Play ball with Russia

By Dimitri K. Simes
Los Angeles Times, 22/03/07

The Kremlin softened its position on Iran; now it rightfully expects the U.S. to listen up on Kosovo.

Here's some good news: Russia is moving toward cooperating with the United States when it comes to Iran. This week at a Senate hearing, a State Department representative indicated that Russia could be expected to press Iran on the matter of nuclear proliferation. It's also becoming clear that the Kremlin would support further sanctions against Iran and would withhold nuclear fuel from the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But that good news could change.

The Kremlin's movement toward the U.S. position on Iran comes in part from a reluctance to see a nuclear-armed Iran, concern over Ahmadinejad's unpredictability, eagerness to avoid a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and frustration over contractual disputes with Tehran. But it is also a gesture toward the Bush administration and European powers that Moscow wants to be viewed as a responsible player in the world arena.

Now Russia is waiting for the U.S. response on issues important to the Kremlin. First up is the question of independence for the Serbian region of Kosovo. Populated by ethnic Albanians, Kosovo was an integral part of Serbia until 1999, when a U.S.-orchestrated NATO intervention-without a U.N. Security Council mandate-seized the territory and established what is essentially a U.N. protectorate under de facto administration by NATO.

Now, with billions of dollars spent, NATO wants to end its mission. On March 26, the United Nations is expected to consider gradual independence for Kosovo. The Kosovo government has embraced the proposal, but Serbia, which wants to regain control of Kosovo, rejects it. Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica complains that by granting Kosovo independence, the United Nations would for the first time formally break up a sovereign member state without its consent.

But much more than the rights of the Serbs and the Kosovars is at stake, and this is where things get complicated. Moscow, which has a veto on the Security Council, has made clear that it will oppose any plan opposed by Serbia. Except, possibly, under one set of circumstances: Moscow could theoretically be persuaded to abstain on the condition that independence would also be granted to pro-Russian separatist enclaves in the country of Georgia.

Like Kosovo vis-a-vis Serbia, those Georgian enclaves-Abkhazia and South Ossetia-have enjoyed effective independence for years, and their populations have lists of grievances against Georgians. Georgia, however, considers them its territory, and Georgia is quickly becoming the No. 1 U.S. client state in the Caucasus.

A reasonable solution would be to find a compromise that would win Serbia's support by either falling short of complete independence or by allowing a few areas of Kosovo to remain in Serbia, thus setting a middle-of-the-road precedent for Georgia's regions as well.

But for an influential group of neoconservatives and liberal interventionists inside and outside the Bush administration, compromise is unacceptable. For them, foreign policy is a morality play; the Russians are the bad guys and should be taught a lesson rather than being "rewarded" with a deal.

Thus, for example, Richard Holbrooke-an architect of the U.S.-led attack on Yugoslavia in 1999-accuses Russia of daring to "defy" the U.S. and its allies on Kosovo and says the issue is "a key test of Russia's relationship with the West." Holbrooke likewise urges that inviting Georgia to join NATO, with South Ossetia and Abkhazia included, should become a "test case of the Western relationship with Russia." It is easy to predict Moscow's reaction.

Meanwhile, Holbrooke has an ally inside the Bush administration-Dan Fried, assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs. Fried maintains that whether Moscow likes it or not, Kosovo will not be a precedent for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. "It just isn't, and it won't be," he declared at a State Department briefing.

The only problem is that although Russia cannot stop Kosovo from becoming independent, it can prevent a Georgian takeover of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Russian military has contingency plans not only to block any possible Georgian offensive into the two territories but to strike back at Georgia proper. For its part, the Georgian parliament has passed a resolution supporting NATO membership, and its parliament speaker, Nino Burjanadze, explained that membership was important because it would help "to restore the territorial sovereignty of Georgia."

It is easy to see where the hard-line American path will lead: a major dispute with Russia over the independence of remote regions that have little to do with U.S. interests. But the dispute itself will have an effect on very important American interests, by undermining efforts to have Russia onboard with American policy toward Iran and as a responsible partner on other issues.

U.S.-Russian relations cannot exist on two parallel tracks: one in which we demand the Kremlin's cooperation on such things as nonproliferation and terrorism, and another in which Russian perspectives are contemptuously dismissed. It's clear which track is best for U.S. interests.

Dimitri K. Simes is president of the Nixon Center and publisher of the National Interest magazine.

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Saudis Aim to Roll Back Iranian Influence in Region

Council on Foreign Relations, 16/03/07

Saudi Arabia seems very active these days diplomatically. King Abdullah has met with the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Saudis have more or less put together an informal alliance of other Sunni majority states in the region. And they have even reportedly met with Israelis. What's going on here?


Interviewee: F. Gregory Gause III, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Vermont
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

F. Gregory Gause III F. Gregory Gause III, a leading Saudi Arabia expert, says the intensified Saudi diplomacy of recent weeks has been largely aimed at containing Iranian influence in the Middle East. Citing Lebanon and the Palestinian peace process as examples, Gause says the Saudis are trying "a sophisticated way to limit Iranian influence in places where the Iranians seem to be getting stronger."

The Saudis are playing a delicate balancing game. On the one hand, they want to contain Iranian influence. There's not much they can do in Iraq right now. But certainly at the peripheries of Iranian influence they're trying to roll it back. On the other hand, they don't want an open confrontation with Iran. They remember the 1980s when Ayatollah Khomeini was castigating them and the Iran-Iraq war was going on. That wasn't a comfortable time for them. The Saudis are playing a pretty nuanced balance-of-power game. Bring the Iranians in, talk to them, try to make deals with them where deals can be made, say perhaps in Lebanon, but at the same time, try to—in a sophisticated way—limit Iranian influence in places where the Iranians seem to be getting stronger.

Is this apart from the U.S. efforts in the Security Council on suspending Iran's nuclear program?

It's parallel. There's nothing the Saudis can do about Iranian nuclear stuff except signal that if the Iranians go nuclear, they'll consider going nuclear too. And they've made those signals. However, the Saudis can work in the region to try to constrain and contain Iranian influence, particularly in Arab contexts, in Lebanon and among Palestinians—not so much in Iraq these days. Their approach to Iran is parallel to the United States' efforts but not exactly the same. The Saudis are more reluctant to confront Iran directly than many people in Washington are.

On Lebanon, it has seemed to be a lot quieter recently. Hezbollah was threatening to bring down the government in Lebanon. Do you think that these talks the Saudis had with the Iranians helped calm it down?

There's clearly something going on in Lebanon. There's now talk across the divide between the government and the opposition forces led by Hezbollah. Whether it's going to actually lead to some kind of solution, that's up in the air because Syria's involved in that too. One of the major issues, of course, is this international tribunal on the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, as well as a number of other Lebanese figures. The Syrians are against that because it will probably implicate some people in the Syrian government. But the Saudis are working very hard to try to get that done because if they can be the power broker in Lebanon, it will reduce Iranian influence in Lebanon—in that Hezbollah would be working through Saudi Arabia to deal with the government—and it will reduce the chances of some kind of blowup in Lebanon that could spread and perhaps draw the Israelis in, as in last summer.

Talking about the Israelis, high on the agenda right now is this Saudi peace plan that was offered after 9/11 by then Crown Prince Abdullah, now King Abdullah, which calls for a return to the pre-1967 [War] borders for peace. The Israelis, under U.S. prodding, have shown some interest in this. This is going to be reapproved at an Arab League meeting?

Yes. It's going to come up again at the Arab League summit, which is next week in Riyadh, but I don't think it's going to be a major thing. I think they're just going to reaffirm their support for the peace plan. You know, the details of that plan are a nonstarter. They're a step backward from where the [Ehud] Barak government and [Yasir] Arafat were in 2000 and early 2001. It's more of an atmospheric thing. I don't think it's going to be a basis for any kind of forward movement on the Arab-Israeli peace process.

The Saudis brokered the meeting between Hamas and Fatah, which has led now to the apparent formation of a new Palestinian government. Is this a big deal for the Saudis?

It is a big deal for the Saudis, but in relation to Iran more than in relation to the peace process. Hamas had been increasingly reliant on Iran, politically and financially. And the Saudis are trying to bring Hamas back into their fold, as it were. So for the Saudis, the bigger goal there was to cut Iran out, and if the cost of that is a Hamas-Fatah deal that the Israelis don't like and the Americans don't like, and doesn't really advance the peace process, well, so be it. The Iranians have had their wings clipped.

And that's the deal on this Palestinian government. One can look at the new Palestinian government and say, "Well, they didn't explicitly accept Israel's right to exist, and thus the West and Israel aren't going to deal with them and shouldn't deal with them," That seems to be the American and Israeli position. One could also look at the personnel in the government: the new foreign minister, Ziyad Abu Amr, and the new finance minister, Salam Fayyad, both of whom are pretty moderate and have worked with Western institutions and Western countries before, and one could say, "Maybe we should engage these guys." It's an open question. One could almost do a "good cop, bad cop" on this and have the Europeans engage and the Americans hold back.

Do you have any information about these reported meetings between Saudis and Israelis?

I don't have any kind of private information on that. I have no doubt they occur.

This is by Prince Bandar, the former ambassador to the United States?

Yes. This wouldn't be the first time that Prince Bandar had met with Israeli officials.

Oh, I see. I didn't realize he had been doing this.

Yes. He actually was pretty open when he was ambassador in Washington about trying to facilitate contacts between the American Jewish community and Saudi officials. It's a short step from there to meet with actual, real live Israelis. His reputation certainly in the region is someone who's willing to have those kinds of meetings. And it fit very much into the fear in Saudi Arabia about Iranian influence and the general American push to try to organize some kind of regional front. It fits into new Saudi activism in Lebanon, because obviously the Israelis are an interested party in what goes on in Lebanon. And the Palestinians too. So it fits in a lot of ways, it just makes a lot of sense. The number of sources who have reported this is pretty substantial.

On overall U.S.-Saudi relations, how would you describe them right now?

I'd say they're pretty good. Certainly the crisis of 9/11 has basically been put in the past. There's cooperation on the security front, and on the war on terrorism issues, [ but] perhaps not so much as people in the United States would like, particularly on financing issues—the private money coming out of Saudi Arabia funding groups, whether in Iraq or al-Qaeda affiliates.

The United States would like to see a more active Saudi role there, but there is cooperation. There's a general agreement on trying to limit Iranian influence. But there are differences of opinion. That's clear on the Palestinian issue, with the Saudis basically being the godfathers of this new Palestinian government. There are differences of opinion on how to deal with Iran down the road. The Saudis fear direct confrontation because they fear they'll be the ones on the front line when the Iranians retaliate, whereas people in the U.S. government would be more likely to contemplate a confrontation with Iran. But relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia aren't too bad right now. OPEC [Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries] hasn't cut its production, so basically the Saudis are saying, "We'll keep production where it is," and they can live with oil prices in the fifty-dollar-per-barrel range rather than up toward seventy dollars [per barrel].

Talk a bit about the Saudi role, or lack of, in Iraq. Do they have any influence on the Sunnis in Iraq?

I'm quite struck by how passive Saudi Arabia has been on the Iraqi front since the war. They were really caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, they didn't like the way things were going. They didn't like the increasing Shiite influence in Iraq. They didn't like the Iranian influence in Iraq. On the other hand, they're not going to actively support people who are killing Americans. Because that would severely damage their relationship with their major security partner, the United States. And also, they have their own problem with these al-Qaeda types at home. They're much more wary than they were when we both were helping to fund the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. The Saudi government is much more leery of this Salafi jihadist Sunni opposition in Iraq. I don't doubt at all that there are private sources in Saudi Arabia who are helping to fund the Iraqi insurgency, and of course, Saudis are involved as recruits in the insurgency, fighting against the United States.

But the government has been pretty passive. Now, that doesn't mean they don't have influence with Iraqi personalities. They undoubtedly have contacts with tribal figures, Sunni and Shiite probably, but definitely Sunni. But it doesn't seem like they're exercised the kind of influence that they've exercised in Lebanon or among the Palestinians.

And I guess the latest developments have, in effect, fulfilled your Foreign Affairs article of a few years ago, saying the U.S. policy of promoting democracy in the region wasn't necessarily a good thing?

Well, the administration's largely backed away from the democracy push. You still hear that rhetoric, but I don't see any practical application of pressure to Egypt or to Jordan or to Saudi Arabia. In Egypt and Jordan we've seen reversions from the more open political environment of the Egyptian election in 2005. In Jordan we've seen a steady whittling away of political freedoms. In Saudi Arabia there's been no movement since the municipal elections. And you just don't hear anybody in the administration talking about that anymore.

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A Rose Among Thorns: Georgia Makes Good

By Charles King
Foreign Affairs, March-April 2004

Georgia's recent, peaceful revolutions might allow the country to become a beacon of hope for a troubled region. For that to happen, however, its new leaders must find a way to deal with local secessionists, as well as with Moscow and Washington.

"Oh, fatherland! How I think of you now," lamented Euripides' Medea, the princess of ancient Colchis-today part of the republic of Georgia. "In every way the situation is bad." Modern Georgians understand her sentiment only too well. In the first decade and a half since their independence from the Soviet Union, they have faced civil war, separatist movements, economic malaise, rigged elections, and dysfunctional government.

Recently, however, Georgians have started to take matters into their own hands. In November, they staged a bloodless revolt against their president, Eduard Shevardnadze, for overseeing fraudulent parliamentary elections. When Shevardnadze tried to open the new legislative session, protesters took over parliament peacefully, some handing out roses to the police. At first, Shevardnadze responded by declaring a state of emergency, but he soon thought better of his legacy. Within days, he agreed to resign. New presidential elections, which international observers deemed generally free, were held on January 4, 2004. By an overwhelming majority, the vote awarded the presidency to Mikheil Saakashvili, a 36-year-old Columbia University-educated lawyer who had led the demonstrations.

During his brief electoral campaign and tenure as president, Saakashvili has made all the right moves. He has promised to fight corruption, to reform government-from the structure of the constitution to taxation policy-and to improve relations with Russia while maintaining strong ties with the United States. What his government must do first, however, is find a way to win the allegiance of all Georgia's inhabitants, including staunch secessionists in the north and a prickly potentate along the Black Sea. Before it can become a real democracy, Georgia must become a real state.

VANISHING LINES

The peaceful ouster of Shevardnadze was a signal event in the politics of Eurasia-but only because it is unlikely to be repeated elsewhere in the region. Georgia is the only member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the association of 12 former Soviet republics, that can be said to have genuinely democratic aspirations. Some-Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova-still use the language of democracy but have spent the last several years perfecting their own brand of illiberalism. Others-Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Turkmenistan-have tired of even pretending. Since the downfall of communism, most governments across the region have simply replaced Soviet authoritarianism with homegrown varieties. Elections-if they are held at all-are systematically manipulated, either at the ballot box or, more subtly, through control of the media and harassment of opposition parties. In Russia, the "dictatorship of law" promoted by President Vladimir Putin now seems disturbingly close to a dictatorship pure and simple. If, as the old adage goes, democracy is a system in which it is safe to lose an election, then Eurasia's democrats still need to watch their backs. Georgia's "revolution of roses" stands out as the former Soviet Union's only successful popular uprising against this trend and the lackluster statesmanship and corruption that have attended it.

Observers have been quick to draw lessons from the Georgian experience, for Eurasia and for other parts of the world. The billion dollars in democracy and development aid that Georgia has received from the United States since 1991-by far Washington's largest per capita investment in any Soviet successor state-seem to have paid off. Washington at first lauded Shevardnadze as a beacon of democratic reform, but as the 1990s progressed, his democratic credentials became more suspect. The United States, along with nongovernmental organizations such as the Open Society Institute, stepped up support for the growing political opposition. That assistance was an important catalyst of change. And it is evidence, observers say, that sustained political engagement, party training, and civil-society building can eventually bring down autocrats.

Yet the story of Georgia's awakening is also a cautionary tale. Development strategies there and in many other parts of the world have sometimes encouraged democratization programs without tackling basic problems such as undefined state boundaries or weak government capabilities. In failing states, the strategy has been to build a democracy and hope that, in time, the rest will take care of itself. But the history of Georgia since 1991 illustrates that leaving fundamental questions unanswered-Is this one country or several? Who is sovereign? Where are the country's legitimate borders?-can stymie reform and pollute public life.

Development specialists are not wholly blind to this problem, of course, which is why "governance"-capacity building, institutional design, anticorruption campaigns-has recently become a fashionable focus of international assistance programs. But "governance" is simply a euphemism for what used to be known as "politics," the first requirement of which is to know where power resides. Since the early 1990s, Georgia has been divided among a weak central government and several functionally independent regions, with predictably corrosive effects on national politics. Turning Georgia into a country that is both functional and democratic is the goal of the post-Shevardnadze leadership and of Georgia's friends in the West. The coming months will show whether it can be achieved without first settling the basic issue of territorial control. So far, the lesson seems to be that it cannot.

THINGS FELL APART

Georgia is among the smallest of the former Soviet republics-a little bigger than West Virginia, with a population of about five million. Yet it loomed large in Soviet history and post-Soviet politics. Its capital, Tbilisi, was the site of one of the first major Bolshevik operations, a 1907 bank heist that swelled party coffers. (One of its planners, Iosif Dzhugashvili, would later change his name to Stalin.) Blessed with an appealing climate, productive farmland, and legendary hospitality, Georgia was also among the Soviet Union's wealthiest republics. After the end of communism, it adopted a strongly pro-Western orientation and learned to leverage its strategic location on the Black Sea's eastern shore to become a major player in discussions about routes for Eurasian oil and gas exports. (The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline now under construction will be the primary conduit for transporting hydrocarbons from the rich Caspian basin to the rest of the world. Transit fees are expected to bring Georgia billions of dollars in the coming decades.)

The breakup of the Soviet Union was accompanied by the fracture of Georgia itself. In the northwest, members of the Abkhaz ethnic group asserted their right to self-determination, and the Georgian army launched a poorly executed war to prevent their secession. Ethnic Ossetes also declared their own separate republic in the north, while, in the south, Azeri and Armenian minorities complained of discrimination and occasionally rumbled about breaking away. Political differences, fueled by competition among regional clans and criminal gangs, escalated even among ethnic Georgians. A full-blown civil war of Georgians against Georgians raged alongside the secessionist conflicts.

Because of these disputes, the state known as "Georgia" has largely been a fiction of recent international diplomacy. Nearly 20 percent of the country's territory remains beyond the central government's control. Abkhazia and South Ossetia, for example, function as de facto independent countries, even though no one has recognized them. The presence of Russian soldiers-in peacekeeping contingents authorized by the Georgians themselves and on bases left over from the Soviet era-has discouraged Tbilisi from trying to retake the areas by force. And Adjaria, a province along the Black Sea, maintains an uneasy "autonomous" relationship with the Georgian center-and hosts a Russian military base to underscore it.

When Shevardnadze stepped into the presidency in 1992 promising to restore Georgia's territorial integrity and promote ties with the West, he was greeted as a savior. Relative political calm did return during his tenure, but he proved unable to solve the basic conundrums of territorial control and state performance. Today still, the central government's influence begins to wane just a few miles outside Tbilisi. Even in the capital, average citizens often do without electricity or running water. Although the population is highly educated, the economy is in shambles. Georgia's per capita national income is lower than Swaziland's, and more than half of the population lives under the poverty line.

Under Shevardnadze, the government's inherent weakness was exacerbated by a dysfunctional political system. Parties appeared and disappeared. Elections were falsified. Corruption became rampant: police officers extracted fines for imaginary traffic offenses and government officials misappropriated international aid or helped sell off state industries to their cronies. In the end, nothing became Shevardnadze in power like the leaving of it.

This is the difficult legacy that Saakashvili's government has inherited. The secessionists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia will look no more kindly on the new leadership than they did on the old. There are signs, in fact, that they may be even less inclined to cooperate with energetic reformers than they were with the generally accommodating and avuncular Shevardnadze. As soon as Shevardnadze fell, the renegade regions appealed to Russia, their long-time protector, to dissuade the new Georgian leadership from making aggressive moves. Elsewhere, local elites have become accustomed to running their own affairs, and efforts by the central government to rein them in may produce conflict. That is the case with Aslan Abashidze, the potentate in Adjaria. Once a rival of Shevardnadze, Abashidze threw in his lot with the former president and often manipulated electoral results to guarantee a victory for Shevardnadze's party, as he did last November. Abashidze has already proved to be a thorn in the side of Saakashvili by discouraging Adjarians from participating in the latest presidential elections and complicating plans for the next parliamentary ballot.

Then there are the entrenched interests of bureaucrats and businesspeople who benefited from the largesse and laxity of the Shevardnadze years. (Off-the-record deals are said to account for 60 to 70 percent of the country's total economic activity.) Corruption has long tentacles in Georgia, and setting out to tame the criminal networks that infest state structures can be a dangerous pursuit. Shevardnadze himself was the target of several assassination attempts, even though he was hardly a serious reformer. The murder of Zoran Djindjic, the reformist prime minister who tried to clean up Serbia after Slobodan Milosevic, undoubtedly weighs heavily on the minds of Saakashvili and his cohort.

Georgia's revolution injects a welcome dose of uncertainty in a region where political outcomes have become oppressively predictable. It is unclear, however, whether the country's new leaders will have the conviction and deftness to capitalize on Shevardnadze's departure. They will have to deal with (or buy off) local power brokers without prompting them to turn to violence. They will have to root out the widespread use of public office for private gain. They will have to find ways to keep the electricity on and the water flowing. Otherwise, Georgians will begin to wonder whether the end of Shevardnadze really marked the beginning of something better.

BALANCE OF POWERS

Georgians say that the country's biggest problem is Russia. The Russian government has never denied that it takes a keen interest in its neighbor, and Georgia's secessionist leaders welcome Russian support-they even visited Moscow just days after Shevardnadze resigned. Russia has effectively cemented the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as protectorates by maintaining preferential visa and passport regimes with them and making it easier for their inhabitants to obtain Russian citizenship. (It has extended that special relationship to Adjaria as well.) Russia also operates military bases in Georgia, in contravention of international agreements to close them down.

To balance Russia's influence, Georgia's central government needs outside help, especially from the United States, which has been the country's most generous backer for a decade. A stable and democratic Georgia is the linchpin of U.S. policy in the Caucasus, and the Caucasus, in turn, is a critical part of the strategic future of Eurasia and the greater Middle East. The Clinton administration gave Georgia massive amounts of aid, a good deal of which helped Shevardnadze stay in power so long. Since the "revolution of roses" last fall, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. government officials have visited Tbilisi, underscoring Washington's commitment to Saakashvili and his associates. These moves are encouraging to many Georgians, who say that the country needs to establish the right "pressure gradient" in its foreign policy. They hope that the United States and its allies will put pressure on Russia, so that Russia, in turn, will put pressure on the Abkhaz and South Ossetian leaderships to give up their quest for independence. With a big enough push from the outside, their logic goes, Georgia's territorial problems would go away.

Things are more complicated than this, however. Abkhazia and South Ossetia certainly depend on Russia. Their trade is oriented almost exclusively toward the north, and Russian financial assistance, especially via subsidized energy supplies, is the bedrock of their existence. Moreover, Russian bases support local economies, even outside the secessionist zones; closing them down without a plan for replacing the jobs lost would be disastrous. At the same time, residents of these regions remember the violent conflicts of the early 1990s and remain understandably wary of the central government. Over the past decade, they have built their own administrations, security forces, and-most critically-school systems, with little connection to the rest of the country. Shevardnadze did little to reach out to the average people in these peripheral regions or to restore their confidence in the recognized government. Reversing that practice should be one of the key criteria by which outside powers judge Saakashvili's leadership.

Thinking creatively about what a meaningfully united Georgia ought to look like, instead of simply condemning Russia's dark influence, is the best way forward. There are several ways to bring together the country's disparate regions and interests, provided someone dares to consider and implement them. Federations, confederations, condominiums, and various forms of limited sovereignty have never really been put on the table in Georgia, even though these solutions are already being discussed in other parts of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Until now, the situation in Georgia has not been sufficiently dire for anyone-at least not for anyone with real political power-to worry about solving it.

Saakashvili has a chance to change Shevardnadze's dismal legacy. But that will require statesmanship in the purest sense of the word, including articulating a clear case for why residents of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and any other part of the country should think of their future as lying within a state controlled by Tbilisi. Continued kvetching about territorial integrity and the nefarious designs of the Russian Federation will only alienate the secessionists further. In time, even Georgia's friends may come to wonder whether a country with fictitious borders and no plan for making them real is a country worth helping.

Georgia's strategic location and its pro-American foreign policy first helped put the country on the United States' radar screen. The government's weakness and Washington's fear that terrorists might set up camp in the country's mountain passes have kept it there. Money has flowed freely from Washington to Tbilisi for more than a decade, and U.S. soldiers have helped train the Georgian military. It is only recently, however, that the U.S. commitment to Georgia has come with meaningful admonitions about democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Washington's growing honesty about the reality of Georgian politics helped bring about Shevardnadze's resignation. The United States should now help Georgia's new leadership think creatively about basic questions of sovereignty, territorial control, and institutional design. The central government must recognize the multiethnic and multireligious reality of the country. It must accept a decade of state-building in the secessionist regions and allow local governments to be empowered. If these efforts succeed, Georgia could well become the positive example for eastern Europe and Eurasia that observers have long hoped for.

Charles King is Associate Professor of Foreign Service and Government at Georgetown University and author of The Black Sea: A History.

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