Georgia

Flynt Leverett in the Washington Post | 'Russian Offensive Hailed in Mideast'

Communications — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:22:00 -0400

And with the United States and Russia at odds, Iran also can expect more help from Russia in blocking U.S. efforts at the U.N. Security Council and other international bodies to sanction Iran over its nuclear program, said Flynt Leverett, a former Bush administration Middle East policy director and now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington. LINK

Don't Pick a Fight You Can't Finish, Mr. Miliband

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:37:00 -0400

Before making his speech on policy towards Russia in Kiev, Ukraine, later this week David Miliband would do well to ponder some wise advice from a great predecessor. Lord Salisbury, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister in the days of the British Empire, dispensed immense global power; but that did not mean that he liked playing about with that power.

Faced with proposals for British policy that he understood to be deeply damaging to the interests of other great powers, Salisbury would look his colleagues in the eye and ask simply: “Are you really prepared to fight? If not, do not embark on this policy.”

If the events of the past fortnight in Georgia have demonstrated one thing clearly, it is that Russia will fight if it feels its vital interests under attack in the former Soviet Union - and that the West will not, and indeed cannot, given its conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Other Western threats are equally empty. Russia itself pulled out of cooperation with Nato. If a real threat is made of expulsion from the G8, Russia will leave that organisation too - especially since a club that does not include China and India is increasingly meaningless anyway. The threat of being barred from joining the World Trade Organisation is a bit stronger - but Russia has done so well economically without membership that this goal too has lost much of its allure.

Moscow has reminded Nato of the importance of Russian goodwill to secure the supply lines of the US-Nato operation in Afghanistan through Central Asia. Alternatively, Nato can become wholly dependent on routes through Pakistan. From where I am sitting, that does not look like a very good move - and where I am sitting at this moment is a hotel room in Peshawar, Pakistan.

By siding fully with Iran, Russia has the capability to wreck any possibility of compromise between Tehran and the West, and to push the US towards an attack that would be disastrous for Western interests - and enormously helpful to Russia's.

However, if only he will take it, Mr Miliband's speech could be a magnificent opportunity to set British policy towards Russia on a footing of sober reality - strengthening Western unity and resolve on issues such as reducing our energy dependence on Russia; but eschewing empty promises and shelving hopeless goals such as restoring Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia and forcing Russia to change its Constitution to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, accused of killing the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko.

Russia, for its part, will have to abandon or shelve its own hopeless goals such as restoring Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo and forcing Britain to change its laws to extradite Boris Berezovsky and the Chechen leader Ahmed Zakayev.

Above all, Mr Miliband needs to think hard before committing Britain to support Nato membership for Georgia and Ukraine. He should look carefully at the widespread Western belief that Russia “set a trap for Georgia” in South Ossetia. There was no Russian trap. In recent years Moscow has made it absolutely, publicly and repeatedly clear that if Georgia attacked South Ossetia, Russia would fight.

The obvious trap was set by President Saakashvili for the West, and was based on the belief that if he started a war to recover Georgia's lost territories, the West would come to his aid. This didn't work as well as Mr Saakashvili wished, because we have not gone to war for Georgia. On the other hand, every Western government statement offering future Nato membership is an implicit promise that we will do so in future if necessary. How can we make such a promise to a man who tried to involve us in a war without even asking us first?

On Ukraine, Mr Miliband should study carefully a range of reliable opinion polls showing that by a margin of about three to one, ordinary Ukrainian voters are opposed to Nato membership. This is not only because they want good relations with Russia, but because they fear being dragged into disastrous American wars in the Muslim world.

Even when it comes to the wider question of alignment with the West rather than Russia, the Ukrainian majority in favor of the Western line is slim - about 53 to 47 per cent to judge by the last Ukrainian presidential election. We should have learnt by now from the ghastly examples of Bosnia and elsewhere that a narrow numerical majority is simply not enough when existential national issues are at stake.

In other words, it is Nato's eastward drive, not Russian ambition, that is the greatest threat to Ukrainian stability and unity. A realistic British policy towards Ukraine should mean a genuine commitment to help it to develop economically, socially and politically in ways that will gradually draw it closer to the West and may one day make European Union membership possible. Under no circumstances should it mean plunging Ukraine into a disastrous crisis for the sake of a Nato alliance that cannot and will not defend it anyway.

Viewing this conflict from Pakistan gives some interesting perspectives. The first is the absolute insanity of the West's stoking a crisis with Russia while facing such intractable problems in the Muslim world.

It is also striking that the Pakistani media have been very balanced in their coverage of the crisis, despite their traditional hostility to Moscow.

Is this because they have suddenly fallen in love with Russia? Not a bit. It is because when it comes to international lawlessness, bullying and aggression, they no longer see a great difference between Russia and America. The moralizing of Western leaders, therefore, no longer cuts much ice in Peshawar - or anywhere else much outside the West itself.

William Hartung on Democracy Now | 'Tensions High as NATO Suspends Formal Contacts with Russia Over Georgia Conflict'

Communications — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:51:00 -0400

Tensions are high between the United States and Russia over the ongoing conflict in Georgia. On Wednesday, soon after NATO foreign ministers decided to cut formal ties with Russia until it withdrew all its troops from Georgia, President Bush vowed to continue to support Georgia. We speak with William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. LINK to video and audio

Wrong on Russia

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0400

In the wake of Russia’s military incursion into Georgia, too many current, former, and aspiring U.S. officials are caricaturing the Russian state that was shaped and is still guided by Vladimir Putin as a revisionist aggressor. For Robert Kagan, John McCain’s neoconservative foreign policy adviser, as well as for long-time Democratic foreign policy hands Richard Holbrooke and Ronald Asmus, Russia’s actions in Georgia are comparable to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. For Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russia’s actions are more reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

But, in reality, today’s Russia is not a resurgent imperial power. In the post-Cold War period, it was Washington, not Moscow, which started the game of acting outside the United Nations Security Council to pursue coercive regime change in problem states and redraw the borders of nominally sovereign countries. In Russian eyes, America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, including arresting and presiding over the execution of its deposed President, undermined Washington’s standing to criticize others for taking military action in response to perceived threats. And American unilateralism in the Balkans, along with planned deployments of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe and support for “color revolutions” in former Soviet republics, trampled clearly stated Russian redlines.

Russia has now, in effect, responded in kind. But, however the political arrangements envisioned in the French-mediated ceasefire between Moscow and Tbilisi are worked out, Washington and its European allies face a far more daunting and important policy challenge--how to pick up the pieces of Western relations with Russia. Meeting that challenge means confronting two longstanding deficits in U.S. policy--a wrong-headed assessment of Russia’s interests and ambitions, and a willful disregard of Russia’s heightened influence and standing on the international stage.

Russia’s leaders correctly judge that, as their country has become richer and more powerful in recent years, it has also become increasingly capable of autonomous action to defend its perceived interests--even when that action runs against U.S. and Western preferences. At the same time, Moscow continues to view partnership with America, and the West more generally, as their country’s best strategic option. But this partnership, from a Russian perspective, must entail give and take, not simply acquiescence to American dictates and unilateral U.S. initiatives.

These fundamental drivers of Russian foreign policy in the Putin era are exemplified in the evolution of Moscow’s cooperation with the United States in the war on terror. During her service as a political adviser to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, one of us, Hillary Mann Leverett, worked in the Security Council with Russia’s long-serving permanent representative, Sergei Lavrov (now Russia’s Foreign Minister), to legitimate strong multilateral action against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, both before and after the 9/11 attacks. On September 12, 2001, Russia’s unequivocal endorsement of a “blank check” resolution authorizing the United States to “take all necessary steps” in response to the attacks was critical to bringing China on board and ensuring the Security Council’s unanimity. And, after the Taliban’s overthrow, Russia helped bring anti-Taliban factions together in a political process meant to bolster Afghanistan’s new pro-American President, Hamid Karzai.

But when the Bush Administration used the war on terror to justify deployment of U.S. military forces to former Soviet states in Central Asia, Moscow stopped working with Washington to consolidate a stable post-Taliban political order and rein in drug-dealing warlords in Afghanistan. Furthermore, Moscow built up the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)--a regional security organization in Central Asia dominated by Russia and China--as a counterweight to American influence in the region. Over time, Russia was able to use the SCO to roll back U.S. military deployments in Central Asia.

As Washington contemplates future relations with Moscow, U.S. pundits and policymakers should keep two fundamental realities in mind. First, America and its European allies need positive relations with Moscow, if for no other reason than to forestall Russian steps that could seriously damage Western interests. For example, as Russia’s current account surplus continues to balloon alongside rising oil prices, Moscow is emerging as an increasingly important purchaser of U.S. Treasury securities and agency paper. Would those calling on Washington to deliver various ultimatums to Russia prefer that Moscow dump its dollar denominated assets? Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told us recently that Moscow is preparing the ground for the possible introduction of contracts to purchase Russian oil that would be denominated in rubles, rather than dollars. Does the anti-Russia camp want Moscow to take such a step, given its likely negative impact on the dollar’s long-term value?

Similarly, Europe’s need for Russian gas will only continue to grow in coming years. The West cannot “work around” this situation with pipe dreams about new pipelines, like the European Union’s Nabucco project, for which there are insufficient non-Russian gas volumes to make them economically viable. Shortly before he moved from Russia’s presidency to its premiership earlier this year, Putin said that Europe and the United States could build Nabucco and any other pipelines they wanted. But, he asked rhetorically, where would they get the gas to fill them? In the end, Europe cannot provide for its own energy security without a deep and productive partnership with Russia.

Second, the United States and its allies need Russia’s cooperation in the international arena. Russia is and will remain a permanent member of the Security Council, which means that Washington must work with Moscow if there are to be even minimally effective multilateral responses to the full range of “threats to international peace and security,” from Afghanistan to Iran and Zimbabwe. We cannot “work around” this reality by championing a “concert of democracies” as an alternative forum for legitimating decisive international action--an idea that will only antagonize Russia (and China) without providing any strategic benefit.

Amid all the heated rhetoric over Georgia, some former U.S. officials, such as former Clinton Administration Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, question whether cooperative relations with Moscow are now even possible. But the United States and its allies can have a mutually beneficial relationship with Russia. On its own, Russia does not want to exercise financial leverage over America or withhold energy supplies to Europe. Quite the opposite--Russia wants to expand its energy and financial ties to the West, but it will use the tools it has to defend its interests.

Our conversations with senior Russian diplomats and officials suggest that, under the rubric of strategic partnership, Moscow would provide greater support to U.S. objectives on a range of international issues, including the Iranian nuclear problem. But Russia will not provide that support absent a broad-based strategic understanding with Washington. As Foreign Minister Lavrov put it last week, the United States will eventually have to choose between its “virtual project” in Georgia and a “real partnership” with Russia “on issues that really demand collective action.” That kind of partnership will require the United States to do something it has been unwilling to do since the end of the Cold War--prioritize its foreign policy objectives. Simply put, America’s promotion of a dubious “democratic” movement in Georgia--or in other ethnically divided and unstable post-Soviet states--is not as important to Western interests as working with Russia on the most significant energy, economic, and international security challenges of our time.

Rajan Menon in the Council on Foreign Relations | 'Solving the Crisis in the Caucasus'

Communications — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:20:00 -0400

...As global leaders scramble to find a solution, CFR.org asked five regional experts what must be done to end the violence and create a climate where lasting peace can be nurtured...

Rajan Menon, Monroe J. Rathbone Professor of International Relations, Lehigh University; Fellow, New America Foundation:

Like it or not, the balance of forces decisively favors Russia (IHT). Feel-good ultimatums from us will merely increase Russia’s intransigence. And lofty rhetoric with implied promises to Georgia that we cannot keep will only erode our credibility, further weakening Georgia’s position. As to specific steps, we should:

Coordinate efforts with the EU to craft a strategy for ensuring that a permanent cease-fire agreement provides for a demilitarized South Ossetia. Russia won’t allow Georgian troops back into the enclave in any event, but with the alleged Georgian “threat” to its client removed, there is an opening to push for the withdrawal of Russian forces.

Work with the EU to persuade Russia and the South Ossetians to accept neutral, third-party peacekeepers in South Ossetia. Those deployed there since the early 1990s hail from these three countries. Georgia has never seen them as neutral—and certainly won’t after this war. Given the current animosity between Washington and Moscow, the U.S. (short on troops in any event) should let EU or UN forces handle peacekeeping... LINK… more

Rajan Menon on Minnesota Public Radio | 'What Does a Peace Agreement Mean for Georgia's Future?'

Communications — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:06:00 -0400

Though a cease fire agreement has been signed between Georgia and Russia, there are conflicting reports as to when hostilities actually will stop. Russian troops plan to stay in a security zone in the region.

Featured Guests: Rajan Menon: Professor of international relations at Lehigh University and a fellow at the New America Foundation. Jeffrey Mankoff: Adjunct fellow for Russian Eurasian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

LINK to audio

A Middle Road in Azerbaijan

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:30:00 -0400

There's probably no country in the world watching the Russia-Georgia conflict more intently than this small, energy-rich nation to the south and east of the turmoil. It too leans toward the West. Its oil runs through the pipeline that crosses Georgia. And it too wants to know how far Russia will go to keep its former vassal states within its sphere of influence.

Anatol Lieven on Ian Masters' Background Briefing | 'Russian/Georgian Conflict'

Communications — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:34:00 -0400

Featured Guest: Anatol Lieven is a British author, journalist, policy analyst and professor. He is presently a Bernard L. Schwartz fellow and American Strategy Program fellow at the New America Foundation, where he focuses on US global strategy and the War on Terrorism. Dr. Lieven discusses the broader consequences of the conflict between Russia and Georgia. LINK to audio

The West Shares the Blame for Georgia

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:51:00 -0400

The bloody conflict over South Ossetia will have been good for something at least if it teaches two lessons. The first is that Georgia will never now get South Ossetia and Abkhazia back. The second is for the west: it is not to make promises that it neither can, nor will, fulfill when push comes to shove.

Georgia will not get its separatist provinces back unless Russia collapses as a state, which is unlikely. The populations and leaderships of these regions have repeatedly demonstrated their desire to separate from Georgia; and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, made it clear again and again that Russia would fight to defend these regions if Georgian forces attacked them.

The Georgians, like the Serbs in the case of Kosovo, should recognise reality and formally recognise the independence of these territories in return for a limited partition and an agreement to join certain Georgian-populated areas to Georgia. This would open the way either for an internationally recognised independence from Georgia or, more likely in the case of South Ossetia, joining North Ossetia as an autonomous republic of the Russian Federation. For the Georgians, the resolution of their territorial conflicts would make it more likely that they could eventually join the European Union – though after the Georgian administration’s initiation of this conflict, that cannot possibly be considered for many years.

Western governments should exert pressure on Georgia to accept this solution. These governments have a duty to do this because they, and most especially the US, bear a considerable share of the responsibility for the Georgian assault on South Ossetia and deserve the humiliation they are now suffering. It is true that western governments, including the US, always urged restraint on Tbilisi. Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, was told firmly by the Bush administration that he must not start a war.

On the other hand, the Bush administration, with the full support of the US Congress, armed, trained and overwhelmingly financed the Georgian military. It did this although the dangers of war involving these forces were obvious and after the Georgian government had told its own people that these forces were intended for the recovery of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The Bush administration, backed by Congress, Republican presidential candidate John McCain and most of the US media also adopted a highly uncritical attitude to both the undemocratic and the chauvinist aspects of the Saakashvili administration and its growing resemblance to that of the crazed nationalist leader, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, in the early 1990s.

Instead, according to European officials, the Bush administration even put heavy pressure on US and international monitoring groups not to condemn flagrant abuses by Mr Saakashvili’s supporters during the last Georgian elections. Ossete and Abkhaz concerns were ignored, and the origins of the conflict were often wittingly or unwittingly falsified in accordance with Georgian propaganda.

Finally, and most importantly, the US pushed strongly for a Nato membership action plan for Georgia at the last alliance summit and would have achieved this if France and Germany had not resisted strongly. Given all this, it was not wholly unreasonable of Mr Saakashvili to assume that if he started a war with Russia and was defeated, the US would come to his aid.

Yet all this time, Washington had not the slightest intention of defending Georgia, and knew it. Quite apart from its lack of desire to go to war with Russia over a place almost no American had heard of until last week, with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan it does not have an army to send to the Caucasus.

The latest conflict is humiliating for the US, but it may have saved us from a far more catastrophic future: namely an offer of Nato membership to Georgia and Ukraine provoking conflicts with Russia in which the west would be legally committed to come to these countries’ aid – and would yet again fail to do so. There must be no question of this being allowed to happen – above all because the expansion of Nato would make such conflicts much more likely.

Instead, the west should demonstrate to Moscow its real will and ability to defend those east European countries that have already been admitted into Nato, and to which it is therefore legally and morally committed – especially the Baltic states. We should say this and mean it. Under no circumstances should we extend such guarantees to more countries that we do not intend to defend. To do so would be irresponsible, unethical and above all contemptible.

The Grim Realities of Power

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:44:00 -0400

During the Peloponnesian War, as powerful Athens prepared to put the independent-minded, but tiny, island of Melos to the sword, the Melians appealed to principles of honor and fair play in a bid to save themselves.

The Athenians scoffed, noting that "the strong do as they will and the weak suffer as they must." And suffer the Melians did -- alone and unassisted.

Georgia is a latter-day Melos. It has been battered by Russia's over-the-top reaction to what began as a shoot-out between Georgian troops and forces belonging to the Russian-supported breakaway territory of South Ossetia and segued into a clash between Russian and Georgian military units.

Even if one accepts the Russian version in its entirety, the severity of Moscow's response was both unnecessary and unjustified. The United States and its European allies are indignant over the Kremlin's conduct. But, simply put, they will not do anything that truly makes Russia feel pain.

The reasons for patience and for taking the long view are already being offered: There are too many important issues on which Russia's cooperation is critical, pushing it into a corner will only strengthen its authoritarianism and bellicosity, the better course is to practice patient diplomacy... and so on.

The proposals now being proffered by pundits to arm Georgia, to boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics that will be held in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi, and to evict Russia from the Group of 8 will have no takers. Such measures may have been applied in an ideal world; they won't in the real one. This is unfair to Georgia, which is the victim; but it is nevertheless the reality.

Another unpalatable truth is that Russia's behavior in this instance is the norm, not the exception: Great powers impose their will on weaker neighbors and limit their freedom of action -- all the time.

Airy discourses about the commerce-driven dynamics of globalization and new norms of international conduct will not vanquish realpolitik. Just as other powerful states have done, Russia will be persistent in preventing weak neighbors that it considers to be part of its legitimate sphere of influence from forging links with its adversaries; the means used will vary, but not the ends. In today's Russia, Vladimir Putin personifies this policy, but it reflects deeper realities rooted in balance of power politics.

In this crisis, America and Europe have also behaved as states invariably have: They do not want to spend blood and treasure when the risks are too high and vital interests are not involved. In this instance, no state within NATO wants to pick a fight with Russia right on its doorstep. Nor do they wish to offer Georgia a guarantee of future protection.

The prevailing view seems to be that Russia's full-bore attack on Georgia increases Georgia's chance to gain entry into NATO; the reverse is more likely to be the case. NATO, as seem at its Bucharest summit meeting earlier this year, is already divided on Georgia's membership, and the discord is apt to deepen now that the implications of including it in the alliance are clear. Russia's attack on Georgia also illustrates how little gratitude matters in the politics among nations and how easily it is trumped by the dictates of power.

When Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, sent troops to Iraq, and was hailed as a steadfast democratic ally by President George W. Bush, he no doubt expected to win some good will that could be redeemed in an hour of need. Perhaps he believed that the United States would mobilize its allies and admonish Russia if it were to attack Georgia -- perhaps even offer tangible assistance.

If so, he miscalculated, and the United States is culpable for not making it clear that its thanks would not translate into tanks.

This crisis also tells us something - and it's not reassuring -- about the efficacy of international organizations when it comes to handling aggression. Some observers have looked to the United Nations to do right by Georgia. But what does that mean exactly? The UN can no more check Russia than it could block the Bush administration's preventive war against Iraq.

That Washington lacked a UN mandate and was criticized by most of its members mattered little to the White House. The same is true of the Kremlin; it will continue to debate its critics in the Security Council, and joined by its ally, China, will veto any resolution that condemns Russia.

In short, what happens in the UN will make for good theater: There have been, and will be, pious declarations, angry denunciations and sanctimonious finger-pointing. But none of this will help Georgia's fundamental problem, which is the disparity between its power and Russia's, and Moscow's determination to press that advantage to define what Georgia can and cannot do.

Utterly unsentimental and thoroughly cynical, Putin understands the arithmetic of power. In attacking a small and weak state located across Russia's border he did not take any big risks; and he bet that the West wouldn't either.

Bush did not look deeply enough into the Russian prime minister's soul -- and he apparently hadn't read his Thucydides in awhile.