by Daniel Korski | Aug 18, 2008 | Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia, North America
Jules did a piece about an ordinary Russian’s reaction to the Russo-Georgian War. To give some balance, here are the views of an ordinary American and friend who got trapped in Tblisi.
We finally got back to the US last night, after a harrowing 11 days. Among other things, we got stuck in a column of retreating Georgian tanks in Gori 30 minutes before a major Russian air strike on the column and 2 hours before Russian ground forces occupied the city and closed the highway. Kouchner had been in the town earlier that day and we thought the Russians would hold off at least until the next day.
It’s a bad situation–and much bigger than Georgia. The EU and the US need to speak with a united voice. I’m glad Merkel went to Tbilisi and finally spoke up on Russian aggression. Her first comments from Germany were fantastically bad–and exactly what Russia is counting on.
After unsuccessfully trying to get our family and friends across the border to Azerbaijan, we were guests at the ‘solidarity’ rally with Yushchenko and the presidents of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
A lot was done badly in US-Georgian relations and in Georgian responses to retaliation, but none of that needs to be discussed under the barrel of a Russian gun. We need to find a way to force them to honor the cease fire or start to impose costs.
I think there is still a 50% chance they intend to occupy the whole country. I also think there is little possibility Georgia is the end of it.
by Jules Evans | Aug 18, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia
A good source for comment on foreign policy in the former Soviet Union is the website of the Eurasia Heritage Foundation, in my opinion Russia’s best think-tank, and certainly the one with the best English language website.
I saw this rather ominous comment there by Alexander Rahr, Russia expert at the German council on foreign policy and one of the few western Kremlinologists who’s actually a fan of the Putin regime:
“Yesterday I could say that in Europe there were differences in relation to Russia’s actions in South Ossetia. Some countries blamed Georgia for the conflict, others blamed Russia. For example, the French and German settlement plan was strongly supported. They pinned serious hopes on it.
But at present there is a different tendency. The USA has changed the Europeans’ opinion, and the EU and NATO may revise their relations with Russia seriously. Russia may be even excluded from G-8, the Russia-NATO Council may be disbanded, etc.
The Europeans have no political will and desire to be involved in the conflict in the Caucasus. The European politicians will not go beyond the talking stage. That means that the EU is most likely to let NATO play the key role in the settlement of the armed conflict, which would be a serious mistake.
Russia is short of good diplomatic tools to bring its position to Europe. Many Russian diplomats were educated in the Soviet system. They have revised their approaches, and changed a lot. But even now the West would understand only few of them. Europe will not accept the position “if somebody does not understand us, it is not our problems”.
There are quite a few Russians in Europe who have the European mentality. But there are no tools to make Russia’s position clear for the European policy-makers through those Russians.
And, just to get a taste of the nastiness of some Russian foreign policy comment, here is Alexey Arbatov, director of the International Security Centre in Moscow, mouthing off about the ‘public whipping’ of Georgia.
“Theoretically everything is possible, but in practice a world war is unlikely. Some things have changed compared with the First and Second World Wars.
“First, the great powers have developed many common long-term interests. Second, there are nuclear weapons that make victory in war impossible therefore making world wars meaningless. So, such a war is only possible if events escalate out of control. When, for example, a state takes a small step hoping to stop at that but other states retaliate by taking their own steps, the situation can then get out of control.
“Today we are on the brink, not of a new world war, but of a serious complication in relations between Russia and the West. Russia has, at long last, indicated where the “red line” lies: Moscow will not tolerate foreign military-political alliances in the post-Soviet space. Yes, we have surrendered the Baltics (but that was a special case), but Russia will not tolerate anything like that further.
“In general, the public whipping of Georgia is not only connected with South Ossetia, although Georgia provided more than a valid occasion for Russia to launch this action with a clear conscience. There is a background to the issue, namely, Georgia’s bid to join NATO and America’s wish to admit it to NATO. The process has gathered momentum and has provided the background to the conflict.
by Alex Evans | May 2, 2007 | Africa, Conflict and security, Economics and development
US chat show presenter Jon Stewart’s recent interview with Senator John McCain (here) is interesting for what it says about US perceptions of statebuilding and peace support operations. Towards the end of an interview focused almost entirely on Iraq, Stewart gets one of the bigger audience rounds of applause of the night when he asks McCain with a rhetorical flourish:
How do you quell a civil war when it’s not your country?
Now, what’s really at issue in this debate is not so much the tactics of peacekeeping or peacemaking (though heaven knows the US has made an appalling hash of both in Iraq) nor even the exigencies of immediate post-conflict reconstruction (ditto), but a much longer term set of questions about what external actors can hope to achieve on governance in developing countries. What it really comes down to is this: can donors build effective states?
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by Jules Evans | May 2, 2007 | Europe and Central Asia, Global system, Influence and networks
The generation of Russians who are now in their twenties have a choice, a really defining choice for their country.
They can either go up the cul-de-sac of chauvinist nationalism, or they can seriously try and improve their country, its economy and its governance.
The Russian government is trying, through its management of Russian TV and through Kremlin-funded youth organizations like Nashi, to channel the nation’s attention away from the quality of its own political governance, and towards supposed threats or humiliations by the likes of Estonia, Georgia, Ukraine, the US, the EU, whoever.
They are trying to turn a war memorial in Estonia into, somehow, the defining issue for Russia’s youth. And for alot of Russia’s youth, even for well-educated young Russians, this IS the defining issue for them – how poor Russia is mistreated by Estonia, how poor Russia faces double standards in the EU, how poor Russia is stabbed in the back by the UK because we let Berezovsky live there, and so on.
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by Jules Evans | Apr 24, 2007 | Europe and Central Asia, Influence and networks
This evening I went to see Yeltsin’s body lying in state at the Church of the Saviour in central Moscow. At first, I thought there wasn’t any queue at all, which would have been harsh but appropriate. But actually the police had lined up the queue on the other side of the church. It was big, but not that big. Maybe 500 people in the line at any one time, being constantly re-filled with new arrivals. The queue was just as big when I walked past again at 11pm. We only had to queue for 20 minutes or so before we were in, filing past his coffin with his pale pig-like face peaking out. A small crowd had gathered at the end of the church, some old ladies with tears in their eyes, but on the whole, this was a dry-eyed and reflective affair.
He oversaw such a painful and humiliating time in this country’s history. And for many, he was part of that humiliation, with his drunken tomfoolery on the international stage.
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