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Five-day war: the lessons that Russia again fails to learn

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  • Five-day war: the lessons that Russia again fails to learn

    Five-day war: the lessons that Russia again fails to learn

    en.fondsk.ru
    Eurasia
    07.08.2009
    Aleksander B. KRYLOV

    Following the break-up of the USSR and the armed conflicts of the
    early 1990s the situation in the South Caucasus followed the path that
    proved unfavourable to Russia. The United States and its allies
    started gaining a footing in the region and pursued a policy of
    gradually ousting Russia from the South and, in the future, also from
    the North Caucasus. Moscow pursued a laissez-faire policy, one that
    bore the imprint of defeatism and unjustified illusions about
    prospects for future cooperation with the West. The scale of the
    Russian Federation's political, military and economic presence in the
    South Caucasus was steadily shrinking as a result.
    The situation began changing in the first decade of the 21st
    century. The recent years seemed to suggest a radical revaluation of
    Russia's policy on the Caucasus, as well as a quality-new character of
    that policy. Evidence of that was the Five-day war in August 2008,
    followed by a refusal to recognize as legitimate Georgia's post-Soviet
    borders (that is the former Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic), by
    the official recognition of independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia
    on the 26th of August 2008, by concluding treaties of friendship,
    cooperation and mutual assistance, on setting up two permanent Russian
    military bases in the two republics, on the joint protection of their
    borders etc.
    But even after the Five-day war Russia failed to learn the lesson and
    do away with the basic drawback of its Caucasus policy, that of
    leading developments. One gets the impression that once the war was
    over, Moscow thought it sufficient to set up military bases and
    frontier posts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and concentrate on
    economic aid to the two republics (the aid that unfortunately far too
    often fails to reach the rank and file there).
    Following the Five-day war diplomatic relations between Russia and
    Georgia were severed on Tbilisi's initiative. The Russian l-term moves
    to secure Saakashvili's trial. The information campaign in the West to
    expose the Georgian Army's crimes against South Ossetia's peaceful
    population stood no comparison (in terms of scale and commitment) with
    the round-the-clock propaganda of the idea that a `small democratic
    Georgia' should be defended from being bullied by the `imperial'
    Russia.
    In the wake of the Five-day war Moscow proclaimed a policy of
    non-interference in Georgia's internal affairs, said it recognized
    Georgia's territorial integrity and began waiting for the Georgian
    people themselves to condemn and overthrow Saakashvili for the crimes
    perpetrated. As a result the Georgian dictator got a chance to recover
    from the military disaster, have more armaments delivered and restore
    his armed forces' fighting efficiency.
    It was not before Georgia began almost daily shelling of South Ossetia
    that the Russian leaders said that as of the third of August the force
    of the Russian military base would make security-related moves on a
    daily basis in view of the upcoming first anniversary of Georgia's
    aggression, including military exercise on South Ossetian
    soil. President of the Republic of South Ossetia E. Kokoity welcomed
    the statement in question by the Russian Defence Ministry and
    `Russia's very tough mood as regards the situation'. However, it would
    have proved far more reasonable to preserve that kind of tough mood
    all along since the winning of the Five-day war, which would have
    helped cut short the very possibility of Saakashvili's returning to
    his previous practice of all sorts of anti-Russian provocations to use
    them in his propaganda warfare against the Russian Federation. Russian
    diplomacy has actually lost the opportunity for using the problem of
    cargo shipments to Afghanistan to bring pressure to bear on the United
    States and NATO in the Caucasus direction (and in the post-Soviet area
    in general). Tying Russia's position on the issue with obtaining a
    guaranteed embargo on arms deliveries to the aggressor-state Georgia,
    as well as tying that position with NATO's enlargement eastwards and
    other issues that are sensitive to Russia's national interests
    couldn't have been more opportune under the circumstances (even with
    due account for Russia's interest in the NATO troops' further presence
    in Afghanistan). But rather than bargaining about the transit shipment
    problem, Russia grew so fascinated by the Obama-announced `resetting'
    that actually gave the US and NATO the green light to ship their
    cargoes to Afghanistan across Russian soil.
    In response Russia got Obama's broad smile and his verbal promise to
    improve relations with Moscow. This is certainly suggestive of a story
    of twenty years ago and involving the very same kind of verbal
    promises not to expand NATO eastwards following the break-up of the
    Warsaw Pact and the reunification of Germany. One would hate to see
    the current Russian leaders to inherit Mikhail Gorbachev's amazing
    gullibility with regard to our western partners.
    Russia continues to remain the world's only nation that boasts a
    nuclear capacity that's comparable with that of the United States,
    which determines the character of the policy that the United States
    and NATO pursue on this country. The US and NATO will naturally seek
    to comprehensively weaken Russia, which is graphically illustrated in
    the Caucasus region, the one that's so sensitive to Russia's national
    security.
    The new US Administration's officials continue making contradictory
    statements on Washington's Caucasus policy. Most State Department
    officials that have retained their posts since the George Bush years
    insist that the previous policy has been preserved and point out that
    change will prove cosmetic in character.
    However, the Barack Obama-an ing' of US-Russian relations instils
    certain hope that the new Administration may give up at least the
    toughest forms of confrontation with Russia in the Caucasus. Obama's
    Caucasus policy will most likely proceed from the expediency of
    reducing the scale of the US direct involvement in regional affairs
    and from the striving for shifting the greater share of worries about
    the defence of the US interests on the NATO allies and on other
    countries and international organizations (by analogy with Iraq and
    Somalia).
    Under the new Administration the United States has actually forgone
    its former policy of granting Georgia and Ukraine NATO membership in
    the shortest possible time. The US Senate Commission on studying the
    US policy on Russia advised the new Administration against encouraging
    Georgia's and Ukraine's joining NATO. The Commission has drawn up a
    document that suggests `resigning to the fact that neither Ukraine,
    nor Georgia is prepared for NATO membership' and using other
    opportunities for developing partnership relations with these
    countries.
    The Senators offered, by way of an alternative to NATO membership, `a
    special form of cooperation' of Georgia and Ukraine with the military
    alliance. The NATO Command shares the view. Before stepping down as
    NATO's Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that Ukraine and
    Georgia were unprepared for joining NATO and that the situation would
    hardly change in the foreseeable future. He emphasized that some
    country's leader's desire for joining does not necessarily imply that
    their country will be granted NATO membership.
    But nor is this evidence that NATO has given up its policy of
    enlargement. Hardly had the alliance's new Secretary-General Anders
    Fogh Rasmussen settled himself in his new armchair when he demanded
    that Moscow should respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity
    of its neighbours and emphasized that he would go ahead with
    `practical cooperation' for supporting Ukraine's and Georgia's armed
    forces' reforms. Rasmu hat Ukraine and Georgia could gain NATO
    membership provided they met the alliance's required criteria and,
    unlike his predecessor, made no comment on the deadline the two
    countries should meet (with Ukrainian `orange' and Georgian `rosy'
    democrats cheering this). This did not prevent him from recognizing
    Russia as NATO's second priority after Afghanistan and claiming that
    he sought to normalize relations with Russia, which was hardly
    convincing what with his previous statements about the intention to
    continue pursuing the policy of NATO's enlargement eastwards.
    It was only recently that the American Administration was revelling,
    amid the unipolar world situation, in its seemingly unlimited power,
    treating its NATO allies disparagingly and taking little care of their
    interests in the South Caucasus or elsewhere. This kind of patronizing
    tone caused obvious annoyance in many European politicians. Now that
    Washington's `Pax Americana' is falling to decay, the US has stopped
    harping on the subject of
    Europe-and-the-entire-humanity-made-happy-by-th e-United-States and is
    clearly seeking to disburden its cares on its NATO allies. The
    `Eastern Partnership' project, which has been drawn up to replace the
    now bankrupt GUAM alliance has come in handy as a supplement to NATO's
    plans to expand eastwards.
    The `Eastern Partnership's' officially proclaimed objective is to
    `undertake integration initiatives' with regard to the six post-Soviet
    republics that are not part of the European Union or NATO, namely
    Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and
    Ukraine. Specifically, in terms of boosting political interaction,
    providing for concluding new-generation association agreements,
    achieving closer integration of the `eastern partners'' economies into
    the economy of the European Union, easing visa formalities and taking
    joint measures in the field of energy security in the interests of all
    parties to the partnership, as well as in extending the scope of
    financial aid.
    Russia's involvement in the `Eastern Partnership' project is not
    really foreseen, which is evidence of the West's striving for this
    country's political and economic isolation. The project's actual
    objective is to block integration trends in the post-Soviet area
    through disorganizing the performance of the CIS, EurAsEc, CSTO and
    SCO.
    Most investment projects of the `Eastern Partnership' are about such
    strategically important areas as power production, transport, the
    protection of external borders, the law enforcement project also
    provides for setting up a `Forum of nongovernmental organizations'
    that would enable the European Union to energetically influence the
    internal political situation in the post-Soviet countries,
    specifically through funding opposition organizations.
    Although EU leaders keep making statements that `Eastern Partnership'
    is not aimed against Russia, it is obvious that the project seeks to
    bring back to life and expand the GUAM bloc, which has gone bankrupt
    and which the United States set up in olden times as an anti-Russian
    alternative to the CIS. The Five-day war in the South Caucasus has
    proved that the bloc in question is absolutely untenable. Therefore it
    is only natural that practical implementation of the `Eastern
    Partnership' project began right after the Five-day war amid the US
    and NATO's obvious inability to oust Russia from the South Caucasus
    and establish full Euro-Atlantic control over the region.
    Shortly after the fighting was over, an EU emergency summit was called
    in France to adopt a resolution on the need `to provide support for
    regional cooperation and cement relations with the eastern neighbours
    through implementing the `Eastern Partnership' and `Black Sea Synergy'
    projects. Azerbaijan and Georgia (along with Moldavia and Ukraine)
    were included in the list with no strings attached.
    Armenia and Belarus were told that their access to `Eastern
    Partnership's' promised economic and other advantages was conditional
    on the `democratization' of state mechanism and public life. The
    demand is perfectly formal in character since it would be absurd to
    consider the authoritarian (as the West puts it) Azerbaijan or
    absolutely disorganized Ukraine and Georgia as examples of democratic
    development in the post-Soviet area. It is obvious that `Eastern
    Partnership's' advantages have been promised to bring pressure to bear
    on Armenia and Belarus to ensure their foreign policies' eventual
    re-orientation and, in the long term, their rejection of a union with
    Russia EU to have a pronounced effect on Belarusian leaders. Minsk
    has, as a result, recanted its earlier made promises and is dallying
    with recognizing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. A
    propaganda campaign has been launched in Armenia to negatively affect
    the current public sentiment on Russia through libelling
    Russian-Armenian strategic partnership (which allegedly fails to
    guarantee Armenia's security, is unequal and disadvantageous in
    character). There is little, if any, doubt that the presidential
    election that's due in Abkhazia in December 2009 will also be used to
    destabilize the situation and slander Russia's Caucasus policy in
    every way possible.
    The Caucasus is so important to Russia that any self-complacence or
    reposing on the Five-day war laurels is absolutely
    inadmissible. Russia's policy on the Caucasus is still non-systemic
    and incomprehensive in character; pre-emptive moves are either too
    late or not made at all. The opportunities that offered themselves as
    a result of the victory in the Five-day war were not taken advantage
    of in full measure. This has prompted another aggravation of the
    situation and anti-Russian trend growth both in the North and South
    Caucasus.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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