The Next Hundred Years: Russia, Ukraine, and Geopolitical Maneuvering (STRATFOR)

The Next Hundred Years

Ukraine and the 'Little Cold War

Geopolitical Weekly

TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014 - 03:09

Editor's Note: In place of George Friedman's regular Geopolitical Weekly, this column is derived from two chapters of Friedman's 2009 book, The Next 100 Years. We are running this abstract of the chapters that focused on Eastern Europe and Russia because the forecast -- written in 2008 -- is prescient in its anticipation of events unfolding today in Russia, Ukraine and Crimea.

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For most of the second half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union controlled Eurasia -- from central Germany to the Pacific, as far south as the Caucasus and the Hindu Kush. When the Soviet Union collapsed, its western frontier moved east nearly 1,000 miles, from the West German border to the Russian border with Belarus. Russian power has now retreated farther east than it has been in centuries. During the Cold War it had moved farther west than ever before. In the coming decades, Russian power will settle somewhere between those two lines.

After the Soviet Union dissolved at the end of the 20th century, foreign powers moved in to take advantage of Russia's economy, creating an era of chaos and poverty. Most significantly, Ukraine moved into an alignment with the United States and away from Russia -- this was a breaking point in Russian history.

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