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  • Spy Spat Has A Counterpunch

    SPY SPAT HAS A COUNTERPUNCH
    By M K Bhadrakumar

    Asia Times Online, Hong Kong
    Oct 5 2006

    When spy author John le Carre's Our Game appeared more than 11 years
    ago, the Cold War was over, the Berlin Wall had come down and British
    intelligence had apparently put its operatives out to pasture.

    Thus le Carre had to plow an altogether new furrow in the exotic
    setting of Ingushetia and Ossetia in the Caucasus by weaving a plot
    around a people suppressed by the White tsars and their Red

    successors. By doing this, le Carre made an important point, that
    spies never truly retire. Indeed, the conspiracies of stupendous
    scope unfolding in the ramparts of the Caucasus mountains could be
    straight out of a le Carre plot - taut and suspenseful.

    Last week in Georgia, the security services detained four Russian
    senior military officers for "illegal intelligence gathering"
    concerning Georgia's cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty
    Organization (NATO). Simultaneously, the Georgian police cordoned off
    the headquarters of Russian troops in Tbilisi, ostensibly to nab yet
    another fugitive Russian spy who had taken shelter there.

    Georgian authorities threatened to remand the detainees in custody
    for two months and then put them and 10 Georgian accomplices on public
    trial. Moscow was not amused.

    Amid acrimonious verbal exchanges between Moscow and Tbilisi,
    Russia began retaliating in calibrated moves. Protesters besieged the
    Georgian Embassy in Moscow. Moscow recalled its envoy in Tbilisi and
    evacuated its diplomatic personnel and their families based in Georgia;
    announced it was closing travel routes to Georgia; and suspended postal
    services. Moscow further hinted it might suspend banking operations
    and money transfers between the two countries.

    If the Russian moves, firmly dismissive of the Georgian allegations of
    spying charges, were meant to remind Tbilisi about the facts of life,
    they indeed worked, considering that the remittances by the 300,000
    Georgian workers in Russia alone make up about 4% of Georgia's gross
    domestic product and Russia is Georgia's number one trading partner.

    At any rate, on Monday evening, Tbilisi handed over the four Russian
    officers at the heart of the spy scandal. At which point, however,
    the plot began to thicken.

    Over the weekend, Washington effectively stonewalled a Russian
    diplomatic offensive directed against Tbilisi in the nature of a
    resolution by the UN Security Council in New York calling for the
    urgent release of the Russian officers.

    This provoked the Kremlin to bring out into the open the
    hidden "American hand" in the plot. President Vladimir Putin,
    while addressing the Russian Security Council on Saturday over
    developments in Russian-Georgian relations, reportedly said, "These
    people [Georgian authorities] think that under the protection of their
    foreign mentors, they can afford to feel comfortable and secure. Is it
    really so? Evidently, there are forces that specialize in provoking new
    crises, estimating that it may distract attention from old problems."

    Putin then gave some advice to both Washington and Tbilisi: "Probably
    in a short-term perspective, it [provoking Russia] may have such an
    effect [of distracting attention], but such attempts will not for
    sure help in solving the old and rather serious crises in the world."

    The Kremlin was making clear its sense of indignation in being
    subjected to humiliation by Washington's close ally, Georgian President
    Mikhail Saakashvili. It rankled in the Russian mind that Saakashvili
    would make faces at the Kremlin solely on the basis of his confidence
    of American protection from any Russian retaliation.

    Russi's Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov,
    describing Tbilisi's spy charges as "absurd", accused some unnamed NATO
    countries of illegally selling weapons to Georgia. "Some members of
    NATO - shall we say, the 'younger generation' - are supplying Georgia
    with arms and ammunition of Soviet vintage," Ivanov was quoted as
    telling a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council of defense ministers in
    Slovenia last Friday.

    Ivanov was indirectly alleging that some of the pro-American
    Baltic States and eastern European countries acting at the behest
    of Washington were encouraging Georgia to adopt a confrontationist
    attitude toward Russia.

    Washington seemed to have read the Kremlin's barely disguised warnings
    of the implications of a likely hardening of Russian attitudes apropos
    such festering American wounds as the Iraq war and the Iran nuclear
    issue, where the US dependence on Russian cooperation is becoming
    critical. (Nicholas Burns, the US under secretary of state for
    political affairs, claimed as recently as Monday that Washington
    had won a united front with Moscow and Beijing in pushing for UN
    sanctions against Iran if the latter did not agree to suspend its
    uranium-enrichment activity within this week.)

    Over the weekend, therefore, Washington swung into action, dispatching
    the chief of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe
    (OSCE), Karel De Gucht, to Tbilisi on a mediatory mission to resolve
    the diplomatic row. He later said that after negotiations with all
    parties, including with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
    that Georgian leadership had agreed to hand over the Russian "spies"
    to the OSCE and that they had been returned to Russia on Monday night.

    For Washington, it was a "win-win" situation. Washington shrewdly
    calculated that maximum propaganda mileage could be squeezed out of
    the episode designed to show Russia as a bully in its behavior toward
    a tiny neighbor. And from now on, the law of diminishing returns would
    be at work, whereas, with a bit of timely, demonstrative goodwill as
    a well-meaning mediator, it might be possible to earn some reciprocal
    Russian gesture elsewhere.

    But Moscow has shown no hurry to acknowledge the apparent US "goodwill"
    in resolving the standoff with Tbilisi. Asked about the usefulness of
    "mediators", Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sarcastically remarked
    on Monday that third countries were already "energetically involved"
    in Russia-Georgia relations. He elaborated: "We have many times drawn
    the attention of those third parties, you may call them 'sponsors' -
    those who supply weapons to Georgia and blocked a resolution at the
    UN Security Council - to the problem."

    If anything, Lavrov continued the diplomatic offensive. He said,
    "The actions of the Georgian leadership have unquestionably become
    consistently anti-Russian" and that the current developments were
    "not the culmination but a reflection" of the hostile policies pursued
    by Tbilisi toward Russia.

    Lavrov said that Moscow had warned Western countries about the danger
    of conniving with the policies pursued by Saakashvili, but instead
    Georgia received promises of closer cooperation from NATO.

    (Washington recently announced additional financial support of
    US$10 million for bringing the Georgian armed forces closer to NATO
    standards.)

    "It is clear by now that Saakashvili's main goal is accession to
    NATO. He is hoping to resolve all other problems through this route,"
    Lavrov observed.

    Meanwhile, a Kremlin press release said that in a telephone
    conversation on Monday, Putin warned US President George W Bush about
    Georgia's "destructive policy". Putin reportedly highlighted that
    "any actions of third countries that Georgia's leadership could
    interpret as encouraging its destructive policy were unacceptable
    and dangerous for peace and stability in the region".

    Russian commentators uniformly believed that Saakashvili acted with
    Washington's prior knowledge and approval. They saw a pattern in the
    sequence of events during the past three months following Saakashvili's
    visit to Washington.

    During this period, Georgia deployed its troops in the Kodori Gorge
    in Abkhazia, apparently taking one step further toward seeking a
    "military solution" to the political separatism in the breakaway
    province; Saakashvili ordered a crackdown on opposition political
    figures who were mounting an increasingly effective campaign against
    the power structure in Tbilisi, allegedly for their "pro-Russia"
    stance; Tbilisi commenced a process of "intensive dialogue" between
    Georgia and NATO (which is a stipulated prerequisite as per the
    NATO charter for new members' accession); and last but not least,
    Saakashvili precipitated with great deliberation a totally unnecessary
    crisis by detaining the Russian military officers.

    Thus, Russian commentators saw last week's developments as falling
    within the overall context of Russian-American rivalry for influence
    on the territories of the former Soviet republics. They visualized
    that the US geopolitical objective was to force Russia out of the
    Caucasus as part of Washington's agenda of effecting the Atlantic
    integration of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia, and, specifically,
    of replacing all traces of Russian military presence in any corner
    of the region through which the strategic Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil
    pipeline and a future trans-Caspian pipeline run.

    Now that the "color revolutions" have receded, Russian-American
    rivalry in Eurasia is taking a new form in the nature of intensified
    attempts by the international community to settle the so-called
    "frozen conflicts" in Moldova and South Caucasus.

    Russia is viewing with growing concern Anglo-American attempts in
    recent months to orchestrate discussions over these conflicts within
    European institutions.

    Britain, Poland and Lithuania are leading a campaign at the European
    Commission and the European Parliament for the EU to adopt a Caucasus
    Project. Alongside, the pro-American GUAM (a regional grouping of
    Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova) is also being encouraged
    by Washington to adopt a coordinated position on issues such as the
    "frozen conflicts", Russian-Georgian relations, and the continued
    presence of Russian peacekeeping forces in the breakaway republics
    of Trans-Dneister, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

    Washington hopes to incrementally evolve a common strategy and
    solidarity between the US and the EU concerning relations with Russia
    within the overall framework of Euro-Atlanticism. But there are wheels
    within wheels. In essence, Britain, in league with the pro-American
    bloc of countries of "New Europe", is striving within the European
    institutions to hedge French and German policies toward Russia.

    The UK and the US share a sense of deep disquiet over Russian, German
    and French integration in the energy sphere. The Anglo-American concern
    is that with the passage of time, if the present trends strengthen,
    increased cooperation in the energy sphere will inevitably bring
    Russia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Hungary, etc to act in concert
    on major areas impacting European security and stability, such as the
    status of Ukraine, NATO's future expansion, or Russia's legitimate
    politico-security interests in the Trans-Caucasus.

    At the same time, Britain and the US appreciate that the eastern
    European countries of the erstwhile Warsaw Pact and the Baltic
    republics harbor strong anti-Russia bias while they remain engaged in
    the process of consolidating their European outlook. The Anglo-American
    attempt has been to harness this "critical mass" of animus against
    Russia already available within the European institutions.

    Part of the Anglo-American strategy is to calibrate the irritants
    in relations between the GUAM member-countries and Russia. The
    virulently anti-Russia bloc of countries in eastern Europe (Poland
    and the Baltic states) within the EU has been playing the role of
    inciting the GUAM countries against Russia. The tactic enables the
    US and Britain to stay in the background and avoid complicating their
    bilateral relations with Moscow.

    The "frozen conflicts" present themselves as a convenient topic to
    ratchet up tensions between Russia and its GUAM neighbors. But it
    is not as if the US or Britain can offer any viable solutions for
    settling the conflicts in Moldova and the South Caucasus. In fact, as
    the Nagorno-Karabakh problem illustrates, there are no easy solutions
    to these regional conflicts in the foreseeable future.

    The geopolitical complexities of the region are such that the US
    and Britain need to work hard to consolidate the GUAM positions. For
    instance, within GUAM, Ukraine, Moldova and Azerbaijan do not consider
    it expedient to share Georgia's passion for ganging up against Russia
    (even though they may share an interest in sequestering their energy
    communication links from Russian domination).

    To be sure, the US objective is nonetheless to nudge the GUAM countries
    toward a common platform on as many fronts as possible so as to create
    a new political reality in Eurasia that Russia has to learn to live
    with, and to encourage the GUAM countries to play an increased role
    in the security sphere.

    The political developments in Ukraine in the recent months leading to
    the unraveling of the so-called "Orange" alliance no doubt constituted
    a temporary setback to the US's GUAM strategy, but Washington would
    harbor the hope that in the medium and long term Kiev would revert
    to its GUAM moorings and assume a leadership role in the community
    of democratic nations in Eurasia.

    All the same, Washington has no illusions that GUAM alone can ever
    muster the capacity to solve security issues in the region. In
    the US perception, the need exists for the active involvement of
    the international community. For this reason, the question of GUAM
    countries' accession to NATO has become a priority.

    In fact, the entire US strategy in the region revolves on NATO's
    expansion in the Caspian and Black Sea regions and in South Caucasus.

    That is the reason why Washington even advocates that the eligibility
    bar for NATO accession should be lowered for Ukraine and Georgia at
    the cost of degrading the alliance's defense, political and economic
    standards.

    France and Germany, however, do not share the Anglo-American interest
    in NATO expansion, in priority terms. Neither France nor Germany has
    taken an unequivocal position on the subject, either.

    Washington hopes, arguably, that episodes such as the current
    Russian-Georgian spy scandal show up Russia in poor light as a country
    impeding conflict resolution and occupying the territories of other
    countries (Georgia and Moldova) on the pretext of peacekeeping
    operations, while in reality carrying out subversive activities
    against the regimes in power, apart from blatantly using energy as
    an instrument of foreign policy.

    In Washington's estimation, such an argumentation would convince the
    doubting Thomases within the trans-Atlantic community, especially
    in Paris and Berlin, regarding the "reality" of the threats posed
    by a resurgent Russia and the imperative of NATO expansion in the
    prevailing situation.

    In immediate terms, the Anglo-American strategy is to force Russia
    to withdraw its peacekeeping forces in Georgia and Moldova, as then
    only will these countries become eligible for NATO accession. One
    way of pressuring Russia will be to transfer the agenda of conflict
    resolution in the Caspian and Black Sea regions and in the Caucasus
    to the arena of the United Nations.

    We may see signs of this happening in the coming months. Russia seems
    ready to pre-empt the US design to create an utterly unfavorable
    situation for it by orchestrating a GUAM move (preferably in tandem
    with a common EU position) in the UN in the near future that may
    hold the potential to snowball into focused international scrutiny
    of Russia's policy toward its smaller neighbors.

    Thus, on Tuesday, despite the previous day's release of the Russian
    military officers by Tbilisi (significantly, under OSCE auspices,
    which in itself amounts to "internationalization" of Russian-Georgian
    relations), Moscow decided to submit a draft resolution in the UN
    Security Council calling for the withdrawal of Georgian troops from
    the Kodori Range. The resolution demands that Tbilisi honors all its
    international obligations, including the mandate for the Commonwealth
    of Independent Countries' peacekeeping operations in Georgia, and
    avoids any precipitate steps aggravating the problem of the breakaway
    republic of Abkhazia.

    The resolution specifically seeks an extension of the UN mandate for
    the Russian peacekeeping forces in Abkhazia until April 2007. The
    Russian resolution is due to come back for an open vote at a Security
    Council meeting next week.

    Moscow is also attempting to checkmate the Anglo-American gameplan on
    NATO expansion by harping on the trend-setting nature of the referendum
    in Kosovo (and Montenegro) recently held with EU endorsement and US
    support on the province's separation from Serbia.

    Moscow has argued that what the West considers acceptable in Kosovo
    (or Montenegro), namely, the right of self-determination, should
    be equally acceptable to Trans-Dneister, Abkhazia or South Ossetia
    (the breakaway regions of Moldova and Georgia).

    Moscow is confidently asserting an important point of principle,
    comfortable in the knowledge that the overwhelming popular opinion
    in these breakaway regions of Moldova and Georgia is for close ties
    with Russia. Of course, if a string of newly independent states with
    pro-Russia outlook were to appear in Eurasia, that would throw NATO's
    expansion plans into disarray.

    Speaking at a news briefing in Slovenia on Friday against the backdrop
    of a joint meeting with NATO defense ministers, Ivanov gently reminded
    Washington that taking all factors into account, Russia was not short
    on options if driven into a corner.

    Ivanov said: "We should not forget that 90% of the population
    of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are Russian citizens. They were
    never citizens of Georgia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union,
    the local population in the region, which was then holding Soviet
    passports individually, sought formal Russian citizenship. And we
    issued passports and granted citizenship rights not only to the
    citizens of the former Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic but also
    to the residents in all other former Soviet republics.

    "Millions of people opted for Russian citizenship. That was their
    right and prerogative".

    All in all, therefore, the "frozen conflicts" when applied to
    the post-Soviet scenario, while appearing to lend themselves as
    a convenient lever for Washington to purge Russian influence from
    Eurasia, could in reality turn out to be a historical trap. For the
    fact remains that to resolve the conflicts they need to be "defrosted"
    first. And no one can foretell with certitude the consequences of
    such a step.

    The point is, present-day ethnic conflicts in the region
    began historically with a process of development of national
    consciousness a long time ago in the run-up to the collapse of
    the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires. The ideology of
    national self-determination is still alive in those regions and may
    have, arguably, become even stronger in the post-Cold War era.

    Indeed, the list is long: Armenian enclaves in Georgia, Crimea,
    Trans-Dneister, Gaguzia, Transylvania, Abkhazia, South Ossetia,
    Kurdistan, etc.

    Speaking on the subject in May, Putin called on Washington to
    understand that given the complexities of sub-nationalism and ethnicity
    in the region, geopolitical rivalries should not assume the nature of a
    "sports competition".

    "I believe," Putin said, "we all can, and should, cooperate to
    draft common rules and uniform approaches ... otherwise, there will
    be chaos." Emphasizing that "Russia has never raised the issue of
    annexing any territories outside its present borders", Putin, however,
    cautioned, "when we hear that one approach is possible in one place
    but is unacceptable in another, it becomes difficult to understand,
    and is even more difficult to explain to people".

    Putin pointed out that similar processes were underway in Europe,
    too, and Russia was seriously concerned about it. He was underlining
    that Russia would share common interests and concerns with Europe
    apropos conflict resolution in Eurasia - unlike the US, which was
    busy consolidating its trans-Atlantic leadership role in the post-Cold
    War era.

    M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
    Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador
    to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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