Russia’s warning to the West

Georgia’s unprovoked assault on its secessionist enclave of South Ossetia and Russia’s justified military response, should not be perceived as an indigenous conflict far removed from critical global issues.

Rather, this outbreak of violence is a symptom of Washington’s attempts to preserve American global hegemony by placing a cordon sanitaire around a reinvigorated and resurgent Russian state.

The dissolution of the USSR in 1991 presented American planners with an ideal opportunity to achieve world supremacy for the United States. However, although the new Russia was reeling from the loss of its superpower status and was fast entering a period of economic meltdown, the US government still perceived it as the principal threat to Pax Americana. This was highlighted in the Pentagon’s “Defence Planning Guidance” of 1992 (supervised by Paul Wolfowitz), in which the Russian Federation was cited as the sole country capable of challenging an American-led unipolar world as “it is the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States”.

Subsequently, Washington directed NATO to start enlisting countries which had once made up the defunct Warsaw Pact, something that President George H Bush had verbally promised his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would not do in return for the USSR signing the “Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany”.

The ascension to power in Georgia of the American-trained lawyer Mikheil Saakashvili in 2004 added momentum to Washington’s plans to isolate Russia. Over the last five years the US has done much to court Georgia in the form of military and economic assistance. In return, President Saakashvili has pursued dangerous policies of seeking NATO membership and of threatening to bring his country’s secessionist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to heel, which with last week’s invasion of the latter actually contravened UN agreements signed by Tbilisi during the early 1990s. He has undertaken these policies at the expense of the Georgian economy and of Georgia’s relations with Russia.

Under his leadership Georgia has become a highly militarised state in one of the most volatile areas in the world. Military spending has increased by 30 times since 2003, and much of the weaponry purchased has been offensive in nature. The increase in military expenditure has helped worsen the already precarious state of the Georgian economy.

President Saakashvili has continuously goaded Russia, in particular by sanctioning American military bases in Georgia. He has also provoked the ire of the Kremlin by pursuing and encouraging anti-Russian activities within the Commonwealth of Independent States through an alliance of former Soviet republics known as GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova).

The Georgian invasion of South Ossetia was not entirely unexpected given President Saakashvili’s aggressive and uncompromising stance towards the secessionist regions, his increase in Georgia’s military spending and his refusal over the past month to sign a document (proposed by Moscow) pledging not to resort to force to settle the issue of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

However, the Georgian leader seriously miscalculated Russian resolve. Not only was it inevitable that Russia would come to the aid of South Ossetia where 90 per cent of the population, like in Abkhazia, hold Russian passports, but President Saakashvili also handed the Kremlin an opportunity to demonstrate to Washington that Russia will not tolerate further NATO expansion to its borders and that it will employ its immense military might to safeguard its national security interests in the post-Soviet space, or what the Russians refer to as “the near abroad”.

Moscow’s leverage of power in South Ossetia has now been strengthened by the invasion. It is, however, unlikely that Russia will annex the region or recognise its independence. Instead, it suits the Kremlin for South Ossetia to remain technically a part of Georgia but in reality a de facto Russian protectorate. This way Georgia cannot be admitted to NATO as the alliance is prohibited by its own rules from enlisting a country which has frozen conflicts on its territory.

The decision of the Russian government to unleash force against the Georgians and the Russian military’s efficient and merciless repelling of Tbilisi’s forces from South Ossetia will have sent two powerful messages to Washington: firstly, that Russia is the predominant power in the Caucasus, and indeed in the rest of the former Soviet territory, and will embark on military operations to maintain this dominance; and secondly, that the Russian armed forces are again to be feared and revered.

Moscow’s actions in South Ossetia are a caveat to the US that force will be used to counter the growing American influence in its backyard. Whether Washington heeds the warning is another matter.

However, the ongoing bloodshed in Georgia will be nothing compared to what could potentially occur in Ukraine should American ambitions to bring this country into NATO become a reality. The war in Georgia is merely a taste of things to come as America’s policy to encircle Russia takes its toll on global peace and stability.