RUSSIA AND GEORGIA: CAUCASIAN CALCULUS
by Eric Walberg

Dissident Voice
August 18th, 2009

War clouds refuse to disperse a year after Georgia waged war against
Russia. On the anniversary of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s
ill-fated invasion of South Ossetia 8 August, Russian President Dmitri
Medvedev warned: "Georgia does not stop threatening to restore its
‘territorial integrity’ by force. Armed forces are concentrated at
the borders near Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and provocations are
committed," including renewed Georgian shelling of the South Ossetian
capital Tskhinvali.

What is the result of the Ossetia fiasco? Did Russia "win" or
"lose"? Has it put paid to NATO expansion? What lessons did Saakashvili
and his Western sponsors learn? Analysts have been sifting through
the rubble over the past few weeks.

Some, such as Professor Stephen Blank at the US Army War College,
dismiss any claim that Russia was justified in its response,
that "even before this war there was no way Georgia was going to
get into NATO." He insists that Russia lost, that its response
showed Russian military incompetence and weakness, resulting in
huge economic losses, with the EU now seeking alternative energy
sources and the US continuing to resist Russian sensitivities in
its "near abroad". Georgetown University Professor Ethan Burger
compared the situation to "Germany’s annexation of Czechoslovakia",
with the US playing the role of plucky Britain facing the fascist
hordes. Apparently Burger sees the Monroe Doctrine as a one-way
street. Tell that to the Hondurans.

Indeed, the Russian military is a shadow of its former Soviet self,
as is Russia itself, having been plundered by its robber barons and
their Western friends over the past 20 years. Although the Georgian
army fled in disarray, "major deficiencies in operational planning,
personnel training, equipment readiness and conducting modern joint
combat operations became evident," though "it proved that it remains
a viable fighting force," writes Vladimir Frolov at russiaprofile.org.

And the West, angry at the de facto Russian "win" in Ossetia, pulled
out many stops to undermine the Russian economy afterwards. Beside
the $500 million military operation itself, "capital flight" reached
$10 billion and currency reserves decreased by $16 billion. Overall,
it is estimated that the war cost Russia $27.7 billion.

Other analysts, such as German Council on Foreign Relations
(CFR) analyst Alexander Rahr, see the war as a blip in East-West
relations. "The West has forgotten the Georgian war quickly. Georgia
and Saakashvili are not important enough to start a new Cold War with
Russia. The West needs Moscow’s support on many other issues, like
Iran. The West is not capable of solving the territorial-ethnical
conflicts in the post-Soviet space on its own. The present status
quo suits everyone." He even predicts that if Moscow decides to stay
in Sevastopol after 2017, "there will be no conflict over this issue
with the West."

Sergei Roy, editor of the Russian Guardian, notes that the conflict
produced "greater clarity or, to use a converse formula, less
indeterminacy both in the international relations and domestically." He
recalls that Putin tried to reach Bush on the hotline established for
precisely such crises. "There simply was no response from the other
side. Dead silence," a definite sign of that other side’s "direct
complicity in Saakashvili’s bloody gamble." Roy mourns that superpower
rivalry is alive and well, though "Russia, has done everything
it realistically could (ideologically, politically, militarily,
economically, culturally) to embrace and please the West. Everything,
that is, except disappearing entirely. But disappear it must."

Roy is referring to the overarching US/NATO plans to promote
instability and disintegration throughout the former Soviet Union
(and not only).The strategy is Balkanisation of the Caucasus
(Dagestan, Chechnya and other autonomous regions), with the same
strategy applicable to Iran, Iraq and China. The principle being,
"Don’t fight directly, use secessionist movements within your adversary
to weaken him." Though on the back burner as a result of the Ossetia
setback, the US has been perfecting this strategy for decades now, most
infamously in Yugoslavia, sometimes by direct bombing and invasion,
sometimes by bribery, NGOing and colour revolutions.

While Western media accuses Russia of doing this in Georgia, South
Ossetia and Abkhazia are best viewed as stop-gap entities asserting
Russian hegemony in a world of US-sponsored pseudo-democracies. A new,
more sober Georgian political regime which recognises the situation for
what it is and establishes a pragmatic, even cooperative relationship
with Russia could probably negotiate some kind of compromise within the
Commonwealth of Independent States, though according to leader of the
Georgian Labour Party Shalva Natelashvili, "Dozens of Latin American
states, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras, Ecuador and others,
intend to recognise Abkhazia and so-called South Ossetia. While our
poor president is busy preserving his throne, Georgian disintegration
continues and deepens."

The war certainly destroyed any prospects of Georgia’s membership in
NATO (which were very real, despite Blank’s denial). However, NATO
plans for Georgia and Ukraine stubbornly proceed apace. Ex-deputy
assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs Matt
Bryza brought Saakashvili $1 billion as his parting gift to rebuild
tiny Georgia’s military in conformity to NATO specifications. Oh yes,
and to train Georgian troops bound for Afghanistan. In other words,
to prepare Georgia for incorporation into US world military strategy,
whether or not as part of NATO. After all, Colombia isn’t part of NATO
and is getting the same red carpet treatment, a conveniently placed
ally in the US feud with Venezuela. Perhaps NATO’s Partnership for
Peace can do the trick with Georgia.

The new Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian
Affairs, Tina Kaidanow, explained her qualifications for US-sponsored
Balkanisation in April: "I worked in Serbia, in Belgrade and in
Sarajevo, then in Washington, and I went back to Sarajevo and am now
in Kosovo." Andrei Areshev, deputy director of the Strategic Culture
Foundation, warned on PanArmenian.net that her new appointment "is
an attempt to give a second wind to the politicisation of ethnicity
in the North Caucasus with the possibility of repeating the ‘Kosovo
scenario’." The US will simply continue its double standard of
recognising Kosovo’s secession while arming Georgia and Azerbaijan to
overturn the independence of Abkhazia, Nagorno Karabakh and South
Ossetia – none of which "seceded" from anything other than new
post-Soviet nations they never belonged to.

All this petty intriguing masks a much more important result of
the Russian response to last summer’s provocation. Very simply,
Russian resolve prevented a 1914-style descent into world war. This
time, quite possibly a nuclear war, especially in light of Russia’s
much taunted military weakness in relation to the US. A desperate
nation will pull out all the stops when backed to the wall, which is
where the US and its proxy NATO have positioned Russia. "Had Russia
refrained from engaging its forces in the conflict, the nations of
the northern Caucasus would have serious doubts about its ability
to protect them. This would in turn lead to an array of separatist
movements in the northern Caucasus, which would have the potential
to start not only a full-scale Caucasian war, but a new world war,"
according to Andrei Areshev.

Plans for carving up Russia by employing Yugoslav-style armed
secessionist campaigns were laid out in 1999 when the conservative
Freedom House thinktank in the United States founded the American
Committee for Peace in Chechnya, with members including Zbigniew
Brzezinski and neocons Robert Kagan and William Kristol, according
to Rick Rozkoff at globalresearch.ca. This frightening group has
now morphed into the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus
"dedicated to monitoring the security and human rights situation in
the North Caucasus."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently confirmed that plans
around last August’s war were on a far larger scale than merely
retaking South Ossetia and later Abkhazia, that Azerbaijan was
simultaneously planning for a war against Armenia, a member of the
Russian-sponsored Collective Security Treaty Organisation. NATO-member
Turkey could well have intervened at that point on behalf of
Azerbaijan, and a regional war could have ensued, involving Ukraine (it
threatened to block the Russian Black Sea fleet last summer) and even
Iran. Ukraine has long had its eyes on pro-Russian Transdniester. It
doesn’t take much imagination to see how this tangled web could come
unstuck in some Strangelovian scenario.

Just as the origins of WWI are complex, but clearly the result of the
imperial powers jockeying for power, the fiasco in Georgia can be laid
squarely at the feet of the world’s remaining imperial superpower. The
mystery here is the extent of Russian forbearance, the lengths that
Russia seems willing to go to accommodate the US bear. Over the past
decade, Russia watched while the US and NATO attacked Yugoslavia,
invaded Afghanistan, set up military bases throughout Central Asia,
invaded Iraq, assisted regime collapse/change in Yugoslavia, Georgia,
Adjaria, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, and schemed to push Russia out of the
European energy market. The question is not why Russia took military
action but why it hasn’t acted more decisively earlier.

And, now, why it has given the US and NATO carte blanche in
Afghanistan. The US continues to strut about on the world stage and,
with its Euro-lackeys, to directly threaten Russia with war and civil
war, taking time out to sabotage its economy when it pleases. Its
plans for Afghanistan as a key link in its world energy supplies
(which could, of all goes well, exclude Russia) are well known. The
Russians are also not unaware of evidence of US complicity in the
production and distribution of Afghanistan’s opium, even as the
US piously claims to be fighting this scourge. Sergei Mikheev,
a vice-president of the Centre for Political Technologies, said,
"NATO’s operation in Afghanistan is dictated by the aspiration of
the US and its allies to consolidate their hold on this strategically
and economically important region," which includes Central Asia. He
criticised Russian compliance with US demands for troop and materiel
transport. According to Andrei Areshev, "Russia’s position on this
issue has not been formulated clearly."

More ominous yet, writes Sergei Borisov in Russia Today, the operation
in Afghanistan is "a key element of the realisation of the project
of transforming the alliance into an alternative to the UN." While
the original invasion of Afghanistan was rubber-stamped by the UN,
it was carried out by the US and NATO, and the UN has been merely a
passive bystander ever since. NATO is being transformed from a regional
organisation into a global one: "If the norms of international laws
are violated, then with time the Afghan model may be applied to any
other state."

Perhaps it’s a case of "Damned if you do, damned if you don’t." While a
direct attack like that of last August simply had to be met head-on,
Russia has to be careful not to unduly provoke the US, which can
unleash powerful forces against Russia on many fronts – economic,
geopolitical, military, cultural – picking up where it left off
in 1991 with the destruction of the Soviet Union. Russians are not
cowards, but realists, and appear to be pursuing a holding action,
hoping to wait out the US, counting on its chickens coming home to
roost. Meanwhile, as Roy urges, Russia can use the current breathing
space it have gained from pushing back the NATO challenge to "lick its
armed forces into shape" and prepare for the next unpleasant surprise.

Eric Walberg is a journalist who worked in Uzbekistan and is now
writing for Al-Ahram Weekly in Cairo. You can reach him at his site:
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