For all its remoteness Bosnia's plight stirred public outrage in the U.S. By contrast, Russia's onslaught against the Chechens has aroused little empathy. Why the difference? The answer lies in how Washington defines U.S. strategic interests in the oil-rich lands of the former Soviet Union. PNS editor Franz Schurmann, author of The Logic of World Power and other books on foreign policy, is a professor emeritus of history and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

For over a year now the Russians have been blasting away at Chechen civilians, prompting President Clinton to say nothing more than that he hopes their "tilt to the right" won't harm relations with the United States.

Why when America shows so much empathy for the Bosnians is so little given the Chechens? One answer comes to mind. Whenever national sovereignty clashes with local self-determination, other sovereigns side with their embattled fellow sovereigns unless it is in their interest to side with the rebels.

Many Americans side with the Bosnians because they are the underdogs fighting for a good cause, a tolerant multi-ethnic country. Those who don't argue that the U.S. has no significant interests in that remote region. Clinton straddled the fence until, by sending in NATO, he was able to justify both sides in U.S. public opinion.

As to Chechnya, few public voices support the rebels while it turns out that the U.S. has two inter-related interests in the Caucusus much greater than those in Bosnia: the nuclear superpowers' relationship with each other, and oil.

When it comes to sovereign interests only hard cold calculations count. So it should be no surprise to Americans that Washington -- like Moscow -- has discreetly backed Turkic and Muslim Azerbaijan in its four-year-long conflict with Christian Armenia. Azerbaijan's capital is one of the world's greatest oil centers, Baku. Armenia, despite its historic and emotional ties with America, is barren of oil. Ironically Armenia's chief life-line now comes directly across a land border from Muslim fundamentalist Iran -- America's arch enemy.

During World War I the Armenian people suffered the modern era's first holocaust inflicted by rising Turkish nationalism. And the powerful Armenian lobby in American politics lets nobody forget it. Yet when it comes to oil even holocausts apparently have to take a back seat.

The greatest oil reserves since the Saudi ocean of oil was discovered sixty years ago is now open to the West in the former Soviet Union. Only the U.S. has the technology and capital to develop it, but Russia is determined to control it. If these two mighty forces can be meshed then U.S.-Russian relations will dramatically improve. And Chechnya -- whose fine light oil was discovered before that of Baku and is well suited for aircraft fuel -- will be forgotten as the lakes of war-shed blood dry up.

Yet despite the devastating war, oil continues to flow through the Chechnya pipelines. However much they are portrayed in Russian and Western media as "fanatics," the Chechen rebels are politically strong enough to prevent even one of their fighters from chopping a hole somewhere on the long pipeline.

A further irony -- there is far more outrage in Russia over Russian atrocities in Chechnya and even sympathy with the rebels than in the U.S. A columnist for Izvestia, Russia's largest liberal newspaper, denounced his government's handling of the recent hostage crisis as a "wipe them out at any cost" policy.

For over a century the Caucasus peoples have cast a romantic spell on Russians -- featured prominently in the works of their greatest writers, notably Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy. From 1817 to 1867 Imperial Russia fought many bloody battles to control the Chechen lands. They resumed after World War I, during World War II, and again now. Today, while Chechens are notorious in Russia and the West for their awesome mafia, the great 19th century Chechen independence leader Imam Shamyl -- like the great Apache rebel Geronimo in American lore -- has assumed a mythic stature in Russian imagination.

The Chechens, like other people of the Caucasus, have a powerful sense of ethnic identity and tightly-knit families. Like the Basques, they speak an obscure ancient language. And they are deeply religious Muslims, a circumstance that Russians have historically both feared and admired.

There is no doubt Russia is intent on getting Chechnya under its complete control by force or by guile. The rebels know that and they also know the fearlessness of mountain peoples -- as the Russians found out in Afghanistan, "their Vietnam".

For all the U.S.'s indifference to the Chechens' fate, the future of U.S.-Russian relations -- maybe even the history of the world -- could be decided in Chechnya.