What Russia cannot tolerate are tight borders without buffer zones, and its neighbors united against it. This is why Russias future actions will appear to be aggressive but will actually be defensive. Russias actions will unfold in three phases. In the first phase, Russia will be concerned with recovering influence and effective control in the former Soviet Union, re-creating the system of buffers that the Soviet Union provided it. In the second phase, Russia will seek to create a second tier of buffers beyond the boundaries of the former Soviet Union. It will try to do this without creating a solid wall of opposition, of the kind that choked it during the Cold War. In the third phase -- really something that will have been going on from the beginning -- Russia will try to prevent anti-Russian coalitions from forming. Stratfor
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 01:57:54 +0000
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