Imperial Wreckage: Property Rights, Sovereignty, and Security in the Post-Soviet Space

Imperial Wreckage Alexander Cooley Property Rights, Sovereignty, and Security in the Post-Soviet Space International Security, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Winter 2000/01), pp. 100–127© 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alexander Cooley is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He conducts research on organizational forms and institutional change in international relations. The author thanks Fiona Adamson, Thomas Berger, Mark Blyth, Daniel Deudney, Siba Grovogui, Alexander Motyl, James Ron, and three anonymous reviewers for their excellent critiques and helpful communications. All comments are welcomed and can be sent to the author at: alex.cooley@jhu.edu. 1. Jack Snyder, “Introduction: Reconstructing Politics amidst the Wreckage of Empire,” in Snyder and Barnett Rubin, eds., Post-Soviet Political Order (New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 1–13. See also Karen Barkey and Mark Von Hagen, eds., After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997); and Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott, eds., The End of Empire? The Transformation of the USSR in Comparative Perspective (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997). 2. David A. Lake, “The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Russian Empire: A Theoretical Interpretation,” in Dawisha and Parrott, The End of Empire? pp. 30–62. As Lake explores, the economic argument about the optimality of uniªed governance is further underscored by the fact that all of these residual assets have site-speciªc or transaction-speciªc qualities—that is, their functions are idiosyncratic , indispensable, and cannot be readily contracted on the international market. Under Oliver Williamson’s model of vertical integration, hierarchy is the optimal economic governance arrangement for such assets, especially when transactions are frequent and the potential for production delays is great. Of course, in the post-Soviet case, this would imply a reassertion of direct Russian control or neo-imperialism. For the theory of hierarchical governance and speciªc assets, see Williamson , Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Anti-Trust Implications (New York: Free Press, 1975); and Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (New York: Free Press, 1985). For applications of Williamson’s argument to hierarchical organization in international relations, see David A. Lake, Entangling Relations: American Foreign Policy in Its Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999); Jeffry Frieden, “International Investment and Colonial Control: A New Interpretation ,” International Organization, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Autumn 1994), pp. 559–593; and Beth V. Yarbrough and Robert M. Yarbrough, Cooperation and Governance in International Trade: A Strategic Organizational Approach (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992). When empires collapse , they leave a host of institutional legacies, fragments, and assets in their former peripheries.1 The question of who will control this “imperial wreckage” becomes of paramount importance as post-imperial peripheries and postimperial cores openly contest the sovereignty of these residual assets. In the Soviet case, the residual assets problem was particularly acute because the Russian core heavily invested in and promoted the development of the military -industrial complex, industry, and infrastructure throughout the peripheral republics. Given the speciªc nature of these assets and their importance to the Russian state and its constituent interest groups, a heavy-handed Russian reclamation of this Soviet property or (neo-imperial solution) seemed likely.2 Imperial Wreckage 100 Contrary to such dire forecasts, however, Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union (FSU) have ameliorated the residual assets problem by adopting a set of unconventional governance structures.3 Across such different FSU states as Georgia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Latvia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, Russia has concluded a series of bilateral contractual agreements with its postimperial peripheries to lease assets such as communications installations, harbor facilities for the Black Sea Fleet (BSF), military bases, and the Baikonur cosmodrome (the site of Soviet-era space and satellite launches). In exchange for the use of these facilities, Russia has offered an annual rental payment and explicit acknowledgments that these assets formally belong to the post-imperial states. Strikingly, these leasing arrangements are remarkably similar in their form, regardless of the different power asymmetries, degree of economic ties, and/or ethnic antagonisms that each of these FSU states has with Russia. The proliferation of these...