David Miliband and David Cameron blunder over Russia

By Peter Millar
Sunday Times, 31/08/08

The most frightening sight in recent weeks has not been the media’s metamorphosis of Russia from genial, if rather uncouth, bear into snarling wolf, but the knee-jerking of British politicians.

In Kiev and Tbilisi, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and David Cameron, the Tory leader, displayed their lack of historical perspective, posturing on politico-economic faultlines of which they appear to have barely schoolboy understanding. Russia is a huge country not as far away as we would like, about which our politicians know far too little. That is most acute when it comes to the "near abroad", the former Soviet republics to which George W Bush-and now Miliband and Cameron-would like to extend the Nato membership that the West refused Russia.

It has been said that Russia fears a new encirclement. It does, but it is more than that: for Nato forces to enter Ukraine would for most Russians be tantamount to invasion. For Cameron to equate Estonia and Ukraine, as he did last week, is stupidity.

Estonia’s history, language and culture are markedly separate. Forced into the Soviet Union in the second world war, it has also over the centuries been part of Sweden, and ruled by the Teutonic knights. Its language is related to Finnish.

Ukraine is another matter. Its name comes from Old Slavonicu kraju, meaning "on the edge"-in other words, borderlands.

We stopped saying "the Ukraine" to make it sound more like any other country. To Russians it doesn’t. "The" Ukraine had no independent existence before 1991. Like most borderlands it has been almost continuously fought over, since the early Slav kingdom of Kievan Rus fell to Mongol invaders.

Parts of it belonged for centuries to the vast Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, then much of the west to the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Today, those are the most westward-looking regions, where the language mostly spoken is Ukrainian rather than Russian and the religion is Uniate Catholicism rather than Russian Orthodox.

Kiev, however, remains an anchor in Russo-Slav identity. Far older than Moscow, Kievan Rus gave us the word "Russia"; a statue of its first ruler, Rurik, dominates Moscow’s Pushkin Square. Kiev has totemic status, as Winchester or Runnymede does for England. Of all the losses suffered since the fall of the Soviet Union, those of Ukraine and Belarus have been hardest for Russians to suffer.

Fifty per cent of Ukraine’s population speaks Russian (compared with the 17% who are ethnically Russian). Many Russians-including the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn-see Ukrainian as little more than a dialect, no different from Geordie’s relationship to southern English. Stalin, the Georgian who became Russia’s greatest imperialist, gave the Ukrainians extra territory in 1945 because he considered them inseparable from Russia. He vetoed seats in the United Nations for Canada and Australia unless Russia’s "dominions" got them too. And they did. Never in his wildest dreams did he expect them to vote their own way, let alone achieve independence.

Georgia in Moscow’s eyes is merely a testing ground-from which it emerged victorious. If Ukraine is invited into Nato, the risk is not just a crisis over the Black Sea port of Sebastopol, leased until 2017 to the Russian navy, but also a Russian annexation of the whole Crimean peninsula. That is no more improbable than it would be difficult. Access from Ukraine proper is by a narrow causeway over marshland that could be taken by one battalion of paratroops. Meanwhile, the city of Kerch in the east is less than three miles across water from Russian soil.

Russian annexation would be locally popular. Crimea was not part of Ukraine before 1945. Ninety per cent of its population speaks Russian. Its historic population-the Tatars-were exiled by Stalin and replaced by Russians.

That would invite a Ukrainian civil war, almost certainly bringing in the pro-Moscow breakaway region of Transdnistria in neighbouring Moldova.

This is a minefield over which Miliband and Cameron are trampling without a map. John McCain may see "KGB" written in Vladimir Putin’s eyes but that doesn’t mean what it used to. Russia may be a corrupt pseudo-democracy but it is not communist.

This is a turf war. Russia no longer challenges America for global hegemony but that doesn’t mean it’s going to sit quietly while Uncle Sam parks tanks on what it considers to be its front lawn. To borrow a line from a new John le Carré book: "To ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door."

The author was The Sunday Times central Europe reporter who was made foreign correspondent of the year for his coverage of the end of the cold war

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Why I had to Recognise Georgia’s Breakaway Regions

By Dmitry Medvedev
Financial Times, 27/08/08

On Tuesday Russia recognised the independence of the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It was not a step taken lightly, or without full consideration of the consequences. But all possible outcomes had to be weighed against a sober understanding of the situation-the histories of the Abkhaz and Ossetian peoples, their freely expressed desire for independence, the tragic events of the past weeks and inter­national precedents for such a move.

Not all of the world’s nations have their own statehood. Many exist happily within boundaries shared with other nations. The Russian Federation is an example of largely harmonious coexistence by many dozens of nations and nationalities. But some nations find it impossible to live under the tutelage of another. Relations between nations living "under one roof" need to be handled with the utmost sensitivity.

After the collapse of communism, Russia reconciled itself to the "loss" of 14 former Soviet republics, which became states in their own right, even though some 25m Russians were left stranded in countries no longer their own. Some of those nations were un­able to treat their own minorities with the respect they deserved. Georgia immediately stripped its "autonomous regions" of Abkhazia and South Ossetia of their autonomy.

Can you imagine what it was like for the Abkhaz people to have their university in Sukhumi closed down by the Tbilisi government on the grounds that they allegedly had no proper language or history or culture and so did not need a university? The newly independent Georgia inflicted a vicious war on its minority nations, displacing thousands of people and sowing seeds of discontent that could only grow. These were tinderboxes, right on Russia’s doorstep, which Russian peacekeepers strove to keep from igniting.

But the west, ignoring the delicacy of the situation, unwittingly (or wittingly) fed the hopes of the South Ossetians and Abkhazians for freedom. They clasped to their bosom a Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, whose first move was to crush the autonomy of another region, Adjaria, and made no secret of his intention to squash the Ossetians and Abkhazians.

Meanwhile, ignoring Russia’s warnings, western countries rushed to recognise Kosovo’s illegal declaration of independence from Serbia

We argued consistently that it would be impossible, after that, to tell the Abkhazians and Ossetians (and dozens of other groups around the world) that what was good for the Kosovo Albanians was not good for them. In international relations, you cannot have one rule for some and another rule for others.

Seeing the warning signs, we persistently tried to persuade the Georgians to sign an agreement on the non-use of force with the Ossetians and Abkhazians. Mr Saakashvili refused. On the night of August 7-8 we found out why.

Only a madman could have taken such a gamble. Did he believe Russia would stand idly by as he launched an all-out assault on the sleeping city of Tskhinvali, murdering hundreds of peaceful civilians, most of them Russian citizens? Did he believe Russia would stand by as his "peacekeeping" troops fired on Russian comrades with whom they were supposed to be preventing trouble in South Ossetia?

Russia had no option but to crush the attack to save lives. This was not a war of our choice. We have no designs on Georgian territory. Our troops entered Georgia to destroy bases from which the attack was launched and then left. We restored the peace but could not calm the fears and aspirations of the South Ossetian and Abkhazian peoples-not when Mr Saakashvili continued (with the complicity and encouragement of the US and some other Nato members) to talk of rearming his forces and reclaiming "Georgian territory". The presidents of the two republics appealed to Russia to recognise their independence.

A heavy decision weighed on my shoulders. Taking into account the freely expressed views of the Ossetian and Abkhazian peoples, and based on the principles of the United Nations charter and other documents of international law, I signed a decree on the Russian Federation’s recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. I sincerely hope that the Georgian people, to whom we feel historic friendship and sympathy, will one day have leaders they deserve, who care about their country and who develop mutually respectful relations with all the peoples in the Caucasus. Russia is ready to support the achievement of such a goal.

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Double Standards on Russia-Kosovo

Russia, Georgia, and the Kosovo Connection

By J. Victor Marshall
usa.mediamonitors.net, 27/08/08

"By selectively turning principles into propagandist slogans for scoring points, the United States no longer occupies the political high ground. Washington’s lectures sound like hectoring, not sincere admonitions that could sway international public opinion and restrain Russian actions."

In Russia even more than in America, "Kosovo" rhymes with "I told you so."

Many Americans don’t realize that the former Serbian province of Kosovo, which broke away in 1999 after US-led NATO forces bombed Serbia for 78 days, helped set the stage for the recent conflict between Russia and neighboring Georgia.

But Russian leaders, who like most leaders care intensely about what happens at their borders (Georgia) and to their longtime allies (Serbia), warned earlier this year that support for Kosovo’s independence would set a precedent that could trigger separatist conflicts in places like Georgia.

It was a warning that Washington and several of its European allies foolishly, even recklessly, failed to heed.

In negotiations over the final status of Kosovo, which had been under United Nations jurisdiction since 1999, Serbia promised the province autonomy but not independence.

While many observers questioned Kosovo’s readiness for independence, given corruption in its civil administration and the murderous campaign of ethnic cleansing waged by Albanian nationalists against Serbs in their midst, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence on February 17.

Although Kosovo’s move arguably violated UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which recognized Serbia’s ultimate sovereignty, many NATO countries including the United States sided with Kosovo.

"The Kosovars are now independent," declared President Bush.

Humiliated by NATO’s military intervention in 1999, Russia now chafed at the political intervention of NATO countries in favor of Kosovo’s secession, which Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned as "immoral and illegal."

Russian leaders warned that unilateral recognition of Kosovo’s independence would open a "Pandora’s box" by appearing to support similar claims by other separatist movements in some 200 regions of the world.

The Russian Foreign Ministry declared, "Those who are considering supporting separatism should understand what dangerous consequences their actions threaten to have for world order, international stability and the authority of the U.N. Security Council's decisions that took decades to build."

Outside of NATO, many countries sided with Russia’s statement of principles.

Surprisingly, one of the most outspoken was Russia’s hostile southern neighbor, Georgia. And the reason wasn’t hard for experts to fathom.

As Richard Weitz at the Hudson Institute noted at the time, Russia could seize upon Kosovo as a precedent for fomenting separatist movements in the former Soviet republics, including South Ossetia’s drive for independence from Georgia in the Caucasus.

Jonathan Eyal, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, warned similarly, "if the Kosovo precedent is used, the Russians can also recognise ethnic Russian enclaves in places such as Georgia or Moldova. What's good for Kosovo is good for other places as well."

Their unheeded warnings have just come to pass, at the expense of thousands of dead and wounded.

Just as NATO justified its intervention in 1999 as a humanitarian defense of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians against Serbian atrocities, so Russia said it came to the defense of South Ossetia, which suffered terrible atrocities at Georgian hands in the early 1990s, after Georgian troops shelled its capital earlier this month.

In addition to Kosovo, Russia can justify its intervention on behalf of South Ossetia by pointing to any number of other precedents set by the United States: the Bush administration’s doctrine of preemption, its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, its silence in the face of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, and many more.

What difference do all these precedents and broken principles make?

By selectively turning principles into propagandist slogans for scoring points, the United States no longer occupies the political high ground. Washington’s lectures sound like hectoring, not sincere admonitions that could sway international public opinion and restrain Russian actions.

In short, by squandering its moral authority, the United States has unilaterally disarmed itself of "soft power" that was once one of our greatest weapons. And Kosovo was one of the fields upon which the United States laid down its moral arms.

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Chronology-Georgia and Russia's worsening relations

Reuters, 27/08/08

Georgia recalled all but two of its diplomats from Moscow in protest on Wednesday after Russia recognised its rebel South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions as independent.

The issue of South Ossetia's independence has bedevilled Georgia's relations with Russia. Here is a short chronology of recent major events:

April 16 - Russian President Vladimir Putin orders officials to establish semi-official ties with separatist administrations in Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia says the order is a violation of international law.

April 29 - Russia despatches extra troops to Abkhazia to counter what it says are Georgian plans for an attack. The next day NATO accuses Moscow of increasing tensions with Georgia.

May 6 - Georgia says Russia's deployment of extra troops in Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war "very close".

May 31 - Putin, now prime minister, says he backs a Georgian proposal for Abkhazia's autonomy but not full independence.

July 5 - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev urges Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to refrain from "stoking tensions" in Georgia's breakaway regions.

July 10 - Georgia recalls its ambassador from Moscow in protest over Russian fighters flying into Georgian airspace over South Ossetia.

Aug. 4 - Russia accuses Georgia of using excessive force in South Ossetia after Russian-backed rebels said Georgian artillery had killed at least six people.

Aug. 7 - The head of Russian peacekeepers in the region is quoted as saying Georgia and South Ossetian separatists agreed on a truce until they hold Russian-mediated talks.

Russia later says Georgia's military operation in South Ossetia shows Tbilisi cannot be trusted and NATO should reconsider its plans to admit Georgia.

Aug. 8 - Russia sends forces into Georgia to repel a Georgian assault on South Ossetia.

Saakashvili says the two countries are at war.

Aug. 12 - Medvedev issues orders to stop fighting in the five-day conflict. Both sides sign up in principle to a plan brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Aug. 16 - Russia signs a peace deal to end the fighting in Georgia but said "extra security measures" were needed before it could begin withdrawing its troops.

Aug. 22 - Russia says it has completed the pullout from Georgia of troops it sent in to reinforce peacekeepers.

Aug. 25 - Both chambers of Russia's parliament pass resolutions urging Medvedev to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent.

Aug. 26 - Russia recognises South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent. Medvedev says that Tbilisi's desire to seize one of the rebel zones by force killed all hopes for their peaceful co-existence in one state with Georgia.

Aug. 27 - Georgia recalls all but two of its diplomats from Moscow in protest.

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Georgia War Rooted in US Self-Deceit on NATO

By Gareth Porter
Inter Press Service, 25/08/08

The U.S. policy of absorbing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, which was enthusiastically embraced by Barack Obama and his running mate Joseph Biden, has undoubtedly been given a major boost by the Russian military operation in Georgia.

In the new narrative of the Russia-Georgia war emerging from op-eds and cable news commentaries, Georgia is portrayed as the innocent victim of Russian aggression fighting for its independence.

However, the political background to that war raises the troubling question of why the George W. Bush administration failed to heed warning signs that its policy of NATO expansion right up to Russia's ethnically troubled border with Georgia was both provocative to Russia and encouraging to a Georgian regime known to be bent on using force to recapture the secessionist territories.

There were plenty of signals that Russia would not acquiesce in the alignment of a militarily aggressive Georgia with a U.S.-dominated military alliance. Then-Russian President Vladimir Putin made no secret of his view that this represented a move by the United States to infringe on Russia's security in the South Caucasus region. In February 2007, he asked rhetorically, "Against whom is this expansion intended?"

Contrary to the portrayal of Russian policy as aimed at absorbing South Ossetia and Abkhazia into Russia and regime change in Georgia, Moscow had signaled right up to the eve of the NATO summit its readiness to reach a compromise along the lines of Taiwan's status in U.S.-China relations: formal recognition of the sovereignty over the secessionist territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in return for freedom to develop extensive economic and political relations. But it was conditioned on Georgia staying out of NATO.

That compromise was disdained by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. After a March 19 speech at the Atlantic Council in Washington, Saakashvili was asked whether Russia had offered a "Taiwan model" solution in return for Georgia stay out of NATO. "We have heard many, many suggestions of this sort," he said, but he insisted, "You cannot compromise on these issues…."

Russia, meanwhile, had made it clear that it would respond to a move toward NATO membership for Georgia by moving toward official relations with the secessionist regions.

U.S. policymakers had decided long before those developments that the NATO expansion policy would include Georgia and Ukraine. They convinced themselves that they weren't threatening Russia but only contributing to a new European security order that was divorced from the old politics of spheres of interest.

But their view of NATO expansion appears to be marked by self-deception and naiveté. The Bill Clinton administration had abandoned its original notion that Russia would be a "partner" in post-Cold War European security, and the NATO expansion policy had evolved into a de facto containment strategy.

Robert Hunter, former U.S. ambassador to NATO in the Clinton administration and head of a three-year project for the State Department on reform of the Georgian National Security Council, says the U.S. project of Georgia's membership in NATO "had to be seen by any serious observer as trying to substitute a Western sphere of influence for Russian" in that violence-prone border region of the Caucasus.

Some officials "wanted to shore up democracy," said Hunter in an interview, imagining that NATO was "a kind of glorified Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe" – a negotiating and conflict-prevention body to which the Russian Federation belongs.

But there were also some in the administration who "genuinely wanted to contain the Russians by surrounding them," he added.

James J. Townsend, director of the International Security Program at the Atlantic Council and formerly the Pentagon official in charge of European relations, said there was enthusiastic support in both the Defense Department and the State Department soon after Saakashvili took power in 2003 for integration of Georgia into NATO "as quickly as possible."

Townsend believes the project to integrate Georgia and Ukraine into NATO gained momentum in part because Washington "was underestimating just how sensitive this is to Putin." U.S. policymakers, he said, had observed that in previous rounds of enlargement, despite "a lot of bluff and bluster by the Russians," there was no Russian troop movement.

Furthermore, policymakers believed they were proving to the Russians that NATO expansion is not a threat to Russian interests, according to Townsend. They did become aware of Russia's growing assertiveness on the issue, Townsend concedes, but policymakers thought they were simply "making trouble on everything in order to have some leverage."

In the end, the bureaucracies pushing for NATO expansion were determined to push it through despite Russian opposition. "I think it was a case of wanting to get Georgia engaged before the window of opportunity closed," said Townsend.

To do so they had to ignore the risk that the promise of membership in NATO would only encourage Saakashvili, who had already vowed to "liberate" the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions, to become even more sanguine about the use of force.

In the same March 19 speech in Washington, Saakashvili minimized the problem of Russian military power in the region. He declared that the Russians "are not capable of enforcing the Taiwan model in Georgia. Their army in the Caucasus is not strong enough … to calm down the situation in their own territory. I don't think they are ready for any kind of an adventure in somebody else's territory. And hopefully they know it."

It was a clear hint that Saakashvili, newly encouraged by Bush's strong support for NATO membership, believed he could face down the Russians.

At the NATO summit, Bush met resistance from Germany and other European allies, who insisted it was "not the right time" to even begin putting Georgia and Ukraine on the road to membership. But in order to spare embarrassment to Bush, they offered a pledge that Georgia and Ukraine "will become NATO members."

Hunter believes that NATO commitment was an even more provocative signal to Putin and Saakashvili than NATO approval of a "Membership Action Plan" for Georgia would have been.

The Russians responded exactly as they said they would, taking steps toward legal recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And Saakashvili soon began making moves to prepare for a military assault on one or both regions.

In early July, Rice traveled to Tbilisi with the explicit intention of trying to rein him in. In her July 10 press conference, she made it clear that Washington was alarmed by his military moves.

"The violence needs to stop," said Rice. "And whoever is perpetrating it – and I've mentioned this to the president – there should not be violence."

David L. Phillips, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told the Los Angeles Times last week he believes that, despite State Department efforts to restrain the Georgian president, "Saakashvili's buddies in the White House and the Office of the Vice President kept egging him on."

But whether more specific encouragement took place or not, the deeper roots of the crisis lay in bureaucratic self-deceit about the objective expanding NATO up to the border of a highly suspicious and proud Russia in the context of an old and volatile ethnic conflict.

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Bush administration steps up war of words with Russia

By Patrick Martin
World Socialist Web Site, 22/08/08

US officials escalated their attacks on Russian actions in Georgia, despite mounting evidence that Russian military forces have begun pulling back from the positions seized in the wake of the Georgian onslaught on South Ossetia, one of two autonomous regions that have enjoyed de facto independence from Georgia for more than a dozen years.


White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, in a press briefing Thursday morning, cited reports that Russian troops were digging in—largely circulated by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and his supporters in the American media—and declared, "the withdrawal is not happening very quickly, if it, in fact, has begun. The withdrawal needs to take place, and needs to take place now."

In response to a direct question, Johndroe said that, in Bush’s view, "Russia is in violation of the commitments they have made" in the ceasefire pact negotiated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who visited Moscow and the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, as the representative of the European Union. The White House spokesman continued, "I can’t imagine a circumstance right now that we would engage in military cooperation with the Russians until the situation in Georgia is resolved."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice contributed to the war of words in the course of her visit to Warsaw to sign a US-Polish agreement to base American anti-missile batteries in Poland and supply the Polish military with advanced anti-aircraft weaponry. The agreement has provoked angry bluster from Russian military spokesmen, including the deputy chief of staff, who warned that Poland was risking attack.

Rice said the threats from Moscow "border on the bizarre," adding, "When you threaten Poland, you perhaps forget that it is not 1988. It’s 2008 and the United States has a ... firm treaty guarantee to defend Poland’s territory as if it was the territory of the United States. So it’s probably not wise to throw these threats around."

While Rice defended the US-Polish agreement with the claim that it is directed against a potential threat from Iran, not against Russia, there was no mistaking the implications of her words: a Georgia-style clash in Poland could touch off direct military conflict between the United States and Russia, the two states which between them control enough nuclear weapons to incinerate the planet many times over.

The most inflammatory comments came from Bush himself, in a speech Wednesday afternoon to a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars—the same group where Vice President Cheney first unveiled in 2002 the administration’s campaign for war against Iraq.

Bush focused his remarks on a full-throated defense of the program of military aggression and domestic repression which his administration has unleashed, using the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as a pretext. "We’re at war against determined enemies," he declared, "and we must not rest until that war is won."

Bush seemed determined to include in the "war on terror" not only the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also the current confrontation with Russia over Georgia, thus effectively lining up Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Georgia has "sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq to help others realize the blessings of liberty," he claimed. "Georgia has stood for freedom around the world—now the world must stand for freedom in Georgia."

This implications of such a perspective are staggering, since Bush has proclaimed the "war on terror" to be a conflict of indefinite length, perhaps generations-long, in which, as he famously declared in 2001, the entire world must decide either to be on the side of the United States or risk being targeted by the United States as an ally or potential supporter of "terrorism."

Bush concluded by emphasizing, as he has on several occasions over the past week, that the US government would brook no compromise over the autonomous territories whose people are hostile to the reestablishment of Georgian rule. "South Ossetia and Abkhazia are part of Georgia," he said flatly, "and the United States will work with our allies to ensure Georgia’s independence and territorial integrity."

The major European powers have taken a far more muted position on the status of the two territories, in part because the Abkhazians and Ossetians are minority ethnic groups long resentful of Georgian rule and, in the case of South Ossetia, likely to seek ties to North Ossetia, an autonomous region in Russia which shares their language.

There is also far more readiness in Europe to condemn the reckless adventurism of Georgian President Saakashvili, who ordered the Georgian military attack on South Ossetia, an action the British magazine the Economist characterized as "foolish and possibly criminal."

The legal status of the two territories could well become the major flash point of the conflict. The Russian parliament is to discuss next week appeals to recognize the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which could well be followed by petitions from both regions to be incorporated into the Russian Federation.

Despite the US government and media propaganda campaign, the military standoff in Georgia appears to be easing. Reuters News Agency reported that one of its correspondents had witnessed a column of T-72 main battle tanks crossing the border from Georgia back into Russia, a major indication that a Russian pullback is occurring, albeit more slowly than demanded by the US and NATO, and with more troops remaining in advanced positions to protect South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgian attack. The withdrawal column, at the Roki tunnel, included artillery launchers, armored personnel carriers and heavy truck, as well as the 21 tanks.

The commander of Russian ground forces, Vladimir Boldyrev, said all the troops sent to reinforce Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia would be back in Russia by the end of August. He made the statement in a conference call to the press from Sochi, the summer residence of much of the Russian ruling elite, located on the Black Sea coast not far from Abkhazia.

A group of Washington Post reporters, who accompanied the first humanitarian aid convoy to reach the Russian-held portion of Georgia adjacent to South Ossetia, said they found considerable destruction, but also evidence that "undermined some of the most incendiary allegations advanced by Georgian officials." They visited the village of Mereti, "where government officials had recently said three local women were raped and murdered. At least eight residents said Tuesday that no such attacks had occurred."

The reporters operated without official Russian minders. All the more significant is their finding that Russian troops—depicted as a barbarous horde in the most incendiary accounts in the Georgian and Western media—were in fact playing the role of peacekeepers. They wrote: "Georgians living in several of the villages said the Russians occupying their land had treated them well, done nothing to encourage them to leave and offered the only protection available from the South Ossetian militias they feared most."

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Russia Never Wanted a War

By Mikhail Gorbachev
New York Times, 19/08/08

(Mikhail Gorbachev is the former president of the Soviet Union)

The acute phase of the crisis provoked by the Georgian forces’ assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, is now behind us.


But how can one erase from memory the horrifying scenes of the nighttime rocket attack on a peaceful town, the razing of entire city blocks, the deaths of people taking cover in basements, the destruction of ancient monuments and ancestral graves?

Russia did not want this crisis. The Russian leadership is in a strong enough position domestically; it did not need a little victorious war. Russia was dragged into the fray by the recklessness of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili. He would not have dared to attack without outside support. Once he did, Russia could not afford inaction.

The decision by the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, to now cease hostilities was the right move by a responsible leader. The Russian president acted calmly, confidently and firmly. Anyone who expected confusion in Moscow was disappointed.

The planners of this campaign clearly wanted to make sure that, whatever the outcome, Russia would be blamed for worsening the situation. The West then mounted a propaganda attack against Russia, with the American news media leading the way.

The news coverage has been far from fair and balanced, especially during the first days of the crisis. Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins and thousands of people were fleeing-before any Russian troops arrived. Yet Russia was already being accused of aggression; news reports were often an embarrassing recitation of the Georgian leader’s deceptive statements.

It is still not quite clear whether the West was aware of Mr. Saakashvili’s plans to invade South Ossetia, and this is a serious matter. What is clear is that Western assistance in training Georgian troops and shipping large supplies of arms had been pushing the region toward war rather than peace.

If this military misadventure was a surprise for the Georgian leader’s foreign patrons, so much the worse. It looks like a classic wag-the-dog story.

Mr. Saakashvili had been lavished with praise for being a staunch American ally and a real democrat-and for helping out in Iraq. Now America’s friend has wrought disorder, and all of us-the Europeans and, most important, the region’s innocent civilians-must pick up the pieces.

Those who rush to judgment on what’s happening in the Caucasus, or those who seek influence there, should first have at least some idea of this region’s complexities. The Ossetians live both in Georgia and in Russia. The region is a patchwork of ethnic groups living in close proximity. Therefore, all talk of "this is our land," "we are liberating our land," is meaningless. We must think about the people who live on the land.

The problems of the Caucasus region cannot be solved by force. That has been tried more than once in the past two decades, and it has always boomeranged.

What is needed is a legally binding agreement not to use force. Mr. Saakashvili has repeatedly refused to sign such an agreement, for reasons that have now become abundantly clear.

The West would be wise to help achieve such an agreement now. If, instead, it chooses to blame Russia and re-arm Georgia, as American officials are suggesting, a new crisis will be inevitable. In that case, expect the worst.

In recent days, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush have been promising to isolate Russia. Some American politicians have threatened to expel it from the Group of 8 industrialized nations, to abolish the NATO-Russia Council and to keep Russia out of the World Trade Organization.

These are empty threats. For some time now, Russians have been wondering: If our opinion counts for nothing in those institutions, do we really need them? Just to sit at the nicely set dinner table and listen to lectures?

Indeed, Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts. Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defenses in neighboring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against the backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?

There is much talk now in the United States about rethinking relations with Russia. One thing that should definitely be rethought: the habit of talking to Russia in a condescending way, without regard for its positions and interests.

Our two countries could develop a serious agenda for genuine, rather than token, cooperation. Many Americans, as well as Russians, understand the need for this. But is the same true of the political leaders?

A bipartisan commission led by Senator Chuck Hagel and former Senator Gary Hart has recently been established at Harvard to report on American-Russian relations to Congress and the next president. It includes serious people, and, judging by the commission’s early statements, its members understand the importance of Russia and the importance of constructive bilateral relations.

But the members of this commission should be careful. Their mandate is to present "policy recommendations for a new administration to advance America’s national interests in relations with Russia." If that alone is the goal, then I doubt that much good will come out of it. If, however, the commission is ready to also consider the interests of the other side and of common security, it may actually help rebuild trust between Russia and the United States and allow them to start doing useful work together.

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NATO meeting in Brussels: US steps up pressure on Russia

By Stefan Steinberg
World Socialist Web Site, 20/08/08

Following intense pressure from the United States, the NATO meeting of foreign ministers held in Brussels on Tuesday issued a statement accusing Russia of "disproportionate" military force and the "deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure" in the conflict with Georgia.


The statement issued by the foreign ministers of the 26 member states affirmed "the principles of Georgia’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity"—a diplomatic formula rejecting demands, supported by Moscow, for independence for the contested breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The statement placed the onus on Moscow for the five-day war between Georgia and Russia that erupted after the Georgian government attacked South Ossetia on August 7. It declared that "military action must cease definitively and military forces must return to their positions held prior to the outbreak of hostilities." Implying that Russia was violating the terms of the cease-fire agreement brokered last week by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on behalf of the European Union, the statement called on Russia to "take immediate action to withdraw its troops from the areas it is supposed to leave..."

The US and Russia are at odds over the terms of the cease-fire agreement. Washington insists that it requires Russia to remove all the military forces it sent into Georgia after August 7 back onto Russian territory. Russia, citing a provision that allows it to take unspecified security measures, insists it can retain a beefed-up military presence within South Ossetia and deploy some forces within a buffer zone surrounding the contested provinces.

Russian President Dimitri Medvedev on Tuesday told Sarkozy that Russia’s military pull-out would be completed by August 21-22, with the exception of some 500 troops who will man posts on either side of South Ossetia’s border.

Reaffirming NATO’s support for Georgia, the statement issued Tuesday announced the formation of a NATO-Georgia Commission to oversee Georgia’s "economic reconstruction," leaving open the possibility of meeting "additional Georgian requests for assistance." The formation of the commission was linked to NATO’s statement of support, issued last April, for eventual Georgian membership in NATO—something Russia vehemently opposes as an intolerable threat to its security.

At the April NATO summit in Bucharest, the US failed to obtain support from Germany, France and other major European powers for a membership action plan for the former Soviet republic, which would put it on a fast track to join the US-dominated military alliance. The statement issued Tuesday said NATO would reconsider Georgia’s bid for a membership action plan at the next NATO summit, to be held in December.

In regard to Russia, the statement called into question the continuation of the NATO-Russia Council, established in 2002, declaring that NATO "cannot continue business as usual" with Moscow.

At a news conference following the meeting, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer denounced what he called Russia’s "occupation" of "the greater part of Georgia." When asked whether NATO was developing any new military plans to aid Georgia, de Hoop Scheffer said, "The answer is no. I think we have in place what we should have."

The NATO meeting stopped short of more punitive measures which have been floated by American officials, such as scrapping the NATO-Russia Council. However, the tone of the statement issued by the meeting was highly confrontational.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded quickly. In a televised address, he accused NATO of being "unobjective and biased" and said the alliance was "trying to portray the aggressor as the victim, to whitewash a criminal regime and to save a failing regime."

In the run-up to the meeting, the Bush administration continued to escalate its Cold War-style rhetoric against Russia as well as diplomatic and military measures of a highly provocative character. A Pentagon spokesman said on Monday that the US military planned to ramp up its "humanitarian" aid to Georgia, and the New York Times on Tuesday cited a "senior administration official" as saying the US would begin selling the Georgians hand-held anti-aircraft devices to defend against Russian air attacks.

On the flight to Brussels, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for the first time since the Georgia crisis erupted raised the issue of Russian bomber flights near the coast of Alaska. Moscow initiated the flights after the US and Europe in February recognized Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, a traditional Russian ally. Rice called the flights "a very dangerous game." She added that the US and its NATO allies would not allow Russia to "draw a new line through Europe."

Rice follows the Brussels meeting with a trip to Warsaw on Wednesday, at which she will sign an agreement announced last week for the stationing of US missile-defence installations in Poland. The deal represents an immense provocation against Russia, providing for the deployment of US Patriot missiles and the permanent stationing of American troops only a few hundred miles from the Russian border.

Notwithstanding the aggressive tone of the NATO statement, there are significant differences between key Western European countries on the one side and the US and its coterie of right-wing Eastern and Central European regimes on the other.

Leading European politicians have warned against any break in relations and expressed opposition to attempts to isolate Russia. Those speaking out for maintaining good working relations with Russia cross traditional political lines and include figures from both the conservative and social democratic camps.

Prior to the Brussels meeting, the president of the European parliament, Hans Gert Pöttering of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said, "We have to be prepared to talk... we cannot afford to isolate Russia."

The chairman of foreign affairs committee of the German parliament, Ruprecht Polenz (CDU), spoke out against any rapid admission of Georgia to NATO.

The most outspoken opponent of the campaign to isolate Russia is former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder (Social Democratic Party—SPD). In an interview published in the current issue of Der Spiegel magazine, he said relations with Russia should not jeopardized because of the Georgia crisis.

Schröder categorically rejected Georgian membership in NATO in the near term. He said: "Imagine if we were forced to intervene militarily on behalf of Georgia as a NATO country, on behalf of an obvious gambler, which is clearly the way one ought to characterize [Georgian President Mikheil] Saakashvili. Georgia and Ukraine must first resolve their domestic political problems, and they are still a long way off. I see the chances of Georgian accession becoming even more remote as a result of the recent events in the Caucasus, and in this connection I have great difficulties following the rather ostentatious promises made by the NATO secretary general a few days ago."

Following the NATO meeting, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) expressed hope for renewed dialogue with Russia and urged that the NATO-Russia Council could be convened quickly following the withdrawal of Russian troops. "According to my understanding," he said, "the NATO-Russia Council is not just a fair weather committee. It is needed when we find ourselves in difficult waters."

Even the foreign secretary of Britain, which has generally lined up behind the US, expressed reservations about some of the more draconian measures being broached in Washington. In an article in Tuesday’s London Times, David Miliband wrote that "isolation has been tried in the past and didn’t work. I favour hard-headed engagement." He added that he opposed expelling Russia from the Group of Eight industrialized nations, as US Republican presidential candidate John McCain has proposed.

There is great concern within Western Europe that a new Cold War-type confrontation between the US and Russia could split the European Union. The governments of a number of Western European states such as Germany, France and Italy are being thrown into crisis by the foreign policy realignment taking place in the US.

Leading politicians in France and Germany who had expressed opposition to the unilateral foreign and military policy of the Bush administration had entertained hopes of a change of line as a result of the November presidential election. On the issue of the US stance toward Russia, however, they have been sorely disappointed. The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are seeking to outdo one another in their declarations of hostility toward Moscow.

Among the most belligerent denouncers of Russia is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter and is now a key foreign policy advisor to the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama. Following the outbreak of hostilities in Georgia, Brzezinski declared that the action taken by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was "horrifyingly similar to that taken by Stalin and Hitler in the 1930s."

In a recent interview, Brzezinski was adamant in calling for punitive action against Russia: "Not only the West, but the rest of the international community, must make it clear that this kind of behaviour will result in ostracism and economic and financial penalties. Ultimately, if Russia continues on this course, it must face isolation in the international community."

He went to say that retaliatory measures had to go beyond excluding Russia from the G-8 and take the form of "a concerted effort on all levels—at the United Nations, in the Atlantic Council, in the EU or in NATO, in consultation with the Japanese, the Chinese and others..."

In his book The Grand Chessboard (1997), Brzezinski advocated the breaking up of Russia into a "European Russia, a Siberian Republic and a Far Eastern Republic," which, he said, would make the country less likely to engage in "imperialist mobilisation."

Hauke Ritz, a prominent German foreign policy analyst, recently published an article arguing that the failure of the US drive in southern Eurasia (Iraq and Afghanistan) meant that the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe gained priority. He wrote: "This means at the same time a massive incursion into the Russian sphere of influence... following Iran, Russia is now trapped in the cross-hairs of US geo-politics."

The evident consensus within US political circles for a confrontational course toward Russia is intensifying the fundamental dilemma of Europe. Unable to risk a military confrontation with America, European powers risk being reduced to the status of pawns as the US intervenes with increasing recklessness into Eastern Europe and Russia.

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Putin Makes His Move

By Robert Kagan
Washington Post, 19/08/08

(Robert Kagan is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His most recent book is "The Return of History and the End of Dreams." He served in the State Department in the Reagan administration.)

The details of who did what to precipitate Russia's war against Georgia are not very important. Do you recall details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama.


This war did not begin because of a miscalculation by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. It is a war that Moscow has attempted to provoke for some time.

The man who once called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century" has re-established virtual czarist rule in Russia and is trying to restore his country's dominant role in Eurasia and the world. Armed with wealth from oil and gas; holding a near-monopoly over the energy supply to Europe; with a million soldiers, thousands of nuclear warheads and the world's third-largest military budget, Vladimir Putin believes that now is the time to make his move.

Georgia's unhappy fate is that it borders a new fault line along the western and southwestern frontiers of Russia. From the Baltics in the north through Central Europe and the Balkans to the Caucasus and Central Asia, a geopolitical power struggle has emerged between a resurgent and revanchist Russia on one side and the European Union and the United States on the other.

Putin's aggression against Georgia should not be traced only to its NATO aspirations or his pique at Kosovo's independence. It is primarily a response to revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia in 2003 and 2004, when pro-Western governments replaced pro-Russian ones. Ever since, Putin has been determined to stop and, if possible, reverse the pro-Western trend on his borders. He seeks to bring Georgia and Ukraine under Russian control and to carve out a zone of influence within NATO, with a lesser security status for countries along Russia's strategic flanks. That is the primary motive behind Moscow's opposition to U.S. missile defense programs in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russia precipitated a war against Georgia by encouraging South Ossetian rebels to raise the pressure on Tbilisi and make demands that no Georgian leader could accept. If Saakashvili had not fallen into Putin's trap this time, something else would have eventually sparked the conflict.

Diplomats in Europe and Washington believe Saakashvili made a mistake by sending troops to South Ossetia. Perhaps. But his truly monumental mistake was to be president of a small, mostly democratic, adamantly pro-Western nation on the border of Putin's Russia.

Historians will come to view Aug. 8, 2008, as a turning point no less significant than Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Russia's attack on sovereign Georgian territory marked the official return of history, indeed to an almost 19th-century style of great-power competition, complete with virulent nationalisms, battles for resources, struggles over spheres of influence and territory, and use of military power to obtain geopolitical objectives.

Yes, we will continue to have globalization, economic interdependence, the European Union and other efforts to build a more perfect international order. But these will compete with, and at times be overwhelmed by, the harsh realities of international life that have endured since time immemorial.

The next president had better be ready.

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Georgia's Israeli arms point Russia to Iran

By Peter Hirschberg
Inter Press Service, 14/08/08

JERUSALEM - With the eruption of fighting between Russia and Georgia, Israel has found itself in an awkward position as a result of its arms sales to Georgia. Israel is now caught between its friendly relations with Georgia and its fear that the continued sale of weaponry will spark Russian retribution in the form of increased arms sales to Iran and Syria.


After fighting broke out late last week between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Israel's Foreign Ministry over the weekend recommended suspending the sale of all weapons and defense-related equipment to Georgia, the daily Ha'aretz newspaper reported.

The paper quoted an unnamed senior official saying that Israel needed "to be very careful and sensitive these days. The Russians are selling many arms to Iran and Syria and there is no need to offer them an excuse to sell even more advanced weapons."

Israel's immediate concern is that Russia will proceed with the sale of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran, which would help it defend its nuclear installations from aerial attack. Israel, like the US, believes that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at developing a bomb, and Israeli leaders have refused to rule out the possibility of a pre-emptive strike aimed at derailing Iran's nuclear aspirations.

Israel recently conducted a major aerial exercise over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece that was widely viewed as a rehearsal for a possible strike against Iran's nuclear installations. But with the US and Europe resorting to diplomatic pressure in the form of sanctions to deter Iran, Israel is loathe to anger Russia, which until now has opposed harsher sanctions on Tehran.

Israel's relations with Georgia have been close, partly because there is a large Georgian Jewish community in Israel. In recent years, ties have also taken on a military dimension, with military industries in Israel supplying Georgia with some US$200 million worth of equipment since 2000. This has included remotely piloted planes, rockets, night-vision equipment, other electronic systems and training by former senior Israeli officers.

"Israel should be proud of its military, which trained Georgian soldiers," Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili told Israel's Army Radio in Hebrew shortly after the fighting erupted.

Israel is not a major supplier of arms to Georgia, with the US and France supplying Tbilisi with most of its weaponry. But the arms transfers have attracted media attention partly because of the role played by some high-profile Israeli figures, including former Tel Aviv mayor Roni Milo, who conducted business in Georgia on behalf of Israel Military Industries.

According to media reports, Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, a senior commander in the 2006 Lebanon war who resigned after the release of a highly critical report on the way the war was conducted, served as an adviser to Georgian security forces.

Further attention was drawn to the Israel-Georgia arms trade earlier this year when a Russian jet shot down an Israeli-made drone being operated by the Georgians.

Even though weapons transfers were modest in scope, Russian diplomats began increasingly relaying to Israel their annoyance over its military aid to Georgia, including the special forces training provided by security experts. Israel decided about a year ago to limit military exports to defensive equipment and training.

New contracts weren't approved as the arms sales were scaled back. Georgia's request for 200 advanced Israeli-made Merkava tanks, for example, was turned down.

There were reports in Israel that the sale of the tanks didn't go through because of a disagreement over the commission that was to be paid as part of the deal. But Amos Yaron, the former director general of the Defense Ministry, insisted it had to do with "security-diplomatic considerations"-a clear reference to the sensitivity of the arms sales to Georgia. Israel, Yaron added, didn't want "to harm Russian interests too much".

Asked about the motivation to initially engage in the sale of weaponry to Georgia despite concerns it might anger Russia, Yaron replied: "We did see that there was potential for a conflagration in the region but Georgia is a friendly state, it's supported by the US, and so it was difficult to refuse."

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Bush escalates confrontation with Russia over Georgia

By Barry Grey
World Socialist Web Site, 12/08/08

In a provocative statement delivered from the White House Rose Garden on Monday, President George W. Bush escalated the confrontation between the United States and Russia over the current fighting in Georgia.

Bush denounced what he called Russia’s "dramatic and brutal" military escalation and demanded that Moscow agree to an immediate cease-fire and the withdrawal of its troops from the Caucasian country on its border. He accused Russia of planning to bomb the Tbilisi airport and charged that Moscow was seeking to overthrow the pro-US government of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Bush reiterated US statements about the inviolability of Georgian sovereignty and territorial integrity—diplomatic language supporting the efforts of the government in Tbilisi to reestablish control over the breakaway pro-Russian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Bush’s remarks followed a statement Sunday by Vice President Dick Cheney, who said Russian "aggression" could not go unanswered. Cheney’s intervention suggested the existence of a faction within the Bush administration that is pushing for a more aggressive US response to the Russian intervention in Georgia.

The statements from the White House express a staggering level of hypocrisy. The US government issued no protest when Georgian military forces attacked South Ossetia last Thursday night, indiscriminately targeting apartment blocs in the capital of Tskhinvali with tank cannon and mortars. It is estimated that the Georgian invaders killed 2,000 civilians, a bloodletting that accounts for the vast bulk of civilian deaths to date.

It was only when the Russian military responded to the Georgian attack with a rapid and massive counteroffensive, crushing the much smaller Georgian force, that Washington became alarmed.

There is nothing remotely progressive in the military actions taken by the Putin regime. The Russian ruling elite is pursuing its own predatory aims in the Caucasus, a region that was ruled for two centuries by Moscow before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Moreover, the eruption of war in the Caucasus underscores the tragic consequences of the dissolution of the USSR. It has exposed the masses of the former Soviet Union, including Russia and the other Soviet republics, to the dangers of war and the predations of the major imperialist powers. For the peoples of the former USSR, the answer is to be found not in the nationalist and militaristic policies of Putin, but rather in the internationalist program of socialist revolution.

Notwithstanding the reactionary aims of the Russian regime, no objective observer can contest the fact that Washington’s provocative policy toward Russia—aimed at supplanting Russia in its long-time spheres of influence—is the primary factor behind the eruption of war between Russia and Georgia.

The media has been virtually silent on the visit just one month ago of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Georgia. Rice held talks with Saakashvili and gave a press conference at which she denounced Russia, backed Saakashvili’s efforts to reassert Georgian control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and reiterated US support for Georgia’s incorporation into NATO.

Russia has made clear that it considers the entry of former Soviet republics such as Georgia and Ukraine into NATO an intolerable threat to its security. Were Georgia already a part of NATO, as Moscow is well aware, the alliance’s member states would be legally bound to intervene military in Georgia’s support.

It is inconceivable that Saakashvili did not review in detail with Rice his plans for a military assault on South Ossetia. Georgia—which is totally dependent on US military, diplomatic and financial support—could not take such a portentous action without informing Washington in advance and securing American sanction.

Preparations for the attack would have been far advanced when Rice met with Saakashvili a month ago. The Georgian military, moreover, is dominated from top to bottom by US military advisers.

The United States has been pouring military aid into Georgia ever since the US-led air war against Serbia in 1999, and the pace and scale of American military aid have accelerated since Washington engineered the so-called "Rose Revolution" that brought Harvard-educated Saakashvili to power in early 2004.

An article in Monday’s New York Times describes "a Pentagon effort to overhaul Georgia’s forces from bottom to top." The article states: "At senior levels, the United States helped rewrite Georgian military doctrine and train its commanders and staff officers. At the squad level, American marines and soldiers trained Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of battle.

"Georgia, meanwhile, began re-equipping its forces with Israeli and American firearms, reconnaissance drones, communications and battlefield management equipment, new convoys of vehicles and stockpiles of ammunition."

As for the principle of national sovereignty and territorial integrity, the US is highly selective when it comes to its application. No one in either political party or in the establishment media has sought to explain why Serbia’s military intervention against Kosovan separatists was a war crime, while Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia was legitimate.

The Bush administration was the prime mover behind Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia last February, on grounds indistinguishable from those claimed by anti-Georgian separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Moreover, the US encouraged and financed the forces that sought to effect the secession of Chechnya from Russia in the 1990s.

Since the United States was clearly involved in the Georgian assault on South Ossetia, one must ask what were its intentions. It is difficult to believe that US policy makers believed Russia would take no action in response to such an immense provocation. Why then, would they support a move that would bring Russia into a direct conflict with one of Washington’s principal allies in the Caucasus—a region that constitutes a bridgehead between the resource-rich Caspian Basin and Western Europe and houses critical oil and gas pipelines?

The only plausible answer is that the United States is deliberately seeking a major escalation of tensions between Russia and the West. Even if the current conflict does not spiral immediately into a wider conflagration, the fate of "little Georgia" will be invoked by the United States to justify a far more aggressive and confrontational stance toward Russia.

The demands being raised by the Bush administration, the European Union, the United Nations and others for a return to the "status quo ante" in Georgia are drenched in hypocrisy. They all know very well that the US is not about to abandon what it has come to see as a critical prop to its position in the Caucasus and its long-term perspective of reducing Russia to a semi-colonial status.

The resumption of something akin to the Cold War underscores the real motives that underlay the decades of confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union. American imperialism considered the Soviet Union—and continues to view Russia—as an obstacle to its geo-strategic aim of securing hegemony over Eurasia.

There is undoubtedly a domestic political component to the US-backed provocation against Russia as well. The Bush administration and the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, want the November elections to take place under conditions of immense international crisis. They calculate that an environment of fear and insecurity will strengthen McCain’s chances, since a major prop of his campaign is his supposed foreign policy experience and national security expertise.

Obama, predictably and pathetically, is responding by seeking to assert his own militaristic credentials. Within minutes of Bush’s threatening statement against Russia on Monday, Obama issued his own denunciation of Russia in terms almost identical to those of Bush and McCain.

The immensely dangerous implications of the eruption of war in the Caucasus leave no doubt about where the drive of imperialism to carve up the world is leading. US imperialism intends to let nothing stand in the way of its goal of establishing global hegemony. It is dragging the American working class and the world into a catastrophe.

The only force that can stop it is the revolutionary mobilization of the American and international working class.

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Military conflict between Russia and Georgia escalates

By Ann Talbot
World Socialist Web Site, 11/08/08

The war that erupted August 7 between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia escalated over the weekend. Some 2,000 people are thought to have been killed, according to estimates given by both sides. Tens of thousands have been injured or driven from their homes by shelling and air attacks.

The US-backed regime in Tbilisi sent troops into South Ossetia last Thursday and carried out bombing attacks on the capital of Tskhinvali in an attempt to reassert Georgian control over the breakaway region, which has exercised de facto self-rule since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia has deployed "peacekeeping" troops in the region, which is allied with Moscow against the government of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

In the face of a large-scale military response by Russia, Georgia claims to have withdrawn its forces from South Ossetia. Russian forces are now in control of Tskhinvali, the republic’s capital.

Underlying the military confrontation is US imperialism’s drive to isolate Russia and establish American hegemony over the energy resources of Central Asia and their transit routes through the Caucasus, utilizing the Saakashvili regime as its cat’s paw. The Russian ruling elite, for its part, is seeking to reassert its control over a region that was ruled by Moscow for two centuries before the break-up of the USSR.

Russian forces have carried out attacks beyond the borders of South Ossetia, including air attacks on the Georgian town of Gori that reportedly killed at least 60 civilians in two apartment blocks. There are reports that Russian jets bombed the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, but failed to damage it. The Russian Black Sea fleet has moved to blockade the Georgian port of Poti, which was attacked by Russian jets on Saturday. Tbilisi airport and military facilities near the airport have also come under air attack.

At least two Russian fighters have been shot down. The Georgians claim to have downed six Russian jets.

By Sunday the conflict threatened to extend to other parts of the Caucasus, as forces of Abkhazia, another Russian-backed breakaway republic, launched attacks on Georgian positions in the upper Kodori Gorge. Russian jets were reported to be supporting the Abkhaz ground troops.

"At this point we are particularly concerned that the conflict appears to be spreading beyond South Ossetia into Abkhazia," the UN assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping, Edmond Mulet, said.

A war on three fronts seems to be opening up as the Abkhazian border, South Ossetia and the area of Gali and Zugdidi come under attack from Russian and Russian-backed forces. Georgian President Saakashvili has appealed for a ceasefire and for international help to open up corridors for the evacuation of wounded and trapped civilians.

Refugees fleeing into Russia described how Tskhinvali and surrounding villages came under heavy bombardment from Grad missiles and tanks as the Georgian forces advanced. There are claims of Georgian atrocities against the civilian population.

The outbreak of war between Russia and Georgia is the culmination of long-escalating tensions. It can be understood only in the context of US foreign policy in the former Soviet republics and the former Yugoslavia.

Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Washington pursued a policy of weakening Russia by isolating it and curtailing its influence in the former Soviet spheres of influence in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The dismemberment of Yugoslavia, encouraged by both the US and the Western European powers, was directed above all against Moscow, which had long considered Belgrade an important ally. This reached a culmination in the 1999 US-led NATO air war against Serbia, followed in 2000 by the toppling of the Milosevic regime in the first of the US-engineered "colour revolutions" of this decade.

Saakashvili was brought to power in Georgia by the so-called "Rose Revolution" of 2003. Like the "Orange Revolution" of 2005 in Ukraine, it was engineered by Washington to place a pro-American regime in power on Russia’s doorstep.

Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze was forced to resign and was replaced by a group of younger Georgian politicians who had been among his protégés. Saakashvili was one of this group. A Harvard-educated lawyer, he presented himself as a suitable figure to act as the US point-man in the Caucasus, with a mission to introduce "free market" economic measures and protect the vital Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipelines.

Since the US-engineered regime change in Georgia, Washington has flooded the country with military aid and deployed 160 military advisers to build up its armed forces.

US policy in Georgia is part of a strategy to incorporate former Soviet republics into NATO, create military bases and deploy anti-missile defence systems on Russia’s borders. The US has established military bases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia and the Baltic states.

President Bush promised Saakashvili NATO membership at the NATO summit earlier this year. Washington’s NATO allies in Western Europe, however, blocked any early admission of Georgia into NATO, seeing such a move as an unnecessary provocation against Russia, upon which they defend for energy supplies.

Tensions between Georgia and Russia over the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia were exacerbated by Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia last February. Washington was the prime mover behind Kosovo’s secession, which was carried out in violation of a number of international agreements. Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened at the time to use the precedent of Kosovo to support South Ossetian and Abkhazian demands for separation from Georgia, and soon after, Moscow granted Russian passports to citizens of the two nominally Georgian republics.

The eruption of military conflict between Russia and Georgia was all but inevitable given the highly aggressive and provocative character of US policy in the region and the nationalist and expansionist aims of the Putin regime in Moscow. There is little doubt that Washington gave Tbilisi the green light to attack South Ossetia. The Georgian offensive came only weeks after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Tbilisi and held talks with Saakashvili. Rice denounced Russia during her visit and reiterated US backing for Georgian membership in NATO.

After the fighting erupted last week, the US agreed to fly home the 2,000 Georgian troops who make up the third largest contingent of "coalition" forces in Iraq.

The response of US and its Western allies to the conflict between Russia and Georgia has been thoroughly hypocritical. President Bush, who is in Beijing for the Olympic Games, on Saturday demanded "an end to the Russian bombing." Backing Saakashvili’s call for a cease-fire, he declared, "Georgia is a sovereign nation and its territorial integrity must be respected." He urged "a return by the parties to the status quo of August the 6th."

Bush failed to square his concern for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia with the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and its support for the secession of Kosovo from Serbia.

Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for the US presidency, responded in almost identical terms. "I condemn Russia’s aggressive actions and reiterate my call for an immediate ceasefire," Obama said in a statement. He also demanded that Russia withdraw its ground forces from Georgia.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain likewise placed the entire blame for the war on Russia, saying, "For many years, I have warned against Russian actions that undermine the sovereignty of its neighbours."

A statement from the European Union took a similar tone. It expressed "commitment to the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Georgia" and urged Russia to respect Georgia’s borders.

It is widely recognized that the US and its Georgian client regime badly miscalculated in launching last week’s offensive against South Ossetia. Moscow’s rapid and massive military response evidently took them both by surprise. Russia has seized on the Georgian provocation to consolidate its control over the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and demonstrate its ability and readiness to use military force to secure the interests of the nationalist regime in the Kremlin.

In a thinly veiled attack on the United States, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday, "Those who have been supplying arms to Georgia, I believe they should feel part of the blame for the loss of life of civilians, including many Russian citizens and peacekeepers. I think those who have been appeasing Mr. Saakashvili’s aggressive intentions and who helped create a feeling of impunity among the Georgian leadership should think twice."

The eruption of war in the Caucasus, containing the threat of a direct military confrontation between the US and Russia—the two biggest nuclear powers—reflects the extraordinarily tense and explosive state of international relations. The sharpening of conflicts between the major powers is itself a product of the deepening economic crisis of world capitalism, which finds its most concentrated expression in the decline in the global economic position of the United States. The reckless and provocative character of US foreign policy, and its increasing reliance on military violence, are bound up with the attempt of the American ruling elite to offset its economic decline by utilizing its continued military dominance.

The Russian ruling elite, for its part, wants to utilize its newfound oil wealth to promote its imperial ambitions in the former Soviet sphere of influence while whipping up Great Russian chauvinism within its own borders.

The conflict in the Caucasus contains the seeds of a far wider conflagration, raising the specter of a new global eruption of imperialist war. Alluding to the events that followed the June, 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and culminated in the outbreak of World War I two months later, Dmitri Trenin, senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and deputy director of its Moscow center, issued the following warning in a piece published on the Washington Post web site on Sunday:

"So far, each step in the Caucasus drama has put the conflict on a yet higher plane. The next step will no longer be just about the Caucasus, or even Europe. Remember the Guns of August."

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Black Sea Watershed

By Ronald D. Asmus and Richard Holbrooke
Washington Post, 11/08/08

In weeks and years past, each of us has argued on this page that Moscow was pursuing a policy of regime change toward Georgia and its pro-Western, democratically elected president, Mikheil Saakashvili. We predicted that, absent strong and unified Western diplomatic involvement, we were headed toward a war. Now, tragically, an escalation of violence in South Ossetia has culminated in a full-scale Russian invasion of Georgia. The West, and especially the United States, could have prevented this war. We have arrived at a watershed moment in the West's post-Cold War relations with Russia.

Exactly what happened in South Ossetia last week is unclear. Each side will argue its own version. But we know, without doubt, that Georgia was responding to repeated provocative attacks by South Ossetian separatists controlled and funded by Moscow. This is a not a war Georgia wanted; it believed that it was slowly gaining ground in South Ossetia through a strategy of soft power.

Whatever mistakes Tbilisi has made, they cannot justify Russia's actions. Moscow has invaded a neighbor, an illegal act of aggression that violates the U.N. Charter and fundamental principles of cooperation and security in Europe. Beginning a well-planned war (including cyber-warfare) as the Olympics were opening violates the ancient tradition of a truce to conflict during the Games. And Russia's willingness to create a war zone 25 miles from the Black Sea city of Sochi, where it is to host the Winter Games in 2014, hardly demonstrates its commitment to Olympic ideals. In contrast, Moscow's timing suggests that Putin seeks to overthrow Saakashvili well ahead of our elections, and thus avoid beginning relations with the next president on an overtly confrontational note.

Russia's goal is not simply, as it claims, restoring the status quo in South Ossetia. It wants regime change in Georgia. It has opened a second front in the other disputed Georgian territory, Abkhazia, just south of Sochi. But its greatest goal is to replace Saakashvili-a man Vladimir Putin despises-with a president who would be more subject to Moscow's influence. As Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt pointed out Saturday, Moscow's rationale for invading has parallels to the darkest chapters of Europe's history. Having issued passports to tens of thousands of Abkhazians and South Ossetians, Moscow now claims it must intervene to protect them-a tactic reminiscent of one used by Nazi Germany at the start of World War II.

Moscow seeks to roll back democratic breakthroughs on its borders, to destroy any chance of further NATO or E.U. enlargement and to reestablish a sphere of hegemony over its neighbors. By trying to destroy a democratic, pro-Western Georgia, Moscow is sending a message that, in its part of the world, being close to Washington and the West does not pay.

This moment could well mark the end of an era in Europe during which realpolitik and spheres of influence were supposed to be replaced by new cooperative norms and a country's right to choose its own path. Hopes for a more liberal Russia under President Dmitry Medvedev will need to be reexamined. His justification for this invasion reads more like Brezhnev than Gorbachev. While no one wants a return to Cold War-style confrontation, Moscow's behavior poses a direct challenge to European and international order.

What can we do? First, Georgia deserves our solidarity and support. (Georgia has supported us; its more than 2,000 troops are the third-largest contingent in Iraq-understandably those troops are being recalled.) We must get the fighting stopped and preserve Georgia's territorial integrity within its current international border. As soon as hostilities cease, there should be a major, coordinated transatlantic effort to help Tbilisi rebuild and recover.

Second, we should not pretend that Russia is a neutral peacekeeper in conflicts on its borders. Russia is part of the problem, not the solution. For too long, Moscow has used existing international mandates to pursue neo-imperial policies. We must disavow these mandates and insist on truly neutral international forces, under the United Nations, to monitor a future cease-fire and to mediate.

Third, we need to counter Russian pressure on its neighbors, especially Ukraine-most likely the next target in Moscow's efforts to create a new sphere of hegemony. The United States and the European Union must be clear that Ukraine and Georgia will not be condemned to some kind of gray zone.

Finally, the United States and the European Union must make clear that this kind of aggression will affect our relations and Russia's standing in the West. While Western military intervention in Georgia is out of the question-and no one wants a 21st-century version of the Cold War-Moscow's actions cannot be ignored. There is a vast array of political, economic and other areas in which Russia's role and standing will have to be reexamined. Moscow must also be put on notice that its own prestige project-the Sochi Olympics-will be affected by its behavior.

Weak Western diplomacy and lack of transatlantic unity failed to prevent an avoidable war. Only strong transatlantic unity can stop this war and begin to repair the immense damage done. Otherwise, we can add one more issue to the growing list of this administration's foreign policy failures.

Ronald D. Asmus, a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, is executive director of the Brussels-based Transatlantic Center of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Richard Holbrooke, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration, writes a monthly column for The Post.

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