A Russian tank in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, August 16
Photo: Dmitry Kostyukov/AFP/Getty Images
The Georgia Crisis
The new Russia
Edited by Andy Ross
Russia must honour its ceasefire agreement with Georgia. Russian
troops must withdraw to positions they held before the current conflict erupted.
Both sides must allow peacekeepers into the region and return to negotiations.
Moscow's reluctance to follow such a course proves that its war aims were more
ambitious.
At the end of the Cold War, the Kremlin lost control of a vast
economic-political bloc. It ceded territory to neighbouring states and saw a
rival military alliance advance on its borders. Although Britain knows the pain
of losing an empire, the more common comparison is with Germany after the First
World War.
Many of Moscow's former satellites see Russia's intervention in South Ossetia as
a blatant land grab. In the Kremlin's claim to be protecting the local
population, they hear echoes of Hitler's professed concern for the well-being of
Sudeten Germans before marching into Czechoslovakia.
The U.S. has responded to the South Ossetian crisis with renewed determination
to include Georgia and Ukraine in NATO and to deploy anti-ballistic-missile
defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Russia needs access to Western markets and the West needs Russian oil and gas.
That creates an opportunity for the European Union to play a moderating role,
steering the conversation away from military grandstanding and towards economic
negotiation.
Under Soviet rule, many Russians privately shared the West's view of their
leaders as thugs. But Putin's brand of militarist nationalism enjoys genuine
popular support.
In defence of its campaign in South Ossetia, Russia cites Western actions in
Kosovo and Iraq. That is neat rhetoric from the Kremlin, but as justification
for its assault on Georgia it is plainly cynical. Russia's claim to be 'keeping
the peace' in South Ossetia is belied by its army's penetration into undisputed
Georgian territory and by credible allegations that it is facilitating
atrocities by anti-Georgian militias.
Such aggression must not be rewarded. The best guarantee of security and peace
in Europe since the end of the Cold War has been economic integration, achieved
through the European Union.
Let's not start World War 3
By Mike Jackson
The Sunday Telegraph, August 17, 2008
Edited by Andy Ross
When the Cold War ended, there was a great sense of euphoria in
the West. The non-Russian republics of the erstwhile union seized the
opportunity to obtain their independence from Russia.
The end of the Cold War exposed the futility and pretence of the ideology which
had underpinned the Soviet Empire.
The euphoria in the West was not shared by Russia itself, which then went
through a difficult and uncertain transition from Communist authoritarianism to
a fledgling democracy and market economy.
I believe more could have been done to welcome the new Russia into the
international fold, to reassure Russia that it still maintained its very
important standing as a permanent member of the Security Council.
The break-up of the Soviet Union left large numbers of Russian nationals in the
old constituent republics of the Union. Overnight, the Russian nationals found
themselves minorities in a foreign country.
Moscow does not forget the searing experiences of being invaded over centuries
through the Near Abroad. Many of these Near Abroad countries have now become, or
wish to become, members of NATO and the EU.
Putin has criticised Western leaders for being still locked into a Cold War
mentality. The post-Cold War history of the Balkans and the break-up of
Yugoslavia have a lot to do with these perceptions and attitudes.
NATO took military action over Kosovo against Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian
regime without the authority of a UN Security Council resolution. NATO relied
for its justification on the emerging doctrine in international law that the
prevention of humanitarian disaster can be more important than sovereignty
itself.
This is precisely the justification advanced by Moscow for its intervention in
Georgia. Georgia is a sovereign democratic state that gained its independence in
the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse. Strongly supported by the West, it
aspires to NATO and EU membership.
Georgia has to contend with two regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, that do
not wish to be part of Georgia. By agreement with Georgia, Russia had deployed
peace-keeping forces in South Ossetia long before the current crisis.
I am clear that the problems arising from minority enclaves in such
circumstances are fundamentally political, rather than purely military.
For me, the right course for the West is to accept more willingly Russia's
concerns for its Near Abroad. Strategic military hostility and confrontation
must remain a thing of the past.
Sir Mike Jackson served as UK Chief of the General Staff.
The New York Times
Russian Blitz
By Thom Shanker
The New York Times, August 17, 2008
Edited by Andy Ross
Russia’s victorious military blitz into the former Soviet
republic of Georgia brought something old and something new, but none of it was
impromptu.
The Russian military borrowed a page from classic Soviet-era doctrine: Moscow’s
commanders sent an overwhelming force into Georgia. At the same time, they picked
up what is new from American military writings, replete with
the hard-learned lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan.
So along with the old-school onslaught of infantry, armor and artillery, Russia
mounted joint air and naval operations, appeared to launch simultaneous
cyberattacks on Georgian government Web sites and had its best English speakers
at the ready to make Moscow’s case in television appearances.
That kind of coordination of the old and the new did not look accidental to
military professionals. In fact, Russia held a major ground exercise in July
just north of Georgia’s border, called Caucasus 2008, that played out a chain of
events like the one carried out over recent days.
Even as the Russian military succeeded in taking control of South Ossetia and
Abkhazia, humiliating the Georgian government and crippling army and police
units, serious shortcomings on the Russian side were revealed, Pentagon and
military officials said.
To the surprise of American military officers, an impaired Georgian air-defense
system was able to down at least six Russian jets. Georgia never has fielded an
integrated, nationwide air defense system, and those ground-to-air weapons that
survived early Russian shelling operated without any central control. That they
bloodied the Russian air wing was taken as a clear sign of poor aircraft
maintenance or poor pilot training.
Russian-language news media and unofficial national security Web sites in Moscow
also noted other shortcomings. A Russian general was wounded when he led a
column of armored vehicles toward the capital of South Ossetia, apparently
without sufficient intelligence to know a Georgian ambush was waiting. The
Russians also suffered losses as they came through the Roki Tunnel, which
connects South Ossetia to the neighboring region of North Ossetia in Russia
proper.
Despite these failings, the Russian military was able to coordinate infantry
advances with movement of airborne troops, simultaneously with the deployment of
armor and artillery. Russian warships moved off the coast of Georgia, and
Russian Special Operations forces infiltrated into Georgia through Abkhazia,
according to Pentagon and military officials.
The offensive into Georgia gave little indication of a renewed Russian capacity
or interest in global projection of power. But Moscow’s military is wholly
capable of pressing the Kremlin’s designs on hegemony over the formerly
Communist states along the border that Russian leaders call the Near Abroad.
Click to watch video
Georgian President Saakashvili eats his tie on TV
Edited by Andy Ross
The BBC recently aired a TV report in which Georgian President
Mikhail Saakashvili ate his tie. The report was about the conflict between
Georgia and South Ossetia. The footage showed Saakashvili making a call to a top
Western official. It could be clearly seen that Mr. Saakashvili was having a
nervous breakdown. But it will never occur to George W. Bush or Condoleezza Rice
to speak about the nightmare that thousands of South Ossetian residents had to
experience after Georgia's attack on the republic.
AR The Kremlin operates with less finesse than one would like.
Condoleezza Rice
If NATO punishes Russia, Russia will punish NATO back
Edited by Andy Ross
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on her way to an
emergency NATO foreign minister meeting on the crisis in South Ossetia and
Georgia that the alliance would “punish Russia for its invasion of Georgia.”
Western sources believe that Ms. Rice was talking about a suspension of defense
cooperation. Russian experts say that Georgia is a uniting factor for NATO, and
the alliance can stand up against Russia in a cohesive way.
Rice also said that Russia “was playing a very dangerous game” with the USA and
its allies. The Secretary of State emphasized that the United States would not
allow Moscow to win in Georgia, destabilize Europe and draw a new Iron Curtain
through the continent.
"We are determined to deny them their strategic objective," Rice told reporters
aboard her plane, adding that any attempt to re-create the Cold War by drawing a
"new line" through Europe and intimidating former Soviet republics and
ex-satellite states would fail.
Condoleeza Rice
By Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda, August 19, 2008
In the equation which makes up the odious, ciminal and murderous
Bush regime and its murderous, criminal and odious foreign policy, the constant
factor is constituted by a teacher, promoted to positions way above her personal
and intellectual station by a gullible fool of a President. This teacher, whose
sheer incompetence as National Security Advisor and as Secretary of State is
today so blatantly apparent, goes by the name of Condoleeza [sic] Rice.
The constant arrogance and hypocrisy of this failed female makes it that much
more apparent that here is a person way out of her depth. Instead of regarding
sensitive issues from a balanced viewpoint as she is supposed to do, this
incompetent loud-mouthed, bad-mannered
... [etc. ad nauseam]
Dr. Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor
The White House
National Security Council
Dr. Condoleezza Rice became the Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security
Advisor, on January 22, 2001.
In June 1999, she completed a six year tenure as Stanford University 's Provost,
during which she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. As
Provost she was responsible for a $1.5 billion annual budget and the academic
program involving 1,400 faculty members and 14,000 students.
As professor of political science, Dr. Rice has been on the Stanford faculty
since 1981 and has won two of the highest teaching honors — the 1984 Walter J.
Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and
Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.
At Stanford, she was a member of the Center for International Security and Arms
Control from 1981-1986 (currently the Center for International Security And
Cooperation), a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a
Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. Her books include
Germany
Unified and Europe Transformed (1995) with Philip Zelikow,
The
Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin, and
Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984). She
also has written numerous articles on Soviet and East European foreign and
defense policy, and has addressed audiences in settings ranging from the U.S.
Ambassador's Residence in Moscow to the Commonwealth Club to the 1992 and 2000
Republican National Conventions.
From 1989 through March 1991, the period of German reunification and the final
days of the Soviet Union, she served in the Bush Administration as Director, and
then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National
Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security
Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on
Foreign Relations, she served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. In 1997, she served on the Federal Advisory Committee on
Gender-Integrated Training in the Military.
She was a member of the boards of directors for ... [etc. etc.]
AR The Pravda editors
have evidently blundered in allowing Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey to vent his hate.
Whatever you say about Condi, she is undoubtedly a smart and impressive
public figure with a right to personal respect as a woman.
We Tilt at Windmills
By Simon Jenkins
The Sunday Times, August 24, 2008
Edited by Andy Ross
Both Obama and McCain have claimed that the war in Iraq has been
allowed to distract attention from the war in Afghanistan. America now thinks it
has won in Baghdad and must return to Kabul, and possibly even Tehran.
These conflicts may be a distraction from the reemergence as world powers of
Russia and China, who are already gaining the initiative in Iran and Africa.
Moscow is also precipitating a nationalist resurgence in eastern Europe and
among Russian minorities in the Caucasus.
The West's global strategy under George Bush, Tony Blair and a ham-fisted NATO
has declared the threat to world peace as coming from nonstate organisations,
specifically Al-Qaeda, and the nations that give them either bases or tacit
support. By grossly overstating the significance of terrorism, western leaders
have distracted foreign policy from what should be its prime concern: securing
world peace by holding a balance of interest among the great powers.
To any who lived through the cold war, recent events along Russia's western and
southern borders are deeply ominous. Moscow initially spent the 17 years since
the fall of the Soviet Union flirting with the West. In the case of NATO and the
EU it was arrogantly rebuffed, while its former Warsaw Pact allies were
accepted. Moscow was told it would be foolish to worry about encirclement.
Afghanistan poses no military threat to Britain. Rather it is Britain's
occupation and the response in neighbouring Pakistan that fosters antiwestern
militancy in the region. The Taliban are fighting an old-fashioned insurgent war
against a foreign invader and recruiting Pakistanis and antiwestern fanatics to
help. They have succeeded in tormenting Washington and London with visions of a
destabilised nuclear Pakistan, a blood-drenched Middle East and an Iran whose
leaders may yet turn to jihad.
There is no strategic justification for siting American missile systems in
Poland and the Czech Republic. It is nothing but right-wing provocation. NATO's
welcome to Georgia and Ukraine, for no good reason but at risk of having to come
to their aid, has served only to incite Georgia to realise that risk while also
infuriating Moscow.
America surely has an obligation to show greater caution. NATO's bureaucracy,
lacking coherence and leadership, has been searching for a role since the end of
the cold war. It has played fast and loose with Moscow's age-old sensitivity and
forgotten the message of George Kennan, the American statesman: that Russia must
be understood and contained rather than confronted.
Simon Jenkins edited The Times from 1990-92, going on to contribute a twice
weekly column until 2005. He now writes weekly for The Sunday Times. He was
formerly political editor of The Economist and Editor of The Evening Standard,
and has been deputy chairman of English Heritage and a member of the Millennium
Commission. He was knighted for his services to journalism in 2004
AR Jenkins is surely right that Russia poses a more serious military threat than the whole Islamic world together. But the point is that we can engage Russians diplomatically. We share core values. Finding a way to agree on Georgia and the Ukraine should not be too hard.
Georgia and the Balance of Power
By George
Friedman
The New York Review of Books, September 25, 2008
Edited by Andy Ross
The Russian invasion of Georgia announces a shift in the balance
of power.
It is difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their attack against US
wishes. This leaves two possibilities. The first is that the United States
either was unaware of the deployments of Russian forces or knew of them but
miscalculated Russia's intentions. The second is that the United States had
assumed that the Russians would not risk the consequences of an invasion.
The Russians welcomed the opportunity to drive home the new reality, which was
that they could invade Georgia, and the United States and Europe could not
meaningfully respond. They did not view the invasion as risky.
To understand Russian thinking, we need to look at two events. The first is the
Orange Revolution in Ukraine. From the US and European points of view, the
Orange Revolution represented a triumph of democracy and Western influence. From
the Russian point of view, the Orange Revolution was a CIA-funded intrusion
designed to draw Ukraine into NATO and add to the encirclement of Russia.
The Russians had tolerated NATO's expansion to Poland, Hungary, the Czech
Republic, and the rest of the former Soviet satellites in what is now Central
Europe, as well as the three Baltic states. But the discussion of including
Ukraine in NATO represented a fundamental threat to Russia's national security.
It would have rendered Russia indefensible and threatened to destabilize the
Russian Federation itself. When the United States suggested that Georgia be
included as well, the Russian conclusion was that the United States intended to
encircle and break Russia.
The second and lesser event was the decision by Europe and the United States to
back Kosovo's separation from Serbia. The issue for Russia was that national
borders should not be changed. If that principle were violated in Kosovo, other
border shifts might follow. The Russians asked that Kosovo not be given formal
independence, but were ignored.
From the Ukrainian experience, the Russians became convinced that the United
States was engaged in a plan of strategic encirclement and strangulation of
Russia. From the Kosovo experience, they concluded that the United States and
Europe were not prepared to consider Russian wishes even in fairly minor
affairs. That was the breaking point.
If Kosovo could be declared independent under Western sponsorship, then South
Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two breakaway regions of Georgia, could be declared
independent under Russian sponsorship. Any objections from the United States and
Europe would simply confirm their hypocrisy.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once said that the fall of the Soviet
Union was a geopolitical disaster. The disintegration of the Soviet Union had
created a situation in which Russian national security was threatened by Western
interests. Putin had to reestablish the credibility of the Russian army as a
fighting force, at least in its own region. And he had to establish that Western
guarantees, including NATO membership, meant nothing in the face of Russian
power.
By invading Georgia, Putin reestablished the credibility of the Russian army.
But far more importantly, Putin's invasion revealed that while the United States
is tied down in the Middle East, American guarantees have no value. This lesson
is something that, from the Russian point of view, the Ukrainians, the Balts,
and the Central Asians need to digest. It is a lesson Putin wants to transmit to
Poland and the Czech Republic as well.
The Russians knew that the United States would denounce their attack. This plays
into Russian hands. The Russians wanted to drive home the idea that American
guarantees are empty talk. The Russians also know that for the United States,
the Middle East is far more important than the Caucasus, and Iran is
particularly important. Georgia is a marginal issue to the United States.
The United States must either reorient its strategy away from the Middle East,
and toward the Caucasus, or seriously limit its response to Georgia to avoid a
Russian counter in Iran. Even if the United States had an appetite for war in
Georgia, it would have to calculate the Russian response in Iran.
The Russians have backed the Americans into a corner. The Europeans, who for the
most part lack expeditionary military forces and are dependent upon Russian
energy exports, have even fewer options. If nothing else happens, the Russians
will have compelled every state on its periphery to reevaluate its position
relative to Moscow.
The war in Georgia is Russia's public return to great power status. The Russian
goal is to assert a new reality throughout the region while the Americans are
tied down elsewhere and dependent on Russian cooperation.
Can the United States and its allies mount a coherent response?
AR This is a good
analysis. If global realpolitik is a chess game, Russia has succeeded in putting
the United States in check.
Dmitry Lovetsky / Associated Press
Russian troops in South Ossetia
Memories of Containment
By James Traub
The New York Times, September 6, 2008
Edited by Andy Ross
When the Russian Army moved into Georgia, occupied major cities
and destroyed infrastructure, the safety of the Ossetians began to look like
little more than a pretext.
Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, said last week that Russia "has regions
where it has privileged interests," adding that Russia has friendly relations
with countries in its sphere of influence. Moscow has amicable relations with
Armenia and Belarus, which comport themselves with suitable deference, but
extremely turbulent relations with Ukraine and Georgia.
Richard Holbrooke and Ronald Asmus, former officials in the Clinton
administration, compared Russia's assault on Georgia with Hitler's march on
Czechoslovakia, airily justified by the alleged need to protect ethnic Germans.
But though widely shared, this view is not universal. "American unilateralism in
the Balkans," wrote Flynt Leverett, another former Clinton diplomat, "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."
These two pictures offer very different understandings of the nature of Russia
in the Putin era: It is either an expansionist, belligerent power whose
ambitions are insatiable, or a "normal" state seeking to restore influence and
regional control along its borders, commensurate with its growing wealth and
power.
If the first, Russia had no right to demand acceptance of its "sphere of
influence." Invading a neighbor who poses no threat to you or others is, as
President Bush put it, "unacceptable in the 21st century."
If, on the other hand, Russia was essentially demanding its due, then the
moralistic response was inappropriate, and America should acknowledge the
legitimacy of Russia's concerns.
How you think about the nature and legitimacy of Russia's ambitions largely
determines the response you advocate. Mr. Leverett argues that "America's
promotion of a dubious ‘democratic' movement in Georgia is not as important to
Western interests as working with Russia on the most significant energy,
economic and international security challenges of our time."
If, on the other hand, Mr. Putin's Russia has embarked on a drive for regional
hegemony, then the policy question is: How can the West block Russia's
ambitions? Mr. Cheney promised the Georgians $1 billion in reconstruction aid
and vowed to redouble American support for Georgia's campaign to join NATO — an
absolute redline for Russia.
John McCain has threatened "severe, long-term consequences" for United
States-Russia relations, and has proposed offering security guarantees to
Ukraine and Georgia, including NATO membership. Barack Obama has also declared
that we "must review all aspects of relations with Russia," though he and
several leading Democratic policy figures have been more cautious on the
question of NATO.
Our European allies, especially Germany and France, are more dependent on
Russian energy and trade than we are, and far more directly threatened by
Russian aggression. European officials, by and large, have been every bit as
appalled by Russian behavior as Washington has been; but most have taken a less
confrontational line.
There's all the difference in the world between an enfeebled and defensive
empire, and a nation emboldened by vast wealth and brimming with resentment at
past humiliations. This Russia does not look so very containable.
AR Traub is right.
A nationalistic Russia with economic dynamism is potentially dangerous.
