Category Archives: Op-eds

Keep your eye on Moldova. It could be the cause of the next Ukrainian-style flare-up between Russia and the West.

A bit of background for those who have never heard of Moldova. It is sandwiched between Romania and southwestern Ukraine. It is the poorest country in Europe; ranks 103 out of 168 on Transparency International’s corruption scale; is bitterly divided between pro-Russian and pro-Romanian factions; and Russia has troops in a narrow strip of land on the eastern border which has declared itself independent.

Over 80 percent of the country speaks Romanian. They two countries also share common traditions and even the same name for their respective currencies—the leu. During the interwar years a big chunk of Moldova was actually part of Romania.  After the war it was part of the Soviet Union. In fact, impoverished, landlocked Moldova has over the centuries bounced back and forth between Romania, Russia and the Ottoman Empires.

The Romanians and Russians have especially left their mark—and peoples—behind. The Russians settled a large community on the banks of the Dniester River on the Eastern border. They are the largest ethnic group in an area generally referred to as Transnistria, although it has also gone by the name of Bessarabia and the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic of Transnistria.

When the Soviet Union collapsed  in 1991, Moldova—all of Moldova—declared itself an independent republic. The Russians in Transnistria were unhappy about this. The result was a civil war with the Russian support for the Transnistrians.

The Earth is constantly changing. There are something like 15 plates which comprise the Earth’s crust or mantle and they are forever moving towards and away from each other. Geologists call the movements tectonic shifts, and sometimes they cause massive earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.

The geological shifts are mirrored in politics. Presidents, prime ministers, governments and countries move to the right and the left. They change alliances and sometimes disappear altogether.

Earthquakes are difficult to predict. The same can be said of tectonic political shifts. In one case we are dealing with nature with all its unknown variables. In the other we are dealing with equally unpredictable human nature.

The political world at the moment is going through one of its shifts. It is a shift which involves the rise of new powers, ideas, concepts, and resources and the decline of their older counterparts in different parts of the world. Just as with an earthquake, or volcanic eruption, these are likely to be disruptive at best and wreak death and destruction at worst.

Fifty years ago the world was locked in a Cold War between two powers—the United States and the Soviet Union—representing two separate and distinct political ideologies. Most of the rest of the world either voluntarily or involuntarily sided with one power or another.