Georgia: An Exercise in Image-Building

Six days before Dmitri Medvedev takes over the helm of Russia, Vladimir Putin has put the country on a war-footing with its favorite punching bag, the neighboring nation of Georgia. Putin has shifted troops to the seaside Georgian region of Abkhazia -- just in case, Moscow says, Georgia mounts a military attack against the separatist region.

As readers recall, Georgia and Abkhazia fought a brutal war during the early 1990s that left the two divided.

Igor Yurgens, a brainy and urbane Medvedev adviser who is making the rounds in Washington, London and Paris, told me in a phone chat yesterday that Moscow "will not use military force" in order to absorb Abkhazia, whose citizens already have been given Russian citizenship.

Yet Putin is still in a lather over the West's decision to recognize Kosovo's independence from Serbia, and this most recent flareup of tensions with Georgia seems to me of a different order from the countless previous flareups between the two over the last seventeen years. Putin is sticking his chin out.

NATO ambassadors said yesterday that the move "risks undermining stability." But Yurgens doesn't seem swayed. "We are not going to be pushed and bullied on this question after Kosovo, that's for sure," he told me.

What is Russia's move really all about? Surely it's not concern over Abkhaz security -- a Georgian military attack in order to bring the region back into the Georgian fold verges on ludicrous, mainly since Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili knows he would lose, either to the Abkhaz themselves or a predictable Russian counter-offensive.

Is Putin simply demonstrating yet again that Russia won't be pushed around? Is he bestowing an image-building conflict on his successor, in the way that Chechnya built up Putin's own nationalist credentials when he took power in 1999 with a popularity rating of 2%? Perhaps Putin simply couldn't resist lest anyone forget what he has done for Russia's feeling of well-being? According to Itar-Tass, he is leaving office with an almost 85% approval rating.

When pressed on its general foreign policy, Russia says the West is mired in Cold War thinking, and that its strategy is straightforward and not political. If that's true, one wonders why Putin been unable to strike win-win deals with Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltics.

The prevailing wisdom is that nothing will change under Medvedev, whom experts think will keep the wheel straight and hope that things turn out as well for him as they did for Putin. Nothing Medvedev has said seems to argue otherwise.

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Let’s be friends, Guys

Vladimir Putin's remark just about sums up the NATO Summit that ended today in Bucharest. "Let’s be friends, guys, and be frank and open,” he told reporters on the topic of whether a new cold war was in the making. The sentiment will carry over into Sunday's meeting between Putin and President Bush in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where the two leaders will sign an affable "Strategic Framework" agreement.

As those familiar with the ways of Moscow know, such empty, toothless pacts -- known as the "protocol" in that part of the world -- are what companies and countries sign when they can't agree to anything conclusive.

In short, the NATO gathering ended with the U.S. attempting to dress up a setback against Putin as by and large a show of unity by Europe.

Bush put much on the line by announcing that he would seek to push forward Ukraine's and Georgia's bids to join NATO. But what did he walk away with? European agreement to a missile defense system that doesn't work. European agreement to add troops to a conflict -- Afghanistan -- about whose merits there's almost no disagreement anywhere in the world.

On the question of Ukraine and Georgia, Europe buckled, at least for now, to Putin's objections to their obtaining so-called MAP -- or Membership Action Plan -- status.

So Putin closed out another week of diplomatic triumphs. There will be no advance for now in NATO's expansion to the Russian border. And, with Bush's appointment of a harmless old family friend this week as Eurasian energy czar, there will be no serious challenge to Putin's policy of dominating European energy.

As for the Strategic Framework agreement to be signed Sunday, it's Putin's stated sentiment on paper -- gosh, can't we be friends?

I personally think that Georgia and probably Ukraine will eventually join NATO as full members. But it could be going more smoothly.

For a solid commentary on the spectacle from the perspective of Germany, this piece by Ulrich Speck at RFE-RL is highly recommended reading.

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Showdown in Bucharest

After the spectacle and fireworks of recent years, we're about to see the latest picture of the balance of power in Russia-West relations. The venue will be the NATO summit that begins tomorrow in Bucharest. The issue is whether to advance Georgia and Ukraine's applications to join the military alliance.

The two former Soviet countries want to push forward their status to what’s called MAP – a Membership Action Plan. True membership would come down the road, once they meet the various necessary qualifications. France and Germany oppose moving to a MAP for the two. "France will not give its green light to the entry of Ukraine and Georgia," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon told France-Inter radio. "We are opposed to Georgia and Ukraine's entry because we think that it is not the correct response to the balance of power in Europe, and between Europe and Russia."

Stephen Fidler and Stefan Wagstyl of the Financial Times rang up Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili, who has a reputation as a hothead, but sounds eminently sensible on this issue. "No matter what some Europeans might be thinking, it's basically giving [Russia] direct veto rights, because that's how they'll perceive it," Saakashvili told the FT.

Saakashvili has that right. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, suggests that Georgia will use NATO membership to force the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia back into the Georgian fold. This is a red herring – it’s absurd to suggest that NATO would commit troops to crushing Abkhazian or South Ossetian politics. It can't even raise sufficient troops for Afghanistan.

Instead, the issue is simple -- Vladimir Putin wishing to demonstrate Russia’s influence now, and to retain its pressure points on its former colonies in the future.

Saakashvili has done smart political spadework. He has offered power-sharing to Abkhazia, and 500 Georgian troops to Afghanistan. The latter move at minimum could quiet France’s objections.

The ultimate decision will indicate whether Putin has at last succeeded in shifting the balance of power more toward Russia's direction.

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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.

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Note on Putin

Reporters in Moscow are weighing in on Vladimir Putin's latest anti-Western broadside. Peter Finn of the Washington Post has this account of Putin's attack today against his political opponents as pawns of the West.

It's rooted in Russia's traditional seige mantra -- the country is surrounded by enemies, and infiltrated by traitors, the story goes. Yet it's also uncanny how Putin has morphed smoothly from a failed junior KGB officer into a politician of the first rank.

The West will have years to figure out how to reach a modus vivendi with him.

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The Down Side of Leaving the Nest

A piece in The New York Times today demonstrates that a growing general grasp of the new hard geopolitics on the Eurasian dual continent, driven by economics -- in particular oil and natural gas -- rather than the traditional movement of armies.

In the story, Adam Ellick writes that "Russian power is rapidly returning to the Baltics, only this time the weapons are oil and money, not tanks."

That's an essential point, since the United States has yet to show that it fully comprehends that the nature of conflict, at least in this part of the world, has changed under its feet (see Josh Foust's excellent latest post on the pipeline war), and that Russia with its financial muscle is leading the charge.

But there's a larger point for the small nations crusading most vigorously to be shielded from the hostilities: For the up side of independence, you have to leave the nest entirely.

Which brings us to the Baltic republics' self-serving posture on the proposed Russian-German-Dutch Nord Stream natural gas pipeline. The Balts oppose Russia's resolution for its continuous disputes with the pesky neighbors that stand between it and its European oil and natural gas customers. Russian-controlled Nord Stream would go through the Baltic Sea, bypassing Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

There are reasons for apprehension over the total of three new natural gas lines through which Moscow proposes to export Central Asian and Russian gas into Europe. As I'll discuss in the last stop of the book tour tomorrow and Tuesday in New York, Moscow has a record of using its petro-power for political and economic leverage.

But the Baltic states want it both ways. They want NATO and European Union protection from possible Russian aggression, but also the cheap fuel and pipeline tariffs they get as a channel for Russia's energy.

But, like the rest of Europe, they will have to fend for themselves.


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Did Georgia Shoot Down A Russian Plane?

Georgia says there is a fire in a thick, isolated section of forest in the north of the country. That's relevant because the country's interior minister also said a few hours ago that the Georgian military fired on an aircraft that it believed to be Russian. A search may start tomorrow to determine the source of the fire. So far Russia says it is missing no planes. The upshot: If it is a Russian military aircraft, there will probably be a significant escalation of tensions in the already much-strained relationship between the two neighbors.

Here is the top of the Reuter's story: Georgian forces fired at a plane they believed was Russian after it violated the Caucasus republic's airspace on Wednesday, a senior interior ministry official said. The incident marks an intensification of a row between the two countries in which Georgia has accused Russian planes of violating its border and of dropping a missile near Tbilisi. Russia called the Georgian statement a provocation. It has not reported any plane missing, and when asked specifically about the Georgian statement an official denied Russian aircraft had violated Georgian airspace. Rest of story.

Steve's comment: Russia and Georgia have had a tense relationship since the Soviet breakup. Under Eduard Shevardnadze, Georgia was dismembered when Russia backed separatists in the Black Sea region of Abkhazia, which used Moscow's sophisticated military to successfully break away.

More recently, Georgia has accused Moscow of a few violations of Georgian air space, including the firing of a missile. Western inspectors traveled to Georgia and backed up its claim about the missile.

Russia has been enraged by the charge, and the western position toward it. But if Georgia actually shot down one of Russia's planes, that could change the complexion of the tension. Russia's Putin stands almost entirely on a nationalistic platform of toughness bordering on belligerence toward the outside world. If it is indeed what the Georgians suggest, that will color his response.

Russia in the Air

The Central Asia republics joined their two paternalistic neighbors -- Russia and China -- in a military show yesterday. The climax was President Putin's announcement that Russia had resumed long-range flights by its nuclear bombers, and a U.S. announcement that NATO aircraft had scrambled the aircraft. The upshot: The message was not warlike, but it was belligerent. Russia is attempting to demonstrate that its global ambitions are not limited to refineries and pipelines.

The first paragraph of the L.A. Times account: Russian President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday announced reinstatement of the Soviet-era practice of having nuclear bombers routinely make long-distance flights that bring them within striking distance of the United States and its allies. "Today just after midnight, 14 strategic missile aircraft, with support and fuel planes, took off from seven airfields across Russia," Putin said in televised remarks. "Combat duty began in which a total of 20 planes are taking part. From today, combat duty of this kind will be carried out on a regular basis." Read story

Steve's comment: Russia's bomber flight is reminiscent of a similar show that the U.S. put on almost precisely 10 years ago. On Sept. 15, 1997, the U.S. 82d Airborne flew from the U.S. all the way to Kyrgyzstan for a Central Asia military exercise. It was the longest such airborne mission in history, capped by a parachute landing.

It was intended to demonstrate not that the U.S. intended to invade, but that it had the reach and will to get to the region. No one anticipated that, four years later, that would be illustrated in fact with the establishment of a semi-permanent military presence there.

The Russian flight was farce in the sense that Moscow lacks the capability to mount a massive long-range military assault. But in military language, image can be crucial. Russia is saying that it intends over the coming years to take its previously formidible military out of mothballs, and turn it into something of use. That use is surely regional, but given the neighborhood it is something that bears watching.

Here is the first paragraph of a Reuters account of the Shanghai military exercises: CHEBARKUL, Russia - Russia and China staged their biggest joint exercises on Friday but denied this show of military prowess could lead to the formation of a counterweight to NATO. Read story