Get Ready World: The U.S.-Russian Rivalry Is Back

Get Ready World: The U.S.-Russian Rivalry Is Back

05/28/14

Dmitri Trenin

Great Powers, Russia

And it could get ugly.

The May 25 presidential elections in Ukraine mark the end of the beginning in Ukraine; but they do not mark the end of the story, which will continue to evolve and could possibly turn more violent. Yet, the elections and their results give Ukraine more of a chance at avoiding a full-scale civil war and sticking together, even as it deals with current and future hardships.

The Ukraine crisis has ended the era of post–Cold War engagement, which failed to culminate in integration between the West and Russia. In a stunning reversal, the crisis has opened up a period of intense geopolitical competition, rivalry, and even confrontation between Moscow and Washington, but also between Moscow and Brussels.

The area of competition is again Eastern Europe; only this time, father to the east of its Cold War namesake. In a region which includes Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and also the unrecognized Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh, fault lines have developed both within and between countries.

Some of these countries, like Georgia, lean toward the European Union; others, such as Belarus, toward Russia; some are battleground states; and there is only one outlier, Azerbaijan. The “gray” buffer zone between Europe and Russia, which has existed ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union, is unraveling.

Russia is pivoting away from Europe and the West. It is pivoting toward itself as a unique civilization related to, but separate from, Western Europe. It is also pivoting to its former empire in Eurasia, redesigned as a Russia-led economic and security union. Lastly, it is pivoting to China, which is seen as a new center of global economic and political power. 

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