Russia's high-stakes bet in Georgia

Russia's decision yesterday to establish thicker ties with Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia was as predictable as it is inflammatory.

As Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili rightly protests, the Russian foreign ministry's declaration (Civil Georgia has provided a full text of it here) that it will recognize as legal all documents issued by the separatist governments is a step towards the de facto annexation of those two territories to Russia.

According to the Russian foreign ministry statement, President Vladimir Putin has ordered his government to "interact with the actual bodies of power" in both places, and to build trade links with the regions.

This is hardly a surprising move. For years, the Kremlin has been granting Russian passports and citizenships to residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, even those international law clearly recognizes both provinces as parts of Georgia. Russian citizens now make up a majority of the population in both places.

The Kremlin clearly foresaw a day when its hold over the two territories would be useful in a standoff with Tbilisi, the West or both.

Throughout the Kosovo crisis, Russia warned that if the West recognized Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia, a strong Russian ally, it would re-evaluate its relationships with not only Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but perhaps the Transdniestr region of Moldova and the Srpska Respublika in Bosnia-Hercegovina as well. (The Kosovo example has also contributed to rising tensions between Georgia's neighbours, Armenia and Azerbaijan, over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh)

When the West (seemingly because it couldn't figure out what else to do with Kosovo) through its weight behind Pristina's UDI, the Kremlin had two choices: accept its dimished stature and do nothing - as Boris Yeltsin did while NATO bombed Belgrade in 1999 - or do something bold to make it clear that Russia's interests can no longer be ignored as they were a decade ago. For better and for worse, Putin has spent eight years choosing the latter route.

To Saakashvili's consolation, the U.S., the EU and NATO are tripping over themselves today to denounce Russia for "openly siding with separatists" and to call on the Kremlin to respect Georgia's sovereignty. Intentionally or not, their words and arguments are borrowed from Russia's reaction to the West's support for Kosovo.

The unanswered question is how far does Western support for Georgia's territorial integrity go? How would NATO - an organization that just promised Georgia future membership - react if Russia annexed two chunks of Georgian soil, or backed their independence?

The status quo in Eastern Europe is starting to slide away, just as it did in the early 1990s, when borders regularly fell away and new states were created seemingly every month. Back then, there was only one player at the table dictating the rules.

Yesterday, dangerously, the Kremlin anted up and declared that Russia back in the game. Mikhail Saakashvili is betting hard that it's a bluff.

The New Cold War on the road: if any readers are in London or Almaty next week, please feel free to come, say hello and argue with me. On Monday I'm giving a talk at the Cafe Diplo at The Gallery in Farringdon.

Friday, I'm in Kazakhstan to take part in the opening session of the Eurasian Media Forum alongside Zbigniew Brzezinski, Gleb Pavlovsky and others. The theme is Cold War deja-vu.

The Kosovo conundrum

It sounds increasingly like Kosovo is going to unilaterally declare independence from Serbia tomorrow.

Whatever you think of the arguments for and against Kosovo becoming an independent state, it's a dangerous step that could provoke fresh violence not only in the Serbian areas of Kosovo (if Serbia is divisible, why isn't Kosovo?), but in ethnically divided Bosnia-Herzegovina as well. Leaders of the "Respublika Srpska" could be forgiven for wondering why - if Kosovo is allowed by the international community to go its own way - they can't also declare independence or push again for union with Serbia.

Russia's foreign ministry once more earned itself the enmity of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili last week when it linked the fate of Kosovo with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia's two breakaway regions. But the Russian stance has some merit: Why are the Kosovars more worthy of independence than the Abkhaz or the South Ossetians?

(It's worth noting here that many Georgians see the logic in what the Kremlin is saying: "Today there is no bigger problem for Georgia than possible recognition of Kosovo," Kakha Dzagania of the opposition Labor Party was quoted as saying yesterday. "That may become a precedent for recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.")

There are those who will argue that the Abkhaz and South Ossetian separatism movements are not genuine, that they are manufactured by the Kremlin as a way of maintaining influence over its former colony. While there's certainly some truth to this, you could say the same about Kosovo, which has been nurtured and protected by NATO since 1999.

My point here is not to argue for or against independence for Kosovo. But I do find myself wondering how the United States and the European Union find it reasonable to argue that the Kosovars deserve the right to determine their own fate, Serbia be damned, but other peoples of Eastern Europe in similar situations do not.

If Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence is going to get the support of the international community, let's make the right of national self-determination the new global standard. Let's set about determining the real will of the Abkhaz and the South Ossetians and back open and fair (not Russian-sponsored) referendums on whether they want to remain in Georgia. Then let's help them enforce the results.

Hell, while we're at it, let's do the same for the Transdniestr, the Respublika Srpska , Chechnya and the Crimea. If we're going to open this Pandora's Box in Eastern Europe, let's open it all the way.

Anything less looks like the West is picking favourites to suit its geopolitical agenda. And that's just begging for trouble.

S Novom Godom!

Я желаю Вам хорошее здоровье, удачу и успех в новый год!

Now back to business. I went silent for a little while. Very, very silent. Largely because my day job has been all-consuming of late, what with President Bush's tire-spinning visit to my current home, the Middle East.

That said, I'm off to Baku tomorrow for a weekend of pure relaxation by the Caspian Sea. The thought of returning to even the edge of the old USSR has me thinking:

Candidate Kasyanov - He's got the two million signatures. Does the Kremlin have the courage - and the barest commitment to democracy - to let him run against their man, Dmitriy Medvedev? Or are we going to see another "falsified signatures" charge in the coming days that will again prove that Russia is not inching towards democracy, but sliding back towards authoritarianism.

While we're at it, will Yavlinsky, Nemtsov and co. have the good sense to put their egos aside and back the only man with a hope of giving the Kremlin machine a run for its oil money?

Oleg Kozlovsky - His story is a warning, not only about fading freedom of speech in Russia, but about the biggest peril that many talented young Russians face - the draft. Many of my Russian friends spent most of their 20s doing anything - anything - to avoid being sucked into the dark and dangerous pit that is the Russian army. I've seen kids press-ganged off the streets of St. Petersburg while out walking with friends, and met soldiers in Chechnya whose parents didn't even know they were in the army, let alone stationed in Grozny. I'll wholeheartedly sign on to the Free Kozlovksy campaign, but add a note that there are thousands more like him, leading lower-profile lives, who also deserve our concern.

Much More Misha - Four more years of Saakashvili starts off with his government laying charges against tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili. Patarkatsishvili's no saint, but neither are Vladimir Gusinsky, Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. If this was Putin laying charges against another oligarch, wouldn't we all be asking questions about whether the President isn't really just trying to quash all political opposition?

British Council tomfoolery - If the Russian government thinks the British Council is a den of spies, it should produce the evidence and expel those it no longer wants in the country. Otherwise, it should sending spooks to follow Council staff around St. Petersburg. It's an embarrassing saga, and not for the British.

Kosovo: I've asked the question before: why is the West so insistent that Serbia is divisible, but not Kosovo? (And not Georgia or Moldova?)

Azerbaijan 2016 - C'mon, really? This what President Ilham Aliev wants to spend all the oil money on? An expensive, sure-to-fail Olympics bid? What about the hundreds of thousands of Azeris who live in poverty, just outside the Baku bubble?

February 5: If it was the $26.95 that was keeping you from buying The New Cold War, never fear. The paperback edition hits bookshelves Feb. 5.

Person of the Year?

So the illustrious Time Magazine has named Vladimir Putin its Person of the Year, adding him to a list of winners that includes a few people he admires (his role model, Yuri Andropov, shared the title with Ronald Reagan in 1983), a few people Putin has never quite seen eye-to-eye with (George W. Bush and Lech Walesa, to name a couple) and, well, me.

Does he deserve the prize? As Time notes in its explanation, the honour is not a popularity contest, nor an endorsement. Here's the offered explanation:

At its best, it is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world—for better or for worse. It is ultimately about leadership — bold, earth-changing leadership. Putin is not a boy scout. He is not a democrat in any way that the West would define it. He is not a paragon of free speech. He stands, above all, for stability — stability before freedom, stability before choice, stability in a country that has hardly seen it for a hundred years. Whether he becomes more like the man for whom his grandfather prepared blinis (Stalin) — who himself was twice TIME's Person of the Year — or like Peter the Great, the historical figure he most admires; whether he proves to be a reformer or an autocrat who takes Russia back to an era of repression — this we will know only over the next decade. At significant cost to the principles and ideas that free nations prize, he has performed an extraordinary feat of leadership in imposing stability on a nation that has rarely known it and brought Russia back to the table of world power.

Putting judgements aside, as Time has, it's hard to argue that Putin hasn't transformed Russia in a very short period of time. Eight years ago, he inherited a nearly failed state and now Russia, while it still has dangerous internal problems, is a force to be reckoned with on the international stage again.

A test of Putin and the new Russia looms next in Kosovo, where Serbs are looking to Putin as the only person willing to stand up for them as the West throws its weight behind the Kosovar Albanian leadership as it moves towards declaring full independence. More on that later...

Miss one week, miss a lot

So I decided last week to fulfill a promise I made to my wife when I finished writing my book, and to take a vacation with her without bringing my laptop along. While the Amalfi Coast was a nice break from it all, I couldn't help wishing a few times that I had time to sneak away to an Internet cafe to say:

Sochi 2014: Hurrah! There will be those who will scrunch their noses and complain that awarding the Olympics to Russia right now is rewarding Putin and Putinism. I'm usually among the Kremlin's critics, but let's put the politics aside for a while and recognize that Russia has come a very long way since the last time it hosted a Games (the 1980 summer version, which was boycotted by much of the West because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) and that this is a nice way of recognizing it. Plus, Sochi's a beautiful spot, and Russians who are beginning to once more feel isolated from the rest of the world needed this far more than the Austrians or South Koreans needed another boost to their national egos.

The Lobster Summit: What a crock. The only reason Bush was able to keep smiling while Putin drove another nail in his missile-defense plan was that he wasn't yet understanding that Vladimir Vladimirovich was saying (he won't until Condi explains it to him later). I can't help but wondering if some KGB frogman put that poor fish on Putin's hook.

Proof of a Russian attack on Georgia: This story, by Marc Champion in the Wall Street Journal, likely went unnoticed by many since it was published on America's July 4 holiday. But it's very important and deeply disturbing. Effectively, the United Nations has determined that Russian attack helicopters took part in a March 11 assault on Georgia's Kodori Gorge. While it was made to look like an attack by Abkhaz separatists, the UN has determined that a Russian missile, fired from a helicopter, struck a Georgian government building during the fighting. As Champion points out, not only does it bring back dark memories of the early 1990s, when Russian forces aided separatist forces in Georgia and other former Soviet republics, it suggests problems ahead in Kosovo. Russia's strategy to get the West to back down on the issue of Kosovo's independence has been to link the future of Serbia's restless ethnic Albanian province with that of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two Russian-backed separatist enclaves in Georgia, as well as Transdniestr in Moldova.

mosnews.com: Anyone know where it went?

The coming Kosovo crisis

Despite assertions by certain Canadian authors to the contrary, there is no "New Cold War" between the United States and Russia, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov assured us yesterday. Damn, guess I was wrong. And to think my book is listed as non-fiction.

In fact, Rice and Lavrov agreed on very little during the former's two-day visit to Moscow this week. She still wants to see democracy (aka, a different government) in Russia, and less Kremlin control over the energy corridor between Central Asia and Europe. The Kremlin still wants the U.S. to butt out of not only its internal affairs, but to drop its missile shield plan for Poland and the Czech Republic. "Russia and the United States do not see eye-to-eye," Rice understated at one point in the press conference, an instant of truthfulness in an afternoon of smiley faced denial.

While the Kremlin's anger over the missile shield is well-documented, the showdown over Kosovo is promising to be almost as heated. Russia - which has historic and cultural ties to Serbia - has promised to veto a Western-backed plan to give the predominantly Albanian province effective independence from Belgrade. With Kosovar Albanian and Serbian radicals alike hinting at violence if they don't get their way, the standoff could get ugly.

Having visited Serbia several times, but never Kosovo, I'm fairly agnostic about whether breaking up the current Serbian is a good idea. In the long term, perhaps the Serbs and the Kosovar Albanians are perhaps better off if they live separately and each govern themselves. Until now anyway, they certainly haven't done a very good job of coexisting.

But as the Kremlin might point out, you could say the same about other breakaway regions such as Moldova's Transdniestr, or Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia. Or Kosovo itself, which has a Serb-majority enclave in the north. (One could easily add Chechnya and Iraq to the list of regions where current international borders don't make much sense.)

The question is why - after eight years of relative stability in the Balkans - is there a sudden headlong rush to solve the Kosovo issue? As even William Montgomery, the U.S. ambassador who headed the efforts to oust Slobodan Milosevic seven years ago, and no Russophile, has warned in a column he penned for the B-92 website, the ramnifications will reach far beyond Belgrade and Pristina. I quote:

...in terms of US-Russian relations, the timing of the Kosovo question could not be worse. Russian President Putin is actively looking for ways to show his unhappiness with U.S. policies and Kosovo provides a golden opportunity. It seems more and more likely that Kosovo will not be resolved in the near future by a UN Security Council Resolution and that this in turn will lead to significant instability in the region. One can be sure, for example, that many in the West will blame Russia for the recent election as Serbian Speaker of Parliament, Toma Nikolic, acting head of the Serbian Radical Party. Richard Holbrooke, publicly, but many American officials privately, have made it very clear that Russia will be held accountable for any violence that occurs due to failure to pass a Security Council Resolution on Kosovo.

The point is that both Russia and the United States should be looking for ways to improve their relationship in the interest of both parties, but that events like Kosovo keep getting in the way. And without any advance planning or intention, the relationship continues to deteriorate. In the great scheme of world events, Kosovo is far less important either to Russia or to the United States than is the bilateral relationship between the two countries. But at the present time, neither seems willing or able to take the sort of steps (and compromises), which would reflect that reality.

Montgomery's point, supported by the International Crisis Group isn't that Kosovo should never receive the extra autonomy its people are demanding. He's asking why Washington and Moscow are hurtling towards a confrontation that both sides claim they don't want.

If nothing else, the obstinacy of Putin, Bush, Rice and Lavrov is good for book sales. Perhaps I'll offer them a cut to keep all this up until the U.S. launch this September.