COMMENTARY BLAMES "WAR PARTY" OF SILOVIKI, NOT "KREMLIN", FOR OSSETIAN WAR
by Dmitriy Butrin
RedOrbit
Aug 20 2008
TX
"A specific Kremlin"
The confidence that Russia’s actions in the war over South Ossetia
were controlled from start to finish by the Kremlin and the White
House [Russian Government] would make it possible to speak of
the start of radical changes in foreign policy and the transition
from unprincipled dealings with the theoretical world community to
certain principles. Unfortunately no such firm confidence exists. And
there are doubts as to whether the Tskhinvali episode was dumped on
Medvedev’s and Putin’s desks by people whom the heads of state simply
cannot afford not to talk with. These people are not Rice or Angela
Merkel. Whether or not the Russian Federation Army will leave Georgia
on schedule depends on them. And only to a lesser extent on Putin’s
subordinate, Defence Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov.
This is the position of the state
Russia’s position in this war seems attractive by any not-too- strict
standards. The motive force of the conflict in South Ossetia was
and is nationalism – first and foremost Georgian nationalism. The
concept of the territorial integrity of any nation state burdened
with ethnic minorities, whether it be Russia, Georgia, Armenia,
Azerbaijan, or France, presupposes that the nation that forms the
state has state borders that are historically established. A change
to those borders must be recognized by the state itself or by the
world community. Despite the widespread popular belief that Mikheil
Saakashvili’s regime is more or less based on anarcho- capitalist
principles, Georgia has dreamed of regaining its territorial integrity
ever since losing it in 1991-1992.
The majority of the 70,000 inhabitants of South Ossetia, since
1991, would have preferred to live within the State of the Russian
Federation on their own land, within the bounds known by three
generations. Nonetheless Russia, for its own reasons, maintained the
status quo, formulated as follows: In South Ossetia, Ossetian villages
live under local self-government as part of the Russian Federation,
and Georgian villages live as part of Georgia.
The tripartite commission consisting of the military from Georgia and
the Russian Federation and the local self-government of the Russian
part of South Ossetia monitors the situation to ensure that everything
stays as it is until such time as something different can be agreed on.
In this sense all the events in South Ossetia are logical. The
forcible incorporation of the South Ossetian villages and the urban
settlement of Tskhinvali into Russia, with legal recognition by the
Russian Federation, no matter how they may arm themselves, is hardly
conceivable. The incorporation of the Georgian villages of South
Ossetia into Georgia has been obvious for a long time.
Despite having almost unlimited opportunities to resolve the South
Ossetian issue in its own favour, Russia has not resolved it since
1992.
In August 2008 Georgia tried to do just that, and was punished.
Claims that the Kokoiti [Kokoyty] bandit gang is operating in
Tskhinvali under Russian patronage, shelling peaceful Georgian
villages, are feeble. It should be assumed that similar bandit gangs
are also operating in Georgian villages and cities; this can be
assumed not only on the grounds that in recent years there have been
shootings and bombings on both sides, but rather on the grounds that
Kokoiti’s accomplices could only engage in smuggling and car theft
if they had partners on the Georgian side – the region is primarily
a transit region. Fine, so Russia armed Kokoiti’s provocateurs with
grenade launchers. And who armed the Georgians?
There is no point in offering emotional definitions: The aggressor is
whoever disrupts the equilibrium with violence, no matter how he may
have been provoked. As long as Russia controls the Ossetian villages
and Georgia the Georgian villages, the situation can be described as
normal. Here it really does not matter who started it first, if it all
started back in 1919. Of course Russia did not resort to international
mediation over Abkhazia and South Ossetia: As a party to the conflict,
it would inevitably have lost out in this situation. The "frozen
conflicts" were frozen by none other than the Russian Federation,
in the awareness that it simply does not know how to resolve them.
The present position proclaimed by President Medvedev is also fitting.
Basically what that position amounts to is that everything is returning
to normal in South Ossetia.
Talks about the status of the separatist regions of Georgia are
being launched at an international level (at the Russian Federation-
Georgia level they are now pointless and dangerous), and the only
ones to suffer are the Georgian military, who are unable to station
their subunits in the Georgian part of South Ossetia and in Kodori. In
fact, even before, they did not have the right to do that, or no right
that was recognized outside Georgia. So in effect not much will have
changed as from Monday.
This is the private war of Eduard Kokoiti’s patrons
All these considerations are evidently entitled to exist if there is a
satisfactory answer to the question: When we say "Russia" whom do we
have in mind? If "Russia" in this case means the "power hierarchy,"
the state apparatus, or at least the Kremlin, it would be possible
to drop the idea that they were the ones who provoked the war over
South Ossetia. Within the "six principles" format it is not very clear
what Russia as a state might have gained, apart from international
problems, dead citizens, and the strengthening of the pro-Russian
regimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These last were anyway facing
no particular threats before the incidents. In this case Russia has
shown a principled approach for the first time in foreign policy,
and that will pay for itself.
But I suggest that it was certainly not Russia that plunged into a new
Caucasus conflict, but only a small section of its state apparatus,
the section that gained from it – that is obviously what Mrs Rice is
hinting at when she expresses the hope that the Russian Federation’s
military formations will fulfil President Dmitriy Medvedev’s
instruction to leave Georgia’s territory.
There is reason to believe that the provocations in South Ossetia
to which the ordinary nationalistic politician Mikheil Saakashvili
succumbed were not the responsibility of an abstract Kremlin, but of
people in the Russian Federation’s security agencies who continue to
control the Eduard Kokoiti regime. That is, the "security cover" of
Ossetian South Ossetia, which makes no great secret of its provenance
from among Russian military and special service cadres. Proceeding on
the basis of what we know about what happened previously in the Russian
part of the North Caucasus, support for the ideas of separatism and
irredenta is somewhat unexpected for a state with the experience
of Chechnya. It is possible to find an explanation that is much
simpler and much worse than one might assume, simply by analysing
the international situation.
For states, wars are a headache, because they make national
currencies collapse, frighten off investors, and do long-term damage
to politicians’ popularity ratings.
For the Russian siloviki [security chiefs], who since 1995 have grown
accustomed throughout the North Caucasus to accumulating resources
for the stabilization of the situation, the restoration of damage,
and the maintenance of the security level, war is a feeding ground.
In this light there is nothing surprising about Chechen President
Ramzan Kadyrov’s delight at the events or about the absence of any
rejoicing at the Ossetians’ liberation among the governments of the
fraternal North Caucasus peoples within the Russian Federation. For
Kadyrov, a new field of activity for the counterterrorist staff for the
North Caucasus, headed by the FSB, means a lessening of pressure on him
in Chechnya and less competition for his people. But for Ingushetia,
for instance, which has been in a state of conflict with what is now
de facto a united Ossetia for as long as Ossetia has been in a state
of conflict with Georgia, there is no reason to be pleased if that
territory is turned from a war zone into a border zone. The same is
true for Ossetia. The only winners are those who accumulate the funds
for the restoration of South Ossetia and for regional security under
the protection of the siloviki, who since the victorious pacification
of Chechnya in 2000 have seen their feeding ground shrink year by
year. Now that ground is widening.
This is a silovik group that has sufficient political influence to
insist on the replacement of the General Staff leadership in the summer
of 2008, to effectively rebuff all attacks on Ingushetian leader Murat
Zyazikov, and in many conflicts to successfully oppose the official
siloviki in the Putin government, including Minister Serdyukov. Happily
for us, they are not very interested in international policy or
official power.
Very little indeed is known about this "combat brotherhood" – at
least since February 2004, when I wrote in this column about the
military-criminal economy surrounding Chechnya, these people have
not become public.
Everything that is more or less known indicates that they are
interested almost exclusively in money and in guarantees of the
preservation of their feeding ground in their base regions. These are
mainly border territories, as well as parts of the Volga, Far East,
and Nonchernozem. I will not even venture to say whether they are
united: Maybe their coordinated actions are based on a coalition
deal between individuals in uniform. But the fact that they exist
can hardly be disputed anymore.
The "war party" in the Russian political spectrum is invisible, but
its presence is required in order to explain what has been happening
in the regime in recent years.
Those who are customarily regarded as siloviki in the present White
House, including [Deputy Prime Minister] Igor Sechin, not infrequently
come into conflict with this "war party."
One day – and quite soon – these people will want more than
noninterference in their affairs on the part of Medvedev. It was no
accident that Condoleezza Rice expressed the hope that the Russian
troops will leave Georgia anyway, but where will they want to go
in a year or two? Into the mining industry? To Crimea? Into North
Kazakhstan? To Tbilisi again? Or to Staraya Square [headquarters of
Presidential Staff]?
But that is the internal affair of the Kremlin, which is prepared to
recognize them as equal partners in its domestic political game.
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