Russia's Ruinous Chechen War

Rajan Menon and Graham E. Fuller

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2000

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Summary:  The Russian Federation is unraveling, and its war against Chechnya shows why. Moscow blames Islamist terrorists for the trouble there. But in doing so, it ignores Russia's deeper afflictions. Russia has forced disparate ethnic groups to live together for decades but has proven inept at governing its wobbly empire. Now the fighting in Chechnya is leading dissatisfied nationalities to rethink their options -- and their dependence on Russia. Chechnya was the first to rebel. It will not be the last.

Rajan Menon is Monroe J. Rathbone Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University and Director of Eurasia Policy Studies at the National Bureau of Asian Research. Graham E. Fuller is former Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council and is currently a resident consultant at RAND.

DECLINE AND FALL?

The Russian Federation may be falling apart -- and its war against Chechnya is showing why. Unfortunately, most observers of the war in Chechnya miss the larger implications, limiting their analysis to the struggle for independence of one small region. Moscow blames radical Islamists for the trouble. Despite the undeniable role of fundamentalists in the Caucasus, however, Moscow had a greater hand in the federation's decline than it cares to admit.

Russia's latest war with Chechnya was sparked in August 1999 when radical Islamists, many of whom had infiltrated from Chechnya, staged uprisings in the neighboring southern Russian republic of Dagestan. Russian troops were sent and, despite Moscow's reassurances that the conflict was under control, the operations had evolved by September into the second full-scale war between Russia and Chechnya in five years. The innumerable deaths, the relentless bombardment of cities, and the torrent of refugees are eerily familiar, recalling the horrors of the 1994-96 Russo-Chechen war.

The Russian army -- even while weakened and demoralized -- has been more successful this time; Russian officials are proclaiming swift progress. But no real solution -- military or political -- is in sight. Instead, Russia is drifting back to the hoary Soviet practice of the big lie. It blames the bombing of marketplaces and civilian dwellings on Chechen terrorists and "bandits" while praising its own military for pinpoint strikes that supposedly destroy terrorist strongholds without hurting civilians. Russian leaders dismiss eyewitness accounts of civilian casualties as propaganda or as a double standard employed by the West, fresh from its Serbian war and out to weaken Russia. The Russian news media, too, like their state-controlled predecessors, are sticking to the official story. Only the military setbacks that began in mid-January have forced Russian leaders and the press to be more candid about the extent of Russian losses in the Chechen war. Nonetheless, honest debate is seldom tolerated, as even prominent Russian advocates of democracy and reform equate criticism of the war with disloyalty.

Moscow attributes the turbulence in Chechnya and Dagestan to external forces -- the bogeymen of radical Islam and foreign zealots. In doing so, it ignores the country's deeper afflictions. Russia has forced disparate ethnic groups to live together for decades but has proven inept at governing its wobbly empire. Now the fighting in Chechnya is endangering Russia's nascent democracy and dooming its efforts to make the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) the attractive coalition of friendly states it needs to be. Short-term Russian military successes will actually increase the appeal of political Islam as an alternative, given the heavy toll of Russia's unrestrained campaign on the lives of ordinary people.

HOW THE SOUTH WAS WON

It is no accident that the skein of the Russian Federation should unravel first in the North Caucasus, the bloodiest venue of tsarist imperial expansion. When Russia's Romanovs tried to conquer it in the nineteenth century, it took from 1816 to 1856 to subdue the fierce resistance. Thousands of noncombatants were ...

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