One of the interesting things about reading a non-fiction book about current events nearly ten years after the book was originally published is that you have the opportunity to check the author’s analytical ability. Anyone can say anything about the future. But once the future becomes the past, well, then we get to argue about what the truth is.

Robert Kaplan offer quite a few insights into what the future might looks like in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Caucasus and Middle East in Eastward to Tartary. One such prognostication was that Russia would attempt to recreate the Soviet Union by bullying its former satellites through quasi-legitimate entities:

Common, too, [among former satellites] are allegations of a new Russian imperialism by way of European-wide crime connections and energy monopolies like Gazprom. . . . These networks include legitimate enterprises–audited by Western accountants, and increasingly, linked to Western multinationals–as well as legitimate entities which engage in activities such as compact-disk pirating, illicit-drug activity, money laundering, and extortion.

–Robert Kaplan, Eastward to Tartary page 70

Interesting that Kaplan mentioned Gazprom. The Russian government owned company extracts 85% of Russia’s considerable supply of natural gas, and is the sole supplier of natural gas to many Eastern and Central European countries and a major source for the rest of Europe. Recently, Gazprom shut off all suplies of natural gas to Ukraine, over a price dispute. It did the same thing during the winter of 2006. Gazprom has had similar disputes with Belarus.

Russian elements have also been accused of conducting cyber attacks on Estonia’s government. Not to mention disputes with Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic over their missile defense agreements with the U.S. which included threats of military strikes on the former satellites. All three have also seen recent reductions in natural gas thanks to Gazprom. And then there was the direct air and ground strikes on Georgia this summer that also involved cyber attacks.

The Russian attacks on Georgia bring up another quote Kaplan included in the book:

“[Georgia will] be walking along the edge of a razor blade until enough oil is flowing through here to give the West the self-interest it needs to fight for us. Russia will do everything to destabilize Georgia until that happens.,” Revaz Adamia, the Parliament’s head of defense committee, told me.

–Page 251

Considering the West’s rather anemic and slow response to the attacks on Georgia, either the 220,000 barrels per day that flow through the pipeline aren’t enough, or no amount of oil can motivate the West to stand up to its old foe.

Another timely topic discussed in Eastward to Tartary is Israel and the role of the Palestinian leadership:

“As for Jordan,” the [Israeli] intelligence official went on, “everyone has a use for it: none of the other Arabs wants a border with Israel. . . . A Palestinian state, as you say, already exists. But the West Bank and Gaza have no common frontier, no clans or families linking them. Before 1967, Gaza was ruled by Egypt; the West Bank, by Jordan. It could take maximum force for an Arab leader to keep the two places together after Arafat goes.”

–Page 207

Kaplan then goes on to compare the situation in the Middle East in the late 1990s to the Omayyad period (I think Kaplan is referring to the Umayyad caliphate) and predicted the expansion of “preachers backed by armed groups.” I’m not sure how far out on a limb anyone had to go to in the late 90s to predict armed, militant, religious groups sprouting up in the Middle East, but Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda (and all of its various franchises) certainly have proved him correct.

The Israeli intelligence officer’s comment about keeping Gaza and the West Bank together only with maximum force is particularly interesting now, especially since John Bolton is suggesting that the two territories be returned to their pre-1967 countries.

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