IPN analysis: Even if Moldova can be lucky to avoid the catastrophe of military actions amid the serious regional crisis, the Moldovan state and society already feel and will yet feel the serious damage caused by this crisis.
---
We definitely must pray to God to protect us from a possible war on Moldova’s territory, generated by the regional crisis. We surely must be vigilant and ready to prevent or cope with such catastrophes, if they occur. The damage that may be caused by such a war would be really catastrophic for what we call today Moldova and for its people and the economy.
Fortunately, a direct war involving Moldova, its people and its territory does not seem very probable, judging by the current state of affairs. It’s not yet the merit of Moldova, on which its start and its possible results depend to a very small extent. Unlike the Transnistrian war of 1992, it is a clear regional crisis with the univocal involvement of regional and world players that every time have their own reasons for starting wars, extending them on new territories and ending them. For now, the given players haven’t yet formulated directly a decision or an intention.
However, Moldova already feels and will yet fell the effects of the war in the neighboring Ukraine, in the form of real and great damage to its present and future.
Firstly, the regional crisis seriously affects the Transnistrian conflict settlement process, respectively the process of reunifying Moldova. The events taking place in southeastern Ukraine can be now described as ‘Transnistrization’ of the neighboring state by the model tested in Moldova’s eastern region during over two decades. As in the case of Transnistria, Russia does not have the interest or capacity to militarily intervene in the southeastern regions of Ukraine. In such a case, it must be ready to cope with the danger of facing directly the military, human or technical forces of the U.S. and the EU. But it does not have such a capacity, first of all military and economic, if we take into account the fact that Russia’s GDP is slightly greater than that of Italy and much more lower than that of France, not speaking about that of Germany. “Compared with the EU and the U.S., Russia, economically speaking, is a pigmy and an underdeveloped country, of the third world. It exports gas, petroleum and raw materials. It seems underdeveloped in comparison with China too,” the well-known Romanian historian Lucian Boia says in his new book “First World War. Controversies, paradoxes and re-interpretations”.
Russia does not have the capacity and the interest to directly attack or annex the southeast of Ukraine, by the model of Crimea. It will rather promote the ‘Transnistrization’ model in Ukraine, bringing separatist regimes and puppet people in power in Ukrainian regions. It will weaken and will permanently harass Ukraine, affecting first of all its European course. But it will permanently keep the EU and the U.S. in checkmate, directly or/and by puppets, in the talks held in Geneva or in any other city of the world, as it does in the 5+2 format talks in the case of Moldova. Thus, Russia will contribute to cloning and multiplying the ‘outlaws of the international law’, like the Transnistrian regime, which can become much more aggressive than now, separately or within, for example, a CIS2, with the coordination center in the known place.
Secondly, the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the interference in the southeastern regions of Ukraine significantly affected, by ricochet, the difficult process of strengthening Moldova’s statehood and of constituting the Moldova society and civic nation. For decades already, Moldovan society has been powerfully fragmented according to ethnic, linguistic, political ideological, historical, cultural and other criteria. These differences were often stimulated by forces from inside and outside the country. The Moldovan population includes a rather large category of people who obtained the Moldovan nationality from the very start, without a precondition as in the case of the ex-Soviet Baltic countries. These people continue to consider other countries than Moldova their motherland and continue not to speak and to feel the necessity of learning the official language of Moldova. They also continue to watch other televisions than those of Moldova and to know the artists and news from a distance of thousands of kilometers and do not know at all the artists and news of Moldova.
Such a state hampers the country’s development at economic, social and political levels. This affects the living standards in society in general and of every person in particular. It’s true that certain progress has been seen over the last few years in the process of destroying the pronounced borders between different social categories of the Moldovan society. This happened rather under the natural influence of time, traditions and skills gained by common conviction in a common area. More and more people use to say and hear “Moldova” not “Moldavia”. More and more people are ready, including psychologically, to answer in the same language in which the question is put to them on the street or in the shop, without feeling inconvenience and frustrations, as until now. More people now say that ‘Moldova is my motherland’. The events in Ukraine naturally and suddenly interrupted this natural process of building the Moldovan society, the state and the motherland because it awakened the illusion and the nostalgias of a part of the population that they can live in that ‘real motherland’ that exists or is only imagined in the form of the ex-Soviet Union, not simply personally, but eventually, with a piece of land of the ‘stepmother’ Moldova. One should only hold referendums, occupy by force the state buildings and seek protection from another state that showed for many times that it is ready to use Kalashnikov guns to defend the speakers of particular languages. It’s not known when the hostilities in the neighboring Ukraine will end and with what, but it’s known that Moldova will have to start almost from the very beginning the process of constituting the own society. This will happen if the catastrophe of the ‘hot war’ is avoided, as it is hoped.
Thirdly, but not lastly, the regional crisis additionally exerts great pressure on the European integration process of Moldova. I refer not only to the already known manifestations in the form of embargos and restrictions, but also to the pressure that will be yet exerted by the problems mentioned in the first and second points, and not only. They can influence rather considerably the results of this autumn’s parliamentary elections and, respectively, the possibility of continuing the country’s European course. The events in southeastern Ukraine can be regarded as a model of imposing by force the viewpoint concerning the country’s development course with or without direct or indirect support from inside or outside for these manifestations. An example of direction from which this support can come from outside was formulated in the first point of the economic chapter of the draft electoral platform of the Communist Party (PCRM), which was made public on May 1: “We know what we have to do to bring natural gas and electricity to Moldova at reasonable prices both for the people and the producers.” As far as it is known, the PCRM does not have its own reserves of gas. But we know who has them and is ready to offer them on particular conditions. Ukraine is the newest and most relevant example in this respect.
Valeriu Vasilică; IPN
