Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 18 – Two days
ago, the Rosbalt news agency reported that Moscow is discussing the possible sale
to Japan of at least a portion of the disputed Kurile Islands (the Northern
Territories, in Japanese parlance) and is “preparing public opinion for such a
decision” (rosbalt.ru/like/2018/11/16/1747037.html).
That announcement has sparked an emotional
outcry among many Russians who view any loss of Russian-controlled territory as
an act of treason, but it has also led to some more thoughtful discussions of
what such a decision says about the nature of Kremlin thinking and what it may
mean for the future of Eurasia.
Two of these discussions are
especially intriguing.
In the first, Igor Eidman, a Russian
sociologist who writes commentaries of Deutsche
Welle, says the idea of selling the Kuriles to Japan reflects “the main
leitmotif of the policy of Russia’s ruling oligarchy – the monetarization of
the resources it controls” (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2121065507956417&id=100001589654713).
Its operating principle, he
continues, is that “’everything is for sale,’ that everything must be
transformed into money” and that money must go into the pockets of the oligarchs,
typically to be held in offshore accounts. First, the oligarchs took over
government agencies to pump money out of Russia and more recently they have
been selling off Russia’s natural resources.
“Not so long ago, they began to
literally monetarize the blood” of Russians prepared to serve their interests
in so called “private military companies,” men who have been sold off as “cannon
fodder to Syria, Libya, and the Central African Republic.
With that, it might have seemed that
“’all that could be betrayed and sold had been’ … but no, one valuable resource
hadn’t yet been monetarized – vast Russian territories. It is time to sell
them.” And Putin will be willing to do so for what many will see at cheap
prices, Eidman continues.
“The sale of territories under its
control is absolutely in the logic of the Russian bureaucracy accustomed as it
is to enrich itself by any means possible. Apparently, the first steps in this
direction have already been done. Under Putin, no fewer than 337 square kilometers
have been handed over to China. Probably
still larger deals are ahead.”
According to Eidman, “the appetites
of the ruling oligarchy are growing; new assets have to be put on the market”
to satisfy them. “And the most valuable of these is the enormous territory of
Russia itself.” So much for patriotism when money is concerned.
And in the second of these commentaries,
Aleksey Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy, says that unlike many
skeptics, he is convinced that Putin is ready under definite conditions and under
the cover of a specific sauce” to return some or all of the Kuriles to Japan (echo.msk.ru/programs/observation/2316456-echo/).
Some argue that having annexed Crimea
with the one hand, Putin can hardly give away the Kuriles with the other, but
Venediktov says that is to misunderstand the situation, even if returning the
Kuriles to Japan will help Moscow escape “the blockade” it has faced since the
annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula.
Putin doesn’t view the two places
linked in any broader sense, the editor suggests, because for him “Crime is ‘genetically
ours,’” something whose return to Ukraine cannot even be contemplated. But the
two events do reflect Putin’s “model of the world,” a model based on the
Yalta-Potsdam” one set up at the end of World War II.
According to that model, Venediktov
continues, “each great power,” the US and the USSR then, now Russia, the US,
China and the EU, is to be responsible “for order in its sector.” That could open the way to more changes of
borders in Eurasia, changes that in Putin’s mind he has the right to make and
no one else has the right to object to.
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