Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
October 20, 2006 Friday

THE CAUCASUS: WHERE INTERESTS OVERLAP

by Oleg Gorupai

MOSCOW AND WASHINGTON NEED A COORDINATED POLICY OF MAINTENANCE OF
SECURITY AND STABILITY IN THE CAUCASUS; Russia and the United States
should work out a common strategy of keeping the southern part of the
Caucasus safe and stable.

There are three regions in Europe and Asia whose stability worries
the international community: Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asia.
That includes the southern part of the Caucasus as an integral part
of the Larger Caucasus. One of the least stable regions in all of the
post-Soviet zone and actually throughout the world (three local
conflicts on what really constitutes a geographically small area), it
nevertheless possesses colossal resources. The region is playing a
strategic role in restoration of the commercial route across the
continent – the Great Silky Way that once connected the Far East,
Central Asia, Europe, and Middle East. Is it any wonder therefore
that interests of so many countries overlap and collide in the
southern part of the Caucasus?

Main characters

Authors of the policy of stability in this part of the world include
its independent states (Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan), neighbors
(Russia, Turkey, and Iran), the United States and international
organizations. These latter include the UN, OSCE, Commonwealth, GUAM,
and NATO, all of them trying to plant Western standards of world
order in the southern part of the Caucasus.

The list should also be extended to include Abkhazia, South Ossetia,
and Nagorno-Karabakh – the countries that are sovereign but that are
denied recognition by the international community. The main
characters have long since determined the degree of their involvement
in maintenance of regional security. Russia views the southern part
of the Caucasus as a "zone of foreign political priorities", Iran as
a "state security zone", and the United States with its partners a
"national security zone".

It is impossible to evaluate the situation in the region through
analysis of the distinctive features typical only of Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, or Turkey alone. All these countries are
intertwined more closely than one may decide at first sight.

This is what Western participants of the process have missed.
Geographically distant and with but a vague realization of the
political, economic, and ethnic specifics of the region, they do not
really understand what is happening in the southern part of the
Caucasus. And yet, the United States managed to outperform countries
like Turkey and Iran where clout with countries of the region is
concerned.

Big-time "breakthrough"

Its reaction to whatever was happening in the region fairly
disinterested; the United States took little notice of it at first.
Everything changed in the late 1990’s. The US establishment must have
heeded the words of Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation who wrote,
"The United States should not forget its objectives in economically
and politically important regions of the world. The Caucasus and
Central Asia are important. Support of our friends in the Caucasus
and Central Asia, close cooperation with Turkey will enable the
United States to defend its future investments in power resources
that will become vitally important in the next millennium, to make
the Silky Way to Central Asia and Far East and to prevent subjugation
of their smaller neighbors by Russia and Iran."

It did not take the United States long to make up a list of its
partners, another of the countries whose territories or resources may
come in handy, and yet another of enemies. Capitals of Armenia,
Azerbaijan, and Georgia are impossible to imagine without energetic
representatives of the US diplomatic course nowadays. US diplomatic
missions moved to new and larger complexes in Yerevan and Tbilisi,
not long ago. Their staff was increased in quantity and quality.
Prominent analysts work there nowadays, supplying the US Department
of State with the necessary information. All of that is like a
message from Washington that it is determined to palm the keys to the
southern part of the Caucasus.

If the truth were to be told, America’s big-time "breakthrough" in
the region – or rather into it – occurred in spring 2002. It was the
period when Tbilisi and Washington echoed each other promising joint
operations against Chechen terrorists in the Panki Gorge in the
northern part of Georgia not far from the border with Chechnya. The
Pentagon has been teaching units of the regular Georgian army ever
since.

Predictably, the joint American-Georgian operation in the Panki Gorge
was not exactly a success. And yet, the threat of international
terrorism and the necessity to fight it provided Washington with an
excuse for military-political expansion into the Caucasus and Central
Asia. Moreover, some of the local ruling elite obsessed with the idea
of lessening their "dependence on Moscow" actively welcome this
expansion. Georgia is a vivid example. Backed by the United States,
it aspires for the role of the regional leader nowadays even though
its claims are patently groundless.

Relying on Tbilisi

Not to mention the task of planting Western standards and values in
the southern part of the Caucasus, the West regards Georgia from the
standpoint of the strategic Baku-Tbilisi-Jeihan oil pipeline and the
future Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas one. In the north, Georgia has
borders with Russia, the Russian Caucasus whose already proverbial
instability may always be used as an argument in global political
games.

This is not all that makes Tbilisi a vital partner for the US
Administration. The Armenian opposition backed by various American
and European foundations has been vainly trying to engineer a "color
revolution" in Yerevan for years now. Remaining in the orbit of
Russian influence, Armenia is spared another period of political
instability and assured continuation of military-technical and
economic support.

As for Azerbaijan, a color revolution is quite unlikely in Baku in
the foreseeable future even though President Ilham Aliyev is
earnestly castigated by US official and unofficial structures and
even though Azerbaijani opposition enjoys support from the West.
American oil corporations view this country as one of the most
important sources of oil in the world. It follows that the threat of
the chaos in Azerbaijan generated by social cataclysms compels the US
Administration to treat this country with kid gloves and keep
democratic opposition in it on a short leash. Unlike its neighbor
Georgia, clearly the weakest link in all of the Caucasus, Azerbaijan
knows better than to abandon strategic partnership with Russia.

In the meantime, strategists in Washington apparently regard Georgia
as the key that may enable the United States to lock the entire
region. Georgian infrastructure controls transport routes to Armenia
and oil transit from the Caspian region. Keeping an eye on Iran, a
country aspiring for the status of a nuclear power, is fairly
convenient from the territory of Georgia. In fact, the US
Administration is resolved to oversee, regulate, and channel in the
necessary direction domestic and foreign policies of Yerevan, Baku,
and Tehran. Along with economic and political leverage, Washington is
allowed to make use of the so far limited American military presence
in the region. Georgia made its territory and airspace available for
use by the US Army. Servicemen of the US Army do not even need visas
or any special documents to visit Georgia – a mere driver’s license
will suffice. They are permitted to bring whatever they need with
them to Georgia without declaring it or paying taxes and duties.
Transport means are not to be taxed either. A sizeable group of
American and NATO servicemen is on a permanent base in Georgia.

Dangerous maneuvering

Tbilisi understands that the West needs Georgia in the global game
where control over the region is at stake. It understands and never
hesitates to make use of it. Determined to re-annex the runaway
territories at whatever cost, Georgia upped war spending almost
tenfold since 2004, and brought them up to half a billion dollars.
Budget of the Defense Ministry was increased more than 30% this year.
It costs the state treasury more than 600 million laris or nearly
$336 million (15% of the state budget and almost 5% of the GDP).
President Mikhail Saakashvili gets the rest of the money from
"non-budget foundations".

Experts say that the Americans have given Georgia $1.5 billion worth
of aid since the Revolution of Roses. Georgia received more than $64
million worth of aid and assistance within the framework of the Train
and Equip program. Almost $60 million was allocated within the
framework of the Stability Maintenance Operations program in 2005,
and almost $40 million this year. Turkey’s military assistance to
Georgia cost Ankara $40 million a year. Anatoly Tsyganok of the
Academy of Military Sciences, the head of the Center of Military
Forecasts of the Institute of Political and Military Analysis, says
that Georgia bought 24 tanks, 97 armored vehicles, 95 artillery
pieces, almost 100,000 light weapons, 4 SU-24s, 4 MIG-23s, and 5
helicopters over the last four years. The Georgian Armed Forces
currently number almost 26,000 men and include 80 tanks, 18 multiple
rocket launchers, 7 SU-25 ground-strafers, 10 training planes, and
more than 15 helicopters (four of them MI-24 attack helicopters). The
Georgian Navy includes 8 patrol boats, 2 small landing ships, and 2
tank landing ships. Tsyganok is convinced that with the Armed Forces
like that and with the steadily increasing military budget, Tbilisi
will keep defying the UN and OSCE that recommend accords with South
Ossetia and Abkhazia on non-use of force.

Withdrawal of Russian servicemen from Georgia enables Tbilisi to
boost its own Armed Forces. Territorial quotas permitted this country
by the Treaty on Conventional Arms in Europe and formerly used by the
Russian Army Group in the Caucasus enable Saakashvili’s regime to
invite units of a foreign army or increase the Georgian standing army
by 115 tanks, 160 armored vehicles, and 170 artillery pieces of 100
mm caliber and larger.

General Nikolai Bezborodov of the Defense Committee of the Duma says
that what official Tbilisi will do about the quotas is anybody’s
guess. If Georgia joins NATO and has NATO troops quartered on its
territory, the quotas in question may even be transferred to the
United States or other NATO countries (the Treaty on Conventional
Arms in Europe permits it). On the other hand, Georgian Defense
Minister Irakly Okruashvili would like his own army to become a kind
of a regional monster. According to Okruashvili, Georgia would like
to have as many weapons and military hardware on its territory as it
had in the Soviet Union. That’s a lot, because even the minister
himself admits that the matter concerns almost $10 billion worth of
merchandise. Who will all this merchandise be used against?

A look from aside

The United States and the West in general are interested in energy
and transit resources of the region. Moscow, however, views stability
in the former Soviet republics as a principal condition of peaceful
development of Russia itself, a guarantee of its own territorial
integrity. Russia is a state that belongs. It has ten Federation
subjects located in the northern part of the Caucasus. Three more
(Volgograd, Astrakhan, and Kalmykia) are elements of the Southern
Federal Region integrated into the all-Caucasus socioeconomic,
political, and cultural projects. Practically all ethnic and
political conflicts in Southern Russia are inseparable from conflicts
in former Soviet republics of the Caucasus – and vice versa. The
Russian northern part of the Caucasus and the foreign southern part
of the region face one and the same problem of divided peoples
(Lezgines, Ossetians, Avars). Experts say therefore that security and
stability in the Russian part of the Caucasus is impossible without
stability in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

The recent deterioration of Russia-Georgia should have convinced the
world that involvement of third countries that are not direct
subjects of regional politics has a devastatingly negative effect on
the situation in the Caucasus.

Initiating the so called intensive dialogue with Tbilisi (over
membership in NATO, of course), the Alliance fomented the
Russian-Georgian crisis and political deterioration all over the
region, deliberately or inadvertently.

Sicced and encouraged by its foreign partners, Georgia braces for
resolution of the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Ossetian conflicts
by sheer strength of arms. In the meantime, Georgia is the country
with the lowest living standards and the quickest growth of the
military budget (from $77.6 million or 1.2% of the GDP to $336
million or 5%). Official Tbilisi’s behavior compels its neighbors to
concentrate on their military potentials too. Military budget of
Azerbaijan all but doubled this year ($313 million to $600 million).
Military budget of Armenia is about to reach its all-time high level
of nearly 3% of the GDP or $150 million. Should South Ossetia and
Abkhazia catch fire, Nagorno-Karabakh will be quick to follow. It
does not take a genius to predict that neither Turkey nor Iran will
remain disinterested observers.

No alternatives

Granted that Moscow and Washington uphold different views on the
situation in the southern part of the Caucasus, both capitals may and
should work out a coordinated policy in the matter of regional
security.

There is nothing to prevent world leaders from reaching a consensus
over resolution of conflicts in Georgia. Cooperation like that is not
going to be something unprecedented. Moscow and Washington share the
opinion that the OSCE Minsk Group has made considerable progress in
the search for a solution to the Karabakh conflict. It is clear that
the existing format of resolution of conflicts in Georgia may
stabilize the situation in the region and prevent the events from
taking a wrong turn.

Source: Krasnaya Zvezda, October 18, 2006, p. 3

Translated by A. Ignatkin