Tag Archives: The Caucasus

The EU, Russia and Georgia: Round and round in circles

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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?

What does Russia have to gain?

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With the limiting/cutting off of the wealthy European markets for her products that any isolation / “new Cold War” would imply, her economy will end up even more screwed than it is already, further isolating the government from the people. Yes, cutting off energy supplies to Europe would, in the short term, cause a major global economic crash and untold suffering on a scale not seen for decades which would, in the short term, also help boost energy prices and allow Russia to get rich quick via other markets. But in the longer term? Europe will find other energy sources and recover – while Russia’s short term gain will end up as long-term loss, as her finite natural resources run low and the world’s wealthiest markets continue to shun her. As The Economist has noted, “America’s GDP is ten times bigger than Russia’s and it spends at least seven times more on defence. Russia’s economy would fall off a cliff if energy prices slumped and its population, racked by ill-health and inequality, is shrinking by up to 800,000 a year.” How can she keep going if markets are denied her?

Yes, the nationalistic boost will increase the government’s popularity in the short-term (just as it did during the early stages of the Chechen wars), but the current government’s already insanely popular and there aren’t any elections for years, so why bother? Anything short of total moral/military victory will make them seem weak in the eyes of a people they’ve stirred up into a populist frenzy. It’ll have precisely the opposite effect.

On top of that, the semi-paranoid claims that Western powers are encircling her to crush her will become a reality. The blind eye that’s been turned to Russia’s shoddy human rights record, corruption and lack of democracy will start to see once more, and the Western world will, no doubt, start to seriously aid opposition groups, potentially destabilising the current lot’s hold on power. Plus, of course, Russia’s own hypocrisy over the independence of Chechnya may start to become an issue – and cunning Western states may well start taking more of an interest in other national subgroups within the Russian Federation, bolstering their independence movements to destabilise the Kremlin. The Russian Federation, lest we forget, is a country built on conquest that has been held together largely through fear and oppression ever since the days of Ivan the Terrible. From Caucasian regions Ingushetia and Dagestan right through to Siberia (actually not a bad idea…), there are countless parts of Russia that could – with the right incentives and support – be persuaded to start heading the way of the Central Asian republics, and sever their ties to Moscow.

Some of these are more likely than others, of course – and none of this is to say that I don’t have a certain amount of sympathy with Russian accusations of Western hypocrisy (I don’t buy it completely by any means, but they have got a case, and they’ve been telling us for long enough…) – but still. Why? If it’s really just simple nationalism, aren’t nationalist supposed to want to do things in the best interest of their country? Isn’t the aim normally to make the mother/fatherland great once again? How does Russia expect to do that if she pisses off all her trade partners? Or are Russian claims of self-sufficiency justified? Are they genuinely planning a period of splendid isolation? Is that why they’re seemingly becoming so keen to tidy up any remaining border disputes?

It’s all very complex, very confusing. And I haven’t yet read one explanation that covers all the bases. (Hell, even this one leaves out tonnes of relevant stuff…) I was hoping to go into all of this in more detail on the radio last night, but for some reason never quite got the chance…

Russia: The urban myth foreign policy approach

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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.

Europe’s Russia strategy / Russia’s Europe strategy

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NATO, the EU, the former Soviet Union and the new Russian Federation, with Europe caught in the middleSo, 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.

Location of BelarusI 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.)

Oil and gas pipelines in the Caucasus

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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…)

Black and Caspian Sea oil and gas pipelines

The EU’s Caucasion lessons

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So, despite the apparent truce following Moscow’s insanely over-the-top response to Georgia’s silly South Ossetian venture, it sounds like Russia’s still “peacekeeping” in Georgian territory. This is otherwise known as “invading a sovereign nation just for the hell of it”.

Here’s a handy solution to all our problems: Georgia – stop playing the victim, you brought it on yourself; Russia – stop acting like a dick.

Meanwhile, the possibility of a common EU foreign policy becomes more remote by the hour. Which idiot was it who thought that an EU Foreign Minister and diplomatic service was a good idea again? If we can’t agree among ourselves, how the hell are we going to convince other world powers?

Eastern Europe used to be the Soviet Union’s buffer zone against the West; it’s now become the West’s buffer-zone against Russia. Unsurprisingly, those countries that make up said buffer-zone aren’t best pleased – especially when they see so little constructive action from the West when a country they consider one of their own is being bullied by the Russians. Because now the ex-Warsaw Pact EU member states are firmly supporting Georgia while many Western European states, keen not to piss off Moscow, are treading more carefully. The fault-lines within the EU – that have been there ever since 2004′s expansion thanks to the continued failure to come up with new post-enlargement rules and regulations – are becoming painfully apparent.

I’ve long been saying that EU relations with Russia are one of the Union’s most pressing concerns. They seem to be becoming more so. If the EU can’t agree a solution to this – or at least a unified approach – then the potential for disaster is immense. Russia will be pissed off. Georgia will be pissed off. The former Warsaw Pact EU member states will be pissed off. Europe’s only non-Russian energy supply route will be jeopardised. And the EU’s impotence on the world stage will be painfully apparent to all.

And, while the EU dithers on the sidelines, the people of Georgia and South Ossetia are still hiding from tanks, ducking from jets, and picking through the rubble to recover their shattered belongings and their dead. A situation that requires quick action has been allowed to continue unchecked in part thanks to the wasted time of trying to find a common European solution. Nice one, guys.

This is why the EU needs to decide – collectively and decisively – what it is for. Episodes like this one – following so closely on the heels of the disunited front put up over Kosovo’s independence – show that one thing the EU is definitely not for is collective foreign diplomacy. So let’s give up on the idea already. It’s getting embarrassing.

Update: Yup. This pretty much sums it up:

“at every level, Europe appears to be in the thick of events, doing its best to stop the bloodshed. But, on closer inspection, this is the traditional sort of European activity: grand proposals, the clocking of plenty of frequent flyer air miles, yet little of substance.”

South Ossetia: Still simmering

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Convoy of Russian tanks in South OssetiaSo it seems that Georgia just doesn’t know when she’s beat – although quite what the real situation is there nobody seems to know, as there’s so much disinformation around. Who’s at fault here – Russia or Georgia? The answer’s simple – it’s both.

What’s likely to be most instructive now is not how Russia acts, nor Georgia, but how the West (and especially the European Union, supposedly so keen to act more decisively in the international arena on issues just such as this) responds to those actions. So far, it’s hard not to agree with anti-EU blog EU Referendum on the EU’s slowness.

Because the EU, lest we forget, has its own former Soviet states as members these days. For EU citizens in the likes of Latvia, Lithuania and – espcially – Estonia (as well as throughout the rest of the former Warsaw Pact countries that are now within the European fold), the situation in Georgia is likely to seem all too familiar. Yes, Georgia struck first – but so did the Hungarian revolutionaries in ’56, the Czechs in ’68…

No, the comparison’s not perfect – it’s deeply flawed and obscured by ideology and the memories of the last couple of generations’ attempts to shake off rule from Moscow (plus it’s still not entirely clear just what it was that provoked Georgia into acting – was it actually Russian agents, or simply pissed-off Ossetians, fed up with still being a part of a country they’ve been trying to leave for a decade and a half?). But such concerns are going to be there nonetheless – and the longer the West goes without some kind of decisive action to bring the conflict to an end, the more those concerns are going to grow.

If Russia truly is invading Georgia proper (as some reports have begun to suggest), then the EU and the rest of the West are faced with their toughest call in an age. As far as I can tell, NATO has no jurisdiction in Georgia while she’s not a member – and a physical stand-off between NATO peace-keeping troops and Russian forces would only further underscore the “New Cold War” rhetoric that’s being spouted on both sides of the divide (remember Russia’s displeasure over the proposed US missile shield?), making for a potentially disastrous PR move. The UN is also obviously a no-go, what with Russia being on the Security Council. Which means, in terms of a Western military response to prevent further escalation, that the only option is another Kosovo/Iraq-style operation that will, in terms of international law, be illegal. And so further piss Russia off.

At the moment, it’s hard not to see the West being played expertly by both sides: Russia’s so far managing to act with impunity within its traditional sphere of influence (just like the good old days), while Georgia’s getting to play the martyr and ratchet up Western guilt, knowing that any country that Russia’s attacking is pretty much guaranteed to have the West on its side. (Der Spiegel goes further, arguing that the current situation also serves the purposes of the EU and US. The US? Maybe, as a belligerent Russia may increase eastern European support for its missile shield. But the EU? I don’t see how this can end well for the EU… Too much potential for pissing off Russia on one side and showing the ex-communist EU member states and wannabe member states that, when it comes to the crunch, Brussels simply hasn’t got the balls to stand up to Moscow.)

And so the only relatively safe route I can see at the moment – if we’re to avoid the Georgia situation bubbling over and causing problems in other regions along the Russian fringe – is to get China to mediate. China’s got very little interest in the Caucasus, is just as coldly cordial to Russia as to the West, and is desperate to put on a good show while the Olympics are on. She’s also pretty much the only country big and powerful enough for both Russia and the West to bother listening to.

So, come on, China…

Georgia: Why?

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So, now that Georgia seems to have withdrawn from South Ossetia in the face of the overwhelming force of Russia’s displeasure, the question has to be asked: how on earth did they think they were going to be able to get away with it?

As has been frequently mentioned over the last few days, Georgia has been trying to join NATO of late – and had it done so already, NATO may well have had to come to her aid when Russia started launching airstrikes. But why would NATO want such a small, impoverished country with a track record of more or less continuous political corruption since independence, even since the Rose Revolution supposedly ushered in a new age of democratic accountability back in 2003?

Georgia pipelinesThe map to the left may indicate why. And yes this is all part of my slowly developing geopolitics of European energy supply theory of relations between Russia and the west (see also theories about Armenia and Serbia – and a denial from Gazprom executive Alexander Medvedev (no relation)). Because, you see, the proposed Nabucco pipeline – designed pretty much exclusively to bypass Russian control over European natural gas supplies by providing an alternate, non-Russian route from the gas fields of Central Asia – is, in part, intended to be supplied by pipelines that run right through Georgia.

Proposed Nabucco pipeline routeThe recent military action has already caused alarm about existing oil and gas supplies (with a nice overview of the current situation from Reuters). But check the map to the left – the proposed route of the Nabucco pipeline, designed pretty much exclusively to prevent Russia from being able to play politics with European energy supply, as has already happened in Ukraine and elsewhere – including, ahem… Georgia (and again).

Nabucco - the missing linkFor more on Nabucco’s significance, check out this handy report (warning, PDF), which contains the handy graphic to the left, demonstrating how Nabucco is intended to be “the missing link” between the giant gas sources of Central Asia and the dwindling gas supplies/rising demand of Europe (all numbers in billions of cubic metres).

Gas supply routes into EuropeAnd so it should all begin to come clear. The West wants Georgia for its strategic value as one of the links in the Caucasian energy chain – the only route from Central Asia to Europe that doesn’t involve passing through less than reliable countries like Russia or Iran. The only supply route for non-European natural gas that will not be under Russian control (as can be seen in the map to the left) – and a direct competitor to Russia’s own planned Blue Stream pipeline.

Georgia, meanwhile, knowing her own strategic importance, seems merely to have overplayed her hand and acted too soon – perhaps assuming that her new Western partners (most of whom have funded the country’s existing pipelines via the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) would be quicker to protect their investment, perhaps assuming that Russia under Medvedev would be slower to act about such things than Russia under Putin. This despite Medvedev being the former chairman of Russian state energy giant Gazprom, the owner of a third of the world’s gas supplies, and the man responsible for the 2006 price hike on Georgian energy supplies.

It’s hard, then, not to think that Georgia’s been rather stupid about this whole affair. Most NATO member states, so keen on the concept of self-determination, are hardly going to look too favourably on forcing a breakaway region to step in line – especially after so many of them have so recently backed Kosovo’s independence. Plus, of course, South Ossetia is largely just rocks and mountains with very little in the way of value. Why not just let them go their own way? They’ve been causing trouble ever since the fall of the USSR – if they want independence so much, then it’s good riddance to bad rubbish, surely?

So, has anyone managed to come up with a reasonable explanation for Georgia getting involved in such a stupid fight? Fistful has had a couple of stabs, but I still can’t see how the Georgian government was this dumb…

Update: See also the map below, which provides a broader regional context along with greater detail – click for (very) big:

Black and Caspian Sea oil and gas pipelines

South Ossetia: The bear strikes back

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An apartment on fire in the Georgian town of Gori, supposedly hit by a Russian air strike

The South Ossetia crisis really is kicking off – is this going to become another Chechnya? Russia’s now apparently launching airstrikes on targets inside Georgia itself (the photo to the left being of Gori, the town where Stalin was born, fact fans) and is sending more troops. Although Russian President Medvedev is still referring to this as a “peace enforcement operation”, it’s now one with a death toll of 1,500 so far (plus 30,000 refugees fleeing the region – from a South Ossetian population of only 75,000 or so…).

Georgian President Saakashvili, meanwhile, is under no illusions that his country’s at war – and nor, it would seem, is former Russian President (and current Prime Minister, lest we forget) Putin: “War has started after a well-planned invasion”

Georgia by now must be starting to realise that it’s really very silly to get into a fight with the weak little kid in the class when he’s got a very large, very angry bear of a cousin standing next to him.

And so the panic that was in South Ossetia yesterday is moving into Georgia proper today, as hasty plans are made to evacuate, while a flick through the archives at Georgia on my Mind (written by a Norwegian, decidedly sympathetic to Georgia, who left the country yesterday) will give a speedy indication of just how long this conflict’s been brewing for.

Elsewhere, more handy blogs for updates and insight: The Caucasian Knot (superb stuff, combining press reviews with separate analysis and rumours from the ground), while Global Voices Online has a translated roundup of cyrillic blog reactions, including one from someone hiding in a basement in the South Ossetian capital as the mortars rain down, and a handy look at who’s to blame for the crisis (written by the author of The Caucasian Knot).

The Economist’s Edward Lucas also has some handy analysis (following his earlier warning piece about the dangers of tensions escalating, published the very day before they did), while Paul Noble of WindowOnEurasia (and the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy) warns of a background of growing radicalisation among Caucasian minorities in recent years that could see the current conflict spread wider than just Georgia/South Ossetia.

Sadly, this may well just be the start.

16:15 (UK time) update: Oh… From Reuters: Abkhaz separatists strike disputed Georgia gorge

Abkhazia said on Saturday it has launched an operation to drive Georgia out of a disputed gorge, possibly opening a “second front” in Tbilisi’s battle to retain fractious breakaway regions.

The separatist foreign minister Sergei Shamba said Abkhazian artillery and warplanes struck Georgian forces in Kodori, a narrow gorge which cuts deep into the Abkhazian territory and is an ideal route for any invasion in the region.

There are also reports – TV only so far – that Putin has flown back from the Olympics in Beijing (where he apparently told President Bush that there would only be a ceasefire when there are no Georgian troops left in South Ossetia), and is currently in North Ossetia, over the Russian border, for purposes unknown. (Though considering his status as a living embodiment of Russian nationalism, it’s hard not to see it as a morale-booster for both the Russian troops and South Ossetians…) A combined EU, US and NATO delegation is also apparently being mobilised to try and negotiate a ceasefire.

South Ossetia’s kicking off: An overview

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Map of South Ossetia, shamelessly stolen from the IndependentI was going to write about this yesterday, because in these days of vastly diminished foreign news staff on national newspapers, the fact that a story about the breakaway Georgian wannabe state made the notoriously understaffed Independent yesterday should indicate that this ongoing standoff was beginning to get more heated. Overnight, sure enough, Georgian forces have moved into place and surrounded the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, with a number of people killed in shelling and airstrikes that started up only a few hours after Russia had negotiated a ceasefire.

For background you could do far worse than Fistful’s handy introduction to South Ossetia from back in March, alongside (as ever) Wikipedia on the Georgian-Ossetian conflict, before noting this New York Times article from April, putting Russia’s renewed interest in the Georgian situation firmly in the context of the aftermath of Kosovo’s independence.

You may also want to have a gander at this map of the ethnic makeup of the Caucasus region, which may also indicate why Russia’s so interested. Yep – the Ossetians are slap-bang on the same frontier as Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, all of which have spent most of the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union more or less in conflict with both the Kremlin and each other, either directly or thanks to fallout from the decidedly unpleasant Chechen wars.

This could, as with all conflicts in the Caucasus, get nasty. Wikipedia seems to have good coverage, EurasiaNet is good on the recent tensions, while this blog seems to be being written by a British energy policy consultant in Georgian capital Tblisi, noting that army reservists are being called up and provides some analysis, while also pointing to this handy UN-funded English-language Georgian news site, which is providing more regular and detailed coverage than anywhere else I’ve found so far.

Tories and the EU, trade talks, Russian threats

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Three things that have caught my eye this morning, in ascending order of importance:

1) Following a fun article on the impact a Tory victory in the next UK general election may have on the EU in this week’s Economist, there’s an interesting round-up of Conservative European election posters from the last couple of decades over at the Open Europe blog – a perfect illustration of the fundamental shift in Tory thinking on the EEC/EU that’s taken place over the last 30 years or so.

2) As EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson issues a stark warning about the need for unity over WTO talks, I stumble across EU Trade Policy: Approaching a Crossroads – a handy (mercifully short) briefing paper from Chatham House on the continued lack of a breakthrough in EU trade negotiations as we rumble towards the end of the Cotonou agreement and squabbles with the likes of Russia and China continue. Short version: it doesn’t look promising.

3) Medvedev Criticizes West in Tough Foreign Policy Speech – the usual Russian posturing, or the start of something new? Either way, “The EU and US have been warned”, apparently. Thanks for that, Dmitry! Meanwhile, the Financial Times urges standing up to Russia over Georgia – a much-ignored new Caucasian crisis that’s hardly getting any better, and Europe’s World has an article (promising-looking, but I haven’t had a chance to read in full just yet) on The EU, Russia and the crisis of the post-Cold War European order. From what I’ve seen so far, this looks like essential reading:

“The EU today cannot be described anymore as federalist state in the making – it is something much more complex and undefined. It resembles something closer to post-colonial India, with its mixture of languages, legal regimes, traditions and sensitivities, than it does post-War Germany or France. In the powerful metaphor of Jan Zielonka the post-enlargement EU is not a kind of Westphalia federation; it is more a kind of neo-medieval empire. There is no European demos and there probably never will be – but there is kind of European public. There are no final borders but moving borders and variable geometries. And it was Count Sergei Witte, Prime Minister under Nicholas II, who said there was no such thing as Russia, but only a Russian empire.”

NATO, Russia and Europe

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Hunting around for a handy overview of just what’s been happening at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, depending on who you read you’ll get some wildly different ideas. I’ve been confused for much of the morning. Here’s a brief indication of why:

Der Spiegel‘s “Germany Puts the Brakes on US Expansion Plans” is countered by the International Herald Tribune‘s “NATO backs U.S. missile defense plan for Europe”

EU Referendum‘s claim that “NATO has thrown Ukraine and Georgia to the bear. President Bush’s attempts to put them on track to future and very distant membership of NATO has failed” is then contradicted by Radio Free Europe‘s report that “pro-NATO forces in Ukraine and Georgia celebrated the announcement, which offered stronger-than-expected support for their entry bids”

Repeat for pretty much every issue under discussion at the summit (for which, see this very handy round-up).

People always like to look for tangible, obvious outcomes from these things. But this is international diplomacy. Worse than that, it’s strategic military international diplomacy where all but one of the permanent members of the UN’s Security Council are involved (and we know how infrequently that lot manage to get along). Making compromises left, right and centre – leading to a stalemate in which, well, the status quo has largely been maintained – was the only sensible course of action. The thing was always going to end up a waste of time and money.

NATO flagBut the real fun is that despite the fact that NATO is now overseeing operations in Afghanistan (that well-known North Atlantic power) and looking to a more global role, this summit has made one thing increasingly apparent: the Cold War may have ended, but NATO’s principal opponent remains Russia.

Pretty much every compromise on the European front, every bit of backing down, appears to have been done to placate the Kremlin – because the principle areas to which NATO is looking to expand its influence (largely under the prompting of the US) lie in former communist countries, be it Ukraine and Georgia or Croatia and Albania.

As you’ve no doubt noticed, there’s been a growing tension between Russia and the West in recent years – from ex-FSB men assassinated in London to the resumption of patrols by Russian nuclear bombers through the vendetta against the British Council in Moscow. Then there’s the war of words with Belarus, Europe’s oft-forgotten fanatically pro-Moscow wildcard (a country that misses the USSR so much its secret police are still called the KGB and there are constant rumours that it is planning to formally merge with Russia), cyber-warfare against Estonia, and the ongoing standoff over Kosovo’s independence. Even the EU’s (and NATO’s) difficult relationship with Turkey is getting caught up with the Russian situation thanks to the Russo-Turkish partnership in the Bluestream and Nabucco pipelines, both of which are helping to make Europe increasingly reliant on Russian energy supplies.

The relationship with Russia, in other words, increasingly seems to dominate all European diplomacy. Where during the Cold War the presence of the USSR may have ensured that western Europe and the EU was operating under the constant fear of nuclear attack, Moscow’s then lack of engagement in western European affairs allowed everyone to get on much as they pleased. Since the end of the Cold War – and especially since Putin came to power – Moscow’s long-sought-after engagement with the West has if anything caused even more problems.

During the Cold War it was America who stood guard and kept watch, now Europe (both the EU and non-EU countries) has to be constantly on the alert for far more subtle Russian encroachments than columns of Red Army troops or falling H-bombs – encroachments largely economic, and mostly achieved through that strange form of diplomacy at which Putin so excels: smiling with fangs.

With such a large, unpredictable neighbour to the east – especially one with the ability to shut down a sizable chunk of the European economy on a whim (as has already happened to Ukraine) – little wonder there seem to have been few major advances at this latest NATO summit. In fact, I can barely see the point of holding these things until Russian attitudes to the West shift further in the direction of friendly cooperation (no signs of that any time soon) – because Russia’s never going to accept public humiliation, which is how the current regime seems to see any kind of outside involvement in what remains of the bear’s sphere of influence.

So the real points of interest after such standoffs between Russia and the West are never going to be the big issues. We’re not suddenly going to have a Kremlin change of heart on any of the major issues any time soon. And if and when such a change of heart comes, it’s certainly not going to come at one of these big public summits – far too humiliating. Where such shifts in Russian attitudes – either pro-engagement or heading towards hostility – are first going to be seen is in the details. The precise wording, the precise terms of any diplomatic agreement between Russia and the EU, US, NATO or individual European countries – the small print that the journalists rarely have time to scan in their rush to hit deadlines and get an angle that gives the subs a good shot at an interesting headline – that’s where we’ll first spot the changes when they come.

These summits are, in other words, little better than MacGuffins. The real diplomacy is going on off the radar, with lots of little standoffs in places like Armenia, Moldova, Azerbaijan and Central Asia.

NATO may well be starting to look globally – but Europe needs to do the same to keep tabs on just what its unpredictable neighbour is up to, because Russia has more ability than any other state to screw Europe over. If Russia’s got its fingers in a lot of pies, we need to be keeping an eye on all of them, and not get distracted by the occasional fuss over the more obvious ones like Ukraine and Georgia (both of which have had high-profile popular pro-democracy uprisings in recent years, which are always of appeal to the press). To do so would be to fall for the oldest trick in the book.

That UK / Russia spat: background and a conspiracy theory

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Vladimir Putin, looking eeeeevil...

Well, now that the EU has lent its collective support to the UK’s efforts, and with Gordon Brown heading off to meet Nicholas Sarkozy tomorrow (where the Russia dispute will almost certainly be raised), it’s no doubt past time to have a gander at what this is really all about – and where it’s likely to lead.

Because, let’s face it, though the high-profile murder of a political refugee on the streets of London is a fairly big deal, it’s not remotely big enough to warrant escalating an already tense European relationship with Russia. After all, if every political murder led to international incidents, when are we going to start expelling diplomats over the suspicious death of Egyptian billionaire (and alleged Mossad agent) Ashraf Marwan a few weeks back?
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