WHAT "RESETTING" IS AND HOW IT WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE CAUCASUS
Andrei Areshev

en.fondsk.ru
08.08.2009

Some figures of Russia’s top political circles and expert community who
have for the past six months melted with the proclaimed "resetting"
in relations with the United States and the rest of the world seem
to have got only a vague idea of computers. Meanwhile it’s for some
reason that the successors to the foreign policy of Reagan, Clinton
and both Bushes have borrowed the term from the computer glossary
and used it to achieve almost everything. Oddly enough, some people
are unable to hear that (or will not hear it at all)…

Program files loaded by the user of any computer (if they, for
example, feel like drafting a document to speak in an exalted tone of
undreamt-of benefits that "resetting" in the Word format promises to
Russia or enjoy the look of Barack Obama via the YouTube video sharing
website) cannot perform in normal mode without interacting with all
sorts of execution modules (which could, by the way, be easily hidden
from onlookers through several mouse clicks). So it is the unstable
and/or incorrect performance by these very modules that results in
a program hang-up, so the last resort to improve the situation is
the notorious "resetting". The idea being that following resetting
(and possibly some other additional operations, like virus checks
or other forms of optimization) the very same programs and system
processes, downloaded to the computer memory, grow more efficient
and synchronized and start to better distribute the computer memory
resources among them.

Just how could this be related to the developments in the
Caucasus? Well, it is directly relevant to these developments!

Let’s venture a supposition that a year ago it was precisely a hidden
malfunction in the performance of "execution modules" that ensured a
stable performance of the Washington foreign policy "computer". The
reports by dummy news agencies that the USA was giving protection to
Georgia and was prepared to use the entire might of its armed forces
and was sending naval ships and military aircraft to the shores of
Colchis with live ammunition and ready to fight (thereby getting
involved in direct military confrontation with the Russian Army)
proved somewhat abortive, I daresay. "Toilet paper" indeed began
to be unloaded at the Poti and Batumi ports for the dashing Mishiko
ill-starred warriors, but not before the battle action phase was over,
while the angry statements by Condi Rice spoke of perplexity that the
Saakashvili "virus" had unexpectedly come across the more powerful
Russian "antivirus", one that had long since been written off by
one and all. But has it been the actual reason for "resetting",
which is mostly needed by the US Establishment to avoid any more of
that sort of malfunction in the future? And will that "resetting"
help improve the performance of the "programs" and "system processes"
that have been polished and practised to perfection by most seasoned
experts for dozens of years?

The answer seems obvious, and the alarming processes under way in
the Caucasus only serve to confirm it. Georgia’s remilitarization is
in full swing and statements by the Tbilisi leader that his Army is
effectively recovering is not just bravado. According to experts,
the United States, Ukraine and Israel have supplied Tbilisi with
ultra-modern arms, while the strength of the Georgina Army has
been brought to 34,0001. One could, of course, insist that the
"Saakashvili project" has fallen through since it allegedly was fully
ideological. But what follows from the allegation? Isn’t Saakashvili
still sitting in his newly-built palace in the Avlabar district
of Tbilisi? Is the "national purpose" that’s skilfully-guided onto
the anti-Russian track popular with just that nation? Isn’t the US
Congress continuing to discuss programmes of support for Georgia? And
is it possible that the Georgian experience (which cannot be reduced
to Saakashvili alone) proves the irrelevance of ideology as such
and substantiality of the policy whose only ideology (advertised by
television and other media) is luxury consumption?

One could, of course, make endless fun of the "ideological" policy of
another country enjoying reliable support from its ally, whoever the
ally. However, he who laughs last laughs longest. Some reporters known
for their sharp tongue claim that the abbreviation CSTO (Russian
ODKB) stands for "Otdai Deneg Kak mozhno Bolshe", or "Give away
as much money as you can". Should another conflict flare up in the
Caucasus or any other area of the former USSR, the supporters of a
"market" approach to the national foreign policy, rejecting the need
for ideology as such, run the risk of losing all of their allies and
finding themselves in complete politico-diplomatic isolation…

A few days ago US State Department officials said perfectly in keeping
with the spirit of "resetting" that they would not take an interest
in incidents on the Georgian-South Ossetian border. What’s more, the
State Department sees artillery shelling by Georgia as "immaterial
incidents", dropping a clear hint about who Washington will see as
guilty in case of large-scale provocations or even resumption of
fighting. The US is simultaneously urging Moscow to translate into
life the cease-fire agreements of August 12 and September 8 last
year, which bind Russia to pull back its troops to the positions
they had been deployed at prior to the conflict in August 2008; the
agreements that were adopted, as one and all remember, in a certain
political situation. In response one can hear a spate of excuses to
the effect that this country had no plans to recognize South Ossetia
and Abkhazia by any means… which actually reveals the idea that if
a year ago the West had acted somewhat differently, then… To say
nothing of the fact that, according to the Russian General Staff,
Georgia had been preparing its aggression since 20042.

Dimitri Simes’s view that the Obama Administration is bending
insufficient efforts to make the resetting of relations with
the Russian Federation its foreign policy priority seems to lack
substantiation, to put it in an understatement. Joseph Biden’s
visit to Kiev and Tbilisi (and it was in the wake of that visit that
Georgia launched regular shelling of South Ossetian positions) is the
very "resetting" in its pure form, just as the US Vice-President’s
scandalous statements in an interview with the Wall Street’s "combat
leaflet". Joe Biden is known to have said in reference to Russia that
"They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy,
they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be
able to withstand the next 15 years, they’re in a situation where
the world is changing before them and they’re clinging to something
in the past that is not sustainable". Therefore "Russia has to make
some very difficult, calculated decisions".

The statements caused the Russian Foreign Ministry (and not only
the Foreign Ministry) to express astonishment for some reason
and simultaneously tried to present Biden almost as a dissenter
going against the grain of the "peace-loving" policy of his own
President. The programme director on Russia and Eurasia at the
German Council on Foreign Relations Alexander Rahr also picks up
by saying that: "…the office of the Vice-President of the United
States, after eight years of Cheney’s vice-presidency, has begun
to play an independent game… I wouldn’t pay any more attention to
Biden’s comments…"3 Oh really?! You wouldn’t, would you? All seem
to have forgotten that it was Biden who was the first to call for
"resetting" relations with Moscow in his Munich speech in February
and at that time no one urged that "no attention should be paid" to
his comments. Information warfare is on just as it was a year ago,
yet today it is described for some reason as "repercussions of old
thinking", although we have all been told in most clear-cut terms:
resetting. In other words, it’s the same old programme but one that
performs more efficiently, including in the field of information
and propaganda.

One can imagine the way the Washington "programmers" and "system
managers" laughed on hearing assumptions that their Vice-President
had got engaged in independent foreign policy making. The White
House press secretary Robert Gibbs explained to the goslings what
is what during a specially held news briefing and said Biden was a
person who was making a critical contribution to the Administration
performance. Hillary Clinton specified that the US Administration
would not allow Russia to have its own sphere of influence in the
former Soviet republics of Eastern Europe.

One may remember that Biden predicted in the run-up to the US election
that in just half-a-year following his inauguration Obama would come
to face just as enormous a challenge as the one that befell the young
Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. According to the future
Vice-President, if any smouldering conflict flares up again, the US
President will have to make "tough and unpopular decisions". One
year ago to the day Condoleezza Rice and Biden’s predecessor Dick
Cheney are known to have come to Georgia. What followed their visit is
something everyone keeps recalling to this day. And there is a direct
analogy between their visit and Biden’s. The "execution modules"
which are invisible to onlookers will most likely get a retouch and
the programme, aimed to achieve the US complete domination over all
countries of the former USSR through Russia’s "controlled conflict"
with its neighbours, will grow still more effective. It is for that
reason that this year one should expect no conflict similar to the
developments of August 2008. But "something" will certainly come up
(not necessarily in August) and one could rest assured of this. This
will happen perfectly in line with the spirit and logic of "resetting",
that is in a format that’s least comfortable to the Russian leaders. To
ignore this, while melting with Obama’s radiant smile, the words he
says, getting a slap on the shoulder and other nice things of the
sort would prove inexcusable naivete, to say the least.

It’s a lot more useful (before it is too late) to get engaged in
remedying non-compliances in the performance of our own "execution
modules", and better still in fundamental "recapture" of programs of
Moscow’s foreign policy on the former Soviet republics (if we stick to
computer terminology), rather than in "compiling" the texts obtained
from outside to allegedly our own "machine-language codes". Or else
we all run the risk of getting an overheated non-operational CPU
(processor) and a burnt hard disk.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress