Eastern Promises (How Two Small, Post-Soviet States Could Wind up the Real Winners in the Crisis)

Foreign Policy ^ | KATIE ENGELHART

[nickcarraway]

2005, in a now-famous television broadcast, Vladimir Putin described the demise of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." But the Russian president seemed to take some consolation from the fact that, in his view, the former Soviet republics were bound by a "shared historical destiny."

The frontier of this perceived destiny does not end at Ukraine, where Russia is now flexing its muscles in the name of nationalism. Rather, it veers south.

While Russia and Ukraine face off in Crimea, foreign eyes are already migrating toward Moldova and Georgia -- the two countries that initialed association agreements with the European Union in November, at the same time that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign his own such document and turned his back on Europe. Both Moldova and Georgia, like Ukraine, emerged from the rubble of the Soviet sphere. Both countries, like Ukraine, have made advances in recent years toward the EU. Both, like Ukraine, have born the brunt of varied Russian aggressions, from trade sanctions to military interventions. And both countries, like Ukraine, have much to lose if Putin's dreams of a Moscow-dominated "Eurasian Union" to counter the EU are realized. (He has said he plans to unveil the union in 2015.)

[DaveA37]

Maybe its time for a number of U.S. states to take a chapter out of the former Russian countries book. I’d bet there are more than one or two thinking how this might be done.