Could the Tsarnaev Brothers Have Been Stopped?

Tamerlan Tsarnaev (l) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Source: Business Insider)

When the news came out shortly after the marathon bombings that Moscow had contacted Washington about Tamerlan Tsarnaev's 2011 trip to the Caucasus region in Russia, I wanted to wait for more information to surface because of the very tense history between Chechnya and Moscow. Vladimir Putin's history with Chechen separatists is long and incredibly complex, to say the least. All of this is a large grain of salt when it comes to Russian intelligence on any Caucasus separatist movement and alleged members.

On top of this, the separatist movements found in the North Caucasus region of Russia have one enemy in their eyes: Russia. It makes no sense, as some were quick to rush to postulate in the aftermath of the Marathon Bombings, that the Chechen separatist movement would attack American targets. There's a litany of reasons why this is true, but the main is that it makes no sense to attack a country who is usually at diplomatic odds with the country you view as your sworn enemy. It'd be like Puerto Rico attacking Saudi Arabia because they want to be independent from the United States.