Europe.view: You say Lwów, I say Lviv | The Economist

Europe.view: You say Lwów, I say Lviv | The Economist

A guide to Eastern Europe's most tedious arguments

Apr 1st 2010 | From The Economist online

LAST week’s column dealt with the arcane name squabble between Macedonia (aka FYROM) and Greece. This piece was soon the most-commented on the Economist’s website. That was no thanks to the brilliance of the prose and the lucidity of argument. The subject was one of those issues that attracts bigots, scaremongers and polemicists, with a vanishingly tangential relationship to truth, logic and courtesy.

The article described the row as “the most tedious dispute in the Balkans”. The ex-communist region sets a high standard in such matters, so the epithet is not to be bestowed lightly. Here is an outsider’s guide to a few of the other rows. All the arguments below are a) historically plausible and b) strike most outsiders as quite mad.
Are you calling me a Tatar?

Moldova/Romania A sizeable number of Romanians believe that what is today called the Republic of Moldova is nothing more than a lost province of real Romania, snatched by Stalin out of spite (along with northern Bukovina, which went to Ukraine). The sooner this “pretend Moldova” rejoins Romania the better. Handing out passports to as many Moldovans as possible brings this nearer.

Bulgaria/Macedonia From a certain Bulgarian-nationalist viewpoint, the idea of a discrete Macedonian ethnicity or language is a nonsense—rather like defining “Texan” as an ethnicity in America. Yugoslav Macedonia was a historical accident, and the sooner the detritus joins Bulgaria the better. After that, it will be time to liberate the brother-Slavs of northern Greece.

Slovakia/Hungary According to hardline Slovak nationalists, the whole idea of a Hungarian ethnic minority in the country is absurd. These people (many of whom are Gypsies anyway) should shut up and get on with being Slovaks: ie, speaking Slovak and thinking like Slovaks. Any other behaviour is a sign that they are still imprisoned by their imperial mindset. If they don’t like living in Slovakia, they should go back to Hungary (where, incidentally, the Slovak-speaking minority has dwindled to nothing—proving that it is the Magyars who are the real ethno-nationalists).

Lithuania/Poland Not many people realise this, but most of the people speaking Polish and Belarussian in the area in and around Vilnius are not really Slavs but polonised Lithuanians, the legacy of centuries of forced assimilation. That is a terrible fate, so the right (and kindest) thing to do is to depolonise these people and relithuanianise them. A good way to start is to make sure that they do not get trapped into using foreign Polish letters and silly spellings when writing their names. It is Adomas Mickevicius, not Adam Mickiewicz. Let nobody forget it.

Ukraine/Poland Anyone who spells the capital of Galicia as Lwów is a Polish nationalist who bayonets Ukrainian babies for fun. Anyone who says it is spelled Lviv is a Ukrainian fascist who bayonets Polish babies for fun. Anyone who spells it Lvov is a Soviet mass murderer. And anyone who calls it Lemberg is a Nazi. See you in Leopolis for further discussion.

Among the runners-up: “Tatar” is a derogatory and invented name for the inhabitants of modern Tatarstan, who are in fact the descendants of Volga Bulgars. Kievan Rus was not Russian. Any talk of a Ruthenian nation is ill-informed, stupid, possibly mad and the product of Muscovite attempts to split and destroy Ukraine.

Outside pressure has mostly calmed these arguments within formal politics. But on the internet the rows still rage, with tortured facts, arguments and syntax, all mixed with vituperative insults, phoney politeness and seemingly RANDOM Use Of Capital letters. There is a whiff of pyjamas-at-noon, and of people who check their emails in the small hours. Time to get a life?

10 Geopolitical Predictions for 2010 & Short Term Strategic Outlook

10 Geopolitical Predictions for 2010 & Short Term Strategic Outlook

A great - and still growing - divergence appeared in 2009 between public statements by leaders and their public performance. The politicized, romanticized theater of increasingly populist “democratic” leaders and media seemed to be of a different planet from activities taking place in the real world.

While a large part of the global population appears still transfixed by words, there is a growing perception that great fissures already rend the global strategic architecture.

This is a trend which will compound during 2010.

There is a widespread belief that the world has “ducked the strategic bullet” of global economic collapse, but this is merely the delusionary euphoria of the severely wounded patient. Severe structural damage has occurred to the key driver of global economic stability, the United States. Most major economies of Western Europe and Asia, although in plight, have been protected in their fall by a complex web of structures and the fact that they were not, in many respects, as leveraged as the US. Britain and Japan, however, remain leveraged in their debt-to-asset ratio, to a death-defying degree.

All of this has been long in coming, and brought to a speedy climax by the unprecedented recklessness of inflationary spending by US Pres. Barack Obama, and, in the UK by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The modern world (East and West, but prompted by the West) is at a junction point in a long process of constantly growing — but poorly-defined — obsession with “rights” (entitlements). This had its origins with the halting, but consistent, rise in global prosperity which began with the early stages of the Second Industrial Revolution (1700-1900).

Changing the Balance of Power: 16 Geopolitical Megatrends Affecting Every Aspect of your Life

Changing the Balance of Power: 16 Geopolitical Megatrends Affecting Every Aspect of your Life

Substantial and unmistakable signs of profound change in the global strategic framework have become concrete in the past year. The stress in the structure has already developed into fissures. The transformation, in reality, has been underway since the end of the Cold War, and will continue and compound for at least another decade.

The balance of power is changing. Apart from the wave of globalization, which was really a precursor event, what is now emerging is the first truly fundamental change since the end of the Cold War, and, in global terms, it is a change which may redefine entire civilizational blocs. It is the most profound geopolitical change since the end of World War II, and part of possibly the most profound change in human history since the Industrial Revolution.

Within this context, energy is the driving physical factor. It has been the critical physical component of economic, military, and social strength since the Bronze Age. The Industrial Revolution, however, beginning in the 18th Century spurred an increasingly intense use of, and dependency on, more and more varieties and quantities of energy, culminating with the present situation in which no society can remain se-cure, or competitive, without access to cheap, high-volume energy. Given the present needs for energy, and the indicators of changing megatrends, which I will discuss shortly, the questions of how society will use and need energy, and, conversely, how energy forms and trade will affect societies are the vital components of economic wealth and security going forward.

Unlike the West, Asia rises above crisis

Unlike the West, Asia rises above crisis - February 9, 2010

Little risk of default among even heavily indebted countries

(MUMBAI) While rising government debt is a growing concern in Europe and the United States, Asia's economies remain remarkably resilient, even buoyant, underscoring how economic might is shifting from West to East.
Prosperous: China, with more than US$2 trillion in foreign reserves, can well afford to repay some of its small external debt as it comes due

China has been repaying some of what little foreign debt it owes, even as economists wonder whether Greece will require an international bailout and ask how long the United States can sustain record budget deficits.

'We took a pass on the economic crisis,' said Philip Carmichael, president of Asian operations at Haier, China's biggest appliance maker.

Even the Asian economies that have shrunk during the recession, like Malaysia and Cambodia, escaped the worst ravages - with the notable exception of Japan, Asia's first industrialised country.

Because of the Asian financial crisis of 1997, many Asian countries have been more conservative about borrowing and spending over the last decade than Western nations, which went on a debt binge during the good times and continued to increase their borrowing during the recession to try to turn around their economies.

Many economists say countries have to spend during recessions, increasing deficits and debts. But investors and economists alike worry about the long-term effect of mammoth debt on the vitality of Europe and the United States. The longer it takes Western capitals to confront their overspending, the higher and more rapid Asia's rise will be, many economists say.

Even though Asian stock markets fell last week, analysts say there is no obvious Asian equivalent to, say, Greece. Investors see little risk of default among even heavily indebted countries like India and Japan.

In India, the government's debt is nearly 80 per cent of the gross domestic product, but it owes more than 90 per cent of that money to its own citizens. Of the rest, a big chunk is held by agencies like the World Bank, which, are not likely to press for quick repayment.

Compared to Greece, 'the threat of these two defaulting is nowhere close, and the reason is that, thanks to high domestic savings rates, their debt is almost all domestically financed,' said Kim Eng Tan, a sovereign debt analyst in the Singapore office of Standard and Poor's.

'If you sell bonds to your own citizens, and you do it in your own currency, you don't have much of a problem,' said Ajay Kapur, the chief global strategist for Mirae Asset, a big South Korean financial services company.

China has been repaying some of its small external debt as it comes due, a luxury that a country with more than US$2 trillion in foreign reserves can afford.

China showed a government budget surplus for the first 11 months of last year, but Western economists still expect a small deficit for the entire year because agencies tend to go on spending binges every December to avoid returning unspent money.

A few smaller Asian nations have had difficulties in the last year and a half. But they have been hurt more often by political strains than by economic troubles. Like Greece, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have relied heavily over the years on overseas borrowing. That started to dry up in late 2008, as fighting with insurgents in both countries began to scare off foreign lenders. Both ended up receiving assistance from the International Monetary Fund, and that has shored up their finances, at least for now.

Thailand and the Fiji Islands both had ratings downgrades last year because of civil unrest as well, although neither required IMF assistance.

The Asian country hurt the most by the global financial crisis was arguably Mongolia, where a steep but temporary decline in world copper prices prompted the government to obtain a US$224 million IMF loan in March.

Though the risk of a full-blown sovereign debt crisis in Asia may seem remote, economists say there are other reasons that investors and policymakers should be concerned about high deficits.

In India, the growing fiscal deficit - which reached 8 per cent of GDP last year, up from 3.3 per cent in 2008 - could dampen growth by making it harder and more expensive for corporations and individuals to borrow money, said Ila Patniak, a senior fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi.

India's policymakers have signalled that they intend to pare the deficit by selling stakes in government-owned companies and reducing subsidies on fuel and fertilisers. Analysts point out that Indian governments have long promised those reforms but have struggled to deliver them because of internal political pressures.

China, too, has internal conflicts - between rural and urban populations and between Beijing and the disparate governments in the provinces - that make fiscal policy more difficult.

But the debt problems faced by Asian nations are neither as immediate nor as far-reaching as the growing debt in Europe and the United States. -- NYT

Decision 2008: The Ukraine 2010 edition

Posted By Joshua Keating Friday, January 29, 2010 - 7:49 PM

The Financial Times takes a look at the high-profile Washington players brought in to advise Ukraine's presidential candidates, who are headed for a run-off on Feb. 7. There's an interesting partisan breakdown between the candidates:

Paul Manafort – a Republican strategist whose firm, Davis, Manafort and Freedman, advised several US presidents – has turned round Mr Yanukovich’s fortunes. Mr Manafort’s team provided strategic advice to Rinat Akhmetov, the country’s richest man, before Mr Akhmetov introduced them to Mr Yanukovich in 2005. They have now helped propel the humiliated loser of the fraud-marred 2004 election into pole position in the country’s first presidential vote since the Orange Revolution.

AKPD Media and Message, founded by David Axelrod, President Barack Obama’s senior adviser, has been helping Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine’s prime minister, who came second in the first round of voting earlier this month. She is also being advised by John Anzalone, who worked on the Obama campaign. [...]

The PBN Company, another US group, failed to restore the popularity of Viktor Yushchenko, the outgoing president. Although Mr Yushchenko also received advice from Mark Penn, campaign strategist to Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, his support plunged to about 5 per cent after his triumph in the 2004 Orange Revolution.

Hmm... so the candidate with an ex-Clinton advisor got knocked out in the first round leaving the Obama-associated advisors and the McCain-associated advisors to fight it out. Sounds familiar. It doesn't appear likely to end the same way, though.

Manafort's connections to Yanukovych have been a bit embarrassing for the Republicans since the Orange Revolution, which was staunchly supported by both the Bush administration and McCain. But given the Tymoshenko camp's campaign tactics, it's not the most savory association for the company to have. Though judging by former AKPD partner David Plouffe's speaking engagements, this group doesn't seem too squeamish about it's acquaintances on the post-Soviet world.

China dips its toe in the Black Sea

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.
By M K Bhadrakumar

Like the star gazers who last week watched the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, diplomatic observers had a field day watching the penumbra of big power politics involving the United States, Russia and China, which constitutes one of the crucial phenomena of 21st-century world politics.

It all began with United States Vice President Joseph Biden choosing a tour of Ukraine and Georgia on July 20-23 to rebuke the Kremlin publicly for its "19th-century notions of spheres of influence". Biden's tour of Russia's troubled "near abroad" took place within a fortnight of US President Barack Obama's landmark visit to Moscow to "reset" the US's relations with Russia.

Clearly, Biden's jaunt was choreographed as a forceful demonstration of the Barack Obama administration's resolve to keep up the US's strategic engagement of Eurasia - a rolling up of sleeves and gearing up for action after the exchange of customary pleasantries by Obama with his Kremlin counterpart Dmitry Medvedev. Plainly put, Biden's stark message was that the Obama administration intends to robustly challenge Russia's claim as the predominant power in the post-Soviet space.

Biden ruled out any "trade-offs" with the Kremlin or any form of "recognition" of Russia's spheres of influence. He committed the Obama administration to supporting Ukraine's status as an "integral part of Europe" and Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration. Furthermore, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Biden spoke of Russia's own dim future in stark, existential terms.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov promptly responded in an interview with the Moscow-based Vesti news channel. He said, "I hope the administration of President Obama will proceed from the agreements reached in Moscow. We believe the attempts by some people from within the administration to pull all of us back into the past, the way that Vice President Joe Biden, a well-known politician, did it, are not normative."

Return to Reaganism
Lavrov added, "Biden's interview with the Wall Street Journal seemed to have been copied from the speeches by leading officials of the George W Bush administration." However, it is difficult to be dismissive of Biden as an unauthentic voice. It was Biden who spoke of "resetting" the US's relations with Russia. He did raise expectations in Moscow. And Obama's visit to Moscow early in July has been widely interpreted as the formal commencement of the "reset" process.

Now it transpires that the "reset" might take the US's policy towards Russia back to the 1980s and towards president Ronald Reagan's triumphalist thesis that Russia could not be a match for the US, given its deeply flawed economic structure and demography and, therefore, the grater the pressure on the Russian economy, the more conciliatory Moscow would be towards US pressure.

As Stratfor, a US think-tank with links to the security establishment, summed up, the great game will be to "squeeze the Russians and let nature take its course".

There is already some evidence of this coordinated Western approach toward Russia in the European Union's "Eastern Partnership" project, unveiled in Prague in May, the geographical scope of which consists of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine, and which aims at drawing these post-Soviet states of "strategic importance" towards Brussels through a matrix of economic assistance, liberalized trade and investment and visa regimes that stop short of accession to the EU but effectively encourages them to loosen their ties with Russia. Indeed, the EU thrust has already begun eroding Russia's close ties with Belarus and Armenia.

An immediate challenge lies ahead for Moscow as the parliamentary election results in Moldova have swept Europe's last ruling communist party from power by pro-EU opposition parties. The US and the EU have kept up the pressure tactic of April's abortive "Twitter revolution" in Moldova to force a regime change that puts an end to the leadership of President Vladimir Voronin, who has pro-Moscow leanings. The EU has made generous promises of economic integration to Moldova and Moscow made a counter-offer in June of a US$500 million loan.

However, in a stunning development, China entered the fray this month and signed an agreement to loan $1 billion to Moldova at a highly favorable 3% interest rate over 15 years with a five-year grace period on interest payments. The money will be channeled through Covec, China's construction leviathan, as project exports in fields such as energy modernization, water systems, treatment plants, agriculture and high-tech industries.

Curiously, China has offered that it is prepared to "guarantee financing for all projects considered necessary and justified by the Moldovan side" over and above the $1 billion loan. In effect, Beijing has signaled its willingness to underwrite the entire Moldovan economy which has an estimated gross domestic product of $8 billion and a paltry budget of $1.5 billion.

The Chinese move is undoubtedly a geopolitical positioning. In an interesting tongue-in-cheek commentary recently, the People's Daily noted that "under the [Barack] Obama administration, the meaning and use of 'cyber diplomacy' has changed significantly ... US authorities ... stirred up trouble for Iran through websites such as Twitter ... [Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] said that this is the essence of smart power, adding that this change requires the US to broaden its concept of diplomacy".

Moldova is a country where China has historically been an observer rather than a player. This is Beijing's first leap across Central Asia to the frayed western edges of Eurasia. Why is Moldova becoming so terribly important? Beijing will have calculated the immense geopolitical significance of Moldova's integration by the West. It would then be a matter of time before Moldova was inducted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), before the Black Sea became a "NATO lake" and the alliance positioned itself in a virtually unassailable position to march into the Caucasus and right into Central Asia on China's borders.

What we may never quite know is the extent of coordination between Moscow and Beijing. Both capitals have stressed lately of increased Sino-Russian coordination in foreign policy. The joint statement issued after the visit by the Chinese President Hu Jintao to Russia in June specifically expressed Beijing's support for Moscow over the situation in the Caucasus. Clearly, a high degree of coordination is becoming visible across the entire post-Soviet space.

Islamists on the Silk Road
Thus, it is conceivable that Moscow would have sensitized Beijing about its intention to set up a second military base in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, which is located in close proximity to China's Xinjiang, and is a principal transit route for Central Asian Islamist fighters based in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There are definite signs of a revival of Islamist activities in Central Asia and the North Caucasus. China is carefully watching its fallout on Xinjiang. Though Western commentators take pains to characterize the renewed Islamist thrust into Central Asia as an outcome of the Pakistani military operations along the Pakistan-Afghan border areas which used to be sanctuaries for militant groups, the jury is still out. Chinese experts have pointed out that with the easing of cross-strait tensions in China's equations with Taiwan, the scope for US meddling in China's affairs has drastically reduced and this, in turn, has shifted US attention to China's western regions of Xinjiang and Tibet.

There is much strategic ambiguity as to what is precipitating the fresh upswing of Islamist activities in the broad swathe of land that constitutes the "soft underbelly" of Russia and China. Within 48 hours of the outbreak of violence in Xinjiang earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi telephoned his Russian counterpart and Moscow issued a statement strongly supportive of Beijing.

On July 10, a similar statement by the secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) followed, endorsing the steps taken by Beijing "within the framework of law" to bring "calm and restore normal life" in Xinjiang following clashes between ethnic Uyghurs and Han Chinese. The SCO statement reiterated the resolve to "further deepen practical cooperation in the filed of fighting against terrorism, separatism, extremism and transnational organized crime for the sake of [safeguarding] regional security and stability".

Again, China has underscored that the regional security of Central Asia and South Asia is closely intertwined. Commenting on the SCO statement, the People's Daily said it "demonstrated that the SCO member states understood well that the situation in Xinjiang bears closely on that of the entire surrounding region ... Some Central Asian countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan also fell victim to these evil forces ... The evil forces have also crossed the border to spread violence and terrorism by setting up training camps. Links have been discovered between these forces and the recent riot in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang. The fight against these evil forces will greatly benefit all Central and South Asian countries as evidence has shown that the 'three evil forces' are detrimental not only to Xinjiang but also to the whole region."

Significantly, in another commentary, the People's Daily launched a blistering attack on US policies in fanning unrest in Xinjiang. "To the Chinese people, it is nothing new that the US tacitly or openly fans the winds of resentment against China ... the US indiscriminately embraces all those forces hostile to China ... Perhaps, it is a customary practice for the US to adopt the double-standard when weighing its interests against others. Or, perhaps, it has some ulterior motive behind to ensure its supreme position will not be challenged or altered by splitting to weaken others ... Since the end of the 1980s, the US has never moderated its intention to stoke so-called 'China issues' ... This time, in their efforts to fan feuding between Han and Uighur Chinese by harboring and propping up separatist forces, the US is jumping out again to be the third party that would, for the secret hope, benefit from the tussle."

There is no need, therefore, to second-guess that China supported the Russian initiative to call a quadrilateral regional security summit meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on Thursday, which was attended by the presidents of Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The Russian move poses a geopolitical challenge to the US, which has been monopolizing conflict-resolution in Afghanistan; keeping Russia out of the Hindu Kush; attempting to splinter the SCO-driven Sino-Russian convergence over regional security in Central Asia; stepping up diplomatic and political efforts to erode Russia's ties with Central Asian states; and expanding its influence and presence in Pakistan and steadily brining that country into the fold of NATO's partnership program.

The tempo of the regional security summit in Dushanbe was set by Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon when he told his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari at a meeting on Wednesday that he expected to work closely with Pakistan to prevent the rise of instability in Central Asia. "We do share similar and close positions on these issues and our countries should have taken coordinated actions aimed against this antagonistic phenomenon," Rakhmon said.

Conceivably, China will also use its influence on Pakistan to nudge it in the direction of regional cooperation rather than passively subserve the US's regional policies. Zardari's initial remarks at Dushanbe, though, have been non-committal. He blandly responded to Rakhmon, "We will stand together against the challenges of this century."

Moscow tabled as an agenda item for the Dushanbe summit a proposal for regional cooperation that involves selling electricity from Tajikistan's Sangtudinskaya hydroelectric power plant (in which Russia has invested $500 million and holds a controlling 75% equity) to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ironically, the idea was originally an American brainwave aimed at bolstering the US's "Great Central Asia" strategy that hoped to draw the region out of the Russian and Chinese orbit of influence.

Russia draws a Maginot Line
Equally, it is all but certain that while China is not a member of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Beijing will draw satisfaction that Moscow is building up the alliance's presence in Central Asia as a counterweight to NATO. After the unrest in Xinjiang, Beijing has a direct interest in the Russian idea of creating an anti-terrorist center in Kyrgyzstan and advancing the CSTO's rapid-reaction force (Collective Operational Reaction Forces) in Central Asia.

No doubt, the outcome of the CSTO summit meeting in the resort town of Cholpon-Ata in Kyrgyzstan this weekend will be keenly watched in Beijing. On the eve of this summit, an aide to the Russian president revealed in Moscow on Wednesday that an agreement had been reached in principle about the opening of a Russian base in Osh under the CSTO banner. A Kremlin source also told the Russian newspaper Gazeta that the summit meeting would discuss the situation in Afghanistan.

Viewed against this backdrop, the joint Russian-Chinese military exercises, dubbed "Peace Mission 2009", held on July 22-26, cannot be regarded as a mere repetition of two such exercises held in 2005 and 2007. True, all three exercises have been held under the framework of the SCO, but this year's has been in actuality a bilateral Russian-Chinese effort with other member states represented as "observers".

Major General Qian Lihua of the Chinese Ministry of Defense claimed that the drills were of "profound significance" when the forces of terrorism, separatism and extremism are "rampant nowadays". He said that apart from strengthening regional security and stability, the exercises also symbolized the "high-level strategic and mutual trust" between China and Russia and became a "powerful move" for the two countries to strengthen "pragmatic cooperation" in the field of defense.

Taking stock of the military-to-military cooperation between China and Russia, Qian said:

First, high-level exchanges have become frequent. It has become a routine for the two nations to arrange an exchange between defense ministers or chiefs of general staff at least once a year. Frequent exchanges between defense departments and high-level military visits have effectively driven the smooth development of bilateral military relations between China and Russia.

Second, strategic consultation has become a routine mechanism. Since 1997, the militaries of China and Russia established a mechanism to hold annual consultations between the two sides' leadership at the level of deputy chief of the general staff. So far, 12 rounds of strategic consultation have been held, which has promoted mutual trust and friendly cooperation.

Third, exchanges between professional groups and teams have become pragmatic. The militaries of China and Russia have conducted pragmatic exchanges and cooperation in many forces and corps including communications, engineering and mapping.

Qian anticipated that with the Peace Mission 2009, the "strategic mutual trust and the pragmatic cooperation between the two militaries will enter a new stage".

China's concern is palpable in the face of the rise in militant Islamist activities in Central Asia. "The terrorists are quietly trying to take cover in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan ... They've lived in Afghanistan for a long time," as Tajik Interior Minister Abdurakhim Kakhkharov put it recently. The Rasht Valley in the Pamir Mountains where the terrorists are gathering is only "trekking distance" from the Afghan (and Chinese) border.

There are reports of famous Tajik Islamist commander Mullo Abdullo having returned from Afghanistan and Pakistan with his followers after nearly a decade and that he is trying to recruit militants in the Rasht Valley. From various accounts, militant elements from Russia's North Caucasus, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang are linking up.

To quote the Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, "The Afghanistan situation is affecting not only Kyrgyzstan but Central Asia as a whole. People have come here to carry out acts of terror." Bakiyev added ominously, "There are still forces out there that we do not know about, who are here and who are ready to indulge in illegal activities. They have one aim: to destabilize Central Asia." Yet, NATO has pleaded helplessness in stopping the movement of the Taliban in the direction of the Tajik border.

Thus, the million-dollar question is whether the current unrest is a mere distant echo or is tantamount to a replay of the US efforts to fund and equip mujahideen fighters and to promote militant Islam as a geopolitical tool in Soviet Central Asia in the 1980s. That is why Biden's remarks harking back to Reaganism will be taken very seriously in Moscow and Beijing - that the Russian economy is a wreck, Russia's geography is ridden with a range of weaknesses that are withering, and the US should not underestimate its hand. China's bold move in Moldova shows that it may have begun regarding the post-Soviet space as its own "near abroad".

End of Chimerica?
The point is, there is a hefty economic angle to the maneuverings. The US's Eurasia energy envoy Richard Morningstar bluntly admitted at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing two weeks ago that China's success in gaining access to Caspian and Central Asia energy reserves threatened the US's geopolitical interests.

Interestingly, the renewed spurt of unrest in Central Asia (including Xinjiang) - which Russian intelligence has been anticipating since end-2008 - is taking place along the route of the 7,000-kilometer gas pipeline from Turkmenistan via Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and leading to Xinjiang that is expected to be commissioned by year-end. No doubt, the pipeline signifies a historic turning point in the geopolitics of the entire region.

Well-known economic historian Niall Ferguson has compared "Chinmerica" - the thesis that China and America have effectively fused to become a single economy - to "a marriage on the rocks".

Ferguson anticipates, in the context of the Group of Two "strategic dialogue" between the US and China that took place in Washington this week, that a point will be reached when instead of continuing with the "unhappy marriage", China may decide to "got it alone ... to buy them global power in their own right".

Factors influencing this are US saving rates soaring upwards and US imports from China significantly reducing; the Chinese feeling they have had enough of US government bonds, with the specter of the price of US Treasury bonds falling or the purchasing power of the dollar falling (or both) - either way China stands to lose.

Ferguson sees that China may have already begun doing this and its campaign to buy foreign assets (such as in Moldova), its tentative movement toward a consumer society, its growing embrace of the special drawing rights idea of a basket of currencies to replace the dollar - all these are signs of an impending "Chinmerica divorce". But what does it entail for world politics? Ferguson says:

Imagine a new Cold War but one in which the two superpowers are economically the same size, which was never true in the old Cold War because the USSR was always a lot poorer than the USA.

Or, if you prefer an older analogy, imagine a rerun of the Anglo-German antagonism of the early 1900s, with America in the role of Britain and China in the role of imperial Germany. This is a better analogy because it captures the fact that a high level of economic integration does not necessarily prevent the growth of strategic rivalry and ultimately conflict.

We are a long way from outright warfare, of course. These things build quite slowly. But the geopolitical tectonic plates are moving, and moving fast. The end of Chimerica is causing India and the United States to become more closely aligned. It's creating an opportunity for Moscow to forge closer links to Beijing.

Surely, a major difference will be that while this month's solar eclipse is not expected to be surpassed until June 2132, there are no such certainties in the shifty world of big-power politics, especially the tricky triangular relationship involving the US, Russia and China. But one thing is certain. Like in the case of the solar eclipse that was gazed at from all conceivable corners of the Earth, the shift in the geopolitical tectonic plates and the resultant realignment of the co-relation of forces across Eurasia will be watched with keen interest by countries as diverse as India and Brazil, Iran and North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, Syria and Sudan.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

Post-Soviet nations to form military force

Post-Soviet nations to form military force - CNN.com

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- A Russian-led bloc of post-Soviet nations has agreed to establish a rapid-reaction military force to combat terrorists and respond to regional emergencies, Russian media reported Wednesday.
Russian navy soldiers stand guard during a military ceremony.

Russian navy soldiers stand guard during a military ceremony.

The decision came a day after reports that Kyrgyzstan is planning to close a strategically important U.S. military base that Washington uses to transport troops and supplies into Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, the Collective Security Treaty Organization -- made up of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan -- decided on the rapid-reaction force at a Kremlin summit, the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti reported.

The group's security council "spent a long time discussing the central issue of forming collective reaction forces and, generally, of rapid reaction to possible threats," said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, according to Russian news agency Interfax.
Don't Miss

* Reports: Kyrgyzstan to close key U.S. base

"Everyone agreed that the formation of joint forces is necessary," he said.

Officials told Russian media that all the members had signed the agreement, though Uzbekistan submitted a special provision.

Uzbekistan doesn't mind contributing military units to the rapid-reaction force "but does not consider it necessary for the moment" to attach emergency responders, drug-control forces and other special services, organization spokesman Vitaly Strugovets told Interfax.

Russian media reported that the force will be used to fight military aggressors, conduct anti-terror operations, battle regional drug trafficking and respond to natural disasters. The force will be based in Russia under a single command, with member nations contributing military units.

On Tuesday, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced at a Moscow news conference that "all due procedures" were being initiated to close Manas Air Base, RIA-Novosti reported. The announcement was made after news reports of a multimillion-dollar aid package from Russia to Kyrgyzstan.

Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees U.S. operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, was in Kyrgyzstan last month, partly to lobby the government to allow the United States to keep using the base. He said he and Kyrgyz leaders did not discuss "at all" the possible closure of the base and said local officials told him there was "no foundation" for news reports about the issue.

The United States is planning to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan to halt a resurgence of the Taliban. Petraeus described Manas as having "an important role in the deployment of these forces" and in refueling aircraft.

The relationship between the United States and Kyrgyzstan was damaged when a Kyrgyz citizen was killed by a U.S. airman in December 2006. The airman was transferred out of Kyrgyzstan, and the dead man's family was offered compensation. Petraeus said in January that the investigation was being reopened.

As he announced the base closure Tuesday, Bakiyev said he was not satisfied with the inquiry into the accident and his government's "inability to provide security to its citizens" was proving a serious concern.

Medvedev also weighed in on the issue Wednesday, saying the base closure shouldn't hamper anti-terrorism operations, according to Interfax.

"It would be great if their numbers meant there were fewer terrorists, but such action depends on other things as well," he said.