Feb 07 2009
Dust Off the Risk Game Board, its Time to Play
The world is looking more and more like a game of Risk as the future global system emerges from its shell, and Russia has just made a move. Earlier this week the former Soviet juggernaut joined forces with most of its former satellites to form a Collective Security Treaty Organization. Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan will send forces to Russia where they will be under single command - presumably with Russian leadership. The eastern-bloc military force is designed to combat a slew of abstract enemies - military aggressors, terrorism, drug trafficking, and on the more humanitarian side, to respond to natural disasters. The thinking is that with an international force on the ready, that they will be able to react quickly to whatever it is that they are expecting to happen.
Once this post-Soviet coalition of the willing was signed, Russia moved on ahead, offering Kyrgyzstan, the poorest former satellite nation, a $300 million dollar aid loan. Kyrgyzstan then went on to close an important US base located on Kyrgyzstan soil - the Manas Air Base. Manas is important to the US’s own military agenda because of its location right outside of Afghanistan. But because of an unanswered incident in 2006, in which a US soldier killed a Kyrgyz civilian, the US government doesn’t have much clout in the issue. The Kyrgyz President, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, stated that the decision is only a coincidence, and has nothing to do with the Russian aid and alliance, although General Petraeus wasn’t told about the plans when he was in the country in January.
Just for good measure, Russia announced that they are willing to allow the United States to transport non-military goods over their land and into Afghanistan, but only non-military. Russia is asserting its own military presence in the region, and at the same time pushing the US war machine out. What will this mean for US-Russia relations? What will the US do in response when they roll the dice? And what exactly is rising out of the shell, or am I wrong, that it is not a shell at all, but something else, shedding its skin?
Russia also granted the U.S. transit routes for military supplies going into afghanistan - it was just as much a move for cooperation as it was for their own strengthening. And it shows a willingness to negotiate. It’s not all bad, I guess is what I’m trying to say.
http://newsday.today.com/2009/02/06/changes-in-foreign-policy-beginning-to-take-place/