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America,’ Brzezinski stated in his book The Grand Chessboard. He added, ‘Mackinder pioneered the discussion early in this century with his successive concepts of the Eurasian “pivot areas.”’ This policy involved identifying any potential power able to upset the balance of power, and as Brzezinski put it, ‘to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt and or control the above.’ Eurasia, as he drew the map, included the oil wealth of the Middle East, the central Asian region, the industrial potentials of Europe and Japan, the resources of China, India and Russia. He warned, ‘control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geographically peripheral to the world’s central continent.’ Just how Washington acted on this imperative was not at first clear to the rest of the world as the cold war came to an end. It was clear, however, to Russian strategic thinkers in and around the Soviet Academy of Sciences. They had carefully studied Mackinder and Anglo-Saxon theories of geopolitics. In the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, their voices were drowned out. The market economy and the prospect of fabulous wealth had momentarily diverted the energies of Russia’s elite.3 From the side of Washington, the strategy for reshaping its cold war adversary into a tool of American hegemony was clear from the outset—albeit not without risk, given the remaining Soviet nuclear arsenal. The Russian bear may have been economically bankrupt in 1990, but she still had a few nuclear teeth. The process of restructuring had to be done carefully. RUSSIA GETS THE IMF THIRD WORLD CURE In July 1990, at a meeting of the G-7 industrial nations in Houston, Texas, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker played the key policy role regarding the future of the Soviet Union. Baker, the man who five years earlier as Treasury secretary had brought Japan to the Plaza accord, told his G-7 allies that the United States wanted the central role in the economic reform of the Soviet economy to be carried out by the IMF. The final G-7 communiqué stated, ‘We welcome the efforts underway in the Soviet Union to liberalize and to create a more open, democratic and pluralistic Soviet society, and to move toward a market-oriented economy.’ The declaration added, ‘We have agreed to ask the IMF … to undertake a detailed study of the Soviet economy … to make recommendations for its reform.’
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