Congressional Quarterly, Inc.
Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony
March 8, 2005 Tuesday
CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
COMMITTEE: SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS
SUBCOMMITTEE: EUROPEAN AFFAIRS
FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY IN BLACK SEA AREA
TESTIMONY-BY: VLADIMIR SOCOR, SENIOR FELLOW
AFFILIATION: JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION
Statement of Vladimir Socor Senior Fellow, Jamestown Foundation
Committee on Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European
Affairs
March 8, 2005
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee: I am grateful for the
opportunity to appear and testify in this important hearing on a
region that has surged to salience in debates on U.S. foreign and
security policy and strategy: the broader Black Sea region, new
frontier in the advance of Euro-Atlantic security and democracy. My
presentation will succinctly identify the interests of the U.S. and
its friends in the region, threats to those interests, and steps the
U.S. can take to promote its security and democratic goals together
with its friends in the region. Interests The Black Sea region forms
the hub of an evolving geostrategic and geo-economic system that
extends from NATO Europe to Central Asia and Afghanistan, and as such
is crucial to U.S.-led antiterrorism efforts. It provides direct
strategic access for American and allied forces to bases and theaters
of operation in Central Asia and the Middle East. It also provides
westbound transit routes for Caspian energy supplies which are key to
our European allies’ energy balance in the years ahead. Countries in
the Black Sea region rarely if ever experienced security, democracy,
or prosperity. Their chance came with the end of Soviet dominance and
the enlargement of the Euro-Atlantic community of interests and
values. At present, however, Russian President Vladimir Putin leads a
campaign to halt and turn back that process at the former Soviet
borders, so as restore a sphere of Russian political, economic, and
military dominance in a large part of the Black Sea region. Threats
of force against Georgia, refusal to withdraw Russian troops from
that country and from Moldova, overt support for secessionist
enclaves in those two countries, fanning of civil confrontation
during the presidential campaign in Ukraine, the poison attack on
Viktor Yushchenko, are among the recent brutal hallmarks of Mr.
Putin’s policy in this region.
The answer must be a redoubling of democratic institution building
within these countries, and anchoring them to Euro- Atlantic
institutions. The U.S. is uniquely equipped to lead this effort
within the Euro-Atlantic community and in the region itself. With
Romania and Bulgaria now in NATO and set to join the European Union,
and with old NATO ally Turkey aiming for EU entry, now is the time to
start planning for the Euro-Atlantic integration of countries that
have declared that aspiration in the broader Black Sea region:
Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan. Friends and Partners American
and overall Western interests in this region require stable,
reform-capable states, in control of their own borders, safe from
external military or economic pressures or externally-inspired
secessions, secure in their function as energy transit routes, and
capable of supporting U.S.-led or NATO coalition operations. Those
interests can only be sustained if the region’s countries develop
good governance, with functioning democratic institutions and
political processes resistant to corruption or hostile manipulation,
and if they are protected by international law and Western-led
security arrangements.
Thus, effective state- and democracy-building and strategic interests
are twin sides of a common set of U.S. and Euro- Atlantic interests
in the Black Sea region. By the same token, security threats to
countries in this region and actions that undermine their sovereignty
run counter to those interests. Within this region, Romania and
Bulgaria became providers of security and contributors to coalition
operations even before accession to NATO. Their role is set to grow
further as the two countries become hosts to U.S. military
installations on the Black Sea littoral. NATO aspirants Ukraine,
Georgia, and Azerbaijan have acted as de facto allies in providing
political backing, guaranteeing air and land passage rights, and
fielding peace-support troops for NATO and U.S.-led operations.
Georgia and Azerbaijan, active members of the anti-terrorist
coalition, have thus graduated from the role of pure consumers of
security to that of net consumers and incipient providers of security
to the region and beyond.
Tbilisi and Baku regard their participation in the anti-terrorism
coalition as synonymous with their national interests. Already before
9/11 they had experienced terrorist threats and attacks in the form
of externally inspired coup- and assassination attempts against their
leaders and ethnic cleansing. Thus they are vitally interested in
combating terrorism in all its forms. For both Georgia and
Azerbaijan, participation in the anti-terrorism coalition is also a
means to maintain close relations with the U.S., advance the
modernization of their security sectors, and earn their credentials
as NATO aspirant countries. Moreover, Georgia and Azerbaijan are on
the alert to prevent a spillover of the Russian-Chechen war into
their territories and to interdict the passage of any foreign gunmen,
their suspected accomplices, or radical Islamist missionaries. With
U.S. assistance, Georgia cleaned up the Pankisi Valley in 2002-2003
and holds it under control since then. For its part, Azerbaijan gave
radical Islamist organizations no chance to make inroads into the
country. Successful development of Azerbaijan as a Muslim secular
state is also a shared interest of that country and the West. This
goal has good prospects of fulfillment in Azerbaijan’s society
characterized by religious tolerance and receptiveness to Western
models. The success of pro-democracy movements, known as Rose and
Orange Revolutions, in Georgia and Ukraine recently, is seen by many
as potentially repeatable in Armenia, but unlikely to be duplicated
in Azerbaijan or Moldova. In these two countries, democratization
will likely follow an evolutionary path. Last week, Presidents
Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia and Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine,
meeting with Moldova’s president Vladimir Voronin, announced their
readiness to work with him toward completing Eastern Europe’s third
wave of democratization — that in the broader Black Sea region. Mr.
Voronin and his team, communists in name only, have reoriented
Moldova westward and are resisting what they describe as “Russia’s
attempts at re- colonization.” These presidents along with Ilham
Aliev of Azerbaijan are scheduled to meet again next month in Moldova
with a view to revitalizing the GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan,
Moldova) group of countries. Security Threats: Old, New, Newest The
region’s Western-oriented countries are facing a wide spectrum of
threats to their security, mainly from Russia and its local proteges.
The overarching goal is to thwart these countries’ Euro-Atlantic
integration and force them back into a Russian sphere of dominance.
The scope, intensity, and systematic application of threats has
markedly increased over the last year, as part of President Putin’s
contribution to the shaping of Russia’s conduct. These may be
described as old-, new-, and newest-type threats to security. The
“old-type” threats stem from troops and bases stationed unlawfully in
other countries, seizures of territories, border changes de facto,
ethnic cleansing, and creation of heavily armed proxy statelets.
Georgia, Moldova, and Azerbaijan are the targets of such blackmail.
“New-type” threats are those associated with illegal arms and drugs
trafficking, rampant contraband, and organized transnational
criminality, all of which use the Russian-protected secessionist
enclaves as safe havens and staging areas. Such activities are
usually associated with non-state actors, often of a terrorist
nature. In the Black Sea region, however, state actors within Russia
are often behind these activities, severely undermining the target
countries’ economies and state institutions. The “newest-type” threat
to security can be seen in Russia’s assault on electoral processes,
some months ago in Ukraine’s presidential election and in recent
weeks in Moldova’s parliamentary elections (and meanwhile even in
loyalist Abkhazia). Using massive financial, mass-media, and covert
action means, Russia has sought to influence the outcome of elections
or hijack them outright in order to install its favorites in power.
Closely related to this is the export of the Russian model of
governance, characterized by a symbiosis of neo-KGB structures,
organized crime, state bureaucracy, and government-connected big
business.
In all of the situations described above, security and democracy are
equally at risk. “Frozen” Conflicts The Black Sea region is the most
conflict-plagued region along the new Euro-Atlantic perimeter. This
situation limits the ability of the U.S. to capitalize on the
region’s high strategic value. Thirteen years after the USSR’s
dissolution, Moscow continues heavily to dominate conflict-management
in this region. Russia, largely responsible for sparking or fanning
these conficts, has a vested interested in keeping them smoldering,
so as to pressure Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Moldova and
thwart their Euro-Atlantic integration. Russias policy consists of
freezing not the conflicts as such, but the rather the negotiating
processes, which Russia itself dominates. The U.N. and OSCE, left
largely to their own devices, have merely conserved these conflicts.
There are those who suggest that the U.S. should defer to Moscow on
this issue, lest Russia’s cooperation with the U.S. in anti-
terrorism and anti-WMD-proliferation efforts be jeopardized. This
thesis seems to underestimate Russia’s own declared interest in
cooperating in such efforts; to overestimate the practical value of
Moscow’s contributions; and to ignore Russia’s outright obstruction
of U.S. efforts in a number of cases. Moreover, that thesis would
seem to confirm the Kremlin in its dangerous expectation that
strategic partnership with the U.S. should entail acceptance of
Russian paramountcy on “peacekeeping” and conflict-resolution in the
“post-Soviet space.” This is an ingredient to sphere-of-influence
rebuilding. It is crucial to avoid the perception (let alone the
fact) of a Russia-U.S. or Russia-West division of peacekeeping and
conflict-management spheres, or an informal partition of countries’
territories.
Strategic partnerships can not long be sustained with rump countries
vulnerable to armed secessionist pressures across uncontrolled
external borders. It is high time to move this issue to the front
burner of U.S. security policy. Preferably in synergy with NATO and
EU countries, the U.S. is best placed for promoting
conflict-settlement solutions that would consolidate the region’s
states in strategic partnership with the the U.S. Turning the broader
Black Sea region into a policy priority need not compete with the
priorities assigned to other areas.
On the contrary, stabilization of this region would entail
incomparably lower risks and incomparably smaller resources compared
to the risks and resource commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, or
emergent initiatives in the broader Middle East. The fact is that a
secure and stable Black Sea region is necessary for sustaining those
U.S.-led operations and initiatives.
CFE Treaty, Istanbul Commitments Russia has openly repudiated its
obligations under the 1999-adapted Treaty on Conventional Forces in
Europe and Istanbul Commitments (twin parts of a single package)
regarding withdrawal of Russian forces from Georgia and Moldova. The
OSCE, custodian of those documents, has cooperated with Russia in
eviscerating them. Troop withdrawal deadlines were postponed and then
removed altogether; preconditions to withdrawal were attached where
the troop withdrawal was to have been unconditional; excuses were
found for retaining some Russian troops in place where the withdrawal
was to have been complete; wide verification loopholes were tacitly
accepted; heavy weaponry — coyly designated as “unaccounted-for
treaty-limited equipment” by a complacent OSCE — was transferred
from Russia’s arsenals into those of the separatist enclaves; the
creation of Russian-staffed separatist forces was tolerated; and the
requirement of host-country consent (to the stationing of foreign
troops) is being flouted. Since 2002, Moscow has rejected the very
notion that it had made “commitments” in Istanbul to withdraw its
troops from Georgia and Moldova.
The OSCE itself all along termed those Russian commitments only
“politically binding,” as distinct from legally binding; i.e., not
binding in practice. All these concessions notwithstanding, the OSCE
is no longer able since 2003 even to cite its own 1999 decisions,
because Russia has easily vetoed such references in the
organization’s routine year-end resolutions. Realistically speaking,
the Istanbul Commitments are dead. Since 2004, moreover, Moscow
threatens to destroy the OSCE by blocking the adoption of the
organization’s budget and terminating certain OSCE activities. Russia
does not want to kill the OSCE, but rather to harness and use the
weakened organization. Under these circumstances, no one can possibly
expect the OSCE to resurrect the Istanbul Commitments, let alone
ensure compliance with them. Meanwhile, the U.S. and NATO governments
collectively take the position that they would not ratify the adapted
CFE Treaty (which Moscow wants ratified) until Russia has complied
with the Istanbul Commitments. This form of leverage has, manifestly,
proven too weak to induce Russia to withdraw its troops from Georgia
and Moldova.
Russian officials scoff at calls for troop withdrawal based on the
Istanbul documents. It is high time for Georgia and Moldova to go
beyond the OSCE to international organizations, and argue the case
for Russian troop withdrawal on the basis of national sovereignty and
international law. The U.S., along with the Euro- Atlantic community,
should place these issues prominent on the agenda of U.S.-Russia,
NATO-Russia, and EU-Russia agendas, and not just at summit time (as
has been done occasionally and feebly thus far) but also on a regular
basis until this legitimate goal is achieved.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress