I think you might be underetimating some significant diifferences. Namely that, even after the dissolution of the USSR, Russia itself is still a multi-ethnic nation, with those ethnicities (unlike US, thank God) being tied to the soil they live on.

Thus, to let Chechnya go, it is reasonably thought, is to pull the loose string on the sweater that will cause the whole package to unravel. Remember the US is not immune from both the theory and the reality of this. As soon as South Carolina seceded, the entire Confederacy followed one at a time like dominoes. And the largest war of the entire 19th century on earth was fought by a US government that would not tolerate dissolution of the country, at ANY cost.

Muslim non-withstanding, Chechnya is not Afghaistan, or even Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan to Russia. They, rightly or wrongly, have considered it part of Russia for a century plus.

Add to that Putin's understandable statement that to let it go now would be a triumph for terror, on the order of the US evacuating Saudi Arabia after 9/11 with Saddam in place and no other response. And when he says the vacuum would be filled by a psychotic Islamo-fascist regime destabilizing the entire Caucasus, I think he is quite right.

The Russians are in a bad, bad place right now. They actually have my sympathy, much to my surprise.

"As soon as South Carolina seceded, the entire Confederacy followed one at a time like dominoes"

OJ
The US has had a Southerner as President for the last 16 years, (cute the way you think we'll let Guilani be President).

Our plan is coming to fruition slowly, but once Bush convinces America that it is proper to let Chechnya split from Russia, then of course it be only a matter of time before you accept the New Confederacy. I, of course, wouldn't have mentioned this, but apparently Andrew X is already on to our plan.

Has anybody noticed this looks more and more like the opening to Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising?

Andrew:

Whatever the Russians think, the Chechens simply don't consider themselves to be part of the country. And the analogy with the CSA is a very weak one. There aren't any Farraguts or Thomases fighting for the Russians.

ken: Didn't Russia decide to attack the West after their oil supplies\petroleum refining capacity had been crippled by a terrorist attack in that?

Andrew:

You think 700,000 Russians are willing to die to keep Chechnya?

h:

No one would refight the Civil War now in America. If anyone wanted to leave we'd let them.

Andrew X is 100% correct about how Russians see Chechnya. All the criticism of Putin is that he is not being tough enough.

Afghanistan made no sense to the average Russian. It was a miserable place, of no intrinsic value, with savage inhabitants. Who needed it?

There aren't very many Chechens and many of them would rather have the Russians than the fundamentalists ruling them. Russia doesn't need brilliant military leadership to win, all it needs is a Grant or Zhukov willing to keep plowing forward to victory no matter what the cost. The Russians are quite content to use MOABs(what we used in Afghanistan) followed by napalm followed by armed infantry and tanks, followed by bulldozers followed by trucks with topsoil, if that is what it takes.

There is no way Chechnya should cost Russia anything like 700,000 soldiers.

Bart:

The cost won't be in soldiers but in citizens and schoolchildren. They won't pay anything like it.

You cannot move around Russia with the ease that you can move around the US. They don't worry about racial profiling. If you have a Muslim name, if you look Chechen, if you speak Russian with a Chechen accent, if you appear to be a religious Muslim, you will be subject to greater scrutiny from police than other Russians are. They will not be pulling 80 year old Russian grandmothers in their babushkas out of lines in order to demonstrate that they don't discriminate. No Russian would say something as utterly blithering as 'Islam is a religion of peace.'

They will heighten the guards at schools now. The Ossetians, who are Christian, are probably angriest of all right now, and will be doubly vigilant.

You bet.

oj writes "If anyone wanted to leave we'd let them.":

I have the same view about Hawaii (much as I love it). If it wants its independence, be my guest (subject to a lease in perpetuity for Pearl Harbor and radar sites). Sorry, Harry.

H-man - The question is are YOU ready to let Massachusetts and California go? That might seem fine on the surface for a unreconstructed Confederate, but jus for kicks, really really consider it as a scenario and you would start to see a lot of costs to disunity, even now.

Ali - I don't think many confedates considered THEMselves to be "part of the country", certainly not an "abolitionist black-Republican" one. Sounds pretty similar to me.

I do wonder what the Russians would sacrifice. If there is one thing they got down, it is endurance and sacrifice. They've been doing that for centuries. I don't know if this pushed ALL their buttons, but it's gotta be damn close.

Fred -

Would we then go back to a 49-star flag, and distribute it all over the country to schools and federal offices? That may sound like a semantic, but consider it deeply for a moment, for it's profound significance. We have never in history replaced a US flag with one with less stars. To do so would be an enormous and unprecedented event, a seminal turning point in US history, and in the manifest destiny that is it's foundation. And if we do it once......

I dunno about that.

Andrew X:

Annex Alberta. It has more natural resources than Hawaii. Keep the same flag.

You could fit the separatist movement in Hawaii in a phone booth, if we still had phone booths.

There's more chance New Mexico or the Uppper Peninsula of Michigan will secede.

I claim to know nothing about Chechnya, but it seems doubtful the attack on the school had much to do with Chechen independence.

Eventually -- and events like the school are the driver -- the world will be forced to understand that there are not two Islams, a good one and a bad one. All the same, as near as makes no difference.

Bart:

No, one cannot move around Russia with anything approximating the ease with which one can move about the US.

I'm told that Russia still requires internal passports...

Anybody in America can go from New York City to Los Angeles by merely purchasing a ticket on the next flight; not so in Russia.

Andrew:

few costs--many benefits.

This may not be the week to discuss how much better Russian internal security is than ours.

David:

Can folks who think the USSR was a more effective military power than us help but think Russia is more competent?

If the Afghans had blown up a few schools in Russia, the Russian conscripts might have fought harder.

Russian internal security was better in those days.

The Nazis were marching on Moscow and Stalin still had to shoot Russians in the thousands to get them to fight.

I don't know where you get this stuff, Orrin.

The Nazis were marching on Moscow, and hundreds of thousands of encircled Red Army soldiers, instead of surrendering, rallied in the swamps to create the partisans.

The penal battalions backed by the NKVD existed but were trivial in an army of 10 million.

Harry:

It's in all the history books--well, not the ones you probably read.

Hard to explain the partisans, though.

I don't believe, based on many, many posts by you, that you understand how armies work. They are not, usually, motivated by politics.

They're motivated by fear of dying. Stalin was one of the deadliest monsters who ever lived. They were smart to fear him more than Hitler.