Russian NIMBY

Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal ran an interesting analysis of U.S.-Russian relations:

On Wednesday, Russia announced a financial rescue fund for a group of ex-Soviet allies and won their agreement to form a military rapid reaction force in the region that it said would match North Atlantic Treaty Organization standards. That came a day after Kyrgyzstan announced, at Russian urging, that it planned to evict the U.S. from the base it has used to ferry large numbers of American troops into Afghanistan. Russia said the base may house part of the planned new force instead.

The steps mark Russia's most aggressive push yet to counter a U.S. military presence in the region that it has long resented. They pose a challenge for the administration of President Barack Obama, which sees Afghanistan as its top foreign-policy priority and is preparing to double the size of the American military presence there.

Kyrgyzstan said the U.S. must leave the Manas Air Base, which American forces use to send troops and equipment to Afghanistan.

The developments also underscore the difficulties for Mr. Obama as he seeks to build a closer relationship with Moscow. Russia is signaling that it will be a tough defender of its interests, especially in its traditional backyard of the former Soviet Union.

It was always going to be difficult for the United States to sustain a posture wherein it defined "vital" interests across the globe (interests that entitled her to use military force to defend) but that afforded no other nation a similar prerogative. That doesn't mean we don't have vital interests across the globe, but it does mean that we're going to have to be far more accommodating to the interests of other rising powers. It will also mean that we should start heeding Nikolas Gvosdev's advice and start choosing our rhetoric more carefully.

I find it interesting that the first post Cold War great power challenge to the United States is coming (albeit in a very mild form) from Russia and not China. Recall that during the 1990s, when neoconservatives weren't worrying about the dire threat from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, they were warning about a possible standoff with China. Instead, the threats to U.S. security came from al Qaeda and the great power challenge is coming from Russia. 0-2.