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| Summertime in Georgia |
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August 18, 2008 |
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’t being especially prescient by anticipating an “October surprise” by Republicans that would tilt the election to McCain. Columnist Robert Scheer argues, interestingly, that the McCain campaign is a causal factor in the current Georgia-Russia conflict, such that the October surprise comes in August. (That is: Give the public more than a few weeks—give them a couple of months—to get scared into seeking more hardball power in the White House, instead of the soft power of multilateralism.) But it’s implausible that a McCain advisor (and Washington lobbyist for Georgia) has enough sway over the president of Georgia. On the other hand, McCain might have such sway, since the Georgian president is a free-market democrat beloved by The American Enterprise Institute, by neoconservatives, and by McCain: April 17, 2008—one day after Putin “legalized” relations with Georgia’s separatist regions—McCain “telephoned Mr. Saakashvili to offer support, and then told reporters...that ‘we must not allow Russia to believe it has a free hand to engage in policies that undermine Georgian sovereignty’” (NY Times, 8/18). August 14, it was reported that McCain was sending advisors to Georgia (overtly playing Commander in Chiefy, which he wouldn’t tolerate from Obama). No doubt, memories of the Cold War serve the McCain campaign superbly. (Obama has prudently expressed that he is “deeply troubled” by the conflict, but his foreign policy advisor has merely sponsored dinner parties for Saakashvili in Washington, under auspices of the Council on Foreign Relations [ibid.]). Anyway, the Bush league is exploiting what Russia has invited for a long time. Russia, of course, feels provoked by the independence of Kosovo and Polish support for a U.S. defense system on Polish territory. “In May and June, Russia increased the number of troops in South Ossetia and sent troops into Abkhazia, who Moscow said were going for humanitarian purposes, Georgian and American officials said” (NY Times, 8/18). Though the Bush administration has been “adamant in asserting that they warned the government in Tbilisi not to let Moscow provoke it into a fight,....The United States took a series of steps that emboldened Georgia: sending advisers to build up the Georgian military, including an exercise last month with more than 1,000 American troops; pressing hard to bring Georgia into the NATO orbit; championing Georgia’s fledgling democracy along Russia’s southern border; and loudly proclaiming its support for Georgia’s territorial integrity in the battle with Russia over Georgia’s separatist enclaves” (NY Times, 8/12). “[B]ut a senior administration official acknowledged that ‘it’s possible that Georgians may have confused the cheerleading from Washington with something else’” (NY Times, 8/18). “...[E]xpert[s] say that the Bush administration’s efforts to promote democracy, including backing Mr. Saakashvili as a beacon of democracy on Russia’s borders, may have emboldened the Georgian president to take provocative actions that brought a fierce Russian response” (NY Times, 8/11). Indeed, just last month, Secretary of State Rice stood with Saakashvili in Georgia, claiming in a news conference that the U.S. clearly stood with Georgia in the conflict with its own provinces. “So are you going — I understood you are going to give a tough fight for us in December,” Saakashvili said. Ms. Rice replied at the news conference: “Always, Mr. President. We always fight for our friends” (NY Times, 8/18). Rice says that she was referring to NATO support, not suggesting anything about conflict with Russia. But Rice is not prone to unintended overtones. Clearly, a Big Chill helps U.S. interest in east European desire for NATO membership, not to mention scaring up support at home for Republican paternalism. So, clearly, Saakashvili is a pawn in a geopolitical game, where, in part, Bush league interest in NATO expansion provokes conflict that bolsters McCain’s hardball image against Obama’s soft-power approach to foreign affairs. The more dangerous the world feels, the better for Republicans. The headline in one version of the NY Times, 8/18, article includes “...the U.S. Missed the Signals” (html page title when you save the article), but I think the U.S. missed no signals and got what it wanted (as did Russia). So, my coy prescience at the top here might have just missed the month of the surprise: August rather than October. The foreground of this issue seems quite straightforward, but the separatist provinces have a history of organized crime that Russia supports, while South Ossetia has long been a “state” (an autonomous province) within the internationally-certified borders of Georgia (which is a normal federalist notion). After the Soviet Union's bankrupt command economy gave a diseased Russia a decade of gangster capitalism, which may be waning in Russia, organized crime remains rampant in the separatist provinces. “Russian ‘peacekeepers’ who entrenched themselves in the conflict zones in the 1990s...[have] been highly successful in protecting [my emphasis] an array of sophisticated criminal networks stretching from Russia through Georgian territory. South Ossetia, in particular, is a nest of organized crime” (NY Times, 8/16). This may be the most compelling reason for U.S. support of Saakashvili: The real threat is nuclear smuggling. Three years ago, a “haphazard sting operation run by Georgian paramilitaries and Interior Ministry agents recovered...100 grams of highly enriched uranium....The Russian government refused to acknowledge the obvious — that the uranium had originated in Russia” (ibid). “On April 21, Georgia accused Russia of shooting down [a] pilotless Georgian plane over Abkhazia and released what it said was a video of the encounter. Mr. Putin responded that he had expressed ‘bewilderment’ to Mr. Saakashvili at Georgia’s sending reconnaissance planes over Abkhazia” (NY Times, 8/18). Longstanding South Ossetian militancy directly caused Georgian military intervention in support for Georgian police, who were being wounded. “The shelling from South Ossetia to Georgia proper increased significantly in August...[T]he Georgians accused the South Ossetian separatists of firing at Georgian towns behind the shelter of Russian peacekeepers” (NY Times, 8/18). The rational way to address this situation is an international effort to have the provinces adequately policed. Russia’s immediate, full-dress military entrance into Georgian territory is not that rational outcome. It looks, rather, like a prepared intent to claim territory for Russia and to severely intimidate Saakashvili, if not oust him from power, so that Russia can control Georgian affairs. It’s absurd to compare this situation with Kosovo, as long as Russia is protecting militancy and crime; and not allowing Georgia to police it’s own territory. Someone has to take responsibility for rational governance. The petropolitical features of the context may be ultimately prevailing: Central Asia is the new frontier in oil exploration, not the sea. NATO frustration with turning Afghanistan into a safe overland passage for oil from central Asia to the Indian Ocean (which is why President Pervez Musharraf will resign) and recent oil market pressures, due to Chinese and Indian modernization, have heightened the need for a second oil pipeline through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey (who declined to make a new oil cooperation deal with Iran, 8/14), just as the screws are turning tightly on Iran, a key ally of Russia. Inasmuch as the West gains leverage in the oil market by becoming more able to marginalize Russia and Iran, a Russian-Iranian alliance on oil policy loses big, especially as the basis of Russia’s export economy is oil and natural gas. So, the proxy conflict in Georgia is also petropolitical, as part of the larger geoeconomic evolution. For some time, Russia has been marginalized by globalization. It still is not accepted into the WTO. India (surely) and China (probably) are more attacted to collaboration with the U.S. and Europe than with Russia. Former Soviet satellites are more attracted to cooperation with the West than with Russia. Russia’s interest in Saakashvili losing power in Georgia is a strategical interest, which the militant provinces of Georgia serve. It’s a message to surrounding states. But the marginalization of Russia will likely increase, quite apart from the loss of international standing that the invasion of Georgia is causing. Continuing high oil prices are creating dramatic pressures for alternative fuels and efficiencies, further eroding the geopolitical future of Russia. Accelerating industries in solar power, wind, ethonol, electric cars, fuel cells, etc. are marking the horizon for oil-based economies. I see the disproportionate and tragic “overreaction” of Russia to the Georgian intervention as expressing a desperation in the waning KGB generation—an ethic of belligerance in the late days of petroeconomics: political thuggery as remnant of Sovietism. On the horizon, a new geopolitics is emerging: A strident China is becoming unsustainable; ascendent India is strongly aligned with a strengthening E.U.-U.S. alliance (and NATO) edging toward the Russian border by invitation, not by force. Brazil is becoming a global power in ethanol production, within a flourishing panamerican trading region (and the U.S. is becoming increasingly Latino—and Asian). The Cold War dynasties are dying out, and, I think, a new multilateralism in the West is going to emerge just as the current recession wanes. Ultimately, global warming is driving everything away from oil-based geopolitical designs.
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