Back in Moscow in 1994 or thereabouts I asked a top Russian foreign policy pundit what would happen to Ukraine, then languishing in a deacying post-communist stupor.

"We’ll just buy it," came the sardonic reply.

But what about less obvious places, such as Nauru, which has just recognised Abkhazia and S Ossetia as independent states, fulfilling a key Nauru foreign policy priority namely for its vote to be up for sale?

Thus:

A new player has emerged in the roiling political theater of the Caucasus: the tiny, destitute Pacific island nation of Nauru, which on Tuesday became the fourth country to formally establish diplomatic relations with Abkhazia, effectively recognizing its sovereignty...

Nauru, an eight-square-mile rock in the South Pacific with about 11,000 inhabitants, was no pushover, according to the influential Russian daily newspaper Kommersant. In talks with Russian officials, Nauru requested $50 million for “urgent social and economic projects,” the newspaper reported, citing unnamed Russian diplomats.

When in doubt on such issues turn to Mark Steyn, who unlike me knows a high percentage of the population of Nauru and eruditely links this subject to various musicals:

In the early Nineties, I met a couple of bigwigs from the capital, Yaren, in London when the Nauruan government, in the wake of Cats and Les Miserables and Phantom Of The Opera, decided to invest in a British musical about Leonardo written by a couple of guys whose only hit song was the long ago Number One “Concrete And Clay”. Oh, come on. You must remember:

Which was literally the situation the bird-pooped-out Nauruans found themselves in.

But there is also this:

First, Russia’s imperialist ambitions are an issue that resonates far beyond Russia’s backyard. Australia has been concerned for some time about a China/Taiwan competition to, in effect, buy up hastily decolonized Commonwealth territories in the Pacific. It will have a terribly corrupting effect on the region’s politics if Russia is determined on a piece of the action.

Secondly, we underestimate the importance of sub-jurisdictions. Nauru is sovereign but not quite independent:  Its Appellate Court rulings can be overturned by the High Court of Australia, a country to which Nauru also contracts its national defense. Why would they object to Abkhazia entering into similar relations with Russia?

But look at the other side, too: Poti sits on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, and Georgia has just sold a 51 per cent stake in the port to Ras Al Khaimah, one of the United Arab Emirates, to run it as a “free industrial zone”.  Like the bankrupt Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah is also a sub-national jurisdiction. These are cross-currents in the undertow of the Big Pond: Arab money, Russian ambition, Chinese subversion, and emerging statelets susceptible to all three.

You’ll notice who seems largely irrelevant to all of the above: us. America and its allies. In a globalized world, the west defers increasingly to the transnational institutions, without apparently even noticing the destabilization by key players at sub-national level.

Foreign Policy in the twenty-first century: stop me and buy one…

“The concrete and the clay beneath my feet begins to crumble…”