Comment Breaking Russia down... (Score 1) 254
The United States will start to do to Russian Federation what it did to the Soviets. We will squeeze and wait. And after 30 years of being squeezed... Russia will probably fracture again. Probably in the far east... and then humbled again... we will offer Russia peace, friendship, and a place at the table. We'll see how small Russia needs to get before it is willing to behave itself.
Only problem w/ this theory. To split up Russia, there would need to be a large population which can be broken away from Russia on ethnic, religious or other lines. For the Soviet Union, there were those 14 other 'republics' that automatically gained independence once Boris Yeltsin pulled Russia out of the Soviet Union, making the latter a caricature of itself before it was dissolved.
But today's Russia is more or less a homogenous nation. What you're wishing for would have been possible had the Siberians, say, been a different ethnic people from the Russians. They're not. Granted, there are Mongoloid Shaman people in Krasnoyarsk going Eastwards, but not in the numbers that would constitute a viable nation. Fact remains that Russians are a homogenous majority from the Baltic to the Bering Straits.
Yeah, there are renegade groups like the Chechens & Tatars who would like independence. Guess what - unlike Ukraine, which has borders w/ several other countries, both a Chechnya & a Tatarstan would be landlocked countries within Russia - much like Lesotho - and would be at the mercy of Russia for all of their needs. Also, since Russians from other ex-Soviet republics, be it Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, et al are returning to Russia, it just bolsters Russian numbers even more.
I do think the Russians would do well to populate Siberia (not gulag style) so that they stop leaning heavily on Ukraine or Georgia or other such countries.