ASSESSMENTS

The U.S. Zeroes in on Russia's Borderlands

Nov 15, 2018 | 10:00 GMT

U.S. soldiers take part in a military parade in Kiev on Aug. 24, 2018, to celebrate the 27th anniversary of Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union. Ukraine is at the heart of the rivalry in Eastern Europe between the United States and Russia.

(GENYA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images)

Highlights

From Eastern Europe to the Caucasus to Central Asia, the United States will increase ties with countries along the former Soviet periphery in the coming year in an effort to increase pressure on Russia.
The United States will cultivate security ties with pro-Western states in Russia's borderlands through weapons sales and military exercises.
At the same time, Washington will offer economic and security incentives to countries that are more firmly in Moscow's orbit in an attempt to wean them off Russia.
Russia will respond with its own hybrid warfare tactics in the region as a means of resisting the United States and the West and spreading its own influence.

The standoff between Russia and the West has shown little sign of abating throughout 2018, and recent U.S. efforts to ramp up the pressure on the Kremlin signal that such tensions are only going to increase in the year to come. One key element of U.S. pressure on Moscow centers on Washington's ties with former Soviet countries on Russia's periphery, from Eastern Europe to the Caucasus to Central Asia. Because of Russia's lack of geographic barriers, these territories form buffer states that protect the country's core from foreign powers while also providing a conduit for the Kremlin to project influence outward. Indeed, Russia's rise and fall as a regional and global power has historically depended on its ability to control these territories; as a result, these states have naturally played a crucial role in the United States' containment strategy against Russia in the post-Soviet period. And as tensions grow between...

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