If they can handle Chechnya, they've given no sign of doing so.
If they do handle Chechnya, it is likely to be the post-9/11 solution to the terrorism problem I would've employed--the "Grand Tour." And that solution will DECREASE the recruiting pool--you can't recruit dead people unless you're the Democratic party, looking for votes.
As far as ethnic chauvinism is concerned, such sentiments existed when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar, and the Soviet held sway for 80+ years thereafter. Who's to say they wouldn't try it again?
The conditions that existed in 1917 do not obtain at this time. Oddly enough, many of the Bolshevik revolutionaries were non-Russian. "Socialist Internationalism" trumped ethnic chauvinism at that point in time, because that was the driving ideology behind ejecting the Tsarist government.
Even more oddly, Russification was started by Joseph Stalin--a Georgian. That set the seeds for everyone to winding up hating the communists, because the communists became the new Tsars.
This time around, nationalism is in the driver's seat. "Nationist internationalism" is self-contradictory on its face.
See post 548.
Handling Chechnya can be defined different ways:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1224340/posts
Well, the Tsarist government was overthrown by pro-Western democrats early in 1917. This created chaos and vacuum of power which allowed Bolsheviks to come to Russia from Germany and stage a coup at the end of 1917.
This was the ONLY way for the Soviet regime to survive. Russians were not willing to fight against Germans in the name of Political Correctness and Internationalism.