Agence France Presse
September 7, 2008 Sunday
A month on, Georgia crisis becomes US-Russia struggle: analysts
by Christopher Boian
MOSCOW, Sept 7 2008
"The world changed after August 8 this year."
That, at least, is Russia’s view — a view articulated again in the
Kremlin during the weekend by President Dmitry Medvedev. And a view,
say analysts, that today no nation on earth is in a position to
dismiss out of hand.
But a month after the outbreak of conflict in ex-Soviet Georgia, as
the world struggles to come to grips with a shifting international
landscape, the question no one can yet answer is: Exactly how has the
world changed?
Russia is demanding a new "multipolar" world structure, the United
States is vowing to fight anywhere for "democracy," Europe seems
somewhere in the middle as it gropes for its own "unity," Asia quietly
watches as events unfold.
On a smaller scale, NATO power Turkey has suddenly decided the time is
ripe to talk with Caucasus neighbour Armenia after a century of
enmity, while a few ex-Soviet republics seem to be cautiously humming
to Moscow’s tune again.
Against this background of deep and shifting currents, the United
Nations has practically gone off the air, seemingly unable to
formulate a coherent thought beyond expression of "concern" over a
burgeoning international crisis.
Amid the general confusion, however, one thing — the identities of
the real protagonists in what is shaping up as an epic struggle —
have become crystal clear: It is Russia versus the United States.
That came into sharper focus last week as the United States continued
to dispatch warships on what it said were humanitarian aid missions
for Georgia, prompting open charges from Moscow that it was quickly
rearming its ally.
"Neither Russia nor the Europeans nor the Americans have a strategy
now for moving forward," said Sergei Mikheyev, deputy head of the
Center for Political Technology, a privately-funded think tank that is
politically close to the state.
"Russia gave up a lot with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
Kremlin considers it has every right to assert influence in the
‘post-Soviet space’.
"However the Americans now also regard this space a legitimate ‘zone
of US influence’" and will bring considerable US means, economic and
otherwise, to bear in reinforcing it, Mikheyev said.
Washington’s determination to put its own economic and political lock
on at least part of the strategic Caucasus and Central Asian regions
was on clear display last week in the person of US Vice President Dick
Cheney.
Visiting oil-rich Azerbaijan, Cheney, whose personal fortunes are
closely tied to the US oil industry, evoked Washington’s "deep and
abiding" interest in these ex-Soviet states, notably in developing new
energy supply routes.
Routes, it was clear, over which Russia would have no control.
Predictably, Kremlin anger over what it sees as a none-too-subtle US
drive to take control of the regions sitting on Russia’s western and
southern borders is now on the rise.
At the same time, Moscow’s annoyance with a European Union seen
increasingly here as Washington’s strategic proxy despite being a
valued trading bloc is also approaching a level not seen in years,
analysts say.
In a commentary posted on the liberal gazeta.ru website, Semyon
Novoprudsky, deputy editor of the centrist daily Vremya Novostei, said
events today had the same disturbing feeling as those preceding both
world wars of the 20th century.
US insistence in placing new missile defences near Russia’s borders,
pushing for further expansion of NATO and sending warships to deliver
aid to Georgia was only "militarising" Russian consciousness and
boosting Russian hawks.
"In this generalised pushing and shoving toward war, the European
Union looks something like a dog that ‘understands everything but
cannot speak’," Novoprudsky wrote.
"Among the nearly 30 countries of the EU there is no unified,
unanimous position on any of the key issues of international security
and they are unable to present anything resembling a ‘balanced
position’," he added.
It was Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who most succinctly described
Russian frustration with Europe, saying recently that if EU policy
continued to toe the US line then Moscow "may as well talk with
Washington about European affairs."
This is the atmosphere — angry, suspicious and unbending — that will
greet French President Nicolas Sarkozy when he and two top EU
officials come to Moscow on Monday to discuss the crisis with Medvedev
before heading to Georgia.
Indeed, as Sarkozy prepared for the trip Russian officials bluntly
alleged that crucial wording in the ceasefire agreement brokered by
France — a document whose interpretation is hotly disputed — had
been altered in the hours after Moscow signed it and before Georgia
signed.
"In the 15 years since the Soviet collapse, Europe has merely followed
the United States," Mikheyev said.
"This greatly irritates the Kremlin — it harms relations between
Russia and western Europe," he added. "The anti-Russian mood is pushed
by the Americans who will sit on their island and let the Europeans
man the front lines."
Though the Kremlin insists that its strategic aim in the present
conflict is clear and limited — to end what it says is a US monopoly
on global decision-making — some say Russia has already overplayed
its hand.
"The Russian leadership is trying to spin and justify after the fact
its hysterical and historic break-up with the West and its
institutions," Andrei Kolesnikov, deputy editor of the weekly magazine
The New Times, wrote recently.
Russia, he said, was living under the illusion that it can recreate
something of its lost Soviet and Tsarist-era empires though in reality
it has neither the economic, political nor even military means to do
so.
That kind of scepticism however is in the minority today in Russia,
where Western diplomats say they hear almost no voices against
Moscow’s current actions even among liberal, pro-Western elites who
usually oppose the Kremlin.
Alexander Dugin, a hardline theorist described by the US daily Los
Angeles Times as a "father figure for contemporary Russian
nationalism," was in no doubt that, a month after the Georgia conflict
erupted, the world had changed.
"It is very far from the end," he told the paper last week. "It is
only the beginning of a real, and maybe very serious, and very
dangerous for all of the sides, confrontation between us and the
Americans."