Uh Oh

At the risk of appearing like Banquo’s ghost, and interrupting the party, I would suggest that this news is pretty troubling. 

President Medvedev ordered missiles to be stationed up against Nato’s borders yesterday to counter American plans to build a missile defence shield.

Speaking within hours of Barack Obama’s election, Mr Medvedev announced that Russia would base Iskander missiles in its Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad – the former German city – next to the border with Poland.

He did not say whether the short-range missiles would carry nuclear warheads.

It seems to have been timed for when the attention of the world was elsewhere, and there’s just a chance it might have been aimed for a domestic audience – especially as he announced plans to extend presidential terms from four years to six at the same time.  However, Joe Biden’s prediction that Obama would be strongly tested by geo-political events looks like coming true.

Impressive contortions

What exactly has been happening in the Caucasus over the past week is far from clear. However, the most likely series of events is as follows: Georgia sends troops into the semi-autonomous region of South Ossetia (whether in reaction to provocations, or simply in an attempt to reverse the course of South Ossetian independence is not clear); Russia responds by bombing Georgian towns and villages and by sending Russian troops, artillery and tanks first into South Ossetia and Abkhazia and then, as Georgian resistance is brushed aside, into Georgia itself; the Russian fleet moves into positions off the Georgian coast, sinking Georgian shipping; finally, with the Georgian army effectively neutralised, Russian forces occupy parts of Georgia as peace deals are hammered out.

In other words, in reaction to Georgian activities in South Ossetia - which is after all a part of Georgia, and not Russia - Russia has invaded Georgia, massively reduced its military capacity and occupied its territory. If the Republic of Ireland had invaded first Northern Ireland, and then the mainland United Kingdom after the UK sent troops to Ulster, would that make the UK the aggressor? I simply don't see it.

Which isn't to say that I'm not impressed at the verbal gymnastics shown by those who believe that Russia is really the innocent party in this. Take Mary Dejevsky in the Indie today.

They began with the repeated references to Russian "aggression" and "invasion", continued through charges of intended "regime change", and culminated in alarmist reports about Russian efforts to bomb the east-west energy pipeline. None of this, not one bit of it, is true.

When a foreign power sends troops into a neighbouring country, in contravention of that country's wishes, that is an invasion. It's definitional.

Take "aggression" and "invasion". Georgia declared itself to be in a state of war with Russia. War, regrettably, is war, and a basic objective is to reduce, or destroy, the enemy's military capability. This is what Russia was doing until it accepted the ceasefire. The positions it took up inside Georgia proper can be seen as defensive, not offensive. Gori houses the Georgian garrison on South Ossetia's border.

Yikes. Georgia declared itself to be 'in a state of war' with Russia after Russia had sent thousands of troops into South Ossetia and Abkhazia and had shelled, bombed, and otherwise reduced Georgian towns and positions. It was a description not a declaration! And saying that the invasion and occupation of another country is defensive is a bit of a semantic push as well.

If you exclude Chechnya, which Russians have always regarded as part of Russia, then neither Putin, nor Medvedev, had sent troops outside Russian borders before this point.

Well, I'm pretty sure that's not true - there were after all Russian soldiers in South Ossetia and Abkhazia before the latest contretemps. And they're in Sudan too, though I suspect Dejevsky means simply that Russia hasn't invaded anyone in the last 8 years - unless you count Chechnya, which is a bit of a big exception. And anyway so what?

The Kremlin would probably be delighted if Georgians eventually punished their President for his misguided enterprise, but Russia seems to accept that Georgians decide what happens in Georgia.

You what?! Pretty clearly they don't do they? Isn't that rather what this entire invasion is about? That Russia believes it has the right to decide what happens in Georgia, whether you believe it is Georgian membership of NATO, Georgian control of oil pipelines or Georgian treatment of ethnic minorities that set the Russians off.

Why was it so difficult for outsiders to believe that Moscow wanted precisely what its leaders said they wanted: a return to the situation that had pertained before Georgia's incursion into South Ossetia – and does it matter that its intentions were so appallingly misread?

Mary Dejevsky, author of such pieces as Russia would be more dangerous without Vladimir Putin; A fight with Russia we cannot hope to win; Putin's handover of power is no mere sham (how's that one looking by the way?); and the sort of boiler-plate ne plus ultra of Don't blame Russia - it's our fault as well clearly has something of a mindset when it comes to Mother Russia. If she can't see why we might profitably treat with caution the avowed motives of Putin's Russia, I suspect she looks a little harder.

Georgia v Russia (cont.)

Taking a slightly more detached view of what is happening in Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia a couple of points spring to mind. The first is about ultimate culpability for this. Whether Saakashvili stupidly tried to assert military dominance over what amounted to a Russian protectorate enclave within Georgia, or stupidly reacted to Russian provocation from that enclave, it is clear that it was a pretty grave blunder for Georgia to attempt to enforce its sovereignty over South Ossetia. One can argue that democracies shouldn't have to watch their step for fear of being invaded by neighbouring states, but that would be pretty naive. That said, of course, this line of argument is akin to the argument that the drunken girl in a miniskirt is responsible for being raped. Ultimately, the culpability for the invasion of Georgia by Russian forces is Russia's. [UPDATE: Not that that stops that old fraud Seumas Milne from making precisely this argument - beautifully captured by Mr Eugenides.] [UPDATE 2: the metaphor spreads But to suggest that he somehow got what he deserved is tantamount to saying that a woman who dresses in a miniskirt and high heels and gets drunk in a bar one night is asking to be raped]

The second thought that occurs is that this invasion shows up the relative emptiness of 'soft power' in comparison to the old-fashioned military kind. Shuttle diplomacy, talks about talks, hard words in the Security Council - all these are totally irrelevant in the face of a power that is prepared to use its military power in pursuit of its national objectives. You might say that this is a point that has been proved before - by the invasion of Iraq, say. There's a fair point to be made there, although I would just point out that before that invasion, the many-spoked wheels of international diplomacy were turning for a long time. The re-assertion of Russia's power, even if still only on a regional basis, has significant implications for the future of global diplomacy - and no-one's going to be quite sure what they are until the dust settles.

One last thing - those people who believe that the United Nations is the supreme moral arbiter in the world: how do they feel knowing that they have left their consciences in the care of Vladimir Putin?

South Ossetia today - where tomorrow?

One of the advantages of reading the economist every week is that, when a foreign policy crisis flares up in the Caucasus, you know where it's happening, and at least have a vague idea of why. Indeed, last Friday, as Russian planes invaded Georgian airspace, the new edition of the economist landed on my doormat, including a story about South Ossetia, and why Georgia was getting increasingly paranoid. It concluded that war could be a matter of days away.

Russia's actions in South Ossetia are opportunistic and self-aggrandising - classic power politics of the kind we were assured didn't happen these days. Since the wave of mini-revolutions in Russia's near abroad, the Kremlin has felt increasingly threatened by the presence, on its borders, of democratic (well relatively), pro-Western regimes. Quite what it is threatened by is something of a mystery - unless it really believes that the West is preparing military strikes against it. Be that as it may, two things should be appreciated by the West. The first is that there is little, on a practical level, it can do to assist Georgia now. That chance came and went with the stalled NATO expansion plans.

Helen Szamuely has written an excellent guest piece on Iain's site about the dangers of appeasement. Sadly, this is a case where we look back on a decade of foreign policy and identify it, post factum, as being appeasement. We are too far down the line to intervene in this directly for two reasons. The first is simply that we don't have the capacity to get into a shooting war with Russia. With troops bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, NATO, which means principally the United States, doesn't have the men or materiel to prosecute a major land war. The second is that we don't have the will. Does anyone really want to go to war with Russia? A country that possesses nuclear weapons, and a pretty sizeable conventional capacity to go with them? Not many takers for that I'd have thought.

This sounds like a counsel of despair, and in a way it is. However, if any good is to come out of this, we must act on this as a wake-up call. Apart from offering Georgia all diplomatic help possible - which should go without saying - the West, and NATO in particular, should take steps to ensure that this can't happen again. This means a progressive embracing of Eastern European states into NATO where possible, and an increase in a European and US military presence (at the request of the state in question obviously) in areas that look threatened. Georgia is the prime example of such a threatened state. South Ossetia and Abkhazia have been the targets for Russian destabilsation since the end of the Soviet era. There are others though. Trans-Dniepstra in Moldova is the other most obvious target for such Russian action - we need to ensure that we are not caught napping next time.