STANDING UP TO RUSSIAGEORGIA MUST NOT BE ABANDONED BY THE WEST. BUSH, BROWN, MERKEL AND SARKOZY SHOULD ALL VISIT TBILISI THIS WEEK
Alexandros Petersen

guardian.co.uk
Monday August 11 2008

A European democracy is under full-scale attack from Russia, and
EU and Nato leaders are either wringing their hands or sitting on
them. The continuing conflict in Georgia is not really about the
small south-Caucasus country. By opening up a three-front offensive
on Georgia, Moscow is deliberately testing Europe’s mettle.

The broader west – European countries, the US, Canada and the host of
post-1945 international institutions – are of course also being tested.

But Moscow is particularly interested in how Europe’s heavyweights
will react. In the wake of serious violence and immense geopolitical
consequences, however, Britain, France and Germany have done nothing
that might be expected of great powers.

This is surprising given that with the stationing of its Black Sea
fleet and troops preparing for an amphibious landing off Georgia
proper, Russia could at any time cut off Europe’s strategic oil link to
the Caspian Sea. It is perhaps not that surprising that Russian-backed
South Ossetian militia chose last week to attack Georgian troops,
sparking the conflict we see now. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline
from Azerbaijan’s Caspian shore had just been sabotaged by Kurdish
rebels in Turkey, and its exports have been rerouted through a
pipeline to Georgia’s coast. With just one more bold action, Moscow
could control Europe’s only major energy import route designed to
avoid Russia.

Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgian president, has compared the day’s
events to the Soviet Union’s 1956 intervention in Hungary and the 1968
Russian crushing of the "Prague Spring". Russia’s 2008 strike against
Georgia is in fact very different. Hungary and Czechoslovakia were
understood to be within the Soviet Union’s agreed area of control,
cemented by the cold war’s nuclear freeze. Today, Georgia is a
fully-independent, sovereign democracy, engaged in a concerted,
if bumpy, reform effort to achieve Nato and EU membership. Only
Moscow deludes itself that its sphere of influence includes Georgia,
a country which has sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, which hosts
US military trainers, western-oriented energy infrastructure and a
western-educated leadership.

Russia is a nuclear-armed and increasingly indispensable power. The
US and Europe cannot satisfy Georgian calls for material aid against
their old cold-war foe. They can, however, take a page out of Moscow’s
playbook. On his way back from the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing,
Vladimir Putin stopped in Vladikavkaz, in Russian North Ossetia, to
lend his support to the war effort. Standing amid Ossetian refugees
and Russian tank columns, the message he sent was that Russia takes
Georgia seriously, while many western policymake rs are on holiday.

George Bush, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy should
all visit Tbilisi next week. That one action would send a more
powerful message to Moscow than any military or diplomatic aid. It
would also lead to the immediate end of the conflict. Merely the
security needed to ensure their safety would necessitate a ceasefire
on the part of Moscow.

While this scenario may be unlikely, it is the vein in which western
leaders should be thinking. John McCain could revitalise his flagging
presidential bid in one fell swoop by standing side by side with
Saakashvili, while his competitor relaxes in Hawaii.

Such a sign of solidarity would be an effective, but short-term
measure. For the long term, Europe must finally get serious about
security in its neighbourhood. South Ossetia is just one among
several ominous thawing conflicts, in Georgia’s Abkhazia, Azerbaijan’s
Nagorno-Karabakh and Moldova’s Transnistria.

All four disputes directly or indirectly involve Russia. The raging
conflict sparked in South Ossetia only underscores that each hotspot
serves as a tool for Russia to block the region’s western integration,
to keep strategic energy reserves, trading routes and markets in
its "orbit". This gives Russia a free hand to divide the EU into
Russophobes and Russophiles, energy-dependent and energy-hungry states,
countries that receive visits from Vladimir Putin, and countries that
receive visits from poloni um-wielding agents.

Moscow’s outdated worldview sees an encroaching west as a threat rather
than an opportunity for mutual prosperity. Only through a comprehensive
stabilisation initiative for Europe’s eastern neighborhood, including
high-level European diplomatic engagement, peacekeepers, and economic
incentives, can the west effectively convince Moscow that it means
business – in more ways than one.

Amid the horrific scenes of violence from Georgia beamed to
living rooms around the world, let us attempt for a moment to be
serious about this conflict and look at the geopolitical causes
and consequences. This is not a Balkan-style ethnic brawl in which
all sides share the blame for irrational inhumanity. Russia is using
ballistic missiles and strategic bombers against a country one-fortieth
its size to finally smash the dream of a Europe whole and free.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress