Special to WorldTribune.com

Gregory R. Copley, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs

Crimea’s March 16, 2014, referendum to join Russia — there were only two options: join now, or join later — marked a significant watershed in the post-post-Cold War restructuring of the global strategic architecture. Not because it was so geopolitically surprising, but because it was the culmination of the fact that the West, and particularly the U.S., sustained the Cold War against Russia as the successor state to the USSR.

The continuation of the Cold War by the West would have been of profound concern to U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who, with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, saw the need to win the Cold War as a chance to end de facto hostilities against the Russian people, and bring a post-Soviet Russia into the West. But this was not understood by the successor leaders to Mr. Reagan and Baroness Thatcher: all those who followed seemed to wish to perpetuate the Cold War and its primary instrument, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Quite apart from the “old Cold Warriors” in the West, who had not been able to come to grips with a world in which the Soviet bloc was no longer there as an adversary, a new generation of formerly pro-Soviet Western politicians were able to rise to office essentially hostile to post-Soviet Russia for having destroyed the USSR.

The result is that Russia, despite its desire to be part of the West, is once again forced into the position of geostrategic adversary to the U.S., and at a time when the U.S. hardly can afford to create new adversaries. But it was not just with the West’s (that is, the U.S.’ and the European Union’s) continual provocative funding and encouragement of the demographic minority of Western Ukrainians to agitate to overthrow the elected Government of Ukraine.

It began with the U.S. pressure to expand NATO, in contravention of the U.S. commitment to Russia that it would not undertake the eastward expansion of the Alliance to the Russian borders. [U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in 1990 assured Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze that the United States would not “leapfrog” over East Germany to place U.S. military forces in Eastern Europe following the Soviet military withdrawal from Germany.] And yet that is exactly what has happened: NATO expanded eastwards inexorably, in two main waves, since 1994 and continues to push its Partnership for Peace (PfP) program into the Caspian region.

The end of the Cold War was the chance to change everything about the global strategic architecture. And everything about it is, indeed, changing. But hardly as imaginatively or as cleanly as could have been achieved. Edward FitzGerald’s translation of the The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (73rd quatrain) sums up the optimal state:

Ah Love! Could thou and I with fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire
Would not we shatter it to bits — and then
Remold it nearer to the heart’s desire?

But it was a more confused state which prevailed as Eastern Europe, including some of the former Soviet bloc, redefined itself. The U.S. Bill Clinton administration, after being constrained for some time by the British Government of Prime Minister John Major, determined to assist in the breakup the former Yugoslavia, and not only helped to achieve this, but also to further dismember the former Yugoslav central state, Serbia, by promoting an independent state in the traditional Serbian heartland, Kosovo. This was achieved without any legal framework in February 2008.

The U.S. claimed that the creation of Kosovo was “sui generis”; that is, that was a unique occurrence, without precedent, and could not be compared with other situations. The claim does not have merit. And it was to backfire on the U.S. when its ally, former Soviet bloc state Georgia, lost territory over which it once had control, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in late 2008. Similarly, the West’s strenuous position to bring Ukraine into the orbit of the European Union and NATO (although not necessarily as members of either body) caused significant internal unrest in Ukraine and threatened the interests of Russia as well as those of, particularly, the Russian majority in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the Donetsk region.

On March 11, 2014, the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea adopted a declaration of the region’s independence, subject to ratification in the March 16, 2014, referendum, under which independent Crimea would ask Moscow to accept it as a new subject of the Russian Federation.

In an interview with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the May 9, 1994, edition of Forbes magazine (U.S.), the noted Russian intellectual commented:

In 1919, when he imposed his regime on Ukraine, Lenin gave her several Russian provinces to assuage her feelings. These provinces have never historically belonged to Ukraine. I am talking about the eastern and southern territories of today’s Ukraine.

Then, in 1954, Khrushchev, with the arbitrary capriciousness of a satrap, made a “gift” of the Crimea to Ukraine. But even he did not manage to make Ukraine a “gift” of Sevastopol, which remained a separate city under the jurisdiction of the USSR central government. This was accomplished by the American State Department, first verbally through Ambassador Popadiuk in Kiev and later in a more official manner.

Why does the State Department decide who should get Sevastopol? If one recalls the tactless declaration of President [George H. W.] Bush about supporting Ukrainian sovereignty even before the referendum on that matter, one must conclude that all this stems from a common aim: to use all means possible, no matter what the consequences, to weaken Russia.

As a result of the sudden and crude fragmentation of the intermingled Slavic peoples, the borders have torn apart millions of ties of family and friendship. Is this acceptable? The recent elections in Ukraine, for instance, clearly show the [Russian] sympathies of the Crimean and Donetsk populations. And a democracy must respect this.

The Crimea’s referendum of March 16, 2014, to return to Russia may have been framed in such a way that there was no other possible conclusion, but the extent of the voter turnout — some 80 percent of registered voters — indicated that the decision, reportedly approved by some 93 percent of voters, was overwhelmingly popular, despite the boycott of the event by the minority Tatar ethnic group. The day before, March 15, 2014, Russia had used its veto in the United Nations Security Council to halt a proposed censure of the forthcoming referendum, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had abstained.

U.S. media hailed this veto of the censure as a highlight of Russia’s strategic isolation. More significantly, the entire event highlighted not Russia’s isolation, but the EU’s and the U.S.’ impotence.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry consistently highlighted the referendum as “illegal”, as did the group in Kiev which had displaced the Constitutionally-elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych. However, the Constitutionally-illegal government in Kiev, of Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenjuk, has been more-or-less “recognized” by the U.S. and EU, giving it some stature in the eyes of the West, but not as far as Russia is concerned. So there is a standoff, but there is little that the U.S. or EU can do to overturn the transfer of sovereignty of Crimea back to Russia. And perhaps there is little that Russia is prepared to do at this time to bring the rump of Ukraine back to a democratically-elected government.

It remains possible that more of Eastern Ukraine will be returned to Russia, particularly with the protests in Donetsk during the March 15-16, 2014, weekend in favor of separation from Ukraine and association with Russia.
But what are the strategic consequences of the action?

For a start, the strategic faultlines have once again been drawn, when they need not have been. Perhaps most significant in this regard is not the “east versus west” scenario, but the fact that the situation now places some of the Continental EU states even more at odds with the U.S. than had been the case recently. Many in Continental Europe need to trade with Russia, and U.S. plans to instigate trade and other embargoes on Russia will not sit well in Berlin.

The new Black Sea alignment gives Russia renewed strength vis-à-vis Turkey and Georgia, but more importantly it has strengthened Russian-Iranian cooperation. The train of events means that Iran now has even less incentive to cement a rapprochement with U.S. President Barack Obama.

Indeed, on Feb. 10, the Iranian government announced the test-launching of several new missiles, including a new long-range (range not disclosed) ballistic missile with multiple warheads. There is no indication as to whether the missile itself is new, or whether a new payload with either multiple re-entry vehicles (MRVs), multiple independently-targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), or multiple maneuverable re-entry vehicles (MARVs) have been fitted to a Shahab 3D IRBM. Iranian reports called the payload a “fragmentation” warhead with “radar-evading” qualities.

A new air-to-ground, laser-guided missile was also reportedly tested, as well as a new surface-to-surface missile, the Bina (Insightful).

Within this evolving framework, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been in close touch with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, including long telephone talks on the night of March 13.

Thus far, some of the strategic consequences of the standoff over Ukraine seem to be producing or reflecting:

1. A strengthening of the Russian geostrategic position, including greater flexibility in the Black Sea region with ramifications for Russian influence in the Eastern Mediterranean;

2. A weakening of Turkey’s position, both vis-à-vis Russia and vis-à-vis Iran. This will mean that — at a time when Turkish Prime Minister Reçep Tayyip Erdogan is facing a weakening grip on power and control over Turkish unity — the U.S. will almost certainly work with Ankara to return Turkey to its old position as a safeguard against Russian expansion. In essence, this will see a return to the almost unbroken U.S. and British approach to Russia which has been in play since the Crimean War of 1853-56;

3. Iran’s strategic dominance of the Persian Gulf will continue and expand, along with its reach through Syria to the Mediterranean, where it will help strengthen Russian naval viability in the Eastern Mediterranean;

4. Russia seems likely to reward Iran by supporting Iranian full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)

5. A weakening of U.S.-EU relations, given the differing priorities of both entities;

6. A continuing decline in the unity and capability of NATO, given the declining defense budgets of almost all the member countries, and the diversion of U.S. defense dollars to Asia-Pacific priorities; and

7. Continuing slide in Middle Eastern support for the U.S., given the perceived decline in U.S. abilities to project protective military power.

  Cold War, Crimea, Decline of the West: Seven strategic ramifications of Crimea’s return to Russia, Putin, Reagan, Thatcher, Yanukovych