[флейм и по-английски] Сужденно ли России быть?

ITC. Intercourrier de Bruxelles. 3 mai 2004

UN RAPPORT DE LA CIA ENVISAGE LA DISLOCATION DE LA RUSSIE DANS UNE DIZAINE D'ANNEES.

Transmis par INTERCOURRIER de Bruxelles. On lira ci-apr&s diverses consid&rations autour d'un rapport d&classifi& de la CIA qui envisagerait la dislocation de la Russie vers 2015. Ce rapport soul&ve des pol&miques en Russie. Elles surviennent dans un contexte o&, malgr& une relance de la croissance tr&s li&e & la hausse des prix du p&trole, les craintes ne sont pas dissip&es quant & une accentuation de la r&gression &conomique et sociale fondamentale. Elles ont lieu au moment o& l'expansion de l'Union Europ&enne et de l'OTAN s'accomplissent dans un climat d'isolement et d'hostilit& envers la Russie. Elles trouvent des &chos complaisants dans les milieux qui, en Russie, sont tent&s par un pessimisme apocalyptique et-ou socialement interess&s & l'affaiblissement de l'Etat russe et & la p&n&tration de l'influence am&ricaine dont ils sont eux-m&mes les relais. Il faut rappeler que la dislocation de la F&d&ration de Russie n'est pas seulement un "pronostic" parmi d'autres, mais un projet politique caress& parmi les strat&ges de la "l&gitime vocation" des Etats-Unis & diriger le monde. Ce projet est explicite dans "Le Grand Echiquier" de Zbigniew Brzezinski. Le strat&ge d&mocrate et lib&ral c&l&bre pour ses contributions & la d&stabilisation de l'URSS signe un nouvel ouvrage, "Le Grand Choix" o& il d&veloppe ses pens&es sur l'importance du contr&le des ressources &nerg&tiques de l'ex-URSS - Sib&rie et Caspienne, Asie centrale et, par la m&me du Sud-Caucase, o& l'Azerbaidjan et la G&orgie dont d&j& largement sous influence &tats-unienne. Mais "Zbig" envisage cette fois explicitement la d&sagr&gation du Nord-Caucase, donc de la F&d&ration de Russie. Et l'on sait que ce conseiller politique tr&s militant de la r&bellion afghane et des r&seaux islamistes dans les ann&es 80, puis de l'UCK lors de la guerre du Kosovo, est maintenant tr&s actif, en coulisse, dans la recherche d'une "issue" & la guerre en Tch&tch&nie, laquelle ne saurait &tre qu'une forme ou l'autre de son d&tachement de la Russie. (Une campagne internationale lanc&e par les s&paratistes tch&tch&nes, largement relay&e au Parlement europ&en, milite pour un mandat de l'ONU en Tch&tch&nie). Le m&me Brzezinski &voque d'ailleurs l'hypoth&se d'une r&union des Az&ris (Azerbaidjanais) du Caucase et d'Iran, ce qui siginifie en clair la dislocation de l'Iran. Les audaces de "Zbig" ne surprendront que ceux qui ignorent encore l'ampleur et le syst&matisme de cette "guerre globale am&ricaine" visant & affaiblir et si n&cessaire dissoudre les souverainet&s d'&tats, en exploitant toutes leurs faiblesses, et notamment les conflits internes inter-ethniques ou religieux.
De telles "hypoth&ses" strat&giques, de m&me que les rapports de la CIA, doivent &tre pris au s&rieux, avec toutes les r&serves d'usage, mais &galement consid&r&s pour ce qu'ils sont par ailleurs: des moments de la guerre psychologique.

CIA angers Russia by predicting break-up of state

within 10 years

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow

The Independent 30 April 2004

Russia's political elite has been stung by a recently declassified CIA report that suggests the world's largest country could fall apart at the seams in a decade and split into as many as eight different states.
The report, Global Trends 2015, has sparked a lively debate in Russia about the country's territorial integrity and triggered passionate denunciations from some of Russia's leading politicians. Its unflinchingly bleak assessment of Russia's prospects has angered many at a time when the Russian government is doing its best to talk up the economy.

The fact that the gloomy prognosis comes from its old Cold War enemy makes it all the harder for Russia to swallow. But many ordinary Russians seem to share the CIA's pessimism.

An opinion poll conducted by radio station Ekho Moskvy earlier this week revealed that 71 per cent of those surveyed (3,380 people) thought that the disintegration of the motherland was a "real threat".

Yesterday's Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper printed a map for its readers showing how Russia might look by 2015 if the CIA is right. It showed Siberia broken up into four different countries, with western Russia similarly partitioned.

It is not for nothing that president Vladimir Putin's party is called
United Russia. According to the CIA, some of Russia's eastern regions are so rich in natural resources such as oil and gas that they will opt to break away from Moscow, which they have long accused of poor governance.

Komsomolskaya Pravda was dismissive of the report. "Either the CIA has super perspicacious analysts who can see what mortal Russians, including politicians and political scientists, cannot, or someone has got it wrong," it said.

Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the Russian parliament, said: "I
completely reject the possibility of Russia breaking up.

"Over the past four years, a lot has been done to strengthen vertical power and legislation in the constituent parts of the Russian Federation was brought into line with the constitution a long time ago."

According to the CIA report, a falling birth rate meant that the
country's population was likely to decline to 130 million by 2015 from 146 million today. It also painted a picture of Russia as a terminally ill patient.

"The Soviet economic inheritance will continue to plague Russia," the report said. "Besides a crumbling physical infrastructure, years of environmental neglect are taking a toll on the population, a toll made worse by such societal costs of transition as alcoholism, cardiac diseases, drugs and a worsening health delivery system. Russia's population is not only getting smaller, but it is becoming less and less healthy and less able to serve as an engine of economic recover."

Dmitry Orlov, the director of Russia's political and economic
communications agency, claimed the CIA had an ulterior motive. "The conservative wing of the American Republican party is interested in the maximum weakening of Russia's position and maybe even in its fragmentation," Mr Orlov told the Izvestia newspaper

© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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The following is an excerpt from the CIA website of the part of the report dealing with Russia. It's gloomy indeed, but "dissolution" is only mentioned as a possibility. IMO, either the Independent story is a canard, or the CIA didn't want to declassify the really dangerous stuff and published only a "sanitized" version. Someone might then have leaked the complete story. N.S.

"Russia and Eurasia

Regional Trends.

Uncertainties abound about the future internal configuration,
geopolitical dynamics, and degree of turbulence within and among former Soviet states. Russia and the other states of Eurasia are likely to fall short in resolving critical impediments to economic and political reform in their struggle to manage the negative legacies of the Soviet period.
Changing demographics, chronic economic difficulties, and continued questions about governance will constrain Russia's ability to project its power beyond the former Soviet republics to the south, complicate Ukraine's efforts to draw closer to the West, and retard the development
of stable, open political structures throughout the Caucasus and Central Asia. Those states that could make progress on the basis of potential energy revenues are likely to fail because of corruption and the absence of structural economic reform. The rapid pace of scientific and technological innovation, as well as globalization, will leave these states further behind the West as well as behind the major emerging markets.

The economic challenges to these countries will remain daunting:
insufficient structural reform, poor productivity in agriculture as
compared with Western standards, decaying infrastructure and
environmental degradation. Corruption and organized crime, sustained by drug trafficking, money laundering, and other illegal enterprises and, in several instances, protected by corrupt political allies, will persist.

Demographic pressures also will affect the economic performance and political cohesiveness of these states. Because of low birthrates and falling life expectancy among males, the populations of the Slavic core and much of the Caucasus will continue to decline; Russian experts predict that the country's population could fall from 146 million at present to 130-135 million by 2015. At the other end of the spectrum,
the Central Asian countries will face a growing youth cohort that will peak around 2010 before resuming a more gradual pattern of population growth.

The centrality of Russia will continue to diminish, and by 2015
"Eurasia" will be a geographic term lacking a unifying political,
economic, and cultural reality. Russia and the western Eurasian States will continue to orient themselves toward Europe but will remain essentially outside of it. Because of geographic proximity and cultural affinities, the Caucasus will be closer politically to their neighbors to the south and west, with Central Asia drawing closer to South Asia and China. Nonetheless, important interdependencies will remain, primarily in the energy sphere.

Russia will remain the most important actor in the former Soviet Union. Its power relative to others in the region and neighboring areas will have declined, however, and it will continue to lack the resources to impose its will.

The Soviet economic inheritance will continue to plague Russia. Besides a crumbling physical infrastructure, years of environmental neglect are taking a toll on the population, a toll made worse by such societal costs of transition as alcoholism, cardiac diseases, drugs, and a worsening health delivery system. Russia's population is not only getting smaller, but it is becoming less and less healthy and thus lessable to serve as an engine of economic recovery. In macro economic terms Russia's GDP probably has bottomed out. Russia, nevertheless, is still
likely to fall short in its efforts to become fully integrated into the global financial and trading system by 2015. Even under a best case scenario of five percent annual economic growth, Russia would attain an economy less than one-fifth the size of that of the United States.

Many Russian futures are possible, ranging from political resurgence to dissolution. The general drift, however, is toward authoritarianism, although not to the extreme extent of the Soviet period. The factors favoring this course are President Putin's own bent toward hierarchical rule from Moscow; the population's general support of this course as an antidote to the messiness and societal disruption of the post-Soviet
transition; the ability of the ruling elite to hold on to power because of the lack of effective national opposition, thus making that elite accountable only to itself; and the ongoing shift of tax resources from the regions to the center. This centralizing tendency will contribute to dysfunctional governance. Effective governance is nearly impossible under such centralization for a country as large and diverse as Russia and lacking well-ordered, disciplined national bureaucracies. Recentralization, however, will be constrained by the interconnectedness brought about by the global information revolution, and by the gradual,
although uneven, growth of civil society.

Russia will focus its foreign policy goals on reestablishing lost
influence in the former Soviet republics to the south, fostering ties to Europe and Asia, and presenting itself as a significant player vis-a-vis the United States. Its energy resources will be an important lever for these endeavors. However, its domestic ills will frustrate its efforts to reclaim its great power status. Russia will maintain the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world as the last vestige of its old status. The net outcome of these trends will be a Russia that remains internally weak and institutionally linked to the international system primarily through its permanent seat on the UN Security Council."