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?
