US President George W. Bush pledged to "rally the free world in defense of a free Georiga," and Britain's PM Gordon Brown warned that "NATO must reëvaluate the alliance's relationship with Russia and intensify our support for Georgia and others who may face Russian aggression." Such talk has only sharpened the Kremlin's response. This week, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev claimed that "Russia, like other countries in the world, has regions of privileged interests." More telling, perhaps, was that Mr Medvedev made clear to reporters that this sphere of influence would extend beyond the states bordering Russia.
The bluster of statesmen is nothing new in this age. In relations with Iran and North Korea, the international community (more specifically, the Bush administration) has used a hard line to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, there was an air of nostalgia that surrounded Russia's incursion into South Ossetia. Strongman Vladimir Putin was finally able to orchestrate a military campaign that would reëstablish Russia's rightful place in the international system. Mr Putin's well-documented K.G.B legacy no doubt left the current PM with a seething resentment for American ascendancy. Indeed, Putin once referred to the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the single greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century."
No doubt Russia's policy (still under the not-so-subtle direction of Mr Putin) was designed to redress such grievances. But the movement of tanks and troops into Gori was a play dictated by contemporary realities, rather than Cold War pangs. The recent tensions probably begin at the NATO summit in Bucharest (April 2008) when the US pushed for Georgian membership in the alliance. Mr Putin made no secret of his displeasure with the West encroaching on Russian borders, and security experts have suggested that Moscow looked into potential military solutions. In early August, a ceasefire between South Ossetian and Georgian forces collapsed, providing the spark that would light the Caucasus. In an effort to restore control over the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Georgian President Mikheil Saakhashvili dispatched troops to Tskhinvali. Russia had already warned through its ambassador, Yuri Popov, that any regional conflict would bring Russian intervention. Mr Saakhashvili, the charismatic golden boy of regional democratization effectively gave Messrs Putin and Medvedev license to carry out an aggressive response.
Once Georgian forces had been pushed back from the disputed territories, Russian troops continued their advance. Such "coming over the top" signaled Moscow's resolve on three points. First, Mr Putin was sending a strong message to any other post-Soviet states, most notably Ukraine which is also seeking NATO membership. Second, the Russians recognized that strategic value of the trans-Caucasus energy corridor running through Georgia. US support for the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline during the Clinton administration (during a period of Russian decline) had secured a reliable access point, controlled by the West, for oil and gas from the region. A military incursion into Georgia would not only create the sort of instability that might raise short-term revenues (Russia is the second largest oil producing country in the world) and increase the likelihood the future pipelines would have to run through Russia. Third, Russian aggression flowed from years of Western involvement in the post-Soviet Baltic and Eastern European states. This explanation is effectively the Cold War revisited. In recent days, Mr Medvedev has used the West's recognition of Kosovo in an effort to justify the Kremlin's support for Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.
The miscalculation in Tblisi unwittingly ensnared those parties from whom Saakhashvili expected ideological and material support. With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the US is in no position to offer much military support, other than providing Georgian coalition troops with a lift home. French and German leadership in the peace negotiations are undercut by their overwhelming dependence on Russian oil and gas exports. Moscow has used this leverage before, limiting oil production to Eastern Europe in early 2007. Any political move to upset Moscow could trigger a cold and dark winter for the offenders.
Thus the two principal levers for international pressure, military and economic, are undercut by the proximate realities of American overstretch and the oil crisis. None of the existing options are particularly persuasive. Throwing Russia out of the G8, denying membership into the OECD, ending certain bilateral agreements are all symbolic measures, unlikely to move Russian leadership which is awash in oil revenue. What is more, the West is painfully dependent on Russian coöperation against Iran, an altogether more harrowing challenge.
The reality is that Russia's aggression seized a global window of opportunity. This was no return to history, but instead a product of the volatile contemporary moment. Mr Bush has rewritten the limits of presidential incompetence, and as a result, the US finds itself alarmingly ill-equipped to respond to the challenges of the Middle East and now the Caucasus. American hegemony is, if only for a short while, susceptible to second-tier powers, like Russia. Rising commodity prices have allowed Moscow to reinvest in the military and once again flex its nationalist muscle.
If the US revives the Cold War playbook, an unfortunate standoff may well escalate. It is unlikely that the Americans or Europeans can bluff their way out of this hand. By most accounts, Russia stopped its war in Georgia on account of capital outflows nearing $8bn after two days of fighting. Western demand for Russia's resources may well outstrip the stagecraft of present politicians. After all, the customer is always right.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment