New world order’ seen as powers square off on Georgia
New world order’ seen as powers square off on Georgia
By Christopher Boian
Russia has signalled that it considers the rules of the international game as it has been played for the past generation are a thing of the past
WHEN Georgia attacked South Ossetia late the night of August 7, it was clear that something out of the ordinary was afoot.
But few could have guessed the events which transpired with breathtaking speed over the next week would ring alarm bells around the world and, according to analysts, instantly alter the international order for many years to come. Fundamental principles for developing relations with Russia and other countries once part of the Soviet Union, taken for granted in the West at least since the 1991 Soviet collapse, have abruptly been called into question.
At the same time, Russia has signalled that it considers the rules of the international game as it has been played for the past generation are a thing of the past, a thought that will give its ex-Soviet neighbours something to ponder. “The recent conflict will have dramatic repercussions for Russia and the international community as a whole for quite some time to come,” said Yevgeny Volk, a political analyst with the US-based Heritage Foundation think tank.
“It is the biggest geopolitical turning point since the 1991 Soviet collapse. It is a new stage in international relations, the end of any illusion about the peaceful nature of development in East-West relations,” he said. Numerous other experts agreed with this, saying that regardless of how the crisis is viewed looking back and how it plays out in the future a seminal event has now occurred that has already deeply impacted the global landscape.
“The status quo ante has gone forever,” James Nixey, manager of the Russia and Eurasia programme at the London-based research centre Chatham House, wrote in an essay as the crisis unfolded. “Whatever happens now in the Caucasus, relations between Russia and the West (and Russia’s West-leaning neighbours) must surely, from this moment on, be re-evaluated by all,” Nixey said.
In repelling Georgia’s bid to take control of the separatist province by force and then launching its own massive offensive into Georgia proper, Russia had a number of aims, several of which it has attained, experts said. These included the general aim of bolstering its weight in world affairs, the strategic aim of fortifying its presence in the Caucasus and the economic aim of stepping back into a vital oil and gas transport corridor.
“Russia’s reaction was a predetermined policy in search of an appropriate application,” Martha Brill Olcott, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said at a seminar last week in Washington. “The situation in South Ossetia proved a perfect storm for Moscow,” she said, according to a transcript of her remarks published by the Brookings Institution, another US policy research organisation.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is strongly supported by the United States and Washington has for years said it backs his objective of reasserting Georgian control over South Ossetia and another breakaway province, Abkhazia. Sporadic violence between rebel fighters and Georgian troops in both areas had been a feature of life in Georgia since the two regions, both backed by Russia, de facto split from the country in the early 1990s.
But what surprised many about the fighting that erupted there last week was how quickly it rocketed into a major confrontation between Russia on one side and the United States and much of western Europe on the other. The long-term implications of that confrontation are only now beginning to dawn on policymakers around the world, analysts said.
“Russia had said for many years that it was ready to use force outside its borders” in defence of Russian citizens and interests, explained Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the foreign policy review Russia in Global Affairs. “But the fact of actually doing it changes the strategic situation,” he said, adding: “At the critical moment, it appeared the United States could not actually do anything” to help Georgia counter the Russian onslaught.
And this, analysts say, may further shake up the international system as Georgia, Ukraine and other ex-Soviet republics re-assess the balance in their own relations with Russia, the United States and the world. Countries like Ukraine and Georgia which have for years pursued resolutely pro-Western policies aimed at integration into NATO and the European Union may change course or demand protection the West has been reluctant to give. “It is a signal that those who decide to bank exclusively on the United States might want to think about this” and either diversify their relations more or extract more solid security guarantees, Lukyanov said. According to a report by the Russian television news network Vesti, one nation once under Moscow’s sway – Poland – managed to do the latter in short order.
Poland obtained US assent to “all conditions” it had been holding out for before agreeing to host elements of a new US missile system, Vesti said. Those included delivery of Patriot missile batteries and training in their use. Russia has for years lashed out at what it perceived as unchallenged US global hegemony, and Turkish President Abdullah Gul, whose country is a close US ally in NATO, said the time had come to change the system.
“A new world order, if I can say it, should emerge,” Gul told the British daily Guardian in an interview published Saturday. It is precisely such a realignment in the relationship among the powers of the world – a change that enhances Moscow’s authority vis-a-vis that of Washington – that is already in progress, according to experts. In two terms as president, Vladimir Putin concentrated on consolidating Russia’s post-Soviet existence as a state and exploiting the country’s vast natural resources to put it back on a more robust economic footing.
As that process took place, the Kremlin began increasingly to believe that, despite talking of partnership, US actions like blocking Russian WTO membership showed Washington was more interested in domination than co-operation. So as an actor in the world, Russia has been aware for years of its sinking relationship with the United States in particular and is less likely to be moved by US threats that its actions in Georgia will worsen them further.
“Frankly speaking, the Western alliance does not have strong leverage to counter” Russia’s actions in the Caucasus, Volk said. “I don’t see that Russia is winning the psychological-information war. But from a point of view of political and economic achievements, I believe Russia has the stronger hand now,” he said. Threats like excluding Russia from the G8, boycotting the 2014 winter Olympic Games in Sochi and others are “not very significant to contain Russia” or coerce it to get in line with the West’s demands, he added.
I actually think the events in Georgia are fairly insignifigant in and of themselves. The constant US push against Russia’s borders was going to go too far at some point and at that point there would be a push back. Simple as that. When Saakashvilli attacked South Ossetia, he put Russia in a position where they had both a right and a responsibility (as peacekeepers) to push back the US-backed aggression and to nuetralize the threat.
Only if the Russian army refuses to pull back will there be any real signifigance to the incident itself.
No, I think the really signifigant thing that has happened here is that the White House has followed its pattern of dealing with any conflict situation by immediately ratchetting up the tension as high as possible. We saw this when Bush had been in the White House less than a month or two, when he reacted very aggressively to the crash of the US spy plane in China. Then, of course, we saw the same pattern in Bush’s dealings with the “Axis of Evil”. What’s different now is that the White House is following this pattern not against a weak nation, but against a powerful nation. Well, it actually tried that before with China, as I mentioned, but immediately backed down.
This time, there’s no back down. The White House is using every concievable method to hype the Georgia situation as a US-Russia confrontation. So far the Russian response has been very measured. So far the most aggressive comment I know of from the Russian side has been that Georgia can ‘forget about’ regaining Ossetia. But that’s just a statement of the obvious.
Well, one thing’s for sure: the defense industry in the US can look forward to even fatter budgets and the US will have even more massive deficits in the years to come. Maybe that’s the sole purpose of all the White House bluster – to convince the American People that we need to switch gears from fearing the Terror Threat to fearing the Russian Threat and (presumably) the Chinese Threat. We’ll need lots more Carriers and submarines and tanks and jet fighters and Star Wars and they’ll be able to bring back that monster artillery gun they were planning to build a few years back. DARPA will be humming like crazy.
And then there’s the presumably immanent attack on Iran. All the heavy handed talk from DC about Georgia must relate to that somehow, though exactly how is a bit difficult to figure. Is the WH hoping to pressure Russia to back extreme new sanctions or even an attack as a conciliatory gesture to the hopping mad White House? Is the purported humanitarian mission to Georgia in fact a way of inserting US military forces to create a second theater for Russia to worry about should it decide to come to Iran’s aid in case of a US attack? Is it a way to try to push US popular support for an attack on Iran over some crucial threshold? Support for an attack on Iran has been declining – is this an attempt to reverse that trend (by tarring Iran’s most important ally)? All of the above?
I can’t help but wonder if the White House and the US military/industrial/political complex are overplaying their hand. There’s something very unseemly about a Secretary of State repeatedly telling off another country’s Head of State, and doing so in the harshest possible terms. There’s something equally unseemly about a US President lavishing the headiest of praise on an obvious thug like Saakashvilli.
Today Rice, in her typically heavyhanded manner, accused Russia of playing a dangerous game. Well, I don’t get the impression that Russia is playing a game at all. I get the impression that they are taking care of business and I would be very surprised if they aren’t out of Georgia in a few days. It seems to me that Rice and Bush are the ones playing a dangerous game.
And if I were Congress, instead of issuing fatwas against Russia, I’d be asking how it came to be that US and EU and Nato military support was so generously given to someone like Saakashvilli, someone who used it to attack his own people.
epppie
August 19, 2008 at 6:21 am
America the thesis, Russia the antithesis. Sooner or later there will be a clash. Russia is reinvigorating their nation, America is trying to build a new hegemony by brute force, and Europe is twisting the blade into the wounds. Out of future coinflict will come the sythesis. This is the same old pattern being used over and over again.
Bait the bear, but get the heck out of it’s way if it decides to bite.
antireptilian
August 20, 2008 at 12:33 pm