Death Trap

(5 of 5)

The biggest threat facing any Russian government is that the war, launched to preserve the "territorial integrity" of the Russian Federation, will end by splintering it. The enormous territory designated on maps as Russia is a crazy quilt of no fewer than 89 ethnic republics and regions with some kind of pretension to autonomy. Many, even among those populated largely by ethnic Russians, have grievances of some sort against Moscow. A successful Chechen secession, or a long war making Moscow look increasingly like a dictatorial oppressor, could prompt more attempts to split off. Already the fighting in Chechnya has spilled over into the neighboring republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia. Tatarstan in February 1994 negotiated the kind of greater- , autonomy-within-the-federation deal that many analysts think Yeltsin should have offered Chechnya. But now Tatarstan is angry too: President Mintimer Shamiyev has not only denounced the Chechen war but also announced that he will not allow any Tatar youths drafted into the Russian army to be sent to fight in Chechnya.

The trouble is that once a disintegrating momentum set in, it would be difficult to stop, and even harder to contain peacefully. What they see as the Russian aggression in Chechnya is already frightening Ukraine and may well cause Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to ask for quick, outright inclusion in NATO as protection against Moscow. But the greater threat to world stability would seem to be a dictatorial Russia that is yet too weak to keep control of a vast territory riven by local and not-so-local wars.

All of which represents a severe challenge to Western statesmanship. The Clinton Administration is increasingly aware that far from claiming relations with Moscow to be its great triumph in diplomacy, it may be faced in a year or two with Republican demands to know "Who lost Russia?" But outsiders have little leverage. So far they have been reduced to an uneasy strategy of defending Yeltsin's attempts to keep Chechnya in the Russian Federation, expressing dismay at the violence and counseling Moscow to look for a peaceful solution that no one can quite envision. The Chechnya war is one of those terrible problems for which a happy outcome seems almost inconceivable, and a descent into more bloodshed, chaos and dictatorship all too likely.