This will bear close analysis, even with the imminent change of regime in Washington. Running, as it does, to nearly 6,000 words, I don’t have the time just now, but will hopefully return to this on the morrow. For now, read for yourselves the statement made by the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (apparently from the 9th, though it has only just gone online):

Russia’s intensified pressure and provocations against Georgia – combined with a serious Georgian miscalculation – have resulted not only in armed conflict, but in an ongoing Russian attempt to dismember that country.

The causes of this conflict – particularly the dispute between Georgia and its breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – are complex, and all sides made mistakes and miscalculations. But key facts are clear: Russia sent its army across an internationally recognized boundary, to attempt to change by force the borders of a country with a democratically-elected government and, if possible, overthrow that government – not to relieve humanitarian pressures on Russian citizens, as it claimed.

This is the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union that Moscow has sent its military across an international frontier in such circumstances, and this is Moscow’s first attempt to change the borders that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union. This is a troubling and dangerous act.

Today I will seek to explain how we got here, how we’re responding, and the implications for our relationship with Russia.

Needless to say, any shift in American attitudes towards Moscow will have some significant implications for Europe. What those will be we shall have to wait and see over the coming months – November’s election is getting increasingly crucial for Europe. I’d been intending to avoid commenting on US politics, but perhaps it’s time to look in more detail at what we might expect from McCain and Obama when it comes to Europe – as it seems that their attitudes towards Russia are going to be crucial.

So, where are we after the EU’s summit on the Georgia crisis? Exactly where we were before the summit.

A few vague tutting sounds in the general direction of Russia, a bit of hyperbole (Hans-Gert Pottering, who should know better, calling the Georgia crisis the worst threat to security we’ve seen since the end of the Cold War), a few vague attempts to blame the EU’s lack of success on the failure to ratify the Lisbon Treaty (rather than, erm… seeing the failure to ratify the Lisbon Treaty as a symptom of the same one-size-fits-all malaise), and little in the way of concrete proposals for how – or if – the EU’s eastern neighbourhood policy should really shift to prevent such situations happening again. (Yes, there are plans in place to strengthen the EU’s ties to its eastern neighbours – but these are nothing new, having been agreed back in June).

With so many countries pulling in so many different directions, Russia’s ended up with not so much a slap, but a faint tap on the wrist – a squeak, not a bark of disapproval. Again.

But surely something’s been achieved, right?

Well, there’s more vague Russian promises of troop withdrawals (that we’ve heard countless times since the invasion – with the Wall Street Journal’s “Stop! Or we’ll say stop again!” headline pretty much summing it up), which have helped them dodge sanctions again. (Not that sanctions are really a very likely outcome no matter what they do, as far as I can tell, but still…). Meanwhile the vague threat – and as yet it’s only a threat – to suspend talks on any future EU/Russian economic deal has been met with Russian tutting in return, effectively trying to paint the EU as over-reacting to a localised issue, while also firmly pointing out Georgian aggression once again. And yet the Russian line about Western hypocrisy remains unchallenged, the propaganda keeps coming (though at least that bit of propaganda has the decency to be entertaining), the Russian leadership continues to do pretty much as it likes, and the Russian people continue to get ever more behind the Kremlin.

Speaking of which, has anything been said or done to tick off the Georgian leadership for its own over-reaction and attempt to forcibly put down the separatist movements within its borders? Has there been any suggestion of the most sensible, logical course of action – holding an EU/OECD-supervised referendum over the status of the two breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Azkhabia to help formalise their self-rule and to enable their leaderships to work out how their economies might function prior to formal independence? You know, supporting independence movements and the principle of self-determination in much the same way we did at the end of the Cold War? Nope. Not a bit of it. Russian accusations of double-standards and hypocrisy continue to have some foundation.

And meanwhile, various aspiring EU member states (or even just aspiring closer partners) have discovered something rather handy to help their bid to get preferential treatment from the rich Westerners of the EU: play the Russia card.

The one cause for optimism? There were some sensible contributions from MEPs during the debate that followed the European Council meeting – among the predictable calls for a common defence policy and overkill calls for complete Russian economic and political isolation. A rare indication of the subtlety of understanding that can be present in a chamber of 600+ deputies that seems to be lost in a council chamber of a couple of dozen ministers and heads of state. Yes, the national concerns of the individual MEPs are on show, but so are is a surprisingly reasonable attempt to rationalise a situation that makes no sense.

Nonetheless, the one word that could shatter Russia’s whole pretence of acting in the interests of the people of South Ossetia – Chechnya – remains unspoken. Russians can point to the potential breakup of Belgium, the support for Kosovo’s independence and the suppression of Northern Irish and Basque separatist movements all they like, but that’s to ignore the case study on their doorstep. Because this is very much a Caucasus-wide issue – one that has been rumbling since the fall of the Soviet Union (if not before), and one that threatens to spread once more. Already there are worrying signs that the wider region is flaring up. This potential short-term revival of old Caucasian tensions – along the Armenian/Azerbaijani border just as much as among the myriad Russian republics of the region – needs to be kept in check just as much as any revival of Russian militarism.

Elsewhere, this article in the New York Review of Books provides one of the best accounts of the crisis I’ve found so far – though I’ve yet to see anyone satisfactorily explain why anyone would actually want South Ossetia anyway. It’s a bunch of rocks and mountains, with very little in the way of economic or strategic worth. What’s the point of getting het up over something so worthless?

One of the major theories behind the formation of the EU – and one of the successes that has always been claimed – is that by intertwining European economies as closely as we can, future conflict will become impossible.

All very well and good – but Russia’s economy is also closely intertwined with that of the EU. Russia is heavily dependent on EU countries for trade, while the EU is heavily dependent on Russia for energy supplies. So, what exactly can the EU – its economy tied up so heavily with Russia – do to stop the Kremlin pursuing whatever course it likes? Not only is there no consensus among EU member states, but also sanctions will certainly be met with retaliation, probably in the form either of raised gas prices or cutting off of supplies altogether.

It’s like an economic version of the Cold War’s Mutually Assured Destruction, if you will. Back in the Cold War, the USA and USSR largely allowed each other to do what they liked within their respective spheres of influence (be it invading Hungary and Czechoslovakia or installing puppet dictators throughout Latin America), because nuclear-powered direct conflict would be too damaging for both parties. Now the EU faces the same situation, albeit economically – the EU lays on sanctions, Russia cuts off energy supplies, both parties suffer. And yet from a Russian perspective, the EU has been interfering in Moscow’s sphere of influence… It’s not been abiding by the old Cold War consensus.

Russia is not an EU member state. But what if a member state DID go rogue? What if another Hitler or Mussolini came to power in an EU member state, and started acting against the EU’s professed principles of democracy and human rights, flouting both EU and international law? What would the EU be prepared to do to stop them? Would there be consensus? What could the EU actually do in any case? With increasingly interdependent economies, how would shutting out one EU member state be any more feasible than the British government in Westminster suddenly trying to shut out Buckinghamshire?

The idea behind economic integration remains rationally sound, for mutual dependence should indeed breed peace – just as did mutually assured destruction. The alternatives should simply be too unpleasant to be worth considering. The one flaw with Mutually Assured Destruction was if someone who was mad broke the standoff. What happens when you’ve got a state that’s decided to start acting irrationally, or that doesn’t seem to care about the consequences of escalation?

It seems that Russia’s new post-Cold War strategy is based on the urban myth that if you’re approached by a group of muggers you should act like a lunatic, as that’ll confuse them and make them go away. How else to explain Medvedev’s “we’re not afraid of a new Cold War” comments?

I mean, Putin saying that the fall of the USSR was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century is one thing, but wanting the Cold War back? An isolated, starving, impoverished Russia relying on slave labour and a culture of fear to maintain its crumbling infrastructure? He’s not afraid of that?

I’m beginning to think that Putin/Medvedev have seriously misread their hand here. After all, you don’t talk about how

“Russia is a state which has to ensure its interests along the whole length of its border. This is absolutely clear.”

just before heading off to a meeting of, erm… states that share borders with you unless you’re either very confident, or you have no clue whatsoever how to conduct international diplomacy. And all they’re doing by being unpredictable and belligerent is showing Europe and the West that we were right all along to think that Russia was an unreliable business partner, and so to look elsewhere for energy sources. Russia’s acting like the shopkeeper who threatens his customers. Yes, we may put up with it for a while due to the inconvenient locations of the other shops – but other shops there are.

More, hopefully, later. There have been some truly bizarre developments over the last few days, and I’m still trying to get my head past the mental image I now have of Russia as that big kid at school who’d go around trying to bully people, but couldn’t actually throw a punch.

Two interesting – and thematically related – pieces look at past conflicts in relation the the Georgia / Russia spat over the last couple of days have prompted some thoughts along the old comparative history line (always an interesting intellectual exercise, as long as you don’t take it too seriously or literally).

First, over at Fistful, Douglas Muir looks at the Second Balkan War of 1912, and the impact Bulgaria’s failure to win had on that nation’s subsequent history (short version: bitter resentment, paramilitary reprisals, fighting on the losing side in both World Wars, more bitter resentment). Georgia’s failure to reassert her dominance over South Ossetia, Douglas posits, is decidedly comparible to Bulgaria’s failure to retake Macedonia and other “Bulgarian” territories in the Balkans. Or, as Douglas puts it,

“losses of national territory are hard for any nation to accept”.

Then, on BlogActiv, Stanley Crossick looks at the post-Fukuyama return of history and the possibilities of Cold War Mk.II:

“Cold War II may soon be with us – indeed will be with us – if we have still to learn the cost of humiliating the Russian Bear… Vladimir Putin has stated that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst geopolitical disaster of the 20th century: he means it.”

Russia was on the losing side in the Cold War – hell, Russia WAS the losing side in the Cold War. Russia is now weak, with a shaky economy that relies largely on the money of her erstwhile enemies. She has lost large chunks of her former territory, and has to see ethnic Russians and Russian speakers scattered throughout the lands of near neighbours where once those lands belonged to her. Meanwhile, her old enemies in NATO are pushing ever closer to her borders, sucking in former allies and making new treaties with countries that used to be Russia’s friends.

For any country, such post-defeat humiliation would be hard to bear, and breed ever more resentment of the victors – both among the politicians and the people. For a country like Russia, with a long macho culture, such humiliation is even more unbearable. But have we learned our lesson? For we have made this mistake before:

From Harold Nicholson‘s diary, written while he was a junior diplomat at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference (from the Wednesday, 28 May entry):

“The more I read the [German peace treaty], the sicker it makes me… If I were the Germans, I shouldn’t sign for a moment. You see it gives them no hope whatsoever, either now or in the future.”

As the old USSR fell apart during the 90s, the US-backed “shock therapy“, designed to push the country towards neoliberal capitalism and democracy, humiliated and alienated the Russian people just as did the reparations clauses of the Treaty of Versailles the Germans. Resentment grew, especially of the “oligarchs” – prompting first the 1993 constitutional crisis, where Yeltsin sent in the special forces against the Duma, then (arguably) the First Chechen War of 1994-6. The 1998 financial crisis (followed swiftly by the Second Chechen War) was, for many, the final proof that the Western way of doing things had failed. It was, with hindsight, to post-Soviet Russia what the Wall Street Crash was to Weimar Germany – the final catalyst to spark the reaction. With Putin’s 1999 rise, the reforms of the Yeltsin years began to be swept back. He determined not to tolerate Chechnya’s de facto independence any longer, to clamp down on the oligarchs, to reassert state control over companies left, right and centre. Russia had been humiliated and exploited enough.

And yet now, despite the failures of the 1990s, the West is demanding that Russia return to that self-same path of neoliberal reform. We’re still saying the same things that we were in ’89, in ’91, in ’93 and in ’98. And all the while, the influence of the West has been advancing – the expansion of NATO into the old Soviet / Warsaw Pact sphere in 1999 and in particular the 2004 expansion of the EU (and NATO) to include old USSR territories Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – bringing the borders of the EU to within 80 miles of Putin’s home town of St Petersburg. Just as Weimar Germany saw parts of its territory go over to its erstwhile enemies, so has Russia. Hence the desperation to hang on to Chechnya. Hence the sabre-rattling over the US missile defence shield. Hence the ongoing meddling in Ukraine and Georgia.

For the duration of the Soviet Union, Russians were raised to distrust the West, to regard it as decadent and full of corruption. Russia’s experience of rampant neoliberal reform during the 1990s merely confirmed this as the rich got richer and the poor stayed poor.

And still the West persists with pressurising Russia. With the best intentions, no doubt. But democratic reform cannot come about if the people themselves don’t want it. Free markets will only be enthusiastically adopted if the people experience the benefits, rather than just entrepreneurs who swiftly become insanely rich oligarchs through dodgy deals and exploitation.

By trying to impose our will on the defeated side, we will only foster ever greater resentment that the war was lost. Russia is unlikely to breed a Hitler; but the rise of extremist nationalism, the tentative nibbling at the edges of former territories, the economic resentment – all these we have seen before in other times, other places.

The First World War’s bad peace was the primary cause of the Second World War. Let’s try to avoid the Cold War’s bad peace sparking a sequel as well. If we don’t want Russia to get ever more resentful, ever more humiliated, threats and punishments are not going to do the job.

There’s a rather good look at blogland’s attempts to cover strange going ons in faraway lands of which they know little from the chap behind tip-top Central Asia blog Registan, which is well worth reading in full:

“Elite bloggers often portray their analytical and news-gathering skills as equal or (more often) superior to those of professional journalists… But in the case of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia, the blogging world mostly failed to live up to its promises… Days after the fighting began, even normally excellent sources of analysis and insight… were still linking to the same narrow set of news sources —sources that offered little more than thin quotes from government officials. While this isn’t necessarily a knock on, say, Reuters or The New York Times (it takes a little time to get a correspondent on scene), it is a tremendous failure on the part of the blogosphere, noteworthy for precisely how it failed to deliver on its original promise: breaking out of the mainstream media’s tendency toward groupthink.”

It’s hard not to agree with pretty much every word. I’m no Caucasian expert, and wouldn’t call myself a Russia expert either (hell, I’m not sure I’d even count as an EU expert), so these criticisms apply just as much to this place as elsewhere, but still. From skimming the blogs, you’d never get the impression of the complexity and lack of clarity of the situation. You’ll get constant references to the same news sources. The same bland platitudes about sovereignty, territorial integrity, self-determination, Russia’s Cold War mentality and the like – all repeated Chinese Whispers style from some pundit in some paper somewhere, with little secondary thought, criticism or research applied. Hell, some places are still picking up on my pipelines post as if it’s an amazing new discovery that Georgia is a major point of transit for energy resources, rather than something that anyone who knows anything about the region at all has known about for years.

But you know the really worrying thing? It’s when the British Foreign Secretary ends up taking the same approach as the blogs:

“These actions need to be taken in the context of a clear diagnosis of the events of the last two weeks. For me, the fog of war does not obscure the basic points.”

Well, it should – if armed conflict doesn’t make you question your existing policy of containment of one of the belligerents, then what the hell will? The situation has changed from a year ago when Miliband first decided that escalation of the UK’s ongoing post-Litvinenko spat with Russia was the way forward. Russia has moved its troops into a sovereign nation. The Kremlin has gone from vague threats and subversion (via cyber attacks and withholding energy) into physical attacks. This requires new thinking and new approaches – not least because it shows just how ineffective the existing British strategy towards Russia has been.*

Me? I’m just a blogger, not Foreign Secretary – and yet I’m trying to revise my preconceptions of Russia. I’m reading more widely, researching in more depth, trying to work out how this might play out, and what the best options are for both sides. I haven’t got there yet, but I plan to work at it constantly – because the joy of international relations is that they are constantly shifting, affected by myriad factors, many of which are both obscure and obscured. If a week is a long time in politics, a year is an age in international relations. So why is the British government still pursuing the same course with Russia when the rules of the game have shifted once again?

(* Of course, it could also be a sign that the current policy is working fine and that Moscow is beginning to get desperate… But although I’m increasingly firmly in the “Russia is weak and trying to hide it” camp (as is the decidedly more knowledgeable Registan, I was pleased to note), this strikes me as both worrying and wishful thinking.)

So, what is it going to be, exactly? A military response isn’t an option, and Moscow knows it – though quite how far they can push before getting shoved back in return we don’t yet know (Georgia may be strategically important, but isn’t yet a member of NATO; the same goes for Ukraine; but what about Estonia, with it’s sizable population of ethnic Russians and history of tensions with its larger neighbour? We’re all meant to fight for EU and NATO member Estonia – but if push did come to shove, would we?) Economic sanctions are unlikely to have much impact when Russia has such a tight grip of the European energy market and can hurt us far more than we can hurt them. We also can’t risk ceasing to trade with Moscow as winter approaches and Russian gas supplies become ever more vital – whereas they can do without European markets, if necessary.

But one thing is clear – if Europe’s strategy remains unclear, Russia’s seems to have failed. If the aim of the Georgia expedition was, as many have assumed, to reintroduce Moscow’s will to the Western periphery of the Russian Federation, then finally pushing Poland into the arms of the Americans was certainly not the desired result. Especially when Ukraine – that other nascent nation with a history of troubles and a sizeable Russian population on the Eurasian border that some have pointed to as “Russia’s next target” swiftly follows suit.

But still, I’m not sure I buy this whole “extending influence” thing. Not only does Russia seem to have hardened the anti-Moscow attitudes of the old Warsaw Pact EU member states (including among the people, many of whom have, in ex-Soviet countries, had a tendency for rosy nostalgia for the days of communism), but also pushed Ukraine further westwards, and potentially gained Georgia the NATO seat she wanted even though Tbilisi’s recent actions show that the country’s really not ready yet.

But that’s not all. Russia’s also singularly failed to maintain control over Chechnya despite years of fighting, and has even found the conflict spreading into neighbouring parts of the Caucasus – as well as to the Russian capital itself. In Georgia, rather than a disciplined and efficient military manoeuvre, we’ve seen poor targeting, poor discipline, and a seeming lack of ability to decide what the hell to do – having pushed in to Georgian territory and taken Gori, the Russians seem largely to have been milling around trying to look macho for the last week or two, while seemingly ignoring presidential orders. This is, it seems, what you get from a conscript army.

So, when we come to look back on this in a few months’ time, what will Moscow have achieved? Well, she may be able to gain a bit more influence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but those two regions hold little of any strategic value (bar Abkhazia’s apparently rather beautiful stretches of Black Sea coastline). Georgia will continue to be the non-Russian route of choice for Central Asian oil and gas to Europe – only now, undoubtedly, with a far stronger western military presence to guard the infrastructure. Georgia’s chances of NATO membership will have been greatly increased, as will those of Ukraine. The significance of energy dependence on Russia will also have become far more apparent to a far wider group of people (the reason we need to develop alternate energy sources is not global warming, folks, it’s Gazprom…) The threat of Russian instability – long largely ignored by many in the West, desperately hoping that Putin was one of us despite his authoritarian ways – will have become clear. But it should also have become clear that Russia’s army really isn’t much of a threat. A few ill-trained teenagers with battered equipment can cause some short-term chaos, certainly – they can maim and kill and loot and burn as well as anyone. But even supported with tanks, I’m not convinced of the threat of the Russian army any more – or of the minds coming up with Russian strategy. It’s still early days, but as NATO plans its longer-term response this whole escapade is beginning to look like it’s backfired on Moscow.

So, what’s the next step? Well, having been slow to act to the initial violence, the best bet for Europe/NATO is probably to sit back and wait to see what the next move from Moscow is going to be, because they’ve probably already started to realise their mistake. For NATO or the EU to suddenly come out with some hasty, highly public punitive measures is likely to spark further escalation as Moscow seeks to save face.

I can’t see too much direct Russian intervention in Ukraine – bar the usual behind-the-scenes funding – as long as Ukraine’s politicians continue their ridiculous infighting (that’s been going on ever since the damp squib that was the Orange Revolution back in November 2004), as a divided Ukraine is very much in Russia’s interests, something that can be exploited while the West sits back and waits for them to resolve their differences. The most likely option is a revival of the old plan to merge Belarus with Russia – a project that’s been on-off, on-off for years now, and which Russia has previously been the reluctant party to – not worth much to Moscow in real terms (Belarus has little to offer economically), but psychologically important, almost completely cutting off the Baltic states, and giving Russia a border only 150 kilometres from Warsaw.

But how do you second-guess Russia? Moscow doesn’t think like governments in the West. At least, we don’t think they do. Because no one really seems to know what Russia’s up to. We can’t even tell who the next head of state is going to be until they tell us, after all. There are countless conspiracy theories about what Russia’s plan is – from shadowy groups of ex-KGB men plotting a global takeover to shadowy groups of ultracapitalist gangsters trying to wring as much money out of everyone as possible – and none of them are entirely convincing.

The old question “cock-up or conspiracy” should always be met with the answer “cock-up” until you’re presented with some very compelling evidence to the contrary. Russia’s Georgia escapade looks rather like it was designed to be a conspiracy, but it’s one they so far appear to have cocked up. A plan designed to show Russia as strong, powerful, and capable of decisive action has, instead, shown her to be incapable and pushed those she was wooing even further into the opposing camp. This Georgia episode has shown that Putin’s old tough guy act is just that. Russia’s prepared to bully those littler than her, but wouldn’t be able to hack it in a real fight. (Not that I’m advocating getting into a real fight with Russia, obviously – in this case, the best response to the bully is probably to pretend to ignore her while sniggering a bit to make sure she knows we didn’t miss her failure… The embarrassment may just be enough to stop her from trying it again – because image does seem to be everything to this lot.)

Yesterday’s Observer was on really rather good form, with a decent long article amply demonstrating the human cost – easy to forget when trying to work out the wider geopolitical remifications:

“They sifted out villagers with Georgian surnames, immediately executing all teenage boys. Nugzari Jashashvili, 65, was returning home across the fields when he saw gunmen approach the house of his neighbour, Gela Chikladze, 50. ‘They cut his throat,’ Jashashvili said.”

I’m focussing on the politics, but that’s not to say that this is just an interesting intellectual exercise in trying to predict the future of Eurasian relations. People have been killed in untold numbers in Georgia and South Ossetia, both by the Georgian and Russian armies and by bands of roving maniacs with guns, loosely fighting in what they see as the interest of one side or the other. There has been ethnic cleansing. People continue to die. The death toll may be unknown, but it is in the thousands.

Further on, a good think piece from Neil Acherson, and a moderately sensible editorial that makes a couple of interesting arguments:

“One crucial difference between the current East-West confrontation and the Cold War is that, this time, the economic ties binding the two sides are stronger. Russia needs access to Western markets; the West – and Europe in particular – needs Russian oil and gas. That creates an opportunity for the European Union, the world’s largest single market, to play a moderating role, steering the conversation away from military grandstanding and towards economic negotiation…

“Such aggression must not be rewarded. But Cold War-style brinkmanship will not make Russia’s neighbours safer. It will only reinforce the Kremlin’s view that small states are pawns in a strategic game. The best guarantee of security and peace in Europe since the end of the Cold War has been economic integration, achieved through the EU. It is Brussels, not Washington, that stands the best chance of persuading Moscow to change its ways.”

Today this is followed up by a piece on Comment is Free by Lib Dem MEP Graham Watson, again making the case for the EU as peacebroker:

“Europe is the only player that can be seen as an honest broker… Europe’s initial ambivalence might prove the unlikely key to its success. Post-Soviet member states are more inclined to lay blame for the conflict at Russia’s door; others, including Italy, have expressed an opposing view. By acknowledging that there are different opinions over responsibility for this conflict, the EU can better adopt a position of neutrality in its negotiations.”

Yes, Watson may be partisan, but I can’t do anything other than agree 100% with him on this:

Playing to the gallery of populist opinion is short-sighted but inevitable at this point in America’s election cycle. But not all EU member states have resisted that temptation either. Notably, Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, and the Conservative leader, David Cameron, have engaged in a race to the bottom with each determined to use tougher, more anti-Russian rhetoric than the other. It is an unedifying spectacle that proves their mutual lack of suitability for the job that they are really squabbling over.

For reasons best known to himself, Miliband has been baiting Moscow for months in a series of vaguely populist soundbytes that have been highly critical of the Kremlin, further escalating the ongoing UK/Russia tensions that have been on the up since before the Litvinenko affair. Cameron… Well, what to make of Cameron? Thus far he’s rarely bothered making much of an effort when it comes to foreign affairs, far happier to score easy points at home. But his Tbilisi trip – coming as it has after the overly-extended decision to pull the Tory MEPs out of the EPP group (against their will) and his half-hearted attempt to build an alliance with the Czech Republic to push EU reform down an ill-defined new path – has nudged me right to the brink of declaring Cameron a man with no sense of the realities of international relations and foreign diplomacy.

Hell, with people like Cameron and Miliband potentially in charge of the UK’s foreign policy, I say bring on an EU-based common foreign policy as soon as possible. When it comes to The Great Game, we can’t risk having second-rate minds with no concept of history at the helm. Why are we still allowing Cameron and Miliband to go around kicking the hornet’s nest when a collective effort is so vital? Because just as it is not in the EU’s interest to alienate Russia thanks to Moscow’s control of so many vital energy supplies, it is not in Britain‘s either. Come on – this is Britain we’re talking about. We used to be good at this stuff. We didn’t get such a vast Empire by making stupid statements and shaking our fists at people – we got it through a combination of overwhelming military force and backed up with insanely good intelligence and expert diplomacy. We no longer have the overwhelming military force – which makes diplomacy and intelligence all the more vital. Miliband and Cameron, in their Georgia statements, appear to possess neither.

And now for a question, the answer to which I genuinely can’t work out. Considering that the Council of Europe exists to promote democracy, justice and the rule of law, contains all EU member states, plus every other European state with an interest in this affair – Turkey, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia – and, most importantly, both Russia and Georgia, why isn’t it the CoE rather than the EU that is taking the lead here?

Over the last few days, my post linking the Georgia / Russia dispute over South Ossetia into the politics of energy supply has received a sizable amount of traffic, largely thanks to the funky pipeline maps I dug out. As such, I thought I’d try and get some more detail and – thanks to the University of Texas’ superb online map resource, now I’ve found an ideal one. It dates from 2001, so is slightly out of date, but still – it gives a rather good idea of what’s at stake in the entire Caspian / Black Sea region – as well as showing just why Georgia’s so important. Click on the image below to have a look at the full-sized version (Warning – it’s 2.5 megs, so not good for dial-up…)

From the press conference held by Condoleezza Rice this afternoon on the South Ossetia situation:

“the way that Russia has brutally pushed this military operation well beyond the bounds of anything that might have related to South Ossetia calls into question Russia’s suitability for all kinds of activities that it has said that it wants to be a part of…

I’m going to France because we support very strongly the European presidency, which is France, in its mediation efforts. I think it’s best that those mediation efforts now be in the hands of the French. We’ll continue to support those…

I am not going to sit here and judge each Russian military operation. I am going to say that when you start bombing ports and threatening to bomb airfields and bombing a city like Gori and bringing troops in a flanking maneuver on the western flank of Georgia and tying up the main roads between Georgia – between Tbilisi and Gori, that’s well beyond anything that is needed to protect Russian peacekeepers. And that is why Russia is starting to face international condemnation for what it is doing.

This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten its neighbors, occupy a capital, overthrow a government, and get away with it. Things have changed…

if you now look across Central and Eastern Europe, one thing that is also very different from just a few decades ago is that the countries that were liberated after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Baltic states and the aspirants – Albania, Croatia, Macedonia and others are now – have made the transition and are making the transition into transatlantic institutions. That allows them both to resolve their differences and to have a reason, a spur, for internal reform and further democratization, the appropriate relationship between civilian and military leaders and so forth and so on. That is why Membership Action Plan has been so valuable, and it’s why the United States continues to stand for Membership Action Plan for Georgia and Ukraine….

Now, I’m not going to try to speculate on Russian motives, but let me just say the following. To the degree that there was intended to be some message beyond the frozen conflicts of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the message is not that Russia can use its military power in a brutal way against a small neighboring state. The message is that Russia has perhaps not accepted that it is time to move on from the Cold War and it is time to move to a new era in which relations between states are on the basis of equality and sovereignty and economic integration.

Now, Russia has said that that is the future that it wishes, that that is the future it wishes with the EU, that is the future it wishes with the United States and with any number of international organizations. So the message, unfortunately, that is being sent is that it is important to think again about whether, in fact, Russia will be committed to the kind of behavior that would make its involvement in those institutions appropriate.”

Now, what to make of that? The US administration has made its position very clear – complete and utter disapproval, couched in strong terms evoking Russia’s past unilateral belligerence during the Cold War (though not mentioning the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, you’ll note – *ahem*).

But these are the words of an outgoing presidency, with only a few months left to go. Does the disapproval of Bush and co really matter to Moscow? And will Sarkozy – as EU president – take up the mantle and continue the tough talk? Can the EU risk being as bombastic in its rhetoric when cordial relations with Russia are so important for Europe’s ongoing prosperity – and when the EU itself is split between those who take the American line and those, like Germany and Italy, more inclined to the softly-softly approach?

The diplomatic fall-out of this one promises to be very interesting indeed. How the West responds could be vital – but tough words may not be enough. The US is in one of its constitutionally-prescribed periods of impotence; with a member of the Security Council one of the parties involved, the UN is not an option; NATO has no jurisdiction, and is seen by some as one of the catalysts; Europe is currently divided. And yet it is to the EU that the world seems to be looking for leadership and mediation – albeit without much expectation of success.

This really is interesting. For advocates of a single EU foreign policy, and of greater EU involvement on the world stage, this is an ideal opportunity to prove that Brussels has got what it takes. I’m pessimistic of the chances so far, but if the US is content to take a back seat on this one (which means less of the public Cold War rhetoric cranking up the tensions, more behind the scenes support) – and considering Sarkozy’s apparently passable relationship with Putin and the Kremlin – they may just be able to pull something off.