum. Bluntly stated, Washington promised to support a bunch of secessionist Colombian politicians on condition they allowed the US to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Panama ( then part of Colombia) and exercise what amounted to sovereign control over it. The treaty concluded in 1903 between John Hay, the US secretary of state, and Philipe Bunau- Varilla, a French commercial adventurer in Washington’s pay, who had bought up a number of Colombian politicians, granted the US “ in perpetuity the use, occupation and control of a zone of land” and further allowed it “ all the rights, power and authority within the same…. which the United States would have if it were sovereign of the territory… to the exclusion of the exercise by the republic of Panama of any such sovereign rights, power or authority.” The American position was that Panama retained titular jurisdiction, but nothing more. Almost all that Panama was able to secure after more than 70 years of agitating against the treaty was that its flag would fly with the Stars and Stripes.
The US felt obliged to dismember Colombia and create Panama to reinforce control over its “near abroad.” That was also the rationale for buying Alaska, deposing Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani, and annexing Texas and California. The same logic explained Kennedy almost plunging the world into nuclear war over the Soviet missiles in Cuba.
Geopolitically speaking, undivided (or British) India is India’s “ near abroad.” That includes not only Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, but also Sri Lanka, probably Myanmar and possibly, parts of Tibet. I would have included Sikkim if India had not in this one respect self- defeatingly followed the Chinese example of annexing a fragment of the “near abroad.” The main question revolves around Pakistan, which is yoked with India in the American consciousness, like unreconciled Siamese twins. As I noted in Waiting for America: India and the US in the New Millennium, sometimes the hyphenation is symbolic, like Harry Truman lavishing exactly the same hospitality on Liaquat Ali Khan immediately after Jawaharlal Nehru’s first US visit; sometimes substantial, like successive administrations building up Pakistan militarily.
“Parity was extended to create the myth that if India’s neighbours were not its equal in every way (despite their combined area and population being a fraction of India’s), this invested India with a special responsibility to shrink to their level in all regional transactions.” Indians did not repudiate this theory, perhaps seeing in it a tribute to their own pre- eminence.
In January 2002, China’s foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, advised Jaswant Singh that “ as a big country,” India should “ play a more positive role” in the subcontinent. No one asked Tang what concession big China made to smaller Vietnam, to the even weaker Philippines or to Tibetans and Uighurs.
Some facts have changed, but as I wrote then, “Pakistan’s domestic product is oneeighth India’s; it has one- seventh the population and one- fifth the area. Pakistan’s armed forces are only between two- and- ahalf to three times smaller than India’s because the military has been built up at the expense of social welfare. While India has sustained its parliamentary democracy through regular elections at several levels – from village council to Parliament – Pakistan had already known three prolonged spells of military rule before General Pervez Musharraf seized power.” et, Kissinger dared to argue that a strong and stable Pakistan presented India with a psychological challenge! Andrei Kozyrev, who became Russia’s foreign minister in 1991, coined the term ‘Near Abroad’ to mean the 14 countries that became independent when the Soviet Union disintegrated. But Vladimir Putin emphasised the political and economic content by using Near Abroad interchangeably with “sphere of influence." The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation that came into effect in 2010 under the third president and current prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, justifies intervening militarily in the Near Abroad to protect Russian minorities. A Russian passport- holder living in Georgia or Ukraine has exactly the same legal claim on Moscow as a Russian citizen living in Russia. Medvedev is on record stating he would "protect the life and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they are" and 85 per cent of Crimeans are Russian.
But the real point is that Russia may never have felt it necessary to act if NATO’s relentless eastward push had not raised the bogey of more anti- Russian and pro- Western coups like the one in Kiev in all Near Abroad capitals.
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