The Spy Plane Over Abkhazia

Was Russia justified in shooting down an unmanned Georgian spycraft flying over the separatist Georgian region of Abkhazia last month? Probably not. If it were, Moscow would be crowing about its action, not denying it, as it has been doing.

Yesterday, the results of a United Nations investigation into the April 20 downing were released. The report concludes that Moscow did shoot down the Georgian plane, which was doing reconnaissance over the Black Sea strip of land that broke away in a war 15 years ago. The news of the report, rejected by Russia as biased, was in most of the major papers, such as this article. The U.N. said that Georgia should not have been stoking tensions with such a flight, and that it violated the terms of a peace agreement between the sides. But it also said that Russia had no business shooting down the drone, and raised doubts about Russia's legitimacy as a neutral peacekeeper, the role it serves in the region.

As I saw time and again when I visited both sides of the conflict during the 1990s, the feelings of the Georgians and Abkhazians are one understood by ethnically rivalrous people the world over -- the Armenians and Azeris, the Kurds and Turks, the Serbs and Kosovars, the Palestinians and Israelis. There is very little rationality in their deeds and words. And, in the case of the Abkhaz and Georgians, it likely will take many, many years before they can figure out how to live together normally. Perhaps they will never figure it out.

Which is why the Russians should not be stirring the pot. Back when the drone went down, Georgia and Moscow-backed Abkhazia seemed at the brink of a return to war.

So why did Russia do it? Georgia in general serves as one of Russia's main punching bags. Russia has blockaded Georgia economically, and Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders frequently lash out at leader Mikheil Saakashvili. Most recently, Georgia has been the vehicle for Putin to demonstrate his ire over Western recognition of Kosovo independence. Putin responded to Kosovo by granting effective political recognition to Abkhazia and Georgia's other breakaway region, South Ossetia.

Dmitry Medvedev doesn't seem like a bully. On the other hand, neither did Putin in his very first days.

Photo: Chesi - Fotos CC

Rights: Creative Commons

Putin: Still in Pursuit of Respect

How far will Vladimir Putin push his rejection of Kosovo independence? My own feeling is not very. And even if he does go through with his implicit threat -- to recognize breakaway regions of his favorite punching bag, Western ally Georgia -- Russia and perhaps Belarus will probably be the only nations to do so.

President Bush has announced U.S. recognition of Kosovo, which unilaterally declared independence yesterday. The largest European countries are likely to follow. Why? Because of Serbia's murderous rampage through Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Putin asserts that territorial integrity is supreme and that, in order to create a separate nation, the country from which it is separating must approve. As an example, he cites the two Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which pulled away during the early 1990s when nationalism was sweeping through the former Soviet Union.

There are only academic and polemical links between these Georgian regions and Kosovo.

I covered the Abkhaz fighting from both sides. While there was brutality, the scale nowhere approached Serbia's pathological violence against its neighbors. And in the end, in 1993, it was the Abkhaz -- backed by Moscow -- who applied ethnic cleansing after vowing not to. They simply put the Georgians in their midst on foot out of the seaside region, and occupied their homes.

One thing I learned from my time in the former Soviet Union is that pride is king when it comes to nationalities. No one wants to feel he or she are under anyone's thumb. In the case of the Abkhaz and the Ossets, the Georgians stirred the pot with their own nationalism. Then the Russians came in with military backing, which continues to this day.

What are Putin's and Russia's genuine beef? That their view isn't accepted in the West. Ultimately, that isn't very compelling. Putin will no doubt continue to protest. And, regarding Georgia as the West's soft underbelly because of the energy pipelines running through the republic and the West's backing for President Mikheil Saakashvili, he'll keep punching there.

Photo: C+H
Rights: Creative Commons

Domino Bluff in the Caucasus

There is important wisdom in a passage of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s new Journals, contained in a New York Times review posted today. It involves a post-mortem of the Cuban Missile Crisis by President Kennedy, as recounted by JFK's in-house intellectual.

The Times says: Schlesinger writes that Kennedy resisted seeing the missile crisis as part of a holy war with the Soviets. “Too many people will think now that all we have to do in dealing with the Russians is to kick them in the balls,” he says, after the Soviets back down. “I think there is a law of equity in these disputes. When one party is clearly wrong, it will eventually give way.” Read review

This is sharp counsel in the West's current standoff with Russia in former Yugoslavia. Eight years after halting Serbia's murderous assaults on its Balkan neighbors at Kosovo, the West supports finally recognizing the ethnic Albanian region's status as an independent nation.

The date set for that recognition is Dec. 10.

President Putin vehemently opposes Kosovo independence unless it's in agreement with its former aggressor, Serbia. He argues that, short of such an accord, uncontrollable warfare will re-ignite to the east in the former Soviet Union, specifically in the breakaway Georgian republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Balderdash. Putin's angst has nothing to do with a highly principled nightmare of dominoes falling and everything to dowith who calls the shots in Russia's claimed sphere of influence.

Putin's own intellectual cadre assert that Abkhazia and South Ossetia rose up in response to Georgian genocide. It is true that indefensible Georgian nationalism at the time is to blame for triggering the separatist revolts of the early 1990s. But what followed was inflamed and assisted by then-Russian siloviki only too happy to give the upstart Georgians a black eye.

Those events are not equatable with Serbia's ethnic cleansing.

Instead, Putin and his brain trust are making an empty threat. Putin no more than the Georgians wishes to re-ignite instability in the Caucasus.

Dominoes will not fall of their own accord in response to Kosovo any more than they did when the other parts of the former Yugoslavia became independent. Neither will Putin manufacture a cause-and-effect.

While Putin chooses to see issues like Kosovo as a humiliating physical blow, they are rather simpler matters. Most of the former Yugoslav provinces long ago chose not to be joined to Serbia any longer. Kosovo is merely the latest.

Moscow's Red Lines: Kosovo, Missiles and Berezovsky

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has used the occasion of a university speech to lay down an implacable position on some of the most divisive issues between Moscow and the West. It was another indication that Moscow is engaged as much in policy as in image-building as someone no longer to be trifled with.

Here is the first paragraph of the Agence France Press story: Russia will not back down on "red line" issues including the future of Kosovo and opposition to US plans for an anti-missile defence system in central Europe, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday. Read story

And an important quote from the piece: Lavrov said that some were worried by "the rapid rebirth of our country as one of the leading countries of the world. However, this does not mean that it's necessary to think up yet another myth about the Russian threat."

Steve's comment: Lavrov made the remarks today at Moscow State Institute of International Affairs. For those accustomed to negotiating with Moscow, whether during the Soviet or post-Soviet period, it is nothing new for it to "stick to our position until the end," as Lavrov put it.

Its immovable positions, he said, include a refusal to hand over Andrei Lugovoi to Britain in the case of the Alexander Litvinenko murder, rejecting Kosovo independence unless Belgrade itself agrees, and opposing Washington's plans to install an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic (on the last item, one wonders about the hulabaloo on either side over an as-yet unproven system).

Lavrov also resurrected Moscow's chagrin over Britain's sheltering of oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whom he called one of several "odious characters" from Russia living there.

As a whole, these do not differ fundamentally from postures Russia has taken previously during the post-Soviet period. What is different is that it appears unlikely this time to shift position. And that appears to be as much show as principle.