RUSSIA’S ARGUMENTS
by Dario Valcarcel

ABC Newspaper
Sept 11 2008
Spain

Let us return to the strange Georgian crisis. We recalled here ("Oil
and Gas Pipelines," 21 August 2008) the blunders made by Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili. On 7 August, he ordered his troops
to seize the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, by surprise. Russia
continues to be the world’s second largest nuclear power. This gift
from Saakashvili to Putin and Medvedev was not easy to understand.

Since 2000, Russia has been transformed. Within the Russian state,
there is a vile mob, which ordered the killing of Anna Politkovskaya
and many others. But it seems that this mob is not making any
progress. In fact, it is falling back. Russia is the world’s largest
natural gas producer and the third largest oil producer (although it
does not belong to OPEC). British Petroleum and the new consortium
of Russian businessmen, namely TNK, which have recently reached an
agreement, have control over Siberia’s large oilfields, which total a
fifth of BP’s total reserves. The agreement was about to collapse. A
new agreement has just been reached: BP has given up some seats
on the board, but it will not lose control of this venture. Peter
Sutherland, BP chairman and a former EU commissioner, was very clear:
Russia is in need of investment and technology to curb the fall in
its oil-pumping capacity. BP is benefiting from this crisis. Russia is
worried about some territories, such as Georgia, which are being used
as corridors for oil and gas exports to the Turkish Mediterranean (the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline). The Turkish president’s visit to Armenia
on 6 September did not go unnoticed. Neither in the EU nor in Moscow.

The Russians put some strong arguments on the table during the
conflict with Georgia. It was President Saakashvili who ordered the
Georgian troops to capture the South Ossetian capital by surprise,
breaking the agreements that had authorized Moscow to keep a so-called
peacekeeping contingent in South Ossetia since 1992. After the Soviet
Union collapsed, Russia proposed an agreement forbidding both states
to resort to force in Ossetia and Abkhazia. On 19 August, Eduard
Shevardnadze, the former Georgian president and the Soviet Union’s
last foreign minister, expressed reservations about Saakashvili and
added: "It is possible to maintain good relations with Russia. Georgia
needs them."

Russia has hastened to draw a parallel between Kosovo and South
Ossetia. We are once again witnessing the clash between two
contradictory principles of the international law: the territorial
integrity of sovereign states and the peoples’ right to decide
their future. Some people defend, not without reason, the wisdom of
provisional situations. To maintain the status quo without resorting
to war. Such temporary situations may last centuries. When there
are no real solutions in sight, is it so reprehensible to buy
some time? It is not respectable to defend a dream world in which
high ideals are imposed on interests. Those who defend that empty
altruism know that they are performing a comedy. Russia is not Holy
Russia. But, surprisingly, it has made great progress compared with
the misgovernment and looting of the Yeltsin years. Putin has led
many Russians to recover their national dignity.

The outgoing US vice president has just visited Georgia and
Ukraine. His message was: You will be able to join the Atlantic
Alliance. But, rather than the interests of Georgia and Ukraine,
it will be the NATO member countries’ interests that will determine
whether they will join NATO. Only the Baltic republics share borders
with the Russian Federation. Lithuania, the most powerful of the Baltic
countries, shares its southwestern border with Kaliningrad. Poland,
Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Romania, and Bulgaria have
no borders with Russia. To declare that NATO is a defensive alliance
does not help matters. Before starting NATO accession talks with
Georgia and Ukraine, we should talk to Russia. With his tendency to
play roles, President Saakashvili News, Most Recent 60 Days stated:
"If we do not stop Russia, if the world does not stop Russia, its
tanks will invade any European capital tomorrow." Perhaps he knew
that he was exaggerating.