Executive Summary:
1. The Russo-Georgian war must give halt to the ‘crisis management’ mode European diplomacy has been stuck in since the end of the Cold War and bring into focus the need to develop an effective long term strategy to deal with a resurgent Russia.
2. Europe must reckon with the Kremlin. There can be no more wishful thinking about the Putin-Medvedev regime now. We must prepare for acute confrontation whilst working harder to prevent it. In preparation for dealing with a challenging neighbour, Europe’s efforts should focus on the diversification of energy sources, the addressing of Russian minority grievances and associated border-disputes and frozen conflicts, as well as implementing first-rate cyber defences.
3. This is not a return to the Cold War. Both the EU and post-Soviet Russia are still emerging entities, and a Europe not yet at ease about its foreign policy mechanisms must quickly grasp the nature of this complex challenge and its implications. Simplistic Cold War thinking risks policy-makers falling into a self-defeating trap.
4. There should be no illusions as to the Russo-Georgian war having been won by Russia. The realities on the ground may ultimately force us to forego Georgian integrity to salvage the situation. Georgia’s President will have to make tough concessions, but Georgian suffering – and European failure – must be rewarded with immediate fast-track accession to NATO.
Since the 2003 'Rose Revolution,' a surge of nationalism and a desire for Western political and economic standards of life have driven Georgia down an almost romantic adventure led by Mikheil Saakashvili. Despite his errors and none too perfect civil rights credentials, the French Ambassador Eric Fournier stressed to me that whatever questions could be posed, "Saakashvili still transformed this place from a sort of post-Soviet ruin into a modern functioning country."
Forget the 'acquis communitaire,' inspections by Brussels bureaucrats or the costly transition process. Georgia paid the highest price for EU and NATO membership it never achieved. It has been clear to all observers that the Kremlin's fixed hatred of Saakashvili rested on his successes at bringing Georgia out of Moscow's orbit. Russia’s decisions to build-up troops, repair the railways it would deliver its tanks by and begin aggressive over-flights were designed to make Tbilisi realize it would pay a heavy price for its ambitions. Increased fighting in the border-lands near South Ossetia only brought the tension higher, and finally provocative shootings by Ossetian militias brought the crisis to a head. Nobody started this war - it was a long process that played itself out. The Georgians had sent frequent messages to Western leaders saying they were worried, but we chose not to follow what was going on too closely. Like any bad player we can now see the costs of taking our eyes off the ball. Frozen-conflicts are not fixed. They can thaw at any moment.
Saakashvili screwed up by responding to Russia in the worst possible way. He went against US advice and launched a reckless attack on South Ossetia hoping to prevent the break-away region from falling outside Georgian control for good. He miscalculated enormously. Standing in the ruins of large swathes of the South Ossetian capital, it is clear that in the targeting of civilians and in bombing indiscriminately, Saakashvili squandered forever the chance for these territories to re-enter a possibly federal Georgia.
Georgians themselves must not be held accountable for this mistake. Saakashvili has always been a nationalist, modeling himself on medieval kings and coming to power as much on promises of re-conquering these lands as providing western standards of living. There is no use eulogizing him like some US politicians do. Others have called him delusional; I posit that he is simply a nationalist. This experience should make us take another look at the often frightening post-Soviet nationalism of our Baltic, Ukrainian or Polish allies. It should teach us to be wary, but never to abandon the popular sentiment that drives these countries to the West.
The Georgian people do not deserve to pay a higher price for Saakashvili's blunder than they already have. They deserve EU and NATO membership more than ever. However, we cannot pretend that Russia did not win this war. The only option now available to bring Georgia onto a fast-track into the West is to acknowledge Moscow's facts on the ground, accept Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence as a reality and give Tbilisi the recompense it deserves. Only by abandoning Georgia's territorial integrity can we save the country from becoming a new Russian satellite state.
Keti Tsikhelashvili of the European Stability Initiative, a major think-tank dealing with the EU's near abroad, looked forlorn as she tells me: "There were those that urged that Georgia take a major balanced approach before the war in dealing with Russia and the West, taking geography into account. Now perhaps they seem vindicated. I personally think we may have put all of our eggs into one basket." Through making tough and even humiliating concessions, Georgia can if the West commits to it, still achieve its place in Europe.
With Russian tanks still stationed in Georgia and warnings of a new Cold War flying around we should ask ourselves how we got here. European diplomats have since the end of the first Cold War been struggling through crisis-management without ever developing serious long term strategies towards the rest of the world. Too engrossed in EU or domestic politics, we woke up to a shock on September 11th that the Muslim world existed and was full of grievances. This August we woke up to Russia. We found a country with a deep anger at the often appalling way it had been treated, which - perhaps due to our lack of planning, bad economic advice and poor engagement - had fallen into the hands of an authoritarian, criminal, KGB-trained clique.
We need to take the Kremlin seriously from now on. When Putin says he believes the fall of the USSR was the greatest geo-political disaster of the 20th century or that he wants Russia to be a great-power again, he means it. The crisis has demonstrated what Russia’s weapons of choice are. Russia has at its disposal great-energy resources which a dependent Europe needs, frozen-conflicts it can set alight at will, loyal Russian speaking minorities, former KGB networks across the old bloc, cyber-warriors, as well as old-fashioned military might.
Russian armies are unlikely to come face to face with NATO's, despite radical Russian generals being on record stating that war with the U.S. is inevitable within 15 years. In any case, they would be no match. Other Russian levers are de-fusible, for example, European energy markets can be diversified. Yet, dealing with the other aspects of Russia’s potential for troublemaking will require more effort and real imagination. Europe's border areas are littered with frozen conflicts and un-settled borders, in Moldova, and between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Europe should take a clear signal from what happened in Georgia and re-invest its time, money and effort into creating lasting peace on these fault-lines before the Kremlin's sees an opportunity. If this requires Russia being at the negotiating table, so be it. We cannot wish them away and treating them with the respect they deserve cannot hurt. The ‘rogue’ former British Ambassador to Yugoslavia Ivor Roberts, personally told me he views the only solution to the tangled web of bad-borders from Kosovo to Nagorno Karabakh as being "a new congress of Europe." Maybe we should heed his views, no doubt formed in the face of much experience.
If there are fears of Russian-speaking rebellions in the Baltics and the Ukraine we must ask ourselves why citizens of democratic or EU members states could even be considered likely to act in such a way. The reality is that discrimination is real, language rights for Russian-speakers non-existent and ethnic chauvinism towards the large Russian groups painful. Instead of ignoring a fuse ready to light we can eliminate the grievances that make it likely they would side with an authoritarian regime against a democratic one.
Back on the home-front the secret-services have been warning for months that the spying activity within Europe is back at Cold War levels. The simple response is that we need to recognize that modern war is more than ever about intelligence, maybe even more so than it is about guns. The secret-services need to have the funding and scope of an army, navy or air-force, even if that comes at the expense of any of the existing branches of our defense forces. A smart army is worth more than a large but ill-informed one.
Moving swiftly requires working out a long-term destination for EU-Russian relations. The issue is that neither the EU nor the Russian Federation have reached their final destinations themselves. The Russia of today is an impermanent structure. Both too large to be governed conventionally as a representative nation state and too weak to dominate its neighbors effectively, Russia is now hovering between joining the club of great post-imperial states along with Britain, France, and Germany, or embarking on a quest to build a new post-modern Empire. The trouble is that the EU is, in a sense, also stuck in a similar position.
The ‘malaise’ of Brussels, reflects a Europe of unfinished projects. The Union today is left somewhere between a confederation and a near-federation capable of speaking with a single voice. Diego Alonso, a veteran Spanish diplomat once explained to me in Moscow that “The EU right now is an uncertain thing. Maybe it will take on the capacities of single state in foreign affairs, but just as likely is that it will become divided over foreign policy issues, entangled and maybe split or drift apart.” Europe is littered with institutions that have slid into irrelevance. Neglect could spell a similar fate for the EU. Stuck between these two un-identified political flying saucers - is the post-soviet space. For the moment it would be wise for a national leader to tread his country’s path carefully.
Working out what relationship Britain, as a leading EU member, should aim to construct with Russia, forces us to work out what we see Europe becoming. The success that the Russians have already shown in dividing Europe amongst itself - broadly along Donald Rumsfeld’s “Old” and “New” Europe lines - shows that if we seek to mitigate the damage a resurgent Kremlin can do to the fabric of the Union, we need to re-start the drive towards a common European foreign policy. If anything the Bush era should have taught us that the US cannot, despite the greatest of commitments, solidify positions in the Caucasus, Central Asia or the Middle East. However, the EU has proven that through the transformative power of integration, its approach can offer the greatest rewards towards extending democracy. We need to stand firm and together.
Right now, without a serious European strategy towards tackling Russia or even a set of tools truly in place to speak with one voice, the Kremlin is bold and the continent is puzzled and uncertain. Seemingly we are making the two worst mistakes imaginable. One is to fall into Moscow’s trap of Cold War rhetoric and thinking, such as David Miliband and David Cameron seem to have done; the other is the denial which large swathes of the German and French left seem to wallow in. Mr Miliband should remember that talks “of anti-Russian coalitions” do as much to justify or encourage potential further Russian grabs in the Ukraine or the Baltics, as they do to discourage them. In many ways this response is exactly what Putin and Medvedev want, as it is ‘regime legitimizing’ and seems to suggest the publicly flared fears of encirclement and ‘Russophobia’ were justified. This is not the return to the Cold War, but the beginning of something far more unpredictable, dirty and dangerous. A phase of ‘acute competition.’
Looking at Russia’s actions leaves us in a position that makes it hard to strike back without risking even more. The democratic potential for the country is still enormous and we cannot risk falling into a trap set by the Kremlin to launch a new Cold War, so as to permanently rule that out. Neither can we permit populist revanchism to re-draw the map of Eastern Europe on the vague hope that it might produce democracy in the back-wash. Proving that Russian minorities need not turn to Moscow for protection, un-freezing the frozen conflicts and launching serious rounds of negotiations with the Russians on disarmament – whilst never ceasing our democracy promotion efforts should be our first steps. Keeping rhetorically quiet, whilst practically piecing together our defenses is the creative combination we need. There is a way as to how we can avoid losing Russia’s masses without losing part of Europe to Russia. It will require exquisite strategy and diplomacy.
Ben Judah a senior correspondent for ISN Security Watch. His work on the Russo-Georgian war has recently been published by The New Republic (online).