NATO Chief, Envoys Visit Georgia to Show Support
September 15, 2008
Georgia’s president said Monday he hopes a visit from NATO’s chief will accelerate his nation’s drive to join the Western alliance, pressing for sustained international support following its defeat by Russia in a brief and bitter war.
Mikhail Saakashvili said Georgia and NATO should work hard to show that Georgia is on track to join what he called the “Euro-Atlantic family.”
That is Georgia’s proper and rightful place, he said.
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, also speaking in Georgia’s capital, criticized Russia but spoke cautiously in remarks before a NATO-Georgia meeting.
De Hoop Scheffer and ambassadors from every NATO member converged on Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, in a show of support for the former Soviet republic. The U.S. strongly supports NATO membership for Georgia, but Germany and others dependent on Russian energy supplies have balked at taking an action sure to infuriate the Kremlin.
The NATO chief said the alliance will assess “how to further enhance” the partnership between NATO and Georgia.
The trip to Georgia, scheduled before the war, comes as Russia is strengthening its grip on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another separatist region of Georgia, in a challenge to Georgia’s NATO hopes.
Russia, which borders Georgia to the north, objects strenuously to having Georgia join the Western military alliance — an opposition underscored last month when Russia crushed Georgia in a war over Georgia’s separatist, Russian-oriented province of South Ossetia.
As the ambassadors arrived in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned the West that any sanctions imposed on Russia over the war would backfire.
“It’s senseless to pressure Russia with sanctions,” Medvedev said at a meeting with Russian business leaders. “They can shut a couple of sources of (revenue) to a banana republic and make its situation dramatic. It won’t work like that here.”
Without mentioning any specific nation, Medvedev warned that attempts to punish Russia would also hurt the West. “Sanctions is a weapon that will backfire,” he said.
And he dismissed calls by some Western diplomats to bar Russia from joining the World Trade Organization. Russia would like to join but will not be pressured into concessions, Medvedev said.
“WTO isn’t a carrot; it entails a lot of difficult obligations,” he said. “And if we do it, let us do it in a normal way without them trying to scare us.”
The two-day NATO visit is expected to include the first meeting of a new NATO-Georgia Commission set up to oversee future ties.
De Hoop Scheffer said last week that NATO wants to show support for Georgia after Russia’s use of “disproportionate force” against its much smaller neighbor. He has stressed NATO’s condemnation of Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.
Following the war, NATO said it was making closer ties with Russia dependent on the withdrawal of Russian forces to the positions they held before the conflict, as required by a cease-fire agreement.
Russia has promised to withdraw from positions in Georgia proper next month. But it has said it will keep nearly 8,000 troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, although the U.S. and European Union that would violate the cease-fire.
Saakashvili, a U.S. ally, has angered Russia by seeking NATO membership. In April, NATO declined to grant Georgia a road map — a detailed plan for achieving membership — but said Georgia would eventually join.
A review of Georgia’s request for a road map is scheduled for December.
The war has deepened NATO’s dilemma over Georgia — how to handle the membership aspirations of a country with large chunks of territory controlled by Russia and its separatist allies.
NATO members have been united in their criticism of Russia, but less so on Georgia’s future.
The United States has pushed for NATO to take a key step toward granting Georgia membership in April.
Russia seems confident that Georgia is not close to joining NATO.
“Georgia is much farther away from membership in NATO than it used to be,” Sergei Karaganov, a political analyst with close Kremlin connections, said in Moscow.
Anatol Lieven, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, said European countries and the United States would be unlikely to fight Russia on Georgia’s behalf, even if joined NATO.
“Georgia would be crushingly defeated and NATO would be humiliated,” he said.
The war began Aug. 7, when Georgian forces launched an attack to regain control of South Ossetia. Russian forces repelled the offensive and pushed deep into Georgia.
After a partial withdrawal last month, Russia pulled out of the Black Sea port of Poti and other positions in western Georgia over the weekend as part of an additional agreement reached by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who brokered the original EU peace plan.
Moscow has pledged to withdraw all other forces now on Georgian territory outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia within 10 days of the deployment of EU monitors who are supposed to be in place by Oct. 1. But it is pushing to keep Western observers away from South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
At a tent camp housing more than 2,000 displaced people in Gori, a central Georgian city near South Ossetia, families wondered Sunday whether they would ever return home for good.
Nanuli Okroperidze, 45, who lives in Tent 85 with her mother, four children, two grandchildren and two other relatives, said her home is one of many in her mostly ethnic Georgian village in South Ossetia that were torched.
“It’s gone, burned to ashes,” she said.
Source: The Associated Press, September 2008
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080915/ap_on_re_eu/georgia_nato
Georgia’s Saakashvili warns NATO on Russia
September 12, 2008
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili urged NATO on Thursday not to push his country away in the wake of Moscow’s military campaign, warning that showing weakness would cause a “never-ending story” of Russian aggression.
In an interview with The Associated Press before a visit by NATO leaders next week, Saakashvili said Russia invaded Georgia to keep the ex-Soviet republic out of the Western alliance.
“If NATO sends a sign of weakness — and clearly this invasion was intended to deter, to scare NATO away — if NATO gets scared away, then this will be a never-ending story,” Saakashvili said.
Saakashvili has angered Russia by seeking NATO membership for Georgia. The alliance has promised Georgia will eventually join, and a review of its request for a road map to membership is scheduled for December.
He suggested that keeping Georgia out of NATO because of increasing Russian control over South Ossetia and another separatist region, Abkhazia, would be precisely the result the Kremlin intended — and a recipe for forceful intervention elsewhere.
“People are saying, ‘Georgia has conflicts, so maybe Georgia cannot be accepted, but maybe we can accept Ukraine.’ But if you put it this way, you automatically are going to get conflict in Ukraine.”
Saakashvili said NATO nations must stand together and expressed confidence that Russia’s use of what Western governments condemned as disproportionate force had strengthened support from some alliance members for Georgian membership.
He said Russia’s actions were aimed at “shaking the foundations of the alliance and their decision-making process.”
The Kremlin has accused the United States of encouraging Saakashvili to wage war against separatist South Ossetia and of moving to rebuild Georgia’s military following the fighting. Saakashvili said he is committed to peaceful solutions to Georgia’s territorial disputes and is not seeking robust military aid from the United States.
“We don’t expect to get anything from the U.S., we haven’t got anything recently from the U.S. and we will not be getting any large-scale hardware or military material assistance from the U.S.,” he said. “All this talk about Americans rearming Georgia, or others coming in and rearming Georgia has been just part of the propaganda.”
The U.S. Defense Department said Tuesday that it would send an assessment team to Georgia this week to help determine its needs as a way of showing U.S. support for its security.
Saakashvili denied Russian claims that U.S. military aid, which included training Georgian forces, was instrumental in emboldening Georgia to try to retake South Ossetia by force on Aug. 7.
“No matter what kind of theoretical assistance we could have got from anybody, there is no way Georgia can fight wars with Russia,” he said.
In Moscow on Thursday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin aggressively defended the invasion, saying Russia had to act when Georgia attacked South Ossetia. Russian forces repelled the offensive and drove deep into Georgia before withdrawing most of the troops and tanks late last month following a cease-fire deal.
Russia has pledged to withdraw its remaining forces still positioned outside Abkhazia and South Ossetia within a month, but says it will keep thousands of troops in the separatist regions themselves for the foreseeable future. It has also recognized them as independent nations, deepening the confrontation with Georgia and the West.
Saakashvili contends that Georgia was acting in self-defense amid increasing Russian support for the separatists and indications of imminent aggression.
“At a certain moment it was clear that the country was facing an existential threat,” he said.
He reiterated his promise that Georgia will gain control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but said it would rely on legal mechanisms and pressure from the international community to do so.
Source: The Associated Press, September 2008
ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5geomtOYYynWwMbsvM1iu7rMBHruwD934QP7O0
NATO Takes Count in Georgia
September 10, 2008
A group of NATO experts has arrived in Tbilisi. Kommersant has learned that they will evaluate the losses to the Georgian military infrastructure in its recent conflict with Russia. The alliance is taking inventory before providing Georgia with aid. A decision on the volume and nature of that aid will be made at the visiting session of the NATO council that will be held in Tbilisi next week.
The NATO group’s activities are not being publicized in Georgia. The Georgian Defense Ministry has not released any information on the topic. Kommersant received confirmation from the ministry only that alliance specialists were in the country. “A group of NATO experts are in Georgia to assess losses suffered by the country’s military infrastructure in the conflict,” a ministry spokesman said. “That visit and the negotiations are not for the press.”
Nonetheless, a source in the Georgian Defense Ministry told Kommersant that “The group of experts is not authorized to make any decision in relation aid in restoring the military infrastructure of Georgia.” The source explained that “It is working only on collecting information to be delivered to Brussels. But it can already be said that NATO is providing Georgia with aid to restore its air traffic control system.” That is the radar that was partially destroyed by bombing. Earlier, NATO stated its willingness to include Georgia in its unified air traffic data exchange system.
Kommersant has learned that the NATO experts will also look at military bases in the east and west of the country that were partially or wholly destroyed by bombing and the Russians partially took away the weaponry. “The Russians really did take a lot of weapons away from the Senaki and Gori military bases,” military expert Murman Kuprashvili told Kommersant. “But it was mainly nonfunctional military equipment or equipment that was not used in the operation in South Ossetia.” In particular, the Georgian army lost several thousand machineguns stored at the bases that they were unable to distribute to reservists. A considerable number of heavy armored vehicles were also lost.
“Now we are working with American and other colleagues on an estimate of the damage,” Deputy Defense Minister Batu Kutelia told Kommersant. “Georgia will certainly be provided with material aid for the restoration of its defense capability in full measure.” He added, It is a matter of the restoration of the infrastructure and air defense s of the country and other forms of military-technical aid. Aid in restoring the airports in Marneuli, Senaki, Kopitnari and Vaziani is very important.” Kutelia provided no other specifics. It is known, however, that American senators who visited Tbilisi last week openly stated their plans to provide Georgia antitank weapons and ballistic systems.
The final decision on aid to Georgia from the alliance will be made later. It is expected to be made public during the visiting session of the NATO council in Tbilisi September 15-16. “In spite of the tense situation, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer assured us in the name of all member states that a visiting session of the NATO council will be held in Tbilisi on the level of ambassadors with the secretary general taking part, as promised a year ago,” a Georgian Foreign Ministry spokesman told Kommersant. Continuing cooperation between Georgia and NATO within the “Intensive Partnership” program agreed on at the Bucharest summit will be discussed at the visiting session. In addition, Kommersant has learned, the council will issue a statement on the recent conflict and express its support for Georgian territorial integrity and the withdrawal of Russian troops.
Source: Kommersant, September 2008
www.kommersant.com/p1023628/Russia_Georgia_conflict/
US Confident of NATO Nod to Georgia, Ukraine: Official
September 8, 2008
The United States is confident that Georgia and Ukraine will become members of the NATO military alliance and sees growing support in Europe for that prospect, a top US administration official said Monday.
Russia’s recognition of Georgian breakaway regions South Ossetia and Abkhazia has increased backing for expansion of the 26-member alliance, the official said as US Vice President Dick Cheney held talks with Italian leaders here.
“There may be debates about timing, conditions and so forth, but if anything what has happened in Georgia has probably broadened support within the alliance for the proposition that eventually they ought to be members of NATO,” he said on condition of anonymity.
Cheney last week vowed Washington’s support for Baku, Tbilisi and Kiev during a whistle-stop tour of the region, and urged NATO to unite in order to ward off a return of “line-drawing” in Europe.
He held talks at the weekend with political and business leaders at a conference in Italy — including Israeli President Shimon Peres, former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, and top world oil executives.
The US vice president arrived Sunday in Rome for talks with Italy’s president and prime minister as part of a bid to garner support among Washington’s European allies for a stronger stance against Russia after its five-day war with Georgia last month.
“It is not just a US problem, all of Europe has a stake in how this is handled and whether or not these sovereign independent states remain free and independently sovereign states,” the official said.
“I think it will get resolved. The resolution that was adopted at the Bucharest summit that said Georgia and Ukraine will become members of NATO represents the thinking of most of our NATO allies.”
At its summit in Bucharest in April, NATO refused to grant Ukraine and Georgia “Membership Action Plan” (MAP) status after French and German opposition, though leaders agreed on a statement saying “that these countries will become members of NATO.”
Russia has opposed inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine, saying that NATO expansion and its support of a planned US anti-missile system in the Czech Republic and Poland is a “strategic error.”
The official reiterated the US view that an expanded NATO would pose no threat to Russia, and vowed that the United States wants a good rapport with Russia despite soaring tensions over Moscow’s action in Georgia.
“We are still very interested in having normal relations with Russia. That hasn’t changed. That is a long term proposition, but obviously we are not happy with what has happened in Georgia.”
Cheney met Sunday with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, who has urged Russia to “reexamine” its freeze on relations with NATO. Moscow last month said it would halt military cooperation as relations between Russia and the West deteriorated over the conflict in Georgia.
The US vice president meets Tuesday with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has a warm personal relationship with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and hopes to play a mediating role between Moscow and Europe.
Source: AFP, September 2008
afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iQoJZlxqy8QzR0IGwHBiOSG1MB2A
Putin on Georgia’s Humanitarian Aid, NATO Ships in Black Sea
September 2, 2008
Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, said he was surprised that humanitarian aid was delivered to “aggressors” and not to real victims of the conflict.
“If we are talking about the humanitarian aid it should be provided to the victim of the aggression, which is South Ossetia,” Russian news agencies quoted Putin as saying in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent on September 2. “We do not understand what the U.S. ships are doing on the Georgian shore; but it’s a matter of taste and that’s our American colleague’s decision.”
“Another issue is,” he continued, “why this aid is being delivered with warships armed with modern missile systems.”
He said that Russia’s reaction to presence of the NATO vessels in the Black Sea would be “calm, without any hysteria.” “But there will be a response,” Putin added.
He also brushed off western calls for withdrawal of the Russian troops from the Georgian proper and said: “We have no armed forces in Georgia at all.”
“There are only peacekeepers,” Putin said. “There are only 500 of them … and their only job is to maintain security.”
Source: Civil.Ge, September 2008
www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=19377
Russia Weighs Response to NATO Ships
September 2, 2008
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says it is weighing its options following the arrival of more NATO vessels in the Black Sea, according to reports.
Russia Monday accused “foreign navy ships” of delivering weapons to Georgia as the European Union met to discuss possible sanctions against Moscow.
Putin, visiting Uzbekistan to promote the launch of a natural gas pipeline Tuesday, said that its response to ships would be “calm, without any sort of hysteria. But of course, there will be an answer,” the Associated Press reported.
Georgian troops attacked pro-Russian separatists in South Ossetia on August 7, triggering the Russian response. Each side offered conflicting figures on how many people died in the fighting.
Russia has not fully withdrawn its troops from Georgia after sending them across the border for what it called peacekeeping operations and what Georgia called an invasion.
Putin also questioned Tuesday the manner in which the United States had delivered humanitarian aid to Georgia.
“We don’t understand what American ships are doing on the Georgian shores, but this is a question of taste, it’s a decision by our American colleagues,” agencies reported Putin as saying.
“The second question is why the humanitarian aid is being delivered on naval vessels armed with the newest rocket systems.”
Earlier Tuesday Russian officials criticized the European Union for threatening to postpone talks on a new political and economic partnership deal.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said that a “partnership” with the EU “should not be a hostage to the conflict” over Georgia, AP reported.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday that the EU would have to re-examine its partnership with Russia if Moscow did not respect a cease-fire agreement.
Sarkozy, whose country holds the six-month rotating EU presidency, also confirmed that he will visit Moscow next week.
“We will be asking Russia to ensure the full and scrupulous respect of the (cease-fire) plan,” he said. “The EU would welcome a real partnership with Russia that is in the interests of all, but it takes two to tango. You have to be two to have a partnership.
“Therefore this crisis means that we have to re-examine our relationship with Russia.”
Meanwhile, Russia’s NATO envoy, Dmitry Rogozin, accused the U.S. of pushing Poland and the ex-Soviet Baltic states to demand tougher sanctions against Russia, AP reported.
“It is clear who the losing side is: the policy pursued by the Polish president and his Baltic co-thinkers,” Rogozin said.
They acted as “the advocates of Washington’s line to undermine pan-European cooperation,” he was quoted as saying.
EU leaders met Monday in Brussels, Belgium, to discuss how to react to Russia’s recognition of the breakaway Georgia regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.
Source: CNN, August 2008
edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/09/02/russia.georgia.summit.sanctions/index.html
Belligerent Bluster
August 29, 2008
Something shattered when the Georgian artillery opened up with a massive barrage on Tskhinvali on August 7 (Colonel Arsen Tsukhishvili, chief of staff of the Artillery Brigade said with pride that 300 of his gun barrels fired at the enemy simultaneously). What broke was not only the columns of Russian tanks the Georgian artillery was aiming at. It was a 16-year post-Soviet consensus about the power of Russia to affect the course taken by its neighbours. The cold, unspoken western calculation was that, the quicker we pushed eastwards with a combination of political, oil and military projects, the less Russia could resist. Even an economically resurgent Russia was still judged to be either too weak, too poor or just too ramshackle to stop it.
To claim, as David Miliband did yesterday, that Nato did not have a sphere of influence and that the eastern expansion of the military alliance was merely an expression of individual democracies exercising their new-found sovereignty, was breathtakingly disingenuous. In May, a subcommittee of the Nato Parliamentary Assembly, a body that brings together parliamentarians from Nato members and its partners visited Romania and Bulgaria, two of the six states along the Black Sea and the latest members of Nato. The topics discussed on this visit strayed far from its brief - energy and environmental security. The committee heard how Romania and Bulgaria occupy a strategic position between Europe, the largest energy consumer, and the oil-producing countries. Two rival oil and gas pipelines, the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline and the South Stream project backed by Russia, arrive here. Talk of oil and gas led seamlessly on to the military role Nato could play in securing this supply. Paragraph 28 of the executive summary of this visit reads: “Nato has not traditionally played a role in energy security matters … It can however play a more active role defending energy infrastructure and the flow of oil and gas on the high seas … Nato might also provide security for infrastructure in energy-producing states facing unrest.”
Nato yesterday brushed aside Russian claims that an naval exercise in the western part of the Black Sea had anything to do with the crisis going on in the eastern shore. The Nato parliamentarian’s visit held before the Georgian crisis erupted says otherwise. If this is not a “sphere of influence” being constructed and planned by Nato’s existing members along Russia’s most sensitive border in the South Caucasus and right though Russia’s most sensitive sea, what is?
The cold war was a nuclear standoff between two military superpowers with mutually opposed economic systems and ideological beliefs. The new period we could be entering lacks many cold war ingredients. Russia is weaker militarily than the Soviet Union was and its reach is not global. It can sell arms to Syria or Iran, but it can no longer restart the revolution in Angola or Cuba. Russia is unashamedly capitalist. But it is also now allergically anti-western and free to form its own alliances. That was evident in the Russian President Dmitri Medvedev flying eastwards to Tajikistan on Wednesday for a summit with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, an assembly which includes Russia, China and four former members of the Soviet Union.
The way to counter the forces unleashed on August 7 is clear: stop rearranging the furniture on Russia’s sensitive southern border; stop militarising the Black Sea; stop pretending that this is only a conflict about loftier goals, a simple struggle between authoritarianism and western liberal democracy. The ethnically driven post-Soviet map is more complex than that. Local conflicts should be kept local. As things stand, everything is being done to widen them out to the regional level. As a result, Russia and Nato are sleepwalking into a confrontation that neither needs, and neither has planned for.
Source: The Guardian, August 2008
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/29/russia.georgia
Russia Recognizes Abkhazia, South Ossetia
August 26, 2008
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says Russia recognizes Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent.
The pledge comes after a resolution calling on President Medvedev to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia sailed through both houses of the Russian parliament on August 25.
“Taking into consideration the free expression of the will of the Ossetian and Abkhaz people, guided by the provisions of the UN Charter, by the 1970 Declaration On Principles Of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation Among States, the 1975 Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and other basic international documents, I have signed decrees on the recognition by the Russian Federation of the independence of South Ossetia and the independence of Abkhazia,” Medvedev said.
Medvedev: Russia Ready for Halting Relations with NATO
August 25, 2008
Russia is ready for any actions in relations with NATO, including halting all relations with the alliance, the RF President Dmitry Medvedev announced in Sochi. “It is NATO that is interested in cooperation, not Russia,” RIA Novosti quoted Medvedev as saying.
“Should they not share the cooperation, nothing awful would happen to us. We will have any decision, up to halting the relations in general,” Medvedev announced during the Monday meeting with Dmitry Rogozin, who stands for Russia in NATO. Rogozin was summoned to Moscow for consulting after the relations of Moscow and the alliance aggravated on the military actions in South Ossetia.
But halting relations with NATO won’t be an easy decision, Medvedev emphasized. “For long years, we have been consistently developing relations with NATO and would like them to be full-scale and of partners. But we need no illusion of partnership,” the president pointed out. “When we are encircled by bases, we don’t like it,” Medvedev emphasized.
The NATO stuck to the double-standard policy in respect of Russia during the conflict in South Ossetia, Rogozin said during the meeting.
Source: Kommersant, August 2008
www.kommersant.com/p-13129/NATO_relations/
Crisis of Lies and Hysteria
August 25, 2008
The principal lesson of the Russian-Georgian conflict is that Nato must not be expanded further
After a fortnight of conflict on the ground and a flurry of propaganda and debate in European capitals the South Ossetian crisis is winding down. One of the abiding images - a Russian masterstroke - will be the moving concert given by world-renowned Valery Gergiev, a South Ossetian, and the Mariinsky orchestra in the ruins of Tskhinvali, the town the Georgians destroyed.
Another unforgettable memory will be Georgia’s flak-jacketed president cowering on the ground as a Russian plane flies over the town of Gori. Bravado turning into humiliation is a metaphor for the whole foolish adventure. Georgian men are hospitable and engaging, but fond of bombast and empty macho gestures. Unlike the Chechens, who have fought Russians for centuries, Georgians prefer poetry and vineyards to the challenge of war.
President Mikheil Saakashvili epitomises the style, made worse in his case by the lies he served up to deceive foreign opinion. He boasted of defeat. Georgia was being swallowed up, Tbilisi was on the verge of occupation, Russia was using weapons of mass destruction.
The biggest lie was his attempt to airbrush the fact that he created the crisis by launching an artillery barrage on the South Ossetian capital, which killed scores of civilians and 15 Russian peacekeepers. It was absurd to think Russia would not retaliate. So the next lie was to claim Russia’s leaders had prepared a trap. In fact, they were taken by surprise as much as the Ossetians. Russia’s initial response had the hallmarks of hasty improvisation - though, as the crisis unfolded, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin showed increasing determination to exploit Saakashvili’s folly by preventing South Ossetia and Abkhazia from ever being forced back under Georgian rule.
Saakashvili and many of his western backers used ludicrous analogies to hype the crisis - from Poland in 1939 to Hungary in 1956, even though it is clear South Ossetians welcomed Russian aid and now want to break from Georgia once and for all. The more accurate comparison was Kosovo. Suppose Serbia’s leaders were suddenly to kill US peacekeepers, fire rockets at civilian houses in Pristina and storm the town, wouldn’t the Americans be expected to expel the invaders, even if the UN still recognises Kosovo as legally part of Serbia?
Russia’s destruction of Georgia’s radar stations, its military and naval bases, and several bridges in order to degrade the country’s military capability looks similar to Nato’s attacks on Serbian infrastructure in 1999. Instead of confining itself to Kosovo in seeking to protect Albanian civilians from ethnic cleansing, Nato bombed deep into Serbia proper. What Russia did to Georgia was disproportionate, but less so than Nato on Serbia a decade ago.
Nevertheless, Russia should pull back completely now. It should also have restrained South Ossetian militias from running amok against Georgian villages. Nato troops made little effort to stop revenge-seeking Albanians from looting and torching houses in the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo after Yugoslav forces were driven out. Russia’s forces should have done better in Ossetia. They had the moral high ground but quickly forfeited it by not changing the patterns of military indiscipline and cruelty shown in Afghanistan and Chechnya as well as towards conscripts in their own ranks.
How and why Saakashvili acted remains unclear. Did he tell the Americans of his plans? If not, he emerges as even more of a hothead than many in Nato feared. If yes, did the Americans approve? Giving him the green light would have been incredibly irresponsible. If the US warned Saakashvili off and he went ahead anyway, he should be condemned as an ally from hell.
Did he think that by playing on ancient anti-Russian prejudice and hysterical cold war analogies he could swap an inevitable loss of territory for accelerated entry into Nato? If that was the gamble, it is paying off in some quarters. One of the grimmest aspects of this crisis was the degree to which John McCain emerged as an undiplomatic hawk. Before the crisis he was on record as calling Putin “a totalitarian dictator” and saying Russia should be expelled from the G8. As Russia came in to defend South Ossetia, he demanded it pay a “serious negative” price.
In Britain David Cameron showed similar wildness. Gordon Brown and David Miliband were little better. Instead of the relative even-handedness of Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, New Labour followed the White House line. Could it not bring itself to utter any criticism of Saakashvili? Even as poodles, does this government not see that the next potential US president, Barack Obama, is more nuanced? He called on Georgia, as well as Russia, to show restraint.
That said, there is only a slight chance the US, under any president, will do the sensible thing, which would be to announce Nato expansion has reached its limit and that no invitation to Georgia - or Ukraine - will ever be issued.
The mantra is that Russia cannot have a veto on Nato membership. True, but by the same token no country has a right to join Nato, or the EU. Look at Turkey, which has been a loyal Nato ally for four decades but was not allowed to start EU membership proceedings until 2005 and still has no guarantee they will succeed. Neither Russia nor the applicants decide who enters the club. Its existing members do. Whatever the next US president thinks, and whatever other traditionally anti-Russian countries such as Poland and the Baltic states feel, there are European countries that see the danger of extending the Nato umbrella where the alliance’s founders never meant it to go. Nato is not a global institution. It has no business looking for new members in the Caucasus or central Asia.
Nato and Russia are boycotting each other for the moment. But business will soon resume as western leaders see this was a manufactured crisis rather than the start of a new cold war or some cataclysmic shift in international relations. When Nato’s foreign ministers met last week, France and Germany made that point. The alliance promised reconstruction aid to Georgia but no support for rushing it into Nato. Earlier this year, France and Germany had the courage to defy Washington and say it was too early to invite Georgia. They were right then, and are even more so now.
Source: The Guardian, August 2008