I came across this translation from the Latvian press on TOL about whether or not the global financial crisis is changing Russia's foreign policy ambitions in its near abroad. The short answer: no.You would think that given this increasingly complex domestic situation, Russia's rulers would not have the time or money to continue the aggressive foreign policies which they have pursued in recent years - those which culminated in August 2008 with the war against Georgia.
But let us not fool ourselves. There are two reasons why the crisis is strengthening, not weakening Russia's desire to continue on its way with its decided foreign policy course.
First there was something that was stressed at the Tallinn conference by many long-term observers of Russian politics, including a respected researcher from the Carnegie Centre in Moscow, Lilia Shevtsova, as well as Janusz Bugajski from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. They argued that Russia's foreign policy serves its domestic policy, and the goal is to ensure that the Kremlin can maintain control over the country's people, constantly threatening them with foreign dangers and mobilizing them against enemies. Internal dissatisfaction with those who run the country will not force them to get rid of this mechanism of power. On the contrary - it is a powerful driving force to put it to even greater use, because what would be more advantageous right now than to tell people that all of their problems can be blamed on evil imperialists and their running dogs in Georgia, Ukraine, Estonia, and Latvia?
MOSCOW'S FINANCIAL RESOURCES
Secondly, as the Kremlin knows very well, power is never absolute, it is always relative. In a kingdom of the blind, someone with one eye becomes king. Russia has lost a great deal of money from the world's financial crisis, but the blow for neighbouring countries has been even greater. Russia's currency reserves have declined by 200 billion dollars, but they still are at the level of 400 billion dollars. It is not particularly difficult to find 10 billion dollars to use for strategic intervention. The noisiest example of this was the loan of 2 billion dollars from Russia to Kyrgyzstan after that country decided to shut down a military airfield at Manas. The United States used it as an important base to support its military force in Afghanistan. As a former U.S. State Department employee, David Kramer, said at the conference in Tallinn, "The Russians really screwed us." The Manas base was not irreplaceable, but it was very important for the Americans, and Russia took it away, knowing full well how important the war in Afghanistan is in President Obama's foreign policy.
