Hints of pre-1989 times have characterized the international atmosphere over the last week, as the United States fully responded to Russia’s intervention into South Ossetia and Abkhazia, populated by Russian citizens and persons of non-Georgian descent, and then into wider zones surrounding those areas. The Russian manouevre seems to have caught the Americans by surprise. Certainly President Bush enjoying the Olympic atmosphere would hardly have believed that a war situation would be what he would be discussing with Prime Minister Putin, as the latter also was settling in for a few days of sports excitement.
An interesting question, of course, is whether Prime Minister Putin and his President Medvedev had discussed the intervention before he left Moscow; to which a probable answer would be yes. This would, in turn raise a further question as to why, in these days of instant communication and extensive acquisition of intelligence, the Americans had no hint of what was to come last week.
The Russian actions have sent many in the US into something of a diplomatic frenzy, with the President, his Vice-President, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense issuing various ultimatums to the Russians. And add to this, in the present election year, the contributions of the presidential candidates. Mr McCain in particular, claiming superior credibility in external affairs and security to Mr Obama, has been threatening that the US should move to throw Russia out of the Group of Eight (G8), constituted of the major economic powers. And he has argued that the US should not permit Russia’s entry to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), until the situation in Georgian (and probably Ukrainian) relations has stabilised .
Amid this flurry of words and warnings, some observers might perceive a certain American concern about being unable to bring the Russians to book, and to enforce a speedy withdrawal by them. It will be noticed that, with the President in China, it was the European Union, led by President Sarkozy, currently holding the presidency of the European Council, which first got Putin and Medvedev to agree to withdrawal. The President and Chancellor Merkel of Germany, and not the United States, really led the diplomatic offensive, attaining the diplomatic conclusion which the Americans have been left to reinforce.
In a sense, this modus operandi, where the Europeans have taken the lead in an issue considered of major dimensions, has not been common during, or since the end, of the Cold War. Recall that it was decisive American diplomacy which really brought an end to the major conflict in the disintegrating Yugoslavia, and initiated the intervention, through Nato troops, in Bosnia.
This shift in leadership positions suggests the changing parameters of the post-Cold War, post-Iraq intervention world. The European Union has, since the disintegration of the socialist bloc and the USSR, been concerned to rationalize its relations with the emerging states of what used to be called Eastern Europe, and with the Eurasian states that were once part of the USSR. Some of these states they have welcomed into the EU and encouraged to join Nato. Others, like Georgia and the Ukraine, they have sought to have, for the moment, more arms length relationships with, hoping that they can evolve into more representative democracies and market economies than they are at present. But the Europeans know well the tortuous relationships in some of the post-Soviet states, and the extent to which the Russians have a certain sensitivity as to how they evolve in European and Eurasian relations.
Chancellor Merkel, taking advantage of the enhanced prestige of the EU in respect of the outcome of this issue, has jumped a step and reinforced the Nato promise that Georgia and the Ukraine should be members of Nato some time in the future. There are reasons for this. First, the Chancellor who was a citizen of Communist East Germany till the fall of the Berlin Wall, would have little love for any situation in which countries exist under Russian jurisdiction or surveillance, and would want to take this opportunity to encourage closer security relationships with them to inhibit the possibility of their future subordination. This posture would also be of benefit to her in the uncertain political situation of her coalition in Germany itself.
Secondly, the EU has been sensitive to persistent American suggestions that they have been unwilling to place diplomatic pressure on Russia, because of the critical role that that country now plays in exporting oil and gas to Western Europe, and the passage of gas pipelines through some of the countries with whom Russia considers at this time that her relations are unsettled. So the present situation, in which Russia seeks to take advantage of her extended military presence in Georgia and South Ossetia to establish a deeper presence in Georgia – a situation which most countries would consider untenable – provides Chancellor Merkel and the EU an opportunity to flex their muscles somewhat more than usual, and raise their standing in the perception of certain American academic and governmental circles which, in the post-Iraq era, have considered Europe “soft.”
In certain American political circles, however, there appears to be a wish to go further than all of this, and to use the opportunity to raise the issue of the compatibility of Russia within institutions and arrangements that encompass essentially democratic countries and values – countries reflecting representative political institutions, freedom of the press, minimal state intervention in their economies and a relatively free hand for their entrepreneurs.
More and more we are being told that Russia is not moving forward towards fulfilling these prerequisites – indeed the view seems to be that they are moving backward from the openings achieved during the Yeltsin period. It seems, then, that the US would like other countries (especially those of Europe) to pay more attention to this matter in their dealings with Russia, and to put limits on their willingness to treat Russia as just another major European state. Hence an American approach, made perhaps more frenzied at this time by necessary electoral posturing, that sounds like advocating a Cold War-type approach to Russia.
But it seems right to observe also, that while there has been much flurry in Europe, and much verbosity in the context of the American election on this issue, the issue does not seem to have excited the rest of the world to a similar extent. It would have been hard, during last week and this, to discover any particular Chinese anxiety on the goings-on in South Ossetia. And in many parts of developing world, the somewhat non-committal view is being taken that those who intervened in Iraq without the UN’s approval, and in a country far from their own borders, have little justification for jumping on the Russian transgressors. The view is also probably being taken that it was fascinating this week to see the US President vigorously shaking hands with the President of what he considers still an authoritarian Chinese state, while firing arrows at the new authoritarians in Russia.
So while they do not accept that two wrongs can ever make a right, many other countries of the world have been tending to a certain neutrality on a portrayal of issues which seems to remind them of the era of the Cold War, and the notion that the world is divided into two camps which all others must follow.