(New York Times) Excerpt: "Alexander Cooley a political science professor at Barnard College who is an expert on the former Soviet republics, said that Russia had not previously encountered hard bargaining over leases to former Soviet facilities. "I think this would be the first case of an actual eviction or nonrenewal,” Mr. Cooley said in a telephone interview. “All the other ones they have re-upped.” He said the Gabala situation seemed to follow an older pattern in which newly independent countries make heavy demands of their former rulers. “This kind of hard bargaining tactic is typical of what you see in other cases of imperial disengagement,” he said, citing as examples the former colonial possessions of Britain and France." […]
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