Russia is Losing: A Reply to James Schneider

Dear James,

I appreciate you want to move the debate forward. Let’s not get stuck in the mud. However there are a few things I think you should know, not being in Tbilisi. Yesterday some conversations with a senior Georgian politician revealed some vital clues as to why Russia stopped 21 km from Tbilisi. Here is an extract from a fascinating briefing.

“The reason the Russians did not take Tbilisi is clear. They had spoken time and time again about the need for regime change, removing the ‘criminal’ leader Mikheil Saakashvili and demanding his arrest as a pre-condition for a cease-fire. However they did not achieve this objective. The reason was that over 70,000 people mobilised to protest in Freedom Square, from all sides of the political divide, to show they refused to be cowed. Keeping the morale high was crucial, if it had broken, or there had been looting or flight from Tbilisi, the Russians would have entered the capital to ‘restore order.’ The Russians didn’t. What could they have done? Driven their tanks from Igoeti those 21km away and found tens of thousands of protestors waiting for them on the anniversary of the Prague Spring? No. They couldn’t there objectives were stopped. However what were the Russian intentions when they invaded…? We have a clue from their petrol. When their officers arrived in Gori and surrounding areas they made contact with out local authorities. And offered to sell them large amounts of cheap petrol. At first we were unsure and then then soon urged our men to offer and keep asking to buy it. The officers couldn’t sell it as first, ‘we need to know if we are going to drive to Tbilisi on this or if were going back.’ On the fourth day, the corrupt officers sold us the petrol and drove off. We had a celebratory drink with them and they were delighted to have cut the deal. And that’s how we knew they weren’t coming into Tbilisi and we had stopped them.”

Paul Berman argued that the invasion of Georgia signified the death of 1989. I believe this fact shows he is wrong. The very reason that this is not 1968 is that protestors and high morale actually - prevented Russian forces from entering the capital, which they had obviously planned to do given their stated objectives and the amount of petrol they carried with them. The liberal-left, instead of sniffing about Saakashvili’s democratic credentials which are far from perfect (whilst in fact they are mostly angered by his pro Bush stance), should recognise that the mass-protests in Tbilisi are a triumph for democracy and a show that 1989 still breathes. Due to the spread and deepening of the values of the Free World within Russian itself it is no longer acceptable for the Kremlin to send tanks to crush civilian protestors. It wasn’t in Berlin in 1989, nor was is it in Moscow in 1991 and now neither is it in Tbilisi in 2008. In this sense you need to recognise that Russia just lost categorically, and in a sense need to stop feeling threatened by them and sign up to your own first point, a solidarity campaign with Georgia.

The liberal-left, instead of feeling uncomfortable with Saakashvili due to his pro-American stance and thuggery should come and support him – by virtue of all major parties supporting the continuance of his Presidency and democracy in Georgia, he does have an astounding popular mandate. That’s democracy, it’s not always pretty. That’s what we pledged ourselves to defend. Again, I underline my support for your first point.

Moving on. What we urgently need to avoid in Georgia is economic collapse. If the economy nose-dives, the Kremlin will succeed stamping its own agenda on the country in the face of the expressed wishes of the Georgian people to be part of the West. Economic meltdown will lead to the FSB having free reign in Tbilisi and of course over the BTC pipeline. This is what we need to avert. Instead of escalating along your points, I would urge Governments to follow the lead of the United States. I may have spent much of yesterday listening to some horrific accounts of ethnic cleansing, but the amount of people actually permanently driven form their homes is relatively small. There simply were not many Georgians left in South Ossetia or Abkhazia. The 1 Billion US$ aid package from America and the 750 Million US$ loan from the IMF are actually way superior in value to the actual amounts of damage done by Russian forces. The delivery of the aid shipments to Poti includes stuff that isn’t really needed (unlike in Bihar). Both of these are symbolic gestures to show that anyone can use Poti and that we are not abandoning Georgia. In a sense the Georgia solidarity campaign we need has already begun, if you want to put out some bunting that’d be great – but they’ve actually cleared away the ‘Stop Russia’ posters here so I don’t think it’d be necessary. What they need is investment to continue and the only wait it can is if the West affirms it guarantees Georgia’s tarnished – but living democratic choice not to be a Russian satellite.

Russia is losing in Georgia. I repeat. Russia is losing in Georgia. For that reason I am going to suggest that whilst many of the points of your scale, ( 1,3,6 and 9 especially) I broadly agree with as possible options to be used if Russian aggression continues into say the the Ukraine or Moldova, I don’t think it’s necessary to apply them just yet. As for some of your other remaining points (4,5 and 10) they raise the general questions of doing business with authoritarian government in general, there cannot be one rule for Russia and one for China – do you not agree? This is an avenue for further discussion. As for 7, I see it as impossible to implement and 8 is totally useless strategically or militarily. It’s simply a waste of money.

For the moment Moscow is losing with our current post-invasion strategy of keeping the competition confined to Georgia and refusing to abandon it by pledging eventual NATO membership and keeping the economy afloat to ensure the FSB do not manipulate bread-riots or unemployment lines into the emergence of a Russian puppet-regime. Capital flight from Russia has already been over 21billion US$ and the Russian stock-market has yet to recover. It’s been a pricey war for a few scrappy villages. One option outlined by a senior CIA regional analyst was that the Muscovite elite might put pressure on the Kremlin to ‘hold back from the brink’ to protect their investments. This is a possibility and we have market forces to rely on. However, visa-bans remain an option. I suggest making an example of one or two individuals to show what will happen if aggression continues things will escalate. Eduard Kokoity perhaps? He’s made some pretty horrific demands for ethnic cleansing recently. It'd be wrong to retaliate in the ways you outlined, let's continue the current policy of denying victory in Georgia whilst continuing normal relations in other spheres unless something further aggression continues. If it does, I'll take another look at them.

Saakashvili and dare I say, the popular momentum to turn Georgia into a modern and western state we can still call the ‘Rose Revolution’ is moving forward. On the diplomatic level, the Federation is looking even more humiliated. Nino Burjanadze, the speaker of Parliament stressed in conversation that the diplomatic offensive had just suffered a historic reversal. Indeed close inspection of what just happened at the Shanghai Co-Operation Council meeting shows this. Did you see that photo of Medvedev looking as if he was about to cry? The reason is that he turned up expecting CSTO countries to rally behind Russia – and for the first time in history China showed leadership and Central Asia hid behind Beijing. Clearly Medvedev needs to chew on this quote by Ivan Kratsev before setting back to work on a post-modern Empire.

“Russia's failure to persuade the world of the legitimacy of its actions in and towards Georgia should force Moscow to rethink its plans for a return to the world stage. Russia is a born-again 19th-century power that acts in the post-20th-century world where arguments of force and capacity cannot any longer be the only way to define the status or conduct of great powers. The absence of "soft power" is particularly dangerous for a would-be revisionist state. For if a state wants today to remake the world order, it must be able both to rely on the existing and emerging constellation of powers and be able to capture the international public's imagination.”

This is the price you pay for installing a managed democracy. The illusion that all editors and reporters are like those of ORT. Indeed there is some good news for Putin to dwell on – Russia now has company in recognising the breakaways. Nicaragua’s Ortega has decided to anger the Americans. Oh, so have Hezbollah and Hamas. Russia has some pretty friends – the people of the Federation urgently need to take stock of this and realise just into what company they are being driven. This takes us into you point C. – I really don’t think we can discuss CSTO and the SCO as if they are alternative structures to NATO, as the events of the past few days have shown they are incredibly weak and have no clear agenda or organisational capacity for the moment.`

Stephen Kotkin once said “the CIS is not a commonwealth but a question mark.” I think the same applies to the SCO and CSTO. If the Kremlin are smart they will take a sharp lesson from this ( I have little reason to believe that are dramatically less wise than Bush’ Whitehouse so it is a possibility.) The discreet empire-building that has actually been working is the behind the scenes Russian take-over of the borders of Armenia, Belarus Tajikistan and aspects of the military in CSTO countries through the use of these organisations. Using them carefully to empower Russia might see new life breathed into the Russia-Belarus State Union or meaning into the CIS. Moscow seeks to build a sphere. This is how I expect, after a period of trial and error – it will proceed to d so using the CIS, State-Union and CSTO. Two of which Georgia has sharply exited and one it had no interest in joining. As for the SCO, I view the mutually exclusive goals of China and Russia to mean it will be unlikely to deeply dramatically in the foreseeable future, whilst their even deeper fear of each others intentions will hold them together.

This takes us to NATO reform. My knowledge-set has information for how NATO can improve as a fighting force, though institutionally I feel there is little more we can do for the moment apart from increasingly interoperability and avoiding duplication . I subscribe to the notion of NATO as the defence force of the Western democracies and have long argued that non-whites are more than welcome. Georgia without the enclaves, Israel without the territories are two invites I would hope to write, whilst Japan and Brazil can be constructively engaged with and hopefully associated with at the very least. You mentioned in one of your previous notes the need for ‘new’ organisations – let NATO evolve, that is if you believe the democracies need a common army. As for engaging with Russia within a framework or even China, I don’t see the need for creating new offices and mechanisms. When I suggested such a concept to Giovanni Grevi at the EUISS in Paris, he retorted, “there are loads of organisations, some practically defunct that can be used to engage with Russia, which if it desired could easily empower the OSCE for example." As for China, there is a lack of mechanism, what do you suggest? However I am deeply suspicious about founding a new global security-pact between what is essentially just ‘Permanent 5’ states, when almost everything the great power can agree on could and should be done through the UN Security Council. Maybe we should focus out attention on UN reform and seek a new global-pact as part of the next United Nations.

Yours truly,

Ben