THE NEW MAP OF GEORGIA
By Ben Judah
ISN
cfm?id=19351
Aug 27 2008
Switzerland
Moscow redraws the map of Georgia, recognising Abkhazia and South
Ossetia, as the dust settles and it becomes clearer where power lies
on Europe’s borderlands, Ben Judah writes for ISN Security Watch.
Hours before the Russians pulled their forces out of the strategic
Georgian town of Gori, self-declared commandant General Vlachyslav
Borisov stopped his vehicle and gruffly threw open the door to speak
to journalists. Sweating and smelling faintly of cognac, he barked:
"I’m out of here. I’m withdrawing my combat forces form the area. But
peacekeepers are staying." Then he slammed the door.
Russian officials accidentally dropped another hint to their
intentions. ISN Security Watch managed to see a roughly drawn ink
diagram left behind after a meeting of Russian and Georgian officials
on 21 August. This is the new map of Georgia.
The map showed two circles emanating from the center of both the
Ossetian and Abkhaz enclaves that reached out to touch the Georgian
cities of Gori and Senaki. These are the buffer zones where Borisov
plans to leave his troops. However, the future of these territories
is still uncertain.
Inside Enclavia Just outside the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali,
the peacekeeping barracks that once hosted a 500-strong Russian
contingent is a burned-out wreck. The Kremlin’s spokesman and one of
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s chief aides, Alexander Machevsky,
accompanies a tightly controlled press tour through the enclave to
inspect the damage.
Standing in front of the rubble, pointing through the smashed walls
of the base to the dozens of scorched bare metal bed frames, Machevsky
makes his point clear. "There can be no return to the status quo ante."
He trudges over a floor littered with bullet casings from AK-74s,
pieces of burned clothing and the shredded personal belongings of the
soldiers, stressing the brutality of the Georgian attack. Unnoticed
by their superiors, a few troops are sitting around drinking heavily
in the evening gloom. None look happy.
In Tskhinvali, the de facto South Ossetian president bellows to
the crowds from a podium on Stalin Street: "The Caucasus is a
Russian region. It has always been that way. We are not going to
let adventurers like [Georgian President Mikheil] Saakashvili or
[US Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice change that. We are going
to be an independent state within Russia. It’s logical."
The poorly dressed and glum looking huddle drifts away, perhaps
contemplating the implications of that speech. The Kremlin’s flag flies
from government buildings and paramilitaries wear little ribbons of
Russian and Ossetian colors.
Russia is clearly in control – but for the moment this is nothing
like a permanent settlement.
On 26 August, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced he had
recognized Georgia’s breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia
as independent nations. It is highly unlikely they will return to
Georgian control.
In Tbilisi, Keti Tsikhelashvili of the think tank European Stability
Initiative (ESI) advances a more nuanced view of how the situation
might play itself out.
"There are several possible outcomes considering these territories. The
first is that the Europeans have been dropping hints about the
possible internationalization of the conflict. This would involve
the stationing of observers and maybe peacekeepers in Ossetia and
Abkhazia and their futures being brought under intense discussion,"
she tells ISN Security Watch.
However, the ESI believes such an outcome to be unlikely.
"The EU and the US remain committed to Georgian sovereignty and
territorial integrity. The most likely outcome I can imagine will
be the North Cyprus situation. The world will recognize Georgia’s
territorial integrity, while Russia and maybe a few of its satellite
states will acknowledge South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent,"
Tsikhelashvili says.
She continues: "The South Ossetians already can see what an example of
Russian rule in the Caucasus is like if they look to North Ossetia. How
many schools there teach in Ossetian? The answer is none. In a few
years the concern of cultural autonomy will mount and they will begin
to realize the trap they are in."
Crushed rose This is not how Georgians hoped the "Rose Revolution"
would turn out.
In 2003, a wave of nationalism and a desire for western living
standards and true democracy swept Saakashvili to power. Young and
intensely charismatic, he led his country on an adventure that has
turned sour.
"The president turned this country from a sort of post-Soviet ruin into
a modern country," a senior western Europe diplomat tells ISN Security
Watch, gesturing at perhaps the rather unrepresentative setting of
the ornate restaurant in the Tbilisi Marriott hotel to prove his point.
"However, Saakashvili’s definitely in until September. Then I can’t
say. There will be serious questions asked about what has happened
and those questions will have consequences."
The Russian invasion has put a stop to those "rose" aspirations
for now, and Georgia is reckoning with defeat. Tbilisi may not look
miserable on the surface, but you only have to venture into one of
the public buildings being used to house over 60,000 displaced people,
or drive for under an hour to some of the burned-out villages to find
misery waiting for you.
Reconstruction will take years. Georgia’s transport infrastructure
has been badly damaged, communities in the conflict zone have been
hit hard, national parks have reportedly been set alight, commercial
shipping has taken a massive blow, the economy has been shaken,
but above all, Georgia’s diplomatic and military position has been
smashed. The armed forces that Saakashvili painstakingly built up
though clever arms deals with Israel, the US and former communist
states simply no longer exists.
Diplomatically, Georgia is in a disastrous position. Seen as unreliable
and even a liability by many EU member-states and now most likely
shorn of Abkhazia and South Ossetia for good, Georgia is reaping the
consequences of its failed attempt to join the West.
Nona Varanadze, a retired professor and opposition supporter, blames
Saakashvili for what has happened.
"Under Shevernadze, we practiced a political balancing act between
Russia and the West. Just look at where we are on a map. When the
balance got upset, we angered a neighbor and it destroyed so much of
the good development that was going on. We could have avoided this
and just got rich."
The ESI’s Tsikhelashvili stresses that "though my political and
cultural values are completely western. I am starting to think that
Georgia put all of its eggs in one basket."
In many ways the EU and the US should hold themselves responsible for
Georgia’s current predicament. Having ostensibly supported a country’s
bid to remove itself from what Russia considers its exclusive sphere
of influence, they failed to give Georgia the necessary security
guarantees to make such a transition possible. With Russian forces
stationed inside their territory, where EU flags still fly hopelessly
from most major buildings, the promise of the West is starting to
sound like a deadly siren to many Georgians.
The new order The recent conflict has achieved a primary Russian
objective, in proving that American power cannot be solidified along
borderlands. This leaves only two powers that can actually integrate
or control these territories – the EU or Russia.
The post-Soviet space can either seek to emulate the Baltic republics
and find security inside the Union or embrace and hope to benefit from
Russian dominance, as have Armenia and Belarus. Both are asymmetrical
in how they wield influence.
Russia’s strength lies in the areas of hard power such as its military
capacities, energy power, cyberwarriors, pro-Russian parties and
ethnic minorities or former KGB networks. However, it lacks the powers
of persuasion.
Bulgarian expert Ivan Krastev argues in a recent article that "Russia
is a born-again 19th-century power that acts in the post-20th-century
world where arguments of force and capacity cannot any longer be the
only way to define the status or conduct of great powers. The absence
of ‘soft power’ is particularly dangerous for a would-be revisionist
state. For if a state wants today to remake the world order, it must
be able both to rely on the existing and emerging constellation of
powers and be able to capture the international public’s imagination."
The EU has the opposite strengths. Its power is soft and lies in
the promise of membership, cultural appeal, diplomatic influence and
financial clout. However, just as the Kremlin’s failure to convince
the world its actions are legitimate should force a re-think in its
inner circles about a return to great-power status, the EU needs to
learn that it does not exist in a vacuum.
Russia’s strategy may be 19th century – but Europe is stuck in
the future.
The great source of instability for the borderlands is that neither
the EU nor Russia have reached their final destinations. Both are
lost in transition.
The EU is caught between a disunited vague confederacy and a
near-federation capable of speaking with a single voice in foreign
policy and acting purposefully in a single direction. Its foreign
policy mechanisms may slip into irrelevance and its own stability
is far from assured. The news from Brussels is still frustration and
malaise following on the heels of the French and Dutch "No" votes in
2005. The Irish "No" vote earlier this year does not bode well.
Russia itself is in a similar unsettled position. Its own territory
is too large to be run in a conventional democratic manner and the
state is still too weak to dominate its neighbors successfully. In
the long run, further disintegration cannot be ruled out and the
Kremlin is well aware of this.
Hovering between a post-modern empire and joining the club of
post-imperial European great powers alongside the UK, France and
Germany, Russia will continue its struggle to find institutional
stability at home and a place in the state system – to the great
detriment of both its citizens and surrounding countries.
Trapped between two uncertain creatures the post-Soviet states need
to learn from the Georgian experience and tread carefully to avoid
its fate.
Ben Judah is a senior correspondent for ISN Security Watch, currently
writing from the Caucasus and Russia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
