Iraq and Afghanistan

Sunday’s NYT Week in Review offers through two maps and accompanying discussions why Russia faces extreme difficulty in holding the country together at the same time as it is expected to adhere to those international human rights standards, particularly self-determination, that the advanced world has adopted. This material can be see by going here (at least this week. Later I suppose they can be found by going to nytimes.com and looking for archived pages under the titles Map: Russia’s Ethnic Jigsaw Puzzle, and Map: Piecing Together the Caucasus). The discussion accompanying the maps points out that more than half of Russia consists of ethnic republics and autonomous regions (this is, of course, after all the old SSRs were subtracted from the state). Many of these political units now have majority Russian populations. Yet many do not, and the complexity of holding them all together is daunting. The map of the Caucasus shows an overlapping of peoples and borders, international and otherwise, that make the complexities of the Balkans look relatively trivial. Today’s NYT points out that many of these groups hate and despise one another, often more so than they do their Russian overlords. It is expected, for example, that 40 days after the Beslan tragedy there will be another tragedy when Ossetians take revenge on nearby Ingush (even though the Chechens were probably the real sponsors).

All this should be remembered when we too easily criticize the Russian for trying to hold on to Chechnya, in part because their independence would enflame their neighbors. We should also more easily sympathize with Putin and his people when they propose or accept changes in the system that would give greater power to the center and reduce the power of local political leaders. We may not like it, but Russians do crave stability above other goods in the political arena — and perhaps with good reason.