NEW RULES FOR ROUGH PLAY
By Albina Kovalyova

Russia Profile.org
August 12, 2009

A New Law Has Russia’s Neighbors Worried about War, and
Parliamentarians Concerned about Further Consolidation of the
President’s Power

The President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev has introduced
a new bill to the Russian Parliament that would revise the current Law
on Defense, and would broaden the conditions for Russia’s military
action abroad. The introduction comes as a consequence of last
year’s August war with Georgia, and sends a worrying message to the
CIS countries, some of which already have a strained relationship
with Russia.

The current Law on Defense allows Russia’s armed forces to take
military action outside Russian territory only in response to
aggression that is directed toward the country and poses a threat to
Russia’s territorial integrity. The revised law will allow Russia to
use military force "to return or prevent aggression against another
state, to protect citizens of the Russian Federation abroad, to
fight piracy and to ensure the safety of the shipping industry,"
the outline of the bill on the Kremlin Web site states.

The president made it clear that the reform to this law has to
do with the military conflict with Georgia. "It is tied to the
well-known events of last year," Medvedev told the Interfax news
agency. The announcement has been timed to coincide with the one year
anniversary of the war, along with the appointment of the new Head
of Military Training of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
Valery Yevnevich.

Some may be forgiven for thinking that these moves are meant as a
warning to Russia’s neighbors. Anatoly Tsiganok, the head of the Center
for Military Prognosis of the Institute of Political and Military
Analysis, believes that the new revision to the Law on Defense is a
demonstration of Russia’s power to the Caucasus and to Ukraine. "This
law is only being introduced in order to be able to bring the military
to fighting mode if any of the Russian peacekeepers are attacked by
Georgia in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, without the say of Parliament,"
he said.

As a result the revision is likely to upset the international
community, which is already starting to worry about what these
revisions could imply. "When the bill was first introduced by Dmitry
Medvedev, I immediately got worried telephone calls from colleagues
in Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine," Tsiganok said. Russia used the
precedent of protecting its own citizens to justify the fighting in
August of last year, and the issue of citizen protection now raises
the question of what will constitute such protection. Will it be used
as an excuse to attack other countries if some misfortune befalls a
Russian national there?

Opinion is generally divided between those who, like Tsiganok,
believe that there should be no law giving the president the right
to use military action abroad, and those who think that such powers
may be justified in certain circumstances. The State Duma Deputy and
Deputy Chairman of the Security Committee Gennady Gudkov believes
that such a law may be necessarily to give the president a certain
power of protection against the threats of foreign military attacks
and terrorism. However, the existence of the law does not necessarily
imply that it must be put into action. "The question of how we will
act on the law is a question of future political situations and the
relationship that we have with our neighbors and other countries,"
he said.

Another debate surrounding the Law on Defense is that of the
president’s role. Many are concerned about the increasing power that
the president will have to make such serious military decisions without
consulting the Parliament. "We are constantly rolling toward total
monarchy as the constitution and the law get replaced by the will
of the monarch. This has led to various catastrophes and cataclysms
several times now, and I am absolutely against this kind of model of
government," Gudkov said.

Tsiganok agreed. "When you talk about a law that would allow Russians
to fight abroad, I do not think it acceptable that this right is
given solely to the president. I believe that the decision to use
force abroad should be made only by the Parliament," he said.

There are also problems with the Russian constitution, which is vague
on the procedures for responding to acts of aggression against the
country. It does not seem to be clear who would be authorized to
make decisions – the Parliament or the president, who would only
inform the Parliament of what he had already decided and possibly
even acted upon. This absence of a coherent code of conduct needs to
be rectified. "The constitution must be developed thoroughly to take
into account the various cases that may arise," Tsiganok said.

Although it is not yet clear how the law will influence Russia’s
future actions, the decision to amend the existing law in this way
may lead to discontent among other CIS countries. Georgia and Ukraine
are particularly worried about Russia’s intentions, and this news
will certainly increase their apprehension.

The mounting tension in the Caucasus was further intensified on
Wednesday, when the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, while on
a trip to Abkhazia, announced plans to spend around $500 million on
military bases and the building of a protective border guard system
in the region.

Meanwhile, Russia’s problematic relationship with Ukraine this week
was further jeopardized by Medvedev in an address to the Ukrainian
President Victor Yushchenko. In his video blog, Medvedev criticized
the Ukrainian authorities for hindering the development of cultural and
economic relationships between the two countries and taking "an openly
anti-Russian position in relation to the military attack on South
Ossetia by Saakashvili’s regime." Medvedev repeated the accusation
that weapons used to kill innocent civilians and Russian peacekeepers
were Ukrainian, and said that there would not be a Russian ambassador
in Kiev until the relationship between the two countries improved.