Think Like a Russian

September 6, 2004
In Beslan, Russia, over one hundred and fifty children have been slaughtered (along with an equal number of adults, plus multiples of maimed and wounded) by a band of suicidal Islamic maniacs. This fantastic paramilitary insult has come on the heels of two airplane bombings and a Moscow subway bombing. So far (Monday, evening six p.m. EDT) there has been no military response to the act by Russia. Think like a Russian for a few minutes.

Russians do not have an equivalent of poltical correctness. Russian politicians don't get brownie points for competitive empathy. There is no inclination to take a therapeutic view of cultural conflict. There is a strong bent for national survival, and a disposition to deal with adversaries ruthlessly. What does the Russian leadership consider doing in the aftermath of Beslan?

I believe they will think about wiping a major Islamic city off the map. Say, Tehran or Damascus, as an object lesson to the Islamic world, with the admonition that if there is any more fucking nonsense emanating from that part of the world, all Islamic population centers will be turned into ashtrays (Cechenya included, of course, but Baghdad and Kabul conveniently excluded for the time being).

The US might pretend to deplore such a development, but it would probably do nothing to stop whatever action Russia takes, and it might be in America's interest to let the Russians wipe up the floor with the Islamic world and take the heat for it. "They're savages," our talk show stars would say of the Russians, allowing Americans to feel morally superior while they enjoyed the benefit of a world without militant Islamic fundamentalism.

Russia is the world's number two oil producer after Saudi Arabia. The whole world is in trouble with oil, but the Russians arguably would not suffer any sooner or much worse if Riyadh and Jedda were leveled. (The US would be discommoded, but we might soon be on the scene repairing the pipelines and terminals.)

This a pretty harsh picture I am sketching, admittedly, but I wouldn't underestimate the Russians. The murder of all these children (one girl shot forty-six times in the back, according to NPR today) ranks at least with our 9/11. I don't think President V. Putin is going to take a very long time twiddling his thumbs in the Kremlin. I have to say: expect some very severe action in the eastern hemisphere this coming week.

Comments

[aj]

It would seem to be that Chechnya's long-running war for independence from Russian control is only now using religion as a pretext to recruit people to their cause -- before that, they seemed entirely happy to slaughter innocents in a secular fashion.

Of course, it all boils down to control of oil reserves in the end, so it's one band of plutocrats vying for control vs. another, and the people are told it's really about religion, or tribal nationalism, or whatever will get them to pick up a Kalashnikov.

Found on the website of the California National Guard, of all places, from way back in 2000:

Chechnya oil riches fuel war

By Giles Whittell
Source: The Times (UK)
Date: January 5, 2000

In the chaos of the Chechnya war, one image stands out as a sign of why both sides are losing - that of the rebel who has run out of petrol for his Jeep, dashing between dugouts on a bicycle.

This is an old-fashioned war, for Chechen independence and Russian self-esteem, but also a more modern one, for oil. Grozny's dwindling supplies will please Russia's generals, but for Kremlin strategists they are a reminder that Moscow's long-term goal of dominating the Caspian basin and its vast oil and gas reserves is as elusive as ever.

Before the 1994-96 war, Grozny's network of refineries made it the second biggest oil city in the region after Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Geologists said up to 200 billion barrels lay beneath the Caspian, and there was every sign that Moscow would retain a leading role in the lucrative business of selling it. The Russian pipeline which pumped 100,000 barrels of crude a day to the Black Sea has been closed since summer.

Behind the rhetoric of an "anti-terrorist operation", it is clear that Moscow launched this war partly to keep a toehold in what may be the world's richest oil region outside the Middle East.

Yet as a policy initiative it has failed: the fighting has boosted two huge US-backed schemes to build pipelines through the Caucasus to Turkey, while a new Russian one that bypasses Chechnya may have nothing to pump when completed.

In an important sense Russia lost the first decisive battle of the war last month in Istanbul. After President Yeltsin's abrupt return to Moscow from the OSCE summit, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the US signed a treaty paving the way for a $2.4 billion (£1.48 billion) oil pipeline from Baku to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. An American spokesman called the project part of "the strategic vision of new Eurasian co-operation". This is widely seen as code for an American policy of curbing Russia's role in the Caucasus.

Moscow lashed out at Washington for its "meddlesome role" in the Caucasus. The State Department professed bewilderment, but experts talk bluntly of an all-out race for Caspian dominance that America appears to be winning. The opening of a pipeline across Georgia to the Black Sea in April was its first victory.

[Jim]

If the Russians take out Damascus, I believe the U.S. should immediately retaliate by taking out Tehran.

[larry ziegler]

THE RUSSIANS HAVE BRUTALIZED THE CHECHANS FOR YEARS. Im not condoning their killing of kids, but they're not TERRORISTS, THEY'RE REBELS!

[gary]

"Russian politicians don't get brownie points for competitive empathy."

What a great phrase. It's too bad I don't have a place for it right now. By the time I need to plagiarize it, I'll have forgotten. Life is inconvenient like that.

[J. Michael Matkin]

My initial fear was that Putin round up every Chechen kid he could find and threaten to shoot them 100 a day until the Chechens turn over every terrorist that they're harboring. The scenario you've outlined is actually pretty compelling, and it would certainly match Putin's approach in the past. Still, he and his government seem almost stunned in their tracks by this latest week of attacks. The strikes were relentless there for several days, culminating in Breslan.

I agree with larry ziegler that the Chechens have mostly just been fighting back while the Russians were carpet bombing every village and hamlet in the region. I guess I'm just wondering if Putin is wondering if two hundred years of trying to kill off Chechens hasn't just gotten them all deeper and deeper into this downward spiral. If he does, it will be a remarkable bit of evolution for the man. I'm not sure the rest of the country will permit such restraint, however. Putin may end up glassing some major Muslim metropolis not so much to send a message to the fundies but to assuage his own people.

[Julian Morrison]

Watch the russian army in Chechnya. If they pull out to the borders and hunker down behind radiation-proof objects, expect Chechnya to get briefly very well lit indeed.

[Robert Speirs]

Maybe they could put a couple - or a couple of dozen - Russian mountain divisions in Afghanistan to hunt down Osama before our elections. Wait a minute. The Russians already had a decade of bad experiences in Afghanistan. And we funded the rebels, apparently including Osama. My head hurts.

[Mauricio Babilonia]

It'd be a whole lot more accurate to view the perpetrators of the Beslan atrocity as Chechens than as suicidal Islamic maniacs. Don't forget that the Russians have taken Chechnya from a nation of 4 million down to under a half a million. There's also a territorial dispute going on between the various ethnic groups in the area (Beslan + Inguish + Ossetian = Revenge; see: http://www.coppergreen.squarespace.com/blog/2004/10/10/beslan-inguish-ossetian-revenge.html) that can't be ignored.

Oil certainly is playing its part though.