03.09.2008
August 28, 2008 (the date of publication in Russian)
Alexander Rublev
A GOOD RUSSIA IS A DEAD RUSSIA?
The reaction of the West to Russia's recognition of Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence leaves us under no illusions
After President Dmitry Medvedev acknowledged the official recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by the Russian Federation, the foreign policy pressure on Russia reached its extreme point. The West is trying to speak with Russia in an intonation it did not allow itself with the USSR during the Cold War.
Those who don't believe should visit the Historical Library and search through the files of British, French and German papers, for instance, in 1980. Even when Western states reached a consensus over Russia's intervention in Afghanistan, efficiently boycotting the Moscow Olympic Games, they did not go beyond the bounds of verbal decency.
Today's situation is essentially different. Moscow does not export Communism, does not pursue military strategic combinations in various regions. Moscow is only trying to substantiate its elementary right to protect its citizens, not speaking of its borders. Unlike the TV audience that was hardly aware of South Ossetia's existence until August 8, Western political experts were pretty informed about the motives of the Russian side.
The moral imperative for protecting the helpless civil population is beyond consideration. The global West is not enough sentimental to discuss this issue. After Western powers conveniently watched the carnage of 800,000 citizens of Rwanda, after their reluctance to denounce the Red Khmer genocide in Cambodia, it would be strange to expect emotions from the Western establishment at the sight of extermination of a minor Caucasus people.
Can our respected Western partners be convinced with arguments of reason? During last years, we hoped that the global West is interested in a stable Russia, serving as a counterweight to rising nations of Asia and as a donor of the US financial system. The events of the last month indicate that the calculation was erroneous.
It is hard to find a decent expert who would admit that Saakashvili unleashed his attack on Tskhinval without consulting his patrons in the US establishment.
For what purpose? The version that the assault was favored by US neoconservatives lining up behind Republican candidate John McCain, set forth by RPMonitor on the very day of the Georgian invasion (http://www.rpmonitor.ru/en/en/detail.php?ID=10501), is now being broadly discussed on the official political level. However, a thorough analysis of the situation introduces corrections into the original forecast.
In fact, the success of the Russian military operation in South Ossetia was not predetermined. The task, entrusted to the Georgian troops – to rouse panic among South Ossetian population and force it to escape to the Russian territory, was quite realistic. The plan suggested demolition of Tskhinval within several hours, along with major Ossetian villages, to terrorize the civilians and oust them from their native lands to Russia. After that, Russia's military intervention would become useless, as there would be nobody to protect, and Moscow would consider only acts of vengeance.
The inflow of refugees, pouring into North Ossetia, was supposed to trigger a new Ossetian-Ingushi conflict, aggravating the situation in Chechnya and Daghestan as well, and thus promptly plunging the North Caucasus into the condition that Vladimir Putin had to deal with back in 1999. This destabilization was believed to undermine the authority of the supreme political leadership with no chance of recovery.
The design of crisis, fraught with lots of thousands casualties, was supposed to annihilate both the political and economic achievements of Moscow in the region. The ensuing disappointment of the nation in their central leadership would result in new disintegrative tendencies in Russia, while delayed attempts of response would only aggravate the situation.
The massive military support of Saakashvili's operation, pre-arranged long before and involving an array of US allies, suggests that the organizers of the assault envisaged not only the oncoming US elections, but sought to hurl Russia back to the times of chaos and disintegration, – back into the early 1990s.
Are we dealing only with "intellectual whims" of a narrow team of political adventurers, capable of manipulating the NATO establishment along with the Israeli military, or with a scenario shared by the whole Western community?
The concentration of NATO Navy forces, involving US, German, Spanish and Polish ships and exceeding the potential of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, as well as the intonation Russia is dealt with after it recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, rather corresponds with the latter option.
Is the mankind facing a new Caribbean crisis? In 1962, US-Soviet tensions started in the Black Sea. The next possible provocation is most likely to be staged in Sevastopol.
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