Post-Soviet Borders are Disfunctional Mess

Current war in Ukraine brings to light issues of various post-Soviet borders. This conflict is far not the only one. Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and even Central Asian countries all have plenty of border issues with each other, that occasionally flare into armed confrontations. In case of Ukraine, they even develop into a full-scale war.

While it is simple to blame Russia and Putin for starting this war, that overlooks underlying problems that let it happen in a first place.

When USSR collapsed, its 15 highest level territorial subdivisions became independent countries. Question of viability of these borders was deliberately overlooked to avoid disputes over borders. Such disputes in Yugoslavia led to lengthy Bosnian and Croatian wars where many died and those who dissolved USSR wanted to avoid this on a much bigger scale and with nuclear weapons.

However Soviet borders between various were not designed to create viable independent nations who would be able to function independently on their own. On the contrary, they were drawn to foster interdependency. To that end various hidden hooks were placed in all the former Soviet states, to make their separation from the USSR if not impossible, that at least as painful as possible.

That was done to prevent nationalists in different parts of USSR from pushing for independence as any such move would result in breaking of many economic links and make newly independent countries unstable and chaotic if not outright dysfunctional on their own. Economic co-dependency counteracted nationalism and tenuously kept USSR together in its best days.

However, USSR's economy took a deep plunge in 80s and nationalism resurfaced. It was a perfect storm that destroyed USSR and handed USA victory in the cold war.

However, issues with borders remained and they kept plaguing post-Soviet countries, preventing them from finding their place in the world. Different parts of these post-Soviet courtiers fight for control of their countries with other parts that have conflicting interests, world views and often languages as well.

Russia itself is as dysfunctional as many other post-Soviet states. Moscow elites run that country like that since time immemorable and, thanks to high oil prices, so far more or less managed to keep it afloat. However fundamentally Russia is not any more functional that your average post-Soviet state.

Thus Russia, Ukraine and the rest of post-Soviet states need significate border readjustments and, in many cases, break up into smaller states to turn them into viable nation states.

I will cover each country individually in separate blog posts. Some might take several.