Behind Russian war on Chechnya
Politics by other means
The brutal wars of national oppression in Dagestan and Chechnya involve important strategic geo-political and economic objectives for the Russian state bureaucracy.
These include the securing of important regional oil and gas reserves, securing the Baku-Novorosisk pipeline and implicitly combating US imperialism’s aggressive new world order which is perceived as increasingly making ground at Russia’s expense, including in its previously sacrosanct "spheres of influence."
NATO has little capacity to influence developments in the Caucasus, hence its quietist response. However, the US hawks would like too put pressure in Russia’s Southern flank.
The strategic goals of US Imperialism and NATO are not driven by universalist norms such as such as "human rights", "peace and stability", or "economic development" aimed at improving living conditions, but by their own state political and economic interests.
The Balkan war tore up all the Helsinki security agreements made with Russia and ignored the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in favour of a naked show of strength, aimed partly at intimidating Russia and China and their allies.
NATO enlargement, against earlier and commitments, rapidly moved from diplomacy to unilateral military initiative in line with the policy of the US hawks, such as Madeleine Albright and Zbigniew Brzezinski. This has only fuelled Russian fears of encirclement.
Nor will not have passed unnoticed by Russian leaders that influential US hawk Brzezinski is a consultant to Amoco and the Azerbaijan International Operating Company, and has close links with other oil cartels in the region. Nonetheless for now imperialism is playing a restrained game.
When Clausewitz wrote that "War is politics by other means" he was thinking precisely of this kind of real-politic. But these are not the only considerations. If the drive to war is fundamentally pushed forward by strategic geo-political objectives, in this case of the Russian state in relation to Chechnya, secondary even relatively trivial issues can act as the spark that ignites conflict.
For example, the exact timing of the renewed bombing of Baghdad appeared to be closely linked to the political difficulties faced by President Clinton over the Lewinski affair.
Similarly, Clausewitz was clearly not thinking of the kind of machinations which now go for politics in the Kremlin when he formulated his famous dictum, where if matters were not so serious they could readily degenerate into farce. But we cannot avoid the fact that this war, at this time, despite the important strategic questions, is also very politically convenient.
A political crisis, and increasingly a political vacuum, is opening up in Moscow. This does not make for stable government or measured judgements, particularly when the President and his clique are engaged in covering up their corruption and the military is driven by revenge and damaged pride after the debacle of the first Chechnya war in 1996.
For the moment, however, better military and political preparation, aided by some very convenient terrorist bombs which indiscriminately destroyed residential apartment blocks in working class districts, has initially transformed the second Chechnya war (unlike the first) into a popular crusade.
The Economist magazine has asked what many have been thinking - Are the Russian military also preparing for some ‘political initiative?’ Maybe some powerful forces have decided enough is enough.
The war is politically convenient in the heartland because it’s election time and Yeltsin is having trouble grooming a credible candidate to replace him in the Presidential elections next year. His own personal standing in the opinion polls is 3%.
Given this, the economic crisis, the volatility of the political situation and the crisis in the armed forces, the war is a huge gamble, but if victorious, could not only rebuild the prestige and confidence of the armed forces but mobilise nationalist sentiment and national unity behind the discredited Yeltsin/Putin government.
Socialists reject such political methods not just because they will fail, even if Russian forces are victorious in the war, but because they are crimes against the people and will only drive many of the most oppressed peoples of the Caucasus into the arms of imperialism,
But not only the peoples of the Caucusus – for together with the cynical gangsterism of the bureaucracy and the new "mafia capitalism" which it has spawned the war will only further demoralise the Russian masses. None of the key players remotely represent the interests of the working class.
As Socialist Outlook suggested in September, it is particularly important for Yeltsin to ensure that his chosen successor, former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, is elected. This is because Yeltsin and his clique have plenty to fear, especially major charges of corruption, if he doesn’t win.
Putin’s task therefore has been to escalate the attacks on Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow, and his rapidly growing party, Fatherland. He is one of the main challengers along with the Communist Party, while the neo liberal ‘centre-left’ party, Yablocko is considered less threatening.
However, according to the Economist , Yeltsin’s camp has realised that things have already gone too far and are thinking about more radical solutions:
"The really worrying prospect is that Mr Yeltsin’s camp is toying with other ideas, ranging from the outlandish to the wholly unconstitutional,: declaring a union with Belarus, for example, or banning the Communist Party, or announcing a state of emergency." (14-20.8.99)
While these options appeared unlikely outside of a new crisis or a war, these have now materialised.
Everybody in Russia knows that organised crime is linked to the state bureaucracy and nomenclatura. They know that Mafia gangs such as Solntsevo, Russia’s biggest organised crime gang, run by Sergei Mikhailov, has been draining the economy of money and potential investments.
They have laundered huge sums from the IMF and other sources, and from their own racketeering, even ‘legitimate’ enterprise, through various accounts in British, American and Swiss banks, especially the Bank of New York. But even after Russia’s default on loan repayments, followed by the collapse of the rouble and the further meltdown of the economy in the Summer of 1998, the loans have kept coming – and have kept disappearing down a black hole.
The finger is now pointing towards the highest offices in the state. Under headlines like "Russian Mafia target the City" and "Fury in Britain as US leak blows investigation into money-laundering link with world’s most wanted man", the scale of the Russian Mafia operations in City institutions has once again been exposed.
The Guardian reported that, "An undercover investigation, said to involve agents from MI6 and the FBI, was continuing until news of the case broke in the New York Times last week." (23.8.99)
The National Crime Squad was furious at the leak, which exposed its investigations into the laundering of dirty money, especially as it had prompted a hasty and premature raid on the central London apartment of a Russian-born London employee of the Bank of New York and her Russian husband.
A sum estimated at between $4.2 billion and $10 billion had been put through a single account in the Bank of New York! Even worse, it was suspected that the leak came from a high-level US source.
Up until then, the British authorities had been co-operating with the FBI and the US Attorney’s office in their investigations into the Bank of New York. Most of the $25 billion sent to Russia from the IMF since 1992 has gone the same way.
About the same time the multiple murder, in a villa on the edge of Frankfurt’s business district, of four East European prostitutes, the brothel owner and his wife, was being reported.
This contract killing was said to have been arranged by Semion Mogilevich, ‘the most dangerous mobster in the world’.
The purpose of the murders was to deter rival operators from moving in on his patch. The Russian police believe Mogilevich is also a senior figure in the Solntsevo gang, which runs prostitution on a massive scale throughout Eastern and Western Europe, and is also said to be involved in the traffic of nuclear materials, drugs, precious gems and stolen art, money laundering, as well as contract killings.
This is the very same organisation which is being investigated by the officers from the National Crime Squad at the London office of the Bank of New York. Mogilevich, who is suspected of being involved, first came to the attention of Britain’s Intelligence Service in 1995, when he was involved with the money-laundering activities of Arbat International and an associated Channel Islands company, Arigon.
In this case, the investigation had led to the arrest of three people, including two City solicitors. Other London firms are under investigation.
According to The Guardian, intelligence sources in Moscow believe that the British and US investigations have uncovered a major conduit of dirty money out of Russia that involved the connivance of Russian organised crime overseas and senior figures in the establishment.
Author Jeffrey Robinson - whose book, The Merger, was published in August stated that; "Mogilevich typifies the new global criminal," he continues, "These men don’t rob banks, they buy them. They take full advantage of globalisation, ill-equipped law enforcement and lax money-laundering laws – especially in Britain – using the City of London as their onshore gateway to the offshore world. This case is the tip of the iceberg.
"The City is an absolute cesspool and it will remain a cesspool because the people in charge don’t care. Mogilevich is not the only one, the Bank of New York is not the only place. London is the best place to launder money in the world. Since the money-laundering regulations were introduced in this country four years ago, there have been thousands of reports but only one successful prosecution."
The conspiracy goes even deeper, right into the heart of the Kremlin. Natasha Kagalovsky a senior Bank of New York executive in the USA was suspended on suspicion of laundering money there. Her husband happens to be Konstantin Grigoryevich Kagalovsky, who headed Russia’s debt negotiations with the West! Kagalovsky is no ordinary crook.
His mentor is Anatoly Chubais, who became Boris Yeltsin’s chief of staff in the Kremlin, and is now head of the pro-Yeltsin political bloc, which, along with Chernomyrdin’s party, is expected to back the new Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin’s run for the presidency next year.
This is why the Yeltsin clique is so concerned to get their chosen successor back into the Kremlin as the new President.
It’s worth going to war for!
(See ‘ Kosovo: The War of NATO Expansion ,’ Robin Blackburn, New Left Review 235 and, ‘The NATO Powers and the Balkan Tragedy,’ Peter Gowan, NLR 234 for more detailed discussion.)