CAUCASUS DIARY – ‘A SHIVER OF INSTABILITY RUNS THROUGH . . .
by John O’Sullivan
National Review
September 15, 2008
Yerevan, Armenia Arriving here is a little like arriving in Las
Vegas. The terrain, yellow desert and scrubs, is similar to that
of Nevada, and the road from the airport is banked by neon-lit
casinos. There is even a smaller version of the Las Vegas cowboy sign,
whose swinging arm directs gamblers to a particular casino. During
the Soviet period, it was popular with Russian visitors. But since
vacation options for Russians were strictly limited, the locals had
little incentive to upgrade hotels and other tourist facilities.
The town was a pleasant historic backwater. Armenia was supposedly the
first nation to convert formally to Christianity (in the 4th century),
but Moscow’s rule took its toll, and wherever you see an attractive
public building such as an opera house — and Yerevan has quite a
number of them — it is almost certainly erected on the ruins of an
Armenian Orthodox church.
Today Yerevan is popular with Russian investors and developers. Russian
investors own almost all of the country’s infrastructure. In Yerevan
a massive building boom is in progress. Vast cranes dominate the
skyline. (One resident counted 75 from her office terrace.)
There is still an aroma of the Third World in the dusty side
streets. But Yerevan will soon become a real capital city and a
universally popular tourist destination — or, rather, it would do
so if it were not located next door to the full-scale international
crisis in Georgia.
* * *
On the way to lunch I receive a call on my mobile phone from a
friend in Oxford. I postpone the conversation, explaining that I am
in a taxi in the middle of Yerevan. I get a fine example of British
one-upmanship in reply:
"Oh, did the taxi take a wrong turning?"
* * *
But you can see his point: The southern Caucasus is the Rubik’s Cube
of international disputes. Every time you try to solve one crisis,
you make another worse. Next door to Armenia is oil-rich and Muslim
Azerbaijan. Both countries claim the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh,
which the Soviets assigned to Azerbaijan even though its population
was mainly Armenian. They went to war over it even though both were
constituent states of the USSR. In 1994 a ceasefire left the Armenians
in possession of both Nagorno-Karabakh and some part of Azerbaijan
proper. Refugees exist on both sides. Nothing is settled.
The dispute is one of those "frozen conflicts" that Russia has cleverly
exploited to maintain indirect control of its "near abroad." Armenia
and Azerbaijan are both anxious to keep Russia on their side, though
neither likes Russian dominance of the neighborhood.
But other powerful neighbors also intervene. Sympathetic to Azerbaijan
on ethno-religious grounds, Turkey has imposed a blockade on Armenian
trade going through its territory. That is a real restraint on
Armenia’s otherwise very healthy economy — growing in recent years
at an average of 13 percent thanks to privatization and other reforms.
The Turkish blockade means that a very high proportion of Armenia’s
trade travels by rail through Georgia to the port of Poti on the
Black Sea. That railway is now vulnerable to Russian disruption —
and Poti is still in Russian military hands.
* * *
"A Graham Greene sort of place" is how a friend described Yerevan’s
mixture of exoticism and dustiness to me in advance. I should have
thought it rather an Eric Ambler sort of place, after the British
espionage-thriller writer (A Coffin for Dimitrios, Journey into Fear,
Topkapi) who specialized in innocents abroad getting drawn into
dangerous mysteries against seedily exotic backdrops.
The day before I left Prague, one of my colleagues in Radio Liberty’s
office in Armenia was beaten up. He was the 16th journalist beaten up
in Armenia in the last six months or so. No one has yet been arrested
for these attacks.
Armenia’s president made a very strong statement, ordering the police
to investigate the attack zealously. Since this was a big story in
Yerevan, I was interviewed by two female journalists, one of whom
had herself been roughed up, from opposition newspapers.
As executive editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty I welcomed the
president’s remarks as a first step towards providing the media with
proper protection from political violence. My interviewers exchanged
skeptical glances.
* * *
Suspicion between the media and the government is only one example of
a wider problem. Armenia has been exceptionally divided since March 1,
when police shot demonstrators protesting abuses in an election that
returned the ruling-party candidate with an implausible 52 percent
majority.
Ten people died, including one policeman; some demonstrators and
opposition figures were arrested; and a state of emergency was
imposed for a time. This was a shock to an Armenian public that had
been assuming that gradual if erratic progress towards real democracy
was unstoppable.
A coalition of opposition parties has since been holding more or less
permanent demonstrations in Yerevan — demonstrations that are declared
illegal but allowed to proceed. At the same time the government
has been proceeding too — with trials of demonstrators. U.S. and
European officials and human rights NGOs appeal solemnly for "dialogue"
between government and opposition.
Pres. Serzh Sargsyan has made some modest conciliatory gestures
of talking with the opposition, and the leading opposition figure,
Levon Ter-Petrossian, has responded by placing most of the blame for
the brutal crackdown on the previous president.
A Western diplomat suggests over lunch that the president is
waiting for a substantial number of demonstrators to be convicted
by the courts of using violence. He could then issue an amnesty all
around while pointing out that the opposition was shown to be as
blameworthy as the government (though he might not phrase it exactly
that way). Reconciliation would then proceed.
* * *
That may happen. Sargsyan seems to want something like it. But the real
underlying question is: Will the tragedy of March 1 push Armenians
on both sides of the divide to accept truly fair elections and,
just as important, fair campaigns leading up to them?
Americans and Europeans are here in droves urging such an outcome
(and offering the inducement of greater economic integration with
the West). But as my diplomat friend points out, the Russians are
also here in force: "Come over to the dark side. Good money and no
questions asked."
Given that Russian influence on Armenia is so strong, it is significant
that this appeal is not more effective. Both government and opposition
keep talking to their Western interlocutors, if not to each other. It
is possible that simple admiration for democracy is the reason. But
it is also possible that Armenians, a famously shrewd and even crafty
people, have some doubts that their powerful neighbor will ultimately
prove to be the winning side, even locally.
* * *
An important diplomatic breakthrough occurs while I am in Yerevan. The
Turkish-Armenian youth-soccer match ends in a 2-1 victory for
the Armenians. Significantly, the crowd cheers both sides after a
good-natured game in the presence of Turkish diplomats.
This is considered a good omen for the adult Turkish-Armenian game
in September, to which President Sargsyan has invited his Turkish
counterpart, Abdullah Gul. Gul’s acceptance is still uncertain, but
the smart money is now betting the visit will take place. If so, that
would be merely the start of a long process of negotiations on a range
of issues, from the Turkish massacres of Armenians in the First World
War — were they state-ordered genocide or something less heinous? —
to lifting Turkey’s embargo on Armenian trade.
But it would be a start that few people expected a month ago. Observers
then assumed that Azerbaijan had enough clout with Ankara to head
off any such talking. What changed matters is the Russian attack on
Georgia. A shiver of instability has run through the Caucasus, and
all the major players except Russia are anxious to restore mutual
security as best they can.
Turkey, Armenia, and Georgia are nervous about the threat that ethnic
and regional instability poses to the oil and gas pipelines. All
three, especially Georgia at present, would like to see Russian
dominance diluted. All now seem more prepared to tone down their
local conflicts. Nagorno-Karabakh has been consigned to the icebox
for the moment. Talks between Ankara and Yerevan are on the agenda.
But can anything more substantial and positive be done?
* * *
Vartan Oskanian was the Armenian foreign minister for ten years, until
this April. He now heads a think tank, the Civilitas Foundation,
in Yerevan. He is one of the few Armenian politicians who exerts
moral authority over government and opposition at home and enjoys
high repute abroad.
In his office overlooking the city, he sketches out Caucasian
realities. The Russians are dominant, but the Caucasus wants to be
part of modern Europe. People want prosperity and freedom. For that,
however, they need security that NATO cannot provide in the teeth
of Russian opposition. So faster integration into the European Union
is part of the answer — and acceptable to the Russians since, being
heavily invested in Armenia, they too would gain from closer EU ties.
All this would be progress, but not quite enough. There has to
be a security component of any long-term solution. If NATO is not
the answer, what is? I point out that Turkey has recently woken up
from almost a century of sleep on foreign policy. It is sponsoring
Syrian-Israeli talks, appointing more than a dozen Turkish ambassadors
to African countries, and — most important — advancing a proposal
for a Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform. Such an initiative
would, among other things, dilute Russian influence over the Caucasus
by the simple expedient of increasing Turkish influence.
Oskanian is intrigued by this but, moderately skeptical, he wants to
see more details.
A few days later in the International Herald Tribune, he embraces the
idea more warmly, noticing that Turkey’s leaders have specifically
mentioned including Armenia in such a pact, and arguing that it could
be the basis for a wider U.S.-European-Turkish security guarantee.
Much may depend on the soccer match on September 6 in Yerevan. Maybe
this time the Armenians should plan to lose.
* * *
Tbilisi, Georgia Seated in an open-air restaurant overlooking the River
Mtkvari, enjoying a light lunch of mountain trout and Georgian salad,
one finds it hard to believe that Russian tanks are only about 25
kilometers away — indeed, that they may be even closer by the time
the Turkish coffee arrives. Tbilisi shows only a few signs of being a
capital city at war. Yet only an hour’s drive away Russian soldiers
are systematically destroying Georgia’s military (and some of its
civil) infrastructure, occupying towns and villages, establishing
"buffer zones" in "Georgia proper" to add to their annexation of
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and arresting Georgian soldiers.
This is a very postmodern kind of war.
The Russians have plainly won militarily. Equally plainly, however,
they are losing the propaganda war — almost no impartial observer
believes their claims of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" — and
they may be losing the diplomatic and economic wars too.
Poland has already signed the U.S. missile-defense deal that Putin
opposes; NATO has agreed that there cannot be "business as usual"
as long as Russia occupies Georgia; Western Europeans are becoming
antsy about their dependency on Russian energy; and nervous investors
took $16 billion out of the country in the week following its military
success. Mild as these reactions are, they have prevented the Russians
from marching to Tbilisi and "suiciding" Saakashvili. So far.
* * *
Georgians are well aware of these postmodern realities. Temur
Iakobashvili is their minister for reintegration — surely the most
optimistic ministerial title in history. But he is bleakly realistic
when I interview him for RFE/RL.
His first point is a concession. Yes, there was a "miscalculation" by
Georgia when it launched an offensive on its breakaway territories in
early August. But Georgians were not the only people who miscalculated:
"When I was at a press conference in Brussels in May of this year
and I said we were on the brink of war, I saw a lot of worried faces
coming to me and saying: ‘You are using very strong connotation.’ War
is a very, very strong connotation for the European virgin ear."
It is so strong a connotation that the Europeans simply averted their
eyes from the gathering storm.
Iakobashvili’s second argument outlines, again realistically, how this
postmodern war will be fought: "I don’t see that there is any military
component of pressuring Russia, but there is a political component."
But what kind of political component?
* * *
My Hudson Institute colleague Charles Fairbanks, who lives half the
year in Georgia, has answered this question on The Weekly Standard’s
website. Despite the notion that "nothing can be done," "the United
States is far more powerful than Russia, which has an economy in the
range of South Korea’s, and that superiority has multiplied vastly
since we strove successfully against the Soviet Union."
Georgian officials, Western businessmen, and locally based diplomats
feel exactly the same thing, sometimes very impatiently. On my
final night in Tbilisi, one Western diplomat outlines the string
of financial and economic measures that the West can impose. Some
positive measures — a series of aid and investment programs for
Georgia — are already in the pipeline. The eventual package might
be so generous that Georgia would be half-integrated into the EU.
The Russians might not like any of this, but the threat of negative
incentives — expulsion from the G8, etc. — limits their room for
disruption.
Both positive and negative incentives, however, require a strong,
united West to back them. If Europe and America, or the European
countries themselves, split into different camps, then the Russians
could win this postmodern war — and thus gain de facto control over
all the energy pipelines from Central Asia to Western Europe.
* * *
Outside my hotel in Freedom Square is a tall marble column that used
to be the pedestal for a statue of Lenin. It now supports a golden
statue of St. George spearing the dragon.
Unfortunately, outside the Georgian world of myth and art, the dragon
is still ahead on points.