Kurt Bassuener August 27th, 2008

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband spoke in Kyiv today - the BBC gives a good capsule on his remarks here.  Miliband met with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko:

Victor Yushchenko told Mr Miliband that the brief conflict between Georgia and Russia earlier this month had exposed serious weaknesses in the powers of the UN and other international bodies.

He called for Ukraine’s defences to be strengthened and said his country would consider increasing the amount of money Russia pays for the lease of the port of Sevastopol, where it stations its Black Sea Fleet.

In his remarks to students later, Miliband said:

…the Georgia crisis had “provided a rude awakening”…Moscow’s “unilateral attempt to redraw the map marks a moment of real significance”.

The Russian president, he said, had a “big responsibility not to start” a new Cold War.

The foreign secretary said the response of the EU and Nato to such “aggression” should be one of “hard-headed engagement”.

“That means bolstering our allies, rebalancing the energy relationship with Russia, defending the rules of international institutions, and renewing efforts to tackle ‘unresolved conflicts’,” he explained.

Mr Miliband again rejected calls for Russia to be expelled from the G8, but did suggest the EU and Nato needed to review relations with it.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also had strong words for Moscow, referencing Crimea, among other potential future flashpoints:

Asked on Europe 1 radio whether Russia would now regularly choose to confront the West rather than cooperate with it, Kouchner said: “That is not impossible.”

“I repeat that it is very dangerous, and there are other objectives that one can suppose are objectives for Russia, in particular the Crimea, Ukraine and Moldova.” Like Georgia, Ukraine has a pro-Western president who wants his country to join NATO, a move away from Moscow’s sphere of influence which has angered the Kremlin. It also has a large Russian-speaking population, but is much bigger than Georgia…

Kouchner repeated his call on Russia to comply with international commitments, including a French-backed peace plan under which Russia agreed to pull back its forces to the positions they held before the crisis. “We cannot accept these violations of all international law, of agreements on security and cooperation in Europe, of United Nations resolutions, and the seizing for the first time in a long time of one territory by the army of a neighbouring country,” Kouchner said.

“It (Russia) is an international outlaw. That is not just the opinion of the European Union,” he added. The leaders of the European Union’s member states are due to hold an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss their response to Russia’s actions, but Kouchner would not be drawn on what decisions they might take.

“The 27 heads of state will obviously react,” Kouchner said. “The European Union, the 27 countries, 500 million people, Europe’s economic power, must manifest themselves in this crisis to stop it and negotiate a political solution,” he added.

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Kurt Bassuener August 15th, 2008

US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and French President Nicolas Sarkozy met to discuss the tense situation and continuing violence in Georgia, and Dr Rice has since travelled to Georgia to meet with President Saakashvili.  She aims to get him to sign a ceasefire deal that was negotiated in shuttle diplomacy by President Sarkozy and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, between Saakashvili and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.  The major tenets of the deal remain as they were some days ago - end to all fighting and military action, mutual withdrawal to pre-conflict positions, full humanitarian access, and international talks on the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  Sarkozy said the deal would be integral to a UN Security Council resolution France would table.

President Saakashvili has concerns about the deal, since he believes it could undermine Gerogia’s territorial integrity.  On their visit to the region, the leaders of Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states also expressed their misgivings on that score.

“We feel that, in the documents presented last night both in Moscow and in Tbilisi, the principal element, the respect of the territorial integrity of Georgia, is missing,” Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus said, reading a joint statement alongside the leaders of Poland, Latvia and Estonia.

The statement underlined their “full support for the territorial integrity of Georgia within internationally-recognised borders.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave ample reason for worry yesterday when he said: “One can forget about any talk about Georgia’s territorial integrity because, I believe, it is impossible to persuade South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree with the logic that they can be forced back into the Georgian state.”  For those that might remember, this is another conscious parallel adopted by Russia to the Western reaction to Kosovo in this conflict - first in justifying the war itself, and now in justifying the separation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia.  While there are numerous differences between these cases, Russia will use Kosovo as a rhetorical shield for its current actions in Georgia, deep into the country’s interior.  President Medvedev met with the leaders of the two breakaway regions yesterday in Moscow, to get their signatures on the ceasefire deal.  At the meeting, Medvedev told the leaders, South Ossetia’s Eduard Kokoity and Abkhaz Sergei Bagapsh, that Russia would support their independence aspirations, though ostensibly in line with the Helsinki Final Act, which insists all changes to borders be consensual:

“I’d like you to know,” Medvedev told the two leaders, “that we support any decision taken by the peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. We will not only support them, but guarantee them in the Caucasus and in the whole world … Right is on your side.”

It also appears that Russian forces intend to stay in both regions as “peacekeepers” for the foreseeable future - which is hardly consonant with the deal’s stipulation that forces withdraw to prewar positions. 

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted in a press conference yesterday that US-Russia relations “could be adversely affected for years to come” if Russia “does not step back from its aggressive posture and actions in Georgia.”  A long excerpt from the press conference ran on PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, followed by a worthy discussion including Heritage’s Ariel Cohen, who I think captured the gravity for the neighborhood of the Russian action.  The US now landing flights of humanitarian assistance in Tbilisi, though Russia’s deputy military chief cast doubt on whether the aid was strictly humanitarian.  Clearly, the US involvement is chafing Russia, and Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull speculated that the armored feint from Gori toward Tbilisi might have been motivated by this.

Meanwhile, Poland signed a hard-negotiated deal with the US to allow deployment of missile defense interceptors, in exchange for US military assistance and bilateral guarantees.  Foreign Minister Radislaw Sikorski said the timing of the deal had nothing to do with what was happening in Georgia.  Yet Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s remarks at the announcement certainly referenced current events, and expressed doubts about NATO’s Article 5 guarantees for members.

“Poland and the Poles do not want to be in alliances in which assistance comes at some point later — it is no good when assistance comes to dead people,” Tusk said. “Poland wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of — knock on wood — any possible conflict.

“This is a step toward real security for Poland in the future.”

A number of new NATO allies have expressed dismay at what they see as a feeble reaction to the Russian attack on Georgia.  Though it must be noted Georgia is not a NATO member, these countries - especially Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - strongly pushed Georgian membership and feel Russian pressures most acutely.

The most imeediate threat, however, is probably felt by Ukraine, which has approved a presidential order to control the deployment of Russian Black Sea Fleet vessels from the Crimean port of Sevastopol and their return - a move Russia scoffed at immediately.  The current arrangement, under which Russia can use the base, expires in 2017.  President Viktor Yushchenko has unambiguously supported Georgia and its leader Saakashvili, who was very supportive during Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution.

Russian nationalists have long decried what they see as the historical injustice of Crimea being made part of Ukraine, and some, like Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, called for its return, and was barred from entering the country as a result.  Luzhkov, some may recall, acted as Putin’s hatchet man in late 2004, when he spoke a conference of eastern and southern Ukrainian local leaders disaffected by the Orange Revolution and pushing for “autonomy,” or even separation from Ukraine.  This was quickly quashed, and there was little appetite among Russophone Ukrainians for such a move.  Crimea, however, is probably the only place in Ukraine with a large concentration of citizens who feel Russian.  Luzhkov’s moves in the future on this issue deserve close scrutiny, for he has acted in a provocative way for the Kremlin in the past.

Presidents Yushchenko and Bush spoke yesterday about Georgia, and Bush thanked Yushchenko for his role.  No doubt Ukraine wants as much insurance as it can get for its territorial integrity and independence.  The question is, will the US and European Union rise to the occasion? 

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Kurt Bassuener August 11th, 2008

Al Jazeera English just reported that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili just signed a ceasefire agreement with the French and Finnish Foreign Ministers, Bernard Kouchner and Alexander Stubb.  It has reportedly already been rejected by Russia.  The two men are now touring bomb damage in Gori on live TV with their Georgian counterpart.  They reportedly had to duck and cover from a Russian bombing sortie.

How much traction he will get with it is far from clear.  This action by Russia, while given a pretext by the Tskhinvali operation by the Georgians, was clearly in the works for some time, given the weight of force applied and the wide spread area of operations.  As Eric Witte noted earlier, the Russian government has been open about the desire to see Saakashvili ousted.  Vitali Churkin, the Russian UN Ambassador, said the following yesterday in a sharp exchange with US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad:

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador, accused Moscow of seeking “regime change” in Georgia and resisting attempts to make peace after days of deadly fighting.

“Is your government’s objective regime change in Georgia, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Georgia?” Khalilzad asked Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador.

Churkin said “regime change is an American expression. We do not use such an expression”.

But he added: “But sometimes there are occasions, and we know from history, that there are different leaders who come to power, either democratically or semi-democratically, and they become an obstacle.”

Putin, who is clearly and literally calling the shots, has only upsides from this increasingly ambitious attack within Georgia.  He bet - correctly - that there would be no active military response from the outside (and none is foreseeable).  He managed to paint Saakashvili as rash and irresponsible.  He is betting that ultimately Georgian domestic support for the government will wane as Russia continues its assault.  And he’s betting that this war will not only reduce the likelihood of Georgia getting into NATO, but reduce NATO and American credibility in Russia’s “near abroad” and beyond.  The US and NATO may come to be seen as an unreliable ally.

Georgians have asked what their troop deployment to Iraq got them, now that the US is not intervening in Georgia.  This is a fair and understandable question.   The term “ally” has been devalued in the past seven years through the Bush administration’s “with us or against us” approach, and expectation that NATO applicants should send troops to Afghanistan and Iraq - the latter a war none of these countries had a voice in choosing.  Allies are supposed to consult and listen to each other, and take each other’s interests into account before engaging in a conflict.  It is doubtful that Saakashvili did so before he sent troops into Tskhinvali.  Neither Tblisi or Washington had apparently planned for this eventuality, despite it being foreseeable. 

All the opprobrium of the international community has not made a dent in Russia’s plan to crush Georgia. 

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Kurt Bassuener May 7th, 2008

The devastation to Burma’s Irrawaddy delta region from Cyclone Nargis is becoming clearer as some international correspondents have had a chance to tour the affected areas – Burma’s ricebowl.  22,000 people are reported dead, with more than 40,000 missing, and up to one million without shelter.  The few international media traveling outside Rangoon have heard from those rendered homeless that they have received no assistance up to now.

Al Jazeera English has two correspondents in Burma who have not been identified for fear of government reprisal. In a report broadcast earlier today, one correspondent noted the conspicuous lack of government presence and aid. The army was seen clearing roads, but that was all. She reported seeing a hundred empty Burmese Army trucks on the road back to Rangoon from the low-lying areas she visited, none of which was laden with aid supplies. Residents of the delta region she interviewed noted they had received no warning on state radio of the impending cyclone. The town of Pyinkaya, which had 150,000 residents, “Assistance hasn’t reached them yet and they are dying - completely isolated,” according to Save the Children’s Andrew Kirkwood. CNN International’s Dan Rivers  was also reporting from Bogolay in the affected area, touring a makeshift shelter where homeless and wounded persons had gathered – again with no government presence. The rations on hand would only last two days. Bodies of the dead were being carries to the river. Local officials noted they had not been given authorization to act by the central government. Shops that have reopened today generated unrest as desperate people pushed to get needed relief supplies.

International assistance has been offered, and some from neighboring India and Thailand has already arrived. UN and international Red Cross aid efforts were initiated yesterday.  But the difficulty of getting the regime to allow humanitarian aid experts in to oversee aid logistics, as done in Indonesia after the Aceh tsunami, is retarding efforts to assist. Some humanitarian aid workers are on the ground assessing need and providing help, but visas have been denied to many more disaster relief experts who are on standby. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd appealed for humanitarian access: “Forget politics…Forget the military dictatorship. Let’s just get aid and assistance through to people who are suffering and dying as we speak, through a lack of support on the ground.” The regime is more concerned with restricting international presence in the country than in providing for the overwhelming popular need for help. France’s Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner (and founder of Medicins Sans Frontiers and Doctors of the World), noted that the lack of trust in the regime and access was hampering the world’s ability to assist - the junta insists on distribiting the aid themselves. Indonesia’s presidential spokesman, Dino Patti Djalal, asserted in a CNN interview that the scale of the disaster required external assistance on the ground, basing his assessment on the Aceh tsunami recovery effort.

It is as yet unclear how the cyclone and the callous and incompetent reaction to it by the junta will erode the regime’s grip on the state. As of now, popular concerns are consumed by the existential. But the fact that the enormous military buildup of the Tatmadaw since the 1988 coup, including significant logistical capacity, has only been used for repression and not for civic emergencies, will surely not be forgotten. Nor will their footdragging in allowing outside help, which is costing countless lives.  With the military leaders safely out of harm’s way in the new garrison capital Naypyidaw, their detachment from their people’s fate could hardly be more stark than it has proven in these days. In the longer term, the devastation of Burma’s agricultural heartland will necessitate greater external involvement in Burma. 

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