Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia

Russia’s economic woes spurred its neighbours to diversify their trade ties. The total exports of the 11 non-Russian CIS countries to the EU overtook the volume of their exports to Russia by 1998. The most prominent Western geo-economic incursion was occasioned by the bounteous petroleum reserves of the Caspian Sea basin. Oil- and gas-rich Azerbaijan, on the western coast, and Kazakhstan on the eastern, began to clamour for the liberty to deal with multinational oil companies without hindrance from Moscow even before December 1991. Multi-cornered wrangling in subsequent years produced a cavalcade of deals and joint ventures, many of them dead letters. The pinch point was transportation: getting the fuel to outside markets. Russia strived to monopolise this function through its pipeline network. Shevardnadze, now the Georgian president, and his counterpart Heydar Aliev of Azerbaijan lobbied for a route originating in Azerbaijan and stretching through Georgia to Ceyhan, a Turkish marine terminal on the Mediterranean. It was their brainchild that was eventually built, much to Russia’s chagrin. A bureaucratic faction in Washington brought the US into the loop, on the grounds that ‘it was incumbent upon the American government to come to the aid of the Caspian republics – in effect, to run interference for them against Russia’.[76] The geopolitical and geo-economic logic was that by breaking Russia’s export monopoly, the new pipeline would provide both producer and transit countries with independent revenue streams, thus limiting Russian influence over their affairs. But the Clinton administration was also accommodating toward a second pipeline through Russia, and Moscow was restrained in its reaction to the setback. Russia had other fish to fry, the Caspian was a low priority for Yeltsin, and he was averse to the use of force to have his way, despite Shevardnadze’s taking fright that the Russian military would ‘blow me up’ if he persisted.[77] Russia stayed out of the consortium but was free to lay down more pipe itself, which it did in later years. Agreement in principle on the 1,768km Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan Pipeline was reached in November 1998, ground was broken in 2003 and the first crude was pumped in 2005.

Stresses and strains

A frontal altercation over the allegiance of the In-Betweens did not materialise at this juncture. But this did not mean that all was sweetness and light. Stresses and strains grew in both significance and frequency in the late 1990s.

Unlike the East Central Europeans, the In-Betweens had diverse partialities and taller hurdles to clear – greater exposure to Moscow’s hard and soft power, no historical memory of being part of Europe or national mission to ‘return’ to it, Western caution about taking on burdens to the east, and these countries’ poor track record on reform. In-Betweens Armenia and Belarus, along with Kazakhstan, opted to throw in more or less wholeheartedly with Russia. For the other In-Betweens, the unpalatability of sticking with Moscow, and the lack of an option of prompt entry into the Western tent, reduced them to coexisting with Russia and, when practicable, balancing against it, even in cases when segments of their elites would have been happier following the East Central Europeans and bandwagoning with an ascendant West. The elites as a rule had no appetite, however, for decisive market reform and democratic governance, Polish-style, or for relinquishing the political monopoly and lucrative economic rents that went with the status quo. Public opinion, which did not always mimic elite opinion, was still another constraint. In Ukraine, for example, citizens in 2000 had a much warmer view of Russia than of the US or NATO, and 60% approved of an East Slavic confederation with Russia and Belarus.[78]