I am not an expert on Chechnya by any stretch of the imagination, but I
suspect that (at least) two things are at play here as to why NATO
isn't condemning Russian activities.
1) The West doesn't really have any crucial interests at stake here
(unlike in Yugoslavia).
2) There may be a tacit approval of Russian actions for the following
reasons. Russia, as we all know, was cobbled together in the last 2
centuries as an Empire that incorporated lots of different groups.
Clearly, part of what we are seeing here is the rise of Chechen
nationalism against Russia which is driving the move on
the part of the Chechen "rebels" for independence. I think there is
probably a concern in both the West and in Moscow (and I think this is
what is driving Yeltsin's policy) that if Chechnya is allowed to leave
the federation, then lots of other places will also want to and that
Russia will descend into much greater chaos, which, of course, raises
issues for the West of how to deal w/ an even weaker (though still
nuclear) Russia. Also, any independent Chechnya will more than likely
be an Islamic state, which of course raises larger geopolitical
questions for NATO.
As an aside, Mikhail Gorbachev spoke on campus here at the Univ of
Georgia on Friday on his way to meet w/ Ted Turner in Atlanta, and he
was very critical of the West's approach to the war in Chechnya, saying
basically that: 1) the West should have been more involved in events in
1994; and 2) that because the West wasn't involved to the extent it
should have been in 1994, that Grozny had subsequently become a center
for narcotrafficking and terrorism and that Russia now needed to deal
w/ that situation.
_____________________
Dr. Andrew Herod
Associate Professor
Department of Geography
204 GGS Building
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602, USA
Tel: 706 542 2856
Fax: 706 542 2388
Email: [log in to unmask]
When I give food to the poor, they call me a Saint.
When I ask why the poor have no food, they
call me a Communist.
Dom Helder Camara
"Con el coyote no hay aduana"
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