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Georgia As a Testing Ground of Putin’s
International Conduct
by
Vladimir Socor, of the Institute for
Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.
(Paper presented at the Annual
Session of the America-Georgia
Chamber of Commerce)
Tbilisi, 10 October 2002
This presentation seeks
to bring the necessary perspective to the
latest complications in
Russia-Georgia relations. The
Pankisi problem, for all its urgency
and its explosive potential,
is an almost incidental
complicaton to a far broader, deeper, set
of chronic problems. Now that the Georgian
authorites are bringing the
situation in Pankisi
under control, it is time for
Georgia’s Western friends to refocus
political attention on those
larger, festering problems.
Since taking over as
president of Russia, Mr.
Vladimir Putin has successfully
streamlined and centralized the
decision-making processes,
especially in foreign and
security policies. This
president has also put an end to
unauthorized
initiatives by
various governmental departments in the
“near abroad,” and has installed his
trusted personal associates in the top
posts. Mr. Putin, moreover, has
established Kremlin control over the Duma.
The pressures on Georgia, which
earlier had often been imputed to
various Russian agencies
acting purportedly on their own, became
more systematic and more dangerous under Mr.
Putin’s presidency than they had been
during Boris Yeltsin’s
final years. President Putin
escalated the pressures on Georgia well before
the Pankisi problem came up. His own
statements left little doubt that
bringing Georgia to heel was one of
his personal projects from the outset of
his presidency.
Pankisi is a
problem in its own right,
requiring and receiving
its solution in Georgia by
Georgians, in ways that
stabilize the situation,
instead of blowing it up in
the Gorge and on the Russia-Georgia
border. When the United States launched the
Train-and-Equip Program in
Georgia, Mr. Putin chose—as he had
in Central Asia—not to stand in
the way. Since then, however, he and his
close lieutenants have been seeking to
take the matter of antiterrorism in
Georgia into their own hands,
with or even without Georgian and
international consent.
Moscow’s recent
fixaton on Pankisi has served
to distract international
attention from other actions that
aim to keep Georgia weak, unstable,
divided against itself,
underdeveloped, and thus vulnerable to
resubjugation. This paper will
identify six main features
of Moscow’s policy on Georgia.
1. Backtracking on
earlier commitments regarding base
closures and troop withdrawal.
Russia’s
military presence in Georgia
lacks a legal basis and contravenes
Georgia’s oft-expressed will. The
Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe at its 1999
summit required Russia to close
down the Gudauta base by July 2001, and to
negotiate with Georgia
regarding the Batum and Akhalkalak
bases. All of the OSCE member countries
including Russia subscribed
to those summit decisions, shortly
before Mr. Putin became president of
Russia. Mr. Putin signaled
his intention to repudiate
those commitments shortly after he came to power.
Russia retains the
Gudauta base to this day, more than a year after
the deadline for its closure. Some of the
heavy weaponry has been withdrawn from Gudauta to
Russia; but no one really knows what weaponry
went, what has stayed, and what arms may have been
reserved for the Abkhaz. The Russian side
has blocked OSCE inspections at Gudauta,
although the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe stipulates such
inspections as mandatory.
On the Batum and
Akhalkalak bases, Moscow now demands an absurdly
long 11- year term for closing them, with a
corresponding agreement on the bases’
operation. This in effect would
mean an 11-year extension and the appearance of
legalizaton of these bases.
Meanwhile, Russia has unilaterally
suspended the negotiations on
military issues with
Georgia.
On the other hand, Moscow has
said that it wants Western
countries to defray at least some of the costs of
relocating the troops from Georgia to
Russia. Georgia’s Western friends
should give this idea urgent
favorable consideraton, so as to
initiate the troop
withdrawal process without any further
delays. Western countries were right to
help build accomodation in
Russia for some of the troops that
withdrew from Germany and the Baltic
states during the 1990s.
Subsidizing the withdrawal of
Russian troops from Georgia would: a) cost
far less, compared to those earlier cases
which involved much larger Russian
forces; and b) help secure Georgia’s
independence and Western
orientation, the strategic and
economic payoff of which is of
course worth infinitely more than
the cost of relocating those troops to
Russia. Such Western
subsidizing should be firmly
linked to clear deadlines for the
departure of troops and the closure of bases.
2. Sponsorship of armed
ethnic secession and rogue statelets.
In Abkhaza, a
political and humanitarian
problem of ethnic cleansing stands,
unresolved and barely if at all addressed, before
the international community. The
refugee problem is a heavy economic burden
and a political fuse waiting
to be lit. Russian
military intervention had
created these problems in the first place.
It also created the Abkhaz and South Ossetan
forces.
When Mr. Putin singled
out Georgia for abolishing
visa-free travel arrangements, he preserved those
arrangements for residents of Abkhaza and
South Osseta, thereby not only
discriminating among
citizens of Georgia, but
drawng those two secessonist areas
closer to Russia. Most recently, Russia
has been handing out its
citizenship to Abkhaza’s
and South Osseta’s residents. South
Osseta’s new leader is a
citizen of the Russian
Federation, a long-time resident
in St. Petersburg. Another St. Petersburg
Chekist, perhaps? The Abkhaz leaders have of
course all along held Russian
citizenship, and some of them even
ranks in Russian military or
security agencies, just like
their colleagues who rule the
Transnistra region of Moldova.
Meanwhile, Russia’s
Kremlin-controlled majority has passed
legislation that, on paper at least,
authorizes the Russian Federation
to “admit” other states or parts of other
states into the Russian Federation
as its constituent units. And
in another recent development, Russian
ministerial delegations on
visits to Abkhaza discuss
inter alia the possible
acquisition of what is
legally Georgian state property by Russian
entities. In light of all
this, it is high time
to ask Mr. Putin whether, in his
view, international law
still applies to
Russia-Georgia relations.
3. Appropriation of
“peacekeeping.”
In Abkhaza and South
Osseta (as in Moldova’s
Transnistra region), Russia
seeks acceptance of an exclusive role as
military “peacekeeper” in
post-Soviet areas. In parallel, it
insists on a leading role as
diplomatic mediator in the
local conflicts that it had itself
sparked and continues to exploit.
Fortunately, Russia has not obtained any
official recognition of that
special role, though it enjoys a measure
of acceptance de facto. Any formalized
acceptance, or prolonged tacit tolerance, would
constitute a significant
element in the creation of regional
spheres of Russian influence rooted
in the Soviet past.
The Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS), which lends its name to
Russia’s “peacekeepng”
operation in Abkhaza, has no legal
authority to issue or prolong
peacekeeping mandates. The ongoing
Russian operation n Abkhaza
(to consider just this case) does not meet
any of the internationally accepted
standards for peacekeeping operations.
Although the need to
internationalize that
operation is generally recognized,
Western countries have acted half-heartedly on
this matter, and have been thwarted by Mr.
Putin’s diplomats. At present, as NATO
looks for new missions—indeed for
nothing less than new raisons
d’etre—peacekeeping and conflict
resolution on Europe’s doorstep are an
obvious part of the answer.
4. Short shrift to
international organizations.
Last year and this, OSCE
observers reported a number of air raids
carried out by Russian planes in
Georgia. Yet Russian
officials denied the facts even
after the OSCE had reported them. The
situation at Gudauta also shows Moscow’s
disdain of the OSCE. At the U.N. in
April of this year, Defense
Minister Serge Ivanov
claimed that Georgia, the United
Nations Observer Mission in
Georgia (UNOMIG) and U.N. special envoy
Deter Boden had, each and all of them,
authorized the Russian troops’
incursion into Georgia’s
Kodor Gorge. Serge Ivanov’s
claim, utterly implausible to
begin with, was conclusively and
irrefutably laid to rest by Ambassador
Boden, other U.N. officials, and by
Tbilisi. That Russian
incursion came withn a
hair’s breadth of provoking a battle
with Georgian forces. Serge Ivanov,
author of that deception and
initiator of the raid,
is known to be Mr. Putin’s closest
confidant.
5. An instrumental approach to
the issue of international
terrorism.
Shaml Basaev, Ruslan Gelaev,
and many hundreds of Chechen fighters were armed,
trained and deployed by the Russian
military in the Abkhaz war
aganst Georgia. They were not
classified as
“international terrorists” by
Moscow when they served as its proxies.
Later, Igor Gorgadze, the
suspected organizer of the 1995
assassination attempt on President
Shevardnadze, was spirited away to Moscow.
That was one of several attempts traced to
Russian territory and supportive
structures. Mr. Gorgadze is wanted ever
since for legal proceedings in
Georgia. To this day, Russian
media includng
Kremlin-controlled state television
keep interviewing Mr.
Gorgadze, even as Russia’s
intelligence agencies—Mr.
Putin’s home base—claim to be unaware
of Igor Gorgadze’s whereabouts. The
post-September 11 international
political consensus on the issue of
terrorism has not impinged on Mr.
Gorgadze’s safe haven n Moscow. On the
contrary, he has received added
visibility in the
Russian media’s latest
anti-Georgian campaign.
6. Disinformatsya
through mass meda.
Russia’s media have,
under Mr. Putin, lost a good deal of the freedom
they had enjoyed previously. The Kremlin
and its political allies now
control or influence much of the media
output. Officially-inspired
coverage of Georgia and of
Russia-Georgia relations is
programmatically
misinforming. It is
designed to excuse the Russian
military’s setbacks in the
Chechnya war, back up the threats of force
against Georgia, generate
anti-Georgian sentiment among the
Russian public and prepare the
political atmosphere for possible
military actions on Georgian
territory. Mr. Putin’s chief
spokesman Serge Yastrzhembsky, other members of
the Putin team, television
commentators close to the president, and
occasionally Mr. Putin himself set
the tone of this campaign.
Such misuse of the
media illustrates the truism that
neo-imperial ambitions are
destructive of democracy at home. It would be
impossible to name a democratic
country in which the government would or
could enlist almost all of the mass
media--and all of those with a
country-wide impact—in a
daily campaign of
misinformation and
incitement, as we now witness
in Russia at the top leadership’s
behest, and with the intelligence
agencies inspiring news
coverage and editorial policy.
The six features,
identified above, add up to a mode
of conduct which is not unique to
Mr. Putin’s period in
office or to policy toward Georgia.
Various components of this mode of
Russian conduct have been in
evidence during the post-Soviet
period in various areas of the
“near abroad.” In Georgia, however, all of
these components have been in evidence,
compounded by constant threats of military
intervention. Russia has, to all
intents and purposes, suspended the
operation of international law
in Russia-Georgia relations.
It is American steadfastness that has
shielded Georgia from the worst.
Moreover, major Western
interests are at stake in Georgia
regarding the transport of Caspian
oil and gas and the commercial access of
Western Europe to Central Asia. By
threatening and
destabilizing Georgia, the
Russian policy is also
jeopardizing those Western
interests. For all these reasons, Georgia
should be regarded as a touchstone of Mr.
Putin’s willingness to accept the
post-Soviet countries’
independence and their choice of a
Western orientation. Georgia
is also the place where the Kremlin can
show whether it supports U.S.-led
anti-terrorism efforts as a matter of
principle, or it would
instrumentalize this issue
and seek country-for-country tradeoffs. In sum,
Georgia is the testing ground of
Mr. Putin’s international
conduct.
---------------------
The above paper was delivered by
IASPS analyst Vladimir Socor at the America-Georgia
Business Council’s Fifth Annual Conference, entitled
Building Economic Security for Georgia, held in Tbilisi,
October 10-11, 2002, as per the following schedule:
Opening Remarks: Paul Henze,
AGBC/RAND Corporation
Address By Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia
Address By William Lash, Assistant Secretary of
Commerce, USA
FIRST PANEL: National Security Challenges for Georgia
Panel Chair: Paul Henze, AGBC/RAND Corporation
Speakers:
US Government Perspective
By Richard Miles, US Ambassador to Georgia
Georgian Perspective
By Tedo Japaridze, National Security Advisor for
President Shevardnadze
Security Challenges for Georgia
By Gregory Olmstead, Regional Security Officer, Embassy
of USA in Georgia
Georgia - A Testing Ground of Putin's International
Conduct
By Vladimir Socor, Senior Fellow, Institute for Advanced
Strategic and Political Studies
Regional Instability and Threats to Georgia's Security
By Svante Cornell, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, SAIS
Mr. Socor is a Senior Fellow of the Washington-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.
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