Courting the Bear: A New Era for Russian–Western Relations

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. He can be reached at www.geocities.com/walberg2001.

 

Ater a tumultuous year in Moscow’s relations with the West, Russia’s struggle to become a respected player in world affairs moved forward tentatively in November 2008 with a summit with the European Union in Nice. The European trade commissioner, Catherine Ashton, said talk had been “robust, but very open. Presidents Sarkozy, Barroso and Medvedev were very direct with each other in the spirit of having a dialogue”.¹ European Commission president José Manuel Barroso, using rather “robust” diplomatic language, ridiculed the Russian threat to station missiles in Kaliningrad, made just hours after Barack Obama had won the presidential election in the United States: “If we start with the idea that there are missiles on one side or the other, we come back to the Cold War rhetoric which is, I would even say, stupid.”² 

Chance for a Fresh Start 

But that is precisely where relations with Russia were headed until this summit, and it is hardly fair to blame one side only. The summit, hosted by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France as EU president, was a turning point for Russian–EU relations, and we can only hope that it will help the new US president chart a saner course than that of George W Bush. Sarkozy, in his inimitable mercurial style, made it clear that the United States should reconsider its missile-defence plans in Poland and the Czech Republic. “Between now and then,” Sarkozy said, referring to discussions scheduled for June 2009 on a new security architecture for Europe (a Russian proposal) to be hosted by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (which includes the United States and Russia), “please no more talk of anti-missile protection systems.” The deployment of a missile-defence system “would bring nothing to security in Europe”. President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia welcomed Sarkozy’s conciliatory approach, saying that all countries “should refrain from unilateral steps” before discussions on European security take place. “If we share one home, we should get together and make agreements with one another,” Medvedev said, meaning Moscow will not follow through on its threat if Washington agrees to a “zero option” as regards missiles in Europe.³

 

Although he held the rotating presidency of the European Union, Sarkozy was actually moving beyond his official mandate, since the bloc has little power over defence matters. The Czechs, who took over the EU presidency in January 2009, and the Poles were furious with Sarkozy. “We hope that the [US missile-defence] project will continue,” Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski said after meeting his Czech counterpart Karel Schwarzenberg. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk huffed that Russia was not part of the plan: “The anti-missile shield is the subject of contracts between Poland and the United States, and other countries are not—and will not—be participants in these negotiations.” Alexandr Vondra, the Czech deputy prime minister, said he was “surprised” by Sarkozy’s comments, which, he said, contradicted French statements at the April 2008 meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Bucharest, and exceeded Sarkozy’s purview as EU president. “There was nothing in the EU mandate to talk about missile defense.”⁴

 

This is a fine example of Sarkozy at his hyperactive best, one in which he used his antennae well, sensing the shifting weather patterns and attempting to avert a needless and destructive storm, which, he would no doubt add in his own defence, would hit the Poles and Czechs even harder than the rest of Europe. This whole episode shows the weakness of the European Union: statelets are vaulted into the diplomatic big leagues and can pursue petty grudges which leave the union helpless to pursue a sensible agenda. French president Jacques Chirac was undermined in 2003 by these parvenus who slavishly hung on every lie coming out of Washington concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, preventing a strong European resistance to the criminal invasion of Iraq.

 

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was observed jumping through hoops, so to speak, a few weeks later in early December after a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels. He tried to explain the alliance’s decision to begin “a conditional and graduated re-engagement” with Moscow, despite Moscow’s loudly proclaimed opposition to NATO moves to absorb Ukraine and Georgia, and despite Russia’s spectacular assertion of its authority in its “near abroad” with the recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. “Russia is such an important factor in geopolitical terms that there is no alternative for NATO than to engage Russia,” de Hoop Scheffer argued. He innocently claimed he had no idea why Russia felt “victimized, not to be taken seriously, but if that is the perception, we have to discuss it, because I have to try to convince them that democracy and the rule of law coming closer to Russia’s borders—why should that be a problem?”⁵

 

De Hoop Scheffer would have us believe that NATO really is about the tired clichés of democracy and freedom that are used to justify this Cold War relic, and not about US empire and its attempt to end any residual opposition, especially in the oil-rich Eurasian space, which Russia just happens to control.

 

So why the sudden courting of the Russian ogre? De Hoop Scheffer said it was because of Afghanistan, fighting terrorism and narcotics. We might add the global financial crisis as well. It is as if a Don Juan realised too late that his latest flame—his true love this time—was wise to him and had decided the jig was up. “I’m basically an engager,” de Hoop Scheffer said. “But engagement can’t take place in the context of spheres of influence. We have to see if Georgia is a watershed or not, and I hope not, and I’ll do my best that it will not be.”⁶

 

The emissary of the spurned lover, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, welcomed the alliance’s decision to resume informal talks with Moscow, saying, with not a little sarcasm, “I personally do not see the difference between formal and informal sittings, except that you don’t have coffee in an informal meeting but you still can order one.” Rogozin also said that the foreign ministers’ decision not to give a formal membership action plan to Georgia and Ukraine showed that relations with Russia were more important to NATO than either applicant. He predicted to the Russian daily newspaper Kommersant that NATO would retreat from admitting Georgia and Ukraine, a prospect that “does not cheer anyone in the alliance”. Rogozin said that “there is an open split within NATO, and it will widen if NATO tries to expand further. The schemes of those who adopted a frozen approach to Russia have been destroyed”. Words that left Don Juan apoplectic: de Hoop Scheffer shot back that Rogozin could say what he liked, and American officials dismissed his comments as bluster aimed at a domestic audience.⁷

 

Upping the ante, in the NATO meeting’s final communiqué, which went through twenty-two drafts, the foreign ministers gave their unanimous support to the planned deployment in Europe of US missile defences, which Washington says are for protection against Iran, not Russia. Reading from a script retrieved from history’s dustbin, the ministers called the missile system “a substantial contribution” to security and urged Russia to take up US proposals for co-operation on missile defence, oblivious to US president-elect Obama’s scepticism about the system, to Sarkozy’s reservations as voiced during November’s Nice summit, and to Russia’s threat to install short-range missiles of its own in Kaliningrad.

 

As for Medvedev’s proposed talks on a new “security architecture” for Europe—which Sarkozy agreed to in November—de Hoop Scheffer said that NATO members were “quite happy with the security structure as it exists in Europe. There is not a shimmer of a chance that NATO could or would be negotiated away”. European fans of America and foes of Russia see the Russian president’s proposals as a direct attempt to undermine NATO. And so what if they are? This senseless Cold War relict merely raises hackles and sticks its imperial nose where it doesn’t belong. The European Union and Russia are already working together on peacekeeping—through the United Nations—as seen in the current EUFOR mission in Chad, which includes 320 Russians. Who needs NATO to police the world?

 

De Hoop Scheffer drew his line in the sand at a news conference with Georgia’s foreign minister, Eka Tkeshelashvili. She expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the meeting, in which NATO ministers reconfirmed that Georgia and Ukraine would eventually become members of the alliance and said NATO would accelerate co-operative reform programmes with both countries through existing NATO commissions. A lot can happen between now and “eventually”. The United States and Germany are at odds over how further expansion of NATO can proceed, with Germany insisting on membership action plans and the US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, Daniel Fried, arguing at the December NATO meeting that this “is not the only way to get there”. He has in mind the NATO–Georgia Commission established hurriedly after 8 August 2008—when the Russia–Georgia war erupted—that is modelled on the NATO–Ukraine Commission established in 1997.

 

But the bottom line on Georgia is that it can’t join NATO if it is not at peace with its neighbours, as this would oblige NATO to go to war to defend it. This argument could even encourage Russia to make a move on the Crimea, putting Ukraine in the same predicament, making it, too, ineligible for NATO membership. How ironic this would be, given the alliance’s pretensions to be a bastion of peace. 

EU versus NATO 

As de Hoop Scheffer performed his verbal acrobatics, the European Union was doing its own highwire act, renewing its negotiations with Russia on a new strategic partnership. Early in December, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso outlined to the press the European Union’s proposed new “Eastern Partnership” with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus, the boldest outreach to the ex-Soviet bloc since the European Union expanded in 2004 and 2007 to embrace the Baltic states and all the former Warsaw Pact nations of eastern Europe. Ukraine and Georgia were lumped together with the other EU aspirants, indicating that their applications were on hold.

 

Interesting, the rush to get Ukraine into NATO and the procrastination over its joining the much more important economic organisation. The new group—put on fast track after the August war in Georgia—was a response to Sarkozy’s “Mediterranean Union”, which brings all the Mediterranean countries together with the European Union in a loose economic club. Barroso denied suggestions that the European Union was seeking to establish itself as an alternative power centre to Moscow. “The Cold War is over,” said Barroso, “and where there is no Cold War, there should be no spheres of interest.” But Russia has no beef with EU expansion. In fact, it is not inconceivable that Russia itself could join this economic pact, which clearly benefits one and all, at least economically.

 

This cannot be said of NATO. De Hoop Scheffer understandably covets his prestige (and pension), but the alliance is one endangered species that deserves extinction. Its relentless expansion following the collapse of the Soviet Union reached the limit of rashness, if not “stupidity”, with President George W. Bush’s buffoonery at the NATO meeting in Bucharest in April 2008, where Bush decided he wanted to “lay down a marker” for his legacy, and not “lose faith” with the Ukrainian and Georgian peoples. He threw the usual stage-managed NATO script to the winds, ignoring a behind-the-scenes deal with Germany and France to try to slip Ukraine and Georgia’s application in later, in 2009 during NATO’s sixtieth anniversary celebrations, when Russia wasn’t looking, and loudly demanded they be allowed to join immediately. The meeting descended rapidly into recrimination and the rest is history. 

The Georgian War 

The Georgian invasion of South Ossetia on the night of 7–8 August 2008 turned the tables on the Euro Russophobes and played into the hands of those Europeans who really count. The build-up—rapid expansion of NATO in eastern Europe, plans to admit Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance, Western recognition of the independence of Kosovo—had created the conditions for Russia to crystallise its new resolve to stand up for itself, which it did decisively with the Georgian attack.

 

The timing of the attack—and subterfuge—suggest that President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia was counting on surprise. “Most decision-makers have gone for the holidays,” he said in an interview with CNN. “Brilliant moment to attack a small country.”⁸ Apparently he was referring to Russia’s invading Georgia, despite the fact that it was Georgia which had just launched a full-scale invasion of the “small country”, South Ossetia, while Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, was on “holiday” in Beijing, attending the opening of the Olympic Games. Twenty-seven Russian peacekeepers and troops were killed and 150 wounded in the initial attack, many when their barracks were shelled by Georgian forces at the start of the invasion. Georgia’s state minister for reintegration, Temur Yakobashvili, rushed to announce that Tbilisi’s mini-blitzkrieg had destroyed ten Russian combat planes and that Georgian troops were in full control of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.

 

The spider’s web of intrigue surrounding Georgia is thick indeed. It even reaches as far as Iran, which Israel appeared to be preparing to attack using Georgian military bases as a launching pad.

 

Saakashvili insisted he was innocent, that Russia was the problem. But South Ossetia had been independent for sixteen years before he invaded, unlike Kosovo, which was an integral part of Serbia until the day NATO bombed Serbia and invaded Kosovo in 1999. Georgia’s secessionist provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, had been happily functioning as independent countries from 1991–2 until Saakashvili gave the order to flatten the South Ossetian capital—the equivalent of which the Serbs never did to Kosovo. On the contrary, it was NATO that bombed Belgrade. The US war against little Serbia was clearly the inspiration for the deluded Saakashvili, who, abetted by US and Israeli hawks and armed with state-of-the-art weapons, including cluster bombs, figured he could flatten Tskhinvali much as NATO did Belgrade, and cow the Ossetians into submission or force them to flee before the Russians could come to their aid. But Russia happens to be much closer to South Ossetia than it is to Serbia, and Russia in 2008 is not the Western vassal it was in 1999. 

Russia and Its ‘Near Abroad’ 

The Bush administration didn’t realise that apart from the Baltic countries, which had two decades of independence before the Second World War, the ex-Soviet states are not really states at all, but fiefdoms of the most odious part of the former Soviet elite, now trying to play Western-style electoral politics, with disastrous consequences for their citizens. By pretending otherwise and threatening Russia for its understandable security concerns, the United States is playing with fire. “What worries me about this episode [Washington’s reaction to the Russia–Georgia war] is the United States is jeopardizing Russian cooperation on a number of issues over a dispute that at most involves limited American interests,” said Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute in Washington.⁹

 

By opening NATO to bits and pieces of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, by pushing Russophobic, vengeful Polish and Czech governments into hosting missiles which can easily be aimed at Russia, the United States should be prepared for the possibility of a greater Russia, just as it should be resigned to a rump greater Serbia, which would include Serbian enclaves in Kosovo. This, along with illegal US invasions of countries Washington doesn’t like, is unfortunately what so far defines twenty-first-century Realpolitik, not de Hoop Scheffer and Bush’s fantasy about NATO as protecting world peace and spreading “democracy and the rule of law”.

 

President Medvedev called Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia “Russia’s 9/11”, and said Moscow would respond in the same way to future such provocations even if Georgia were accepted as a prospective member of NATO. On 31 August 2008, he announced “five points of Russian foreign policy”, already dubbed the “Medvedev Doctrine”, as a response to what we might call the “Bush I/Clinton/Bush II Doctrine”, i.e., the dismemberment of the Soviet Union/Russia to ensure a US-dominated unipolar world. Medvedev’s points are:

 

• A commitment to the principles of international law.

 

• The principle that “the world should be multipolar”.

 

• The wish to have peaceful friendly relations with all nations.

 

• Russia’s intent to protect its citizens “wherever they may be”.

 

• The decisive fifth point:

 

as is the case of other countries, there are regions in which Russia has privileged interests. These regions are home to countries with which we share special historical relations and are bound together as friends and good neighbours. We will pay particular attention to our work in these regions and build friendly ties with these countries, our close neighbours.¹⁰ 

Arab Views 

Arab analyst Norhan al-Sheikh argues favourably that Georgia was a historic turning point, comparable to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1991. The ability of Moscow to dictate the terms of a cease-fire meant it was enforcing its will “not only on Georgia but also on the United States, Georgia’s main ally, which seemed to be helpless in the face of Russian domination of the management of the crisis”. He compares the Ossetia crisis to the attack by Britain and France on Egypt in 1956, which revealed a change in the world order at the time. Then, it was ironically the United States and the Soviet Union that forced the British and French imperialists to back down, exposing to one and all their inability to dictate terms to anyone anymore. “They had become third-rate powers.”¹¹

 

The most telling analogy for Arabs, however, is with Iraq and its ill-fated invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait had once been a province administered from Baghdad, so Saddam Hussein understandably coveted it, as Saakashvili did South Ossetia. Hussein was convinced that the United States had given him the green light to invade Kuwait after he had spent ten years fighting Washington’s latest bête noire, Iran, just as Saakashvili was given a similarly ambivalent go-ahead to invade South Ossetia.

 

Taking this line of argument to its logical conclusion, perhaps the Americans encouraged the Georgian president in order to test the Russian reaction and to observe the preparedness of the Russian military. This recalls the 1930s Japanese incursion at the village of Nomonhan on the Mongolian–Manchurian border—a move clearly intended to test the Russians. After General Zhukov destroyed its attacking force, Japan decided to leave the Russians alone, despite subsequent pleas by Hitler.

 

Saakashvili’s strategy is also reminiscent of the Israeli conquest of 1948: by bombing civilians and flattening Tskhinvali, he shows he wanted to have South Ossetia without its native Ossetian inhabitants. Saakashvili’s enthusiasm for Israel is not lost on Arab political leaders.

 

The Georgian invasion was a direct outgrowth of the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo in February 2008. Both were backed by the United States and NATO as part of their expansion eastward, oblivious to justifiable protests by Russia. Arab observers were suspicious of Kosovan independence from the start, despite the territory’s purported Muslim credentials, and pointedly did not join the NATO chorus condemning Russia for thwarting the Georgian attack. The experience of the Arab world with the United States and Israel gives it a very different perspective on such intrigues.

 

Despite the fact that 90 per cent of Kosovars are nominally Muslim, and despite the popular image of Serbia as anti-Muslim, only six of the fifty-seven member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) have recognised Kosovo’s independence (Turkey, Albania, Afghanistan, Burkino Faso, Sierra Leone and Senegal). In mid-March 2008, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said before beginning a Middle East visit that Moscow was urging Muslim countries to withstand pressure to recognise Kosovo, a state he said that had been “illegally formed. I would like to warn against the temptation to give in to calls from non-Arab and non-Islamic states addressed to Islamic countries to show Islamic solidarity and recognise Kosovo”, he told Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

 

Egypt, Algeria, Indonesia and Iran actually voted to support Serbia in its successful bid to put the issue of the legitimacy of Kosovo’s independence before the International Court of Justice in October 2008. At that very moment, US defence secretary Robert Gates was making a visit to Pristina, the first US cabinet member to visit Kosovo since the country declared independence. Gates met the president and prime minister of Kosovo and lunched with the sixteen hundred US troops at Camp Bondsteel. He just happened to be on his way to nearby Hungary for a meeting of NATO defence chiefs. The United States pledged $400 million to Kosovo at a donors’ conference earlier in 2008.

 

The Arab nations—and others—see where Kosovo’s interests really lie, revealing this orphan to be more like a brother to another US invention—Israel. So, despite the view taken by the Western media of the independence of Kosovo and the war in South Ossetia, Serbia and Russia have found a sympathetic ear for their positions in the Arab world. 

Warming to Russia 

Gates dismisses Russia’s vehement opposition to Kosovan independence as sour grapes, an attempt to “exorcise past humiliations”, but a less tendentious look reveals a sophisticated diplomatic offensive by Russia, aimed largely at the Muslim world. Russia sees Kosovo as a US–EU invention that has dangerous global implications. It views the war in Iraq in a similar light, is increasingly critical of the war in Afghanistan, and consequently is actively courting and being actively courted by Arab countries, as well as Iran. The only way to fight a unipolar world successfully is to create another pole, and Russia and the Arab countries share many concerns that make them natural allies.

 

There are roughly twenty million Muslims in Russia, not to mention the populations of former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and others. Predominantly Muslim Tatarstan is an example to the Muslim world of the Russian tolerance of Islam. The Tatar president, Mintimer Shaimiev, joined the deputy chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Reverend Vsevolod Chaplin, at a religious conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in November 2008. President Shaimiev read a greeting from Medvedev that stressed: “Russia intends to stick firmly to its course to expand active interaction with the Islamic world.” Chaplin said, “Russia is inseparable from the Islamic world, as many millions of Muslims live there, and the Islamic world is inseparable from the Russian and Orthodox world, whose members live in so many Muslim countries.”¹²

 

Moscow’s new friends include Syria, eager for Russian arms and more than willing to restore the old Soviet naval base at Tartus, and the Palestinian movement Hamas, which went so far as to recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia, putting it in league with Russia’s close friend Nicaragua. Moscow is seen as much less beholden than Washington to Israel, and has shown it is eager to be considered an even-handed broker on the Palestinian issue, maintaining a dialogue with Hamas and agreeing to host international talks on the Arab–Israeli peace process in 2009.

 

As president, Vladimir Putin visited Iran in October 2007, Saudi Arabia in January 2008, and Libya in April that year, his last official visit as president. This thaw in relations has been a two-way street. Russia signed a deal to build a railway in Saudi Arabia and another on gas production in Libya, forgave Iraq $12 billion in Soviet-era debt, and has forgiven past Saudi and Iranian support for Chechen rebels.

 

Arab nations see in Russia not only an important ally and counterweight to the United States, but a role-model of sorts. Political analyst Abdel-Fattah Mady of Alexandria University argues that

 

Arab countries fail to define a framework for their common national security. Unfortunately, Arab regimes cannot distinguish between their peoples’ interests and those of the United States. Russia teaches Arabs a very important lesson: Arabs must settle their internal divisions if they want to join the club of nations that defend their interests without fearing the United States. Unfortunately, Arabs lack strong leadership with a clear vision of national security. Neither do they have the political determination to change facts on the ground.¹³

 

Perhaps all this is best encapsulated in the respective attitudes of the United States and Russia towards the OIC. On 10 March 2008, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, speaking at a reception in Washington to introduce Sada Cumber, the first US special envoy to the OIC, said: “The notion that the United States is at war with Islam, as we sometimes hear, is simply propagated by violent extremists who seek to divide Muslim communities against themselves.” Cumber, a smooth Pakistani-born businessman from Texas, later admitted that he hadn’t made much headway at the OIC’s Senegal conference that month in persuading people of the truth of Rice’s claim.

 

In contrast, Russia actually wants to join the OIC—its Muslim population is larger than that of several Asian and African Muslim states—“to enhance co-operation with Islamic nations”, according to Russian ambassador at large, Veniamin Popov. Russia continues to work within international bodies and observe international laws, while the United States continues to deny its guilt for the terrible situation in the Middle East and to bully the world to follow one of its many “roadmaps”. 

Legacy of the August War 

If not “Russia’s 9/11”, as Medvedev called it, the crisis in Georgia will nevertheless be seen by future historians as the beginning of the end for the grandiose plans of the United States to bring to fruition its version of a New World Order in Eurasia. Instead of a seemingly inexorable march towards the Volga and the dismantling of the Russian Federation—recall this was Hitler’s goal—we are now witnessing a US empire in retreat and the birth of a multipolar world, one in which the Arab nations are now in the process of determining their own place, thanks to Russia’s success in calling the empire’s bluff. This new constellation is evident both to Russia and Europe, where the battle to stop the US missile bases will be played out.

 

It should also be evident to the foolhardy, would-be bully Saakashvili. Already his chickens are coming home to roost. The sixteen-year mission in Georgia of the Organisation for Security and Co‑operation in Europe ended on 31 December 2024 because Russia insisted that the OSCE treat the separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as sovereign nations. There are sure to be more such unpleasant turns of events for Georgia’s president. And when US clients slip up or get out of line, as did a certain Saddam Hussein, they are easily abandoned.

 

Saakashvili would be wise to recall the fate of the first post-Soviet Georgian president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, also a darling of the United States (in 1978, the US Congress nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize). Gamsakhurdia rode to victory on a wave of nationalism in 1990, declaring independence for Georgia and officially recognising the “Chechen Republic of Ichkeria”. But South Ossetia wanted no part of the fiery Gamsakhurdia’s chauvinistic vision and declared its own “independence”. Engulfed by a wave of disgust a short two years later, abandoned by his US friends, he fled to his beloved Chechnya. He later sneaked back into western Georgia, looking for support in restive Abkhazia, but his uprising collapsed, prompting Abkhazia to secede. He died in 1993, leaving the two secessionist provinces as a legacy, and was buried in Chechnya. Saakashvili rehabilitated him in 2004 and had his remains interred in the Mtatsminda Pantheon with other Georgian “heroes”. Truth really is stranger than fiction in Georgia.

 

As an indication of just how far Saakashvili’s star has fallen since the war with Russia, he had Gamsakhurdia’s son Tsotne arrested in September 2008 as a Russian spy—during US vice-president Dick Cheney’s visit to Georgia to provide succour to the beleaguered president. The voices of sensible Georgians, fed up with Saakashvili’s reckless schemes, are clearly being silenced. Of course, all Western media coverage of Georgia slavishly supports this loose cannon, but Medvedev’s description of him as “a political corpse” probably is closer to the truth.

 

As a result of the new geopolitical constellation that is emerging, President Obama faces a clear choice: continue down Bush’s road of provocation towards a renewed Cold War and arms race, or find a path of accommodation with Russia. Relations with Russia will be the cornerstone of the empire’s success during Obama’s presidency. The world, certainly Europe and NATO, is now holding its breath, waiting to see what Obama will do about the missiles and the Georgians, with the ball firmly in his court.

 

Obama said in April 2007 that Russia is “neither our enemy nor close ally”, and that the United States “shouldn’t shy away from pushing for more democracy, transparency, and accountability” there. In a September 2008 presidential campaign debate, Obama said, “Our entire Russian approach has to be evaluated, because a resurgent and very aggressive Russia is a threat to the peace and stability of the region.” He called Russia’s August 2008 actions towards Georgia “unacceptable” and “unwarranted”. At the same time, he has sent out mixed signals about the ever-looming plan for US missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. After the Polish government’s website announced that Obama would proceed with the missile sites, his senior foreign-policy adviser, Denis McDonough, said: “President Kaczynski raised missile defence, but President-elect Obama made no commitment on it. His position is as it was throughout the campaign—that he supports deploying a missile defence system when the technology is proved to be workable.”¹⁴

 

In setting the tone for new US–Russian relations, there will be no love-in like that of George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, when the former famously said, “I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul.” The disastrous plunge in relations following this sound-byte moment precludes such effusions of sentiment. More to the point, so does Obama’s reliance on anti-Russian foreign-policy hawks such as Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Russians know perfectly well that little changes in US foreign policy from one regime to the next. The US empire follows a certain ruthless logic and must be accommodated by the political functionaries presiding over it. 

Imperial Damage Control 

It is unlikely that Obama will run a seemingly wild, unpremeditated foreign policy as his predecessor did. There are factions within the imperial establishment—liberals versus hawks—and Obama presumably belongs to the former. He is more likely to rely on soft power than outright war. The Russians no doubt will count on Obama to wind down the current US wars rather than start new ones, all the time keeping their eye on campaigns to “promote democracy” in their back yard. Remember, it was Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s adviser Randy Scheunemann and Vice-President Richard Cheney who abetted the brash Georgian president in going to war with Russia last August.

 

There are already clear warning signs of trouble to come. Obama has kept as his secretary of defence Robert Gates, who is adamant on deploying the US missile-defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic and equally insistent that Georgia and Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO. Obama has also chosen as his secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who in January 2005 nominated Saakashvili and Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, the bloom is off Mikheil Saakashvili’s rose after his botched war, and the Ukrainian political elite and population as a whole are divided on the desirability of NATO membership.

 

As Gamsakhurdia learned too late, the United States can switch sides, and allies can become ex-allies, at the drop of a hat. Considering that public opinion in the Czech Republic and Poland is against the missile system, by giving the right signals and letting history take its course, Obama could pacify the Russians without further loss of US prestige. The harm to the empire’s image has been done. It’s time for damage control. Any anti-Russia manoeuvring under the tutelage of Obama’s mentor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in careful consultation with Gates, will be much cleverer than under Bush.

 

The main economic issue, which already swamps these political issues, is the global financial meltdown. Medvedev’s top economic adviser, Arkady Dvorkovich, thinks that under Obama, the United States will engage in a closer dialogue with Europe, Asia and Russia to find a way out of the financial crisis. “This dialogue will begin in the near future in Washington. We will look for solutions together.”¹⁵

 

There is one conflict where Washington can move quickly to find common ground with Moscow—in Nagorno-Karabakh. The United States, Russia and France are co-chairs of the Minsk Group, which acts as intermediary over the disputed territory. Medvedev met in November 2008 the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia for talks on the conflict, getting them to agree to continue working on a political resolution of the conflict. None of the co-chairs has any particular hidden agenda, and if they could get the opponents to agree on a compromise, flooding them with development aid to sweeten the pill, this would be a strong signal that there is a way out of the nasty Cold War which Bush and Cheney have bequeathed Obama.

 

If Obama wants to make any progress in the empire’s affairs abroad, be it on Afghanistan, Europe, Iraq, or Iran, he will have to wrestle the cold warrior Washington establishment into submission and make peace with Russia. This will have the truly wonderful side-effect of strengthening Medvedev’s hand in his own struggle with statist authoritarians.

 

This is the way for Washington and NATO to encourage democracy around the world—by refraining from threatening other countries and interfering in their affairs. If the United States is not perceived as a threat by Moscow, constantly intriguing and pushing its European allies into stupid Cold War stand-offs, Russia will be able to continue its halting democratic transformation.

 

Endnotes

 

1. Stephen Castle, “Medvedev Backs off Missile Threat”, New York Times, 14 November 2008.

 

2. Stephen Castle, “Gates and European Officials Criticize Medvedev for His Bellicose Talk”, New York Times, 13 November 2008.

 

3. Castle, “Medvedev Backs off Missile Threat”.

 

4. Ibid.

 

5. Steven Erlanger, “NATO Chief Defends Engaging with Russia”, New York Times, 4 December 2008.

 

6. Ibid.

 

7. Ibid.

 

8. Musa Sadulayev, “Georgian Army Moves to Retake South Ossetia”, Associated Press, 8 August 2008.

 

9. Steven Lee Myers, “Not a Cold War, but a Big Chill”, New York Times, 16 August 2008.

 

10. “Interview Given by Dmitry Medvedev to Channel One, Rossia, NTV”, President of Russia, official web portal, 31 August 2008 [http://tinyurl.com/648pnma].

 

11. Norhan al-Sheikh, “Russia and the Crisis of South Ossetia: A New International Balance of Power” (in Arabic), Al Siyassa Al Dawliya (October 2008), pp. 204–7.

 

12. Sophia Kishkovsky, “Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims Live Peacefully Together in Tatarstan”, New York Times, 28 November 2008.

 

13. Abdel-Fattah Mady, “The US vs. Russia: A New World Order?”, IslamOnline.net, 7 October 2008 

 

14. “Obama Backs Shield Only if Technology Proven—Aide”, Reuters, 8 November 2008.

 

15. Nabi Abdullaev, “Telegram for Obama, No Mention in Speech”, St Petersburg Times, 7 November 2008.