GEORGIA’S DEFEAT AND AMERICA’S OPTIONS

Brussels Journal
2008-08-13 18:33
Belgium

What Mikheil Saakashvili began at his discretion, Vladimir Putin ends
at his pleasure. The Russians have called a halt to their offensive
in Georgia, and none too soon for the Georgians. What remains is the
postwar settlement, and the American part in it.

A look at the situation on the ground speaks to the Russian dominance
of the little Caucasian republic: the Russians have near-total freedom
of movement in the western plain, with soldiers in Poti. Georgia’s only
meaningful lifelines to the outside world are the port of Batumi, and
the long road to Yerevan. Neither of these are significant corridors
for supply, and the port is free only at Russian sufferance. Further
war would have seen a battle for Tbilisi in the coming 36 hours. The
Georgians would have lost, and the war thence would probably have
devolved into guerrilla actions centered about a sort of Georgian
national redoubt in the south — in regions populated more by Armenians
and Azeris than by Georgians. To be spared all this is a mercy that
Georgians, rightly inflamed by what’s been done in mere days, may
not fully appreciate.

The postwar settlement remains thoroughly opaque, even if, as the
Russians report, the conditions of a ceasefire are agreed. The Russian
war aim was never announced — or rather, it only announced itself
on the ground — and its political end remains obscure. The formal
disposition of the Russian-occupied secessionist regions of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia must be decided; the mechanisms of reparation,
if any, must be agreed upon; and, most troublingly, the Russians
are making noises about extraditing Saakashvili to the Hague. Here,
a definitive settlement is to everyone’s advantage — not least the
Georgians, who are ill-advised to act as if they are anything but
beaten. Absurdities like putting Saakashvili in the ICC dock should
be rejected, but otherwise, it is almost certainly best to let the
Russians dictate their terms — and let resistance to those terms
emanate from sources able to make that resistance count, like Europe
and the United States.

With this in mind, the first task of America’s postwar policy in
the Caucasus is distasteful in the extreme: pushing the Georgians to
understand and act like what they are, which is a defeated nation in
no position to make demands. This does not square easily with American
sentiment — nor my own — nor with the Vice President’s declaration
that Russia’s aggression "must not go unanswered," nor with John
McCain’s declaration that "today we are all Georgians." Russia’s
aggression and consequent battlefield victory will stand, and as the
last thing the volatile Caucasus needs is yet another revisionist,
revanchist state, it befits a would-be member of the Western alliance
to make its peace with that. However inflammatory the issue of "lost"
Abkhazia and South Ossetia are in the Georgian public square, it is
nothing that the Germans, the Finns, and the Greeks, to name a few,
have not had to come to terms with in the course of their accessions
to the first tier of Western nations. We should not demand less
of Georgia.

The second, and more enduring, task of our policy must be the swift
containment of Russia. I use the term deliberately: to invoke another
Cold War-era phrase, we’re not going to "roll back" any of Russia’s
recent territorial gains, nor should we attempt to reverse what
prosperity it has achieved in the past decade. (That prosperity,
being based mostly upon transitory prices for natural resources, will
itself be transitory in time.) Russia’s leadership has declared that
it seeks the reversal, de facto if not de jure, of the "catastrophe"
of the USSR’s end. Though not marked by any formal decision in the
vein of Versailles, this is nonetheless a strategic outcome that
America has a direct interest in preserving. That interest has only
gone up with the admission of former Soviet-bloc states — and former
Soviet states — to NATO. Inasmuch as Russian revisionism threatens
the alliance that has kept the peace in Europe for generations now,
it must be confronted and deterred.

The obvious question is how this may be done with the tools America
has at hand. It is a media commonplace over the past several days that
the United States has no leverage over Russia. This is false. American
policy can and does tremendously affect several things of tremendous
importance to Moscow. A brief (though not comprehensive) list of
available pressure points follows:

First, the Ukraine. First and foremost, there is no former Soviet state
that Russia wishes to have in its orbit more than the Ukraine. Not
coincidentally, the Ukraine was also the only nation besides the United
States to render Georgia material assistance in this war, when it
threatened to deny Sevastopol to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. European
reluctance to antagonize Russia scuttled the Ukraine’s potential NATO
membership at the NATO Bucharest summit this past spring. In light of
Georgia’s fate, issuance of a MAP, or even outright NATO membership,
to the Ukraine, is an appropriate riposte to Russia’s war. Unlike
Georgia, the Ukraine has no territorial or secessionist issues,
nor an unstable leadership apt to launch unwinnable wars. It does,
though, very much need the sort of guarantee that NATO exists to give.

Second, Russia’s G8 membership. The G8 is purportedly the group
of the world’s largest industrial democracies. Russia, with a GDP
smaller than Spain’s and a per-capita income lower than Gabon’s,
was admitted in 1997 as a means of supporting its integration into
international economic institutions. It’s a privilege, not a right, and
it should be conditioned upon responsible membership in the community
of nations. Expulsion of Russia from the G8 is a longtime policy
favorite of John McCain’s, and it’s time to consider his preference.

Third, Russia’s client states. This is a short list, though
Russian revisionism would wish to see it lengthen. Belarus is by
far Russia’s premier client, followed by varying degrees of Russian
influence over Armenia, Serbia, Azerbaijan, and the central Asian
states. (We’ll exclude here clients like Abkhazia, South Ossetia,
and Transnistria, all of which have statuses that are dubious at
best.) We’ve already seen that Russia reacts to defend Belarus
when the latter is criticized. An available pressure point, then,
is to turn up the heat on the Belarusian regime — specifically with
support of dissidents in Belarus — and link it explicitly to Russia’s
behavior elsewhere.

Fourth, Russia’s dissidents. Russian public life is nowhere near Soviet
depths, but it is nonetheless notable that the Moscow regime places a
premium upon the control of journalistic institutions and media. (A
great, English-language example of the slick and statist nature of
modern Russian media may be found at Russia Today — note the stories
on Georgian "spy rings" and refugees from Georgian aggression fleeing
into Russia.) Divergence from the Putin line is a good way to end up
unemployed or dead, and so we ought to lend what support we may to
independent media personnel — and their means.

Finally, Russia’s Internet. A major tool of Russian foreign policy in
the past few years is what may only be described as cyber-warfare. We
saw it when Russia wished to punish Estonia [pdf], and we saw it again
this week against nearly all of Georgia’s .ge-domain sites. This is
a tremendously thorny problem, both because cyber-war by its nature
affords the perpetrators plausible denial, and because it is quite easy
to respond to a wrong with a wrong — in America’s case, by using its
leverage over Californa-based ICANN to invalidate .ru domains from
which Russian attacks emanate. Here, the basic functionality of the
Internet must be balanced against political concerns — and there
must be some mechanism for determining when political concerns from
nations like Russia damage the basic functionality of the Internet.

Beyond applying pressure to Russia, American policy must focus upon
reassurance to the NATO nations that expressed alarm at Georgia’s
subjugation. NATO allies Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the
Czech Republic all know quite well what it means to be crushed by
the force of Russian arms, and all were therefore demonstrative in
expressing their dismay at events in Georgia. If NATO and the American
connection in particular is going to retain its meaning for them,
it is up to us to provide the necessary reassurance. Although NATO
is no longer a formally anti-Soviet (and therefore anti-Russian)
alliance, we cannot pretend that it does not hold precisely that
meaning for several of its member states. A failure to recognize this
would concurrently weaken the alliance.

The war in Georgia is done but for the details, and the occasional
sniping. Georgia lost on the first day, and Georgia has mostly —
though not wholly — itself to blame. But if Georgia is prostrate,
America and the West are not. If some good is to come of this,
and if Russia’s adventure in its "near abroad" is to be its last,
we must act decisively — and now.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress