RUSSIAN-GEORGIAN CONFLICT SCRAMBLES STRATEGIC MAP OF EUROPE
By Judy Dempsey
International Herald Tribune
August 15, 2008
France
BERLIN: The Russian tanks rumbling across parts of Georgia are forcing
a fundamental reassessment of strategic interests across Europe in
a way not considered since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November
1989 and the subsequent collapse of communism
Washington and European capitals had encouraged liberalization in lands
once firmly under the Soviet aegis. Now, they find themselves asking
a question barely posed in the past two decades: How far will or can
Russia go, and what should the response be? The answer will play out
not just in the European Union, but along its new eastern frontier,
in once-obscure places like Moldova and Azerbaijan.
Already, the United States has changed tack toward Moscow. There
will be no U.S. military action in the Caucasus, but by dispatching
Condoleezza Rice to Georgia and insisting that Russia withdraw,
Washington underlined that the Russians should not move on the capital,
Tbilisi. French leaders, acting on behalf of Europe, had already firmly
told the Russians they could not insist on the ouster of Georgia’s
president, Mikheil Saakashvili, as precondition for a cease-fire.
Farther west in Poland, American negotiators Thursday dropped
resistance to giving the Poles advanced Patriot missiles in exchange
for stationing parts of a missile defense system there. That system,
the Americans insist, is intended to deflect attack from Iran.
The Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, was not the only
member of the Russian military and political leadership who saw
things differently. "The fact that this was signed in a period of
a very difficult crisis in the relationship between Russia and the
United States over the situation in Georgia shows that of course the
missile defense system will not be deployed against Iran but against
the strategic potential of Russia," he told Reuters.
The Poles, indeed, had their own security in mind. "Poland wants to be
in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of – knock
on wood – any possible conflict," Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
"The reality is that international relations are changing," said
Pawel Swieboda, director of demosEUROPA, an independent research
organization based in Warsaw. "For the first time since 1991, Russia
has used military force against a sovereign state in the post-Soviet
area. The world will not be the same. A new phenomenon is unfolding
in front or our eyes: a re-emerging power that is willing to use force
to guarantee it interests. The West does not know how to respond."
At stake 20 years ago was whether the Kremlin, then under Mikhail
Gorbachev, would intervene militarily to stop the collapse of
communism. But Gorbachev chose to cut Eastern Europe free as he focused
– in vain – on preventing the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.
Communist bloc lands from the Baltic States in the north to Bulgaria
in the south have since joined the European Union and NATO – a feat,
despite flaws, that in the Western view has made the continent more
secure and democratic.
But Russia never liked the expansion of NATO. In the 1990s, it was
too weak to resist; today, in the Caucasus, Russia is showing off its
power and sending an unmistakable message: Georgia, or much larger
Ukraine, will never be allowed to join NATO.
The implications of Russia’s action reverberate well beyond that,
from the European Union’s muddled relations with its key energy
supplier, Russia, through Armenia and Azerbaijan in the south, to
Ukraine and Moldova.
This region has everything the West and Russia both covet and abhor:
immense reserves of oil and gas, innumerable ethnic splits and
tensions, corrupt and authoritarian regimes, pockets of territory
which have become breeding grounds or safe havens for Islamic
fundamentalists. As a result, the region has become the arena for
competition between the Americans and Europeans on the one hand,
and Russia on the other, over how to bring these countries into their
respective spheres of influence.
The EU – as ever, slow and divided – has offered few concrete
proposals in order to bring the countries of what Russia calls its
"near abroad" – Belarus, Ukraine, the Caucasus and the Caspian –
closer to Europe. Russia insists it should protect ethnic Russians
and Russian citizens in those countries – a point that President
Nicolas Sarkozy of France seemed to concede this week in a Kremlin
appearance alongside President Dmitri Medvedev.
The emergency meeting this week of EU foreign ministers showed just
how divided they were. Analysts say it is because the 27 member states
have not been able to separate their view of Russia from adopting a
clear strategy towards the former Soviet republics on the EU’s new
eastern borders.
"The Georgia crisis shows that Russia is in the process of testing
how far it can go," said Niklas Nilsson of the Central Asia-Caucasus
Institute in Stockholm. "This is part of a much bigger geopolitical
game. It is time for the Europeans to decide what kind of influence
it wants in the former Soviet states. That is the biggest strategic
challenge the EU now faces."
NATO, led by the U.S and several East European countries, has reached
out more actively. At a summit meeting in Bucharest in April, Georgia
and Ukraine failed to get on a concrete path to membership as they
had sought, but did secure a promise of joining eventually.
Georgia and its supporters say that NATO membership would have
protected Georgians from Russian tanks. West European diplomats by
contrast note with relief that Georgia is not in NATO, and thus could
not invoke the Article V of the alliance charter that stipulates that
an attack on one member justifies other alliance nations coming to
its defense.
The newly resurgent Russians, buoyed by oil and gas wealth and the
firm leadership of Vladimir Putin, have played their hand with less
hesitation.
Tomas Valasek, the Slovak-born director of foreign policy and defense
at the Center for European Reform in London, says Russia has used the
ethnic and territorial card in order to persuade some NATO countries
that admitting Ukraine or Georgia would prove more dangerous and
unstable than keeping them out. Georgia’s incursion Aug. 7 into South
Ossetia, a territory that fought Georgia from 1990-1992, serves both
these Russian arguments and Moscow’s passionate objections to the
West’s support for an independent Kosovo.
Recognize Kosovo’s break with Serbia, Putin warned last spring,
and Russia will feel entitled to do the same with South Ossetia
and Georgia’s other breakaway enclave, Abkhazia – where Putin needs
stability in order to realize his cherished project of the 2014 Winter
Olympics in nearby Sochi.
Ukraine, bigger than France and traditionally seen by Russians as
integral to their heritage and dominion, has been conspicuously
quiet over the past week. President Viktor Yushchenko flew to
Tbilisi with the presidents of the three Baltic states and Poland
to show support. But he later failed to join them at the side of
President Mikheil Saakashvili. Both Yushchenko and Prime Minister
Yulia Timoshenko have been measured. "They are very concerned about
the Crimea and the energy situation ahead of the winter," said a
spokesman who requested anonymity.
In the case of Crimea, Yushchenko signed a decree that would impose
further controls over access to the port of Sevastopol, where the
Russian Black Sea fleet is based. Russia has insisted it would keep
the fleet there despite a 1997 agreement between Moscow and Kiev to
end the lease in 2017.
Senior Ukrainian officials say that the weak EU response on Georgia
will only embolden Russia to focus even more on Ukraine, where many
inhabitants speak Russian and, particularly in the eastern half,
look to Moscow, not Kiev, for leadership.
"The crisis in Georgia has clear implications for regional security,
and of course Ukraine," said Hryhoriy Nemyria, deputy Prime Minister
of Ukraine who is responsible for European integration. "This crisis
makes crystal clear that the security vacuums that have existed in
the post-Soviet space remain dangerous.
"After Georgia is Ukraine," said Swieboda. "The EU and U.S. cannot
take their eyes off Ukraine now. Russia will do everything possible to
ensure that NATO will not offer Ukraine the chance to start accession
talks in December."
As for Georgia’s eastern neighbor Azerbaijan, energy and ethnic
tensions provide ample fodder for strategic dispute. Georgia and
Azerbaijan are crucial for EU plans to build the Nabucco pipeline
that would bring gas from Central Asia and Azerbaijan via Georgia to
Europe. That would weaken Europe’s dependence on Russia; it is hard
to see investors lining up to bankroll Nabucco if Georgia remains in
military conflict. Azerbaijan also has Caspian oil, which must again
travel west via Georgia.
But it is the unresolved status of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian
enclave in Azerbaijan, which explains why President Ilham Aliyev of
Azerbaijan has been measured in his response to the crisis in Georgia.
After a bloody war in the early 1990s, Nagorno-Karabakh functions as
a part of Armenia, supported by Russia.
"Aliyev has adopted a different style than Saakashvili," said Leila
Alieva, director of the National Committee on Azerbaijan’s Integration
in Europe. "We know that Russia is involved in Nagorno-Karabakh. Aliyev
does not want to provoke Russia by trying to change the status quo
of the enclave. If he tried to do so, it could cause a big Russian
reaction."