According to Nikolai Zlobin, Director of Russian and Asian Programs, World Security Institute, Washington, D.C., and Co-Chairman, International Board, Russian Profile, 1991 may have brought an end to the Soviet Union, but it was only the start of a period of profound changes across the post-Soviet states of Eurasia. This transitional period, Zlobin argued, is still very much under way. As a result, the broader region remains unstable, and the lack of long-term policy thinking by both the United States and Russia is damaging their bilateral relationship and contributing to the continuing instability of the region.

Zlobin questioned whether the post-Soviet space can be considered a "region," arguing that the individual states are drifting away from each other, and that this drift is accelerating. Each post-Soviet country is trying to go global, Zlobin said, by establishing closer ties with countries or regional blocs outside of Eurasia as well as by focusing their energies on joining and participating in multilateral and international organizations. By contrast, he said there have been around 60 different attempts to build some kind of regional organization within the post-Soviet space, all of which have failed. The only successful efforts have been organizations that are established with the participation of an outside country, such as China in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. One consequence of regional leaders' pursuit of approval from abroad is that they value their global reputation over the approval of those they govern, said Zlobin.

Zlobin identified a number of challenges that will emanate from the post-Soviet space in the years ahead. First, the artificial Soviet-era borders that now separate the independent states are, in his view, not realistic and are almost certain to change in the future. Second, the post-Soviet states are governed by what he termed "accidental elites" that were formed as a result of circumstances at the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union. These elites not only control political power but also economic resources, making peaceful elite change difficult, he contended.

The elite structures of these states present a particular problem to the American policy of promoting democracy, stated Zlobin. For these elites, democracy represents a direct challenge to their political and economic interests. In addition, Zlobin commented, the recent examples of American-supported democracy projects such as Iraq and Pakistan do not offer models of stability. He concluded that the main problems for the American democracy project is how to encourage political succession without destabilization; how to reconcile new and old elites; and how to balance short-term social needs with the long-term goal of introducing destabilizing democratic reform.