Bordering Afghanistan, Central Asia’s second smallest republic (population 7.7 million) is caught between a disastrous fall in income from its migrant workers abroad and the offer of American money for the use of its territory for transit to Afghanistan.
As General Patreus, head of US Central Command, continues to tour ex-Soviet Central Asian republics, seeking bases for logistic support to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, experts see traps for both sides and fear the region’s destabilisation.
Signs are that Russia wants co-operation with Washington over urgent common problems, and that provocative actions were part of a clumsy play for attention.
Russians need to know more about President Obama, and particularly about his foreign relations team, before deciding whether relations with the US will be better than under President George W. Bush.
The Ukrainian president bears a direct responsibility for a crisis which has all but destroyed Ukraine’s credibility as a guarantor of the free flow of Europe’s energy supplies.
It took three years, and another gas crisis between Russia and Ukraine, for Brussels to accept that its energy security is first of all a question of transit, not just of supply.
Much attention has gone to the effect of the global crisis on Russia’s economic hopes, but little to the predicament of CIS countries depending on workers’ remittances to sustain their economies.
Russia has achieved a notable success in engaging in serious efforts towards peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But the result still depends on winning over popular opinion.
Formerly sceptical Western agencies now say that Georgia’s December 7th attack on the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, was indiscriminate, and that President Saakashvili’s defence of it was misleading.
