EU-Digest: : Special Report: Russia, Georgia and US: The infernal logic of mutual escalation

A special EU-Digest report on the escalating crises between Georgia and Russia

EU-Digest Special Report - Russia, Georgia and US: "The infernal logic of mutual escalation"

The blogosphere has been buzzing with comments about the escalating conflict between Georgia and Russia. Based on these circulating reports the following picture seems to emerge.

It is clear now that Georgia 'invaded' South Ossetia first to reclaim what they consider to be their territory. According to Reuters - they have also attacked Ossetian separatists with jets and troops. Also pretty certain now is that the pro-US Georgian leadership, which has ambitions to join NATO, had some sort of assent from Washington before it invaded South Ossetia. Georgia's accession to NATO would commit other NATO countries to defend Georgia's borders, even as independence movements in South Ossetia, Abkhazia - both of which have declared themselves separate from Georgia - and Ajaria take off.

The bottom-line seems to be that the escalation of violence in the area has also become a battle between Washington and Moscow over political control of the oil and gas rich Central Asian territories. It is clear to most observers that the US Administration used the opportunity supplied by 9/11 to position military bases across the region, encircling Russia's southern flank with their own "iron curtain" thereby giving the US crucial military leverage against potentially hostile popular movements.

In respect to Georgia, the Bush administration has always supported the so-called "rose revolution" of the pro-US Mikhail Saakashvili. The US National Endowment for Democracy was heavily involved in Mikheil Saakashvili's political campaign for the Presidency, while at the same time the US State Department halved aid to the country before the elections, in order to apply financial pressure to Saakashvili's oponent. Unfortunately, like the other color-coded 'revolutions', the Georgian one also represented a superficial change in leadership with a new global orientation towards Washington, not a substantial change in the society. In the meantime Saakashvili popularity dropped from an astonishing 94% in the autumn of 2003 to 23% two years later. Washington has consequently repeatedly bailed out the floundering "rose" leadership with aid, and grants, purportedly rewarding it for what they called 'democratic' reforms. These so called democratic reforms including Georgia sending troops to Iraq and allowing US forces to be stationed on their territory and train their military. In 2006 alone former Soviet states have received $565 million in aid programs courtesy of the US Senate, to protect them from "authoritarian Russia". Obviously given the pro-independence separatists trends in Georgia, which benefit the policies of the Putin-Medvedev government, the US is eager to stop this deteriorating situation.

Observers also have concluded that Russia is really not doing anything surprising here: its control of gas and oil in the region is one of its few strengths, and it is exploiting it in the same way the Pentagon does with their military strength. Russia's other strength has been its nuclear arsenal, which it has firmly tucked in its back pocket as a deterrent to other nuclear powers.

As to the conflict with Georgia, Russia can look at the US and refer to Kosovo, where the roles were reversed. South Ossetia has held independence referendums in 1991 and 2006 with no consequences on the ground in either case. Kosovo too did hold a referendum in 1992 without diminishing the apartheid-like Serbian power on the ground. On the other hand, internationally coordinated and recognized independence of Kosovo in February 2008 came through no referendum but by Nato Force. This clearly shows that what people on the ground wish for does not by itself make much of a difference at the end of the day. A factual difference between the two situations are the small population of South Ossetia with 70,000 people versus that of Kosovo with over 2 million.

Russia also knows and fears that the US government's policy seem to be focused on 'neutralizing' Russia's nuclear advantage in the region by aiming to develop a 'missile defense' system around the latter's perimeter, Russia consequently is working aggressively to escalate itsown weapons systems (which are still dwarfed in comparison to the American systems), intimidate rivals, and build up local support - forging new relations with Turkmenistan for example, with a new pipeline to import gas from this country, thus increasing its hold on supplies of energy to Europe.

As it stands now Washington could easily escalate the situation. Looking further into the future one can also see a potential new Brzezinski-advised Obama Administration focussing far more intently on shoring up US power in Central Asia than continuing to fight the costly Iraq insurgency. Present and future US Administrations, in pursuing a "new Cold War strategy", will continue to introduce an infernal logic of mutual escalation, so that even if this present Georgian crisis simmers down, a new one is bound to emerge somewhere soon. The much-vaunted new world order is increasingly resembling the old one, but with more nuclear weapons and less stability for the world.

The position of the EU in all this is negligible. Probably the only positive action some of its members took was to force a delay by the NATO to accept Georgia as a member. Unfortunately, by their own choice, and lack of long term vision by many of its leaders, the EU has no physical force or "spine" to back-up whatever they might decide. Unfortunately this weakness also means that most of the time the Europeans are relegated to follow policies established by Washington, which so far has had more negatives than positives for Europe.