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23668 RO Fall.Qxd Fall 2008 The Georgia Watershed By Leon Aron On August 8, following Georgia’s reckless attack on the Russia-supported separatist enclave of South Ossetia, Russia invaded Georgia. For the first time in post-Soviet history, Russian troops crossed the internationally recognized border of a sovereign neighboring state. Yet there were several other lines that may have been crossed. This short war looks more and more like a culmination and an emblem of the troubling evolution in the Kremlin’s values and priorities and, by extension, its vision of the country’s national interests. It may have heralded the onset of a distinct, and profoundly disconcerting, agenda both inside and outside the country. What has been said and done by the Russian authorities since last August strengthens this impression. The principles and priorities of Russian foreign “civilized world”) is no longer accepted even as a policy have changed in concert with the evolu- distant goal. Today, “Russia is inclined not only tion toward authoritarianism inside the country completely to reject Western values but even to Russian Outlook guided by Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has refuse to admit that something like that exists,” steadily repossessed key economic resources and one of the most astute observers of Russian foreign reestablished control of the media, justice, and all policy, Fyodor Lukyanov, wrote in August of this national political institutions. The government year.4 These “values,” another leading Russian and the national media have stoked the sense of expert noted, include “trifles like the rule of law loss and imperial nostalgia; fomented spy-mania; and the respect for civil liberties and human and fostered Russia’s image as a country “de-facto rights,” for which, in the Kremlin’s opinion, the besieged”1 by cunning, plotting, and ruthless ene- Russian people are somehow not yet “mature mies on every side and aided by a “fifth column” enough” and therefore need, in Putin’s words, of political opposition,2 the latter compared by “about twenty years of manual control.”5 Putin to jackals looking for “crumbs near foreign Russia’s relations with the West have evolved embassies.”3 accordingly: from a protoalliance to “neutrality” The search for “a path to the common Euro- and “mediation” between the West and its oppo- pean home” and the commonality of interests nents (a theocratic, militant Iran and a resurgent, with the West in the strengthening of democracy, authoritarian China) to a kind of omnivorous human rights, and “all-human values,” which “pragmatism” and, finally, to truculence, ad hoc underlined the Gorbachev-Yeltsin foreign policy, anti-Western alliances, and pointedly anti-Western have been discarded as the shameful artifacts of postures on a number of key issues. Perennially “weakness” and “chaos.” Russia’s integration into wronged and misunderstood by the West, in this the family of Western capitalist democracies (the new official perspective, Russia must embark on a Leon Aron ([email protected]) is a resident scholar and policy of resurgence and retribution. the director of Russian studies at AEI. Several themes in this essay were first touched on in “What A “Revisionist” Russia? In the process, Russia Russia’s War Reveals,” USA Today, August 13, 2008, and “Russia’s Next Target Could Be Ukraine,” Wall has been transformed to what is known in the Street Journal, September 10, 2008. theory of international relations as a revisionist 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 202.862.5800 www.aei.org - 2 - power. Until early 2007, it could be said that, although and clients, Moscow is most eager to reclaim hegemony railing at the score more and more loudly, Russia was over the territory of the Soviet Union. not seeking to change the rules of the game or reshape Up to a point, there is nothing unusual in Russia’s the playing field. Then, in a speech in Munich in Feb- insistence on and enforcement of its military and eco- ruary 2007, Putin stated that the world had “approached nomic preeminence in formerly Soviet territory. In seek- that watershed moment, when we have to think seri- ing to ensure stability and, if possible, friendly regimes on ously about the entire architecture of global security.”6 its borders, Russia, too, is not unlike any other major land Later in the year, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov power since ancient Babylon, China, and Rome (as well developed Putin’s theme by blaming such cornerstones as the United States in North and Central America). of Europe’s post–Cold War security structure and stabil- Since the elucidation of Russia’s first post-Soviet national ity as NATO, the Organization for Security and Co- security doctrine in 1993, it has been clear that, along operation in Europe, and the Conventional Forces in with remaining a nuclear superpower and accepting its Europe treaty for unspecified “major problems.”7 status as a great power (but no longer a superpower), Rus- Declaring that the “moment of truth” had arrived, sia would insist on being the regional superpower.12 As a Lavrov announced Moscow’s intention to “clear out” leading Russian foreign policy expert put it recently, the offending institutions.8 “Russia is a world power with regional ambitions.”13 Three weeks after the invasion of Georgia, Lavrov Tacitly accepted by the West, Russia’s claim to leader- again alleged “obvious systemic defects” in the “entire ship in the region during its painful transformation into a current architecture of European security” and renewed flawed and floundering but real and developing capitalist calls for “a radical revision of the entire international democracy was bolstered in the 1990s by its status as the agenda.” 9 Along the way, he accused the United States leader in privatization and democratic institutionalization and the “countries of the West” of acting on “instincts in the territory of the former Soviet Union (with the and prejudices of the past,” of being afflicted with “the exception of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) and, in the deficit of morality,” and—quoting approvingly Kishore early 2000s, as the region’s fastest growing economy. Since Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public then, the criteria for being the regional superpower have Policy at the National University of Singapore—of hav- changed starkly. Moscow no longer appears content to ing become “for the entire world the main obstacle to maintain military and economic primacy in the region the solution of international problems.”10 and exploit the “soft power” that flows from this position Two weeks later, the revisionist direction of Russian (not least because Russia has long surrendered its place as foreign policy was heartily endorsed by President Dmitri the region’s most dynamic economy, let alone a model of Medvedev: “Today we have to do everything we can to democratic and social transformation). Instead, Russia construct a different system of [international] security. strives to wield something close to a veto power over the As far as the Russian Federation is concerned, the one post-Soviet states’ domestic politics as well as their eco- that exists is not satisfactory.”11 nomic and foreign policy orientations. In sharp contrast with the 1990s, the political and The Recovery of the Soviet Geostrategic Assets. economic aspirations of the former Soviet republics have Just as the reimposition of state control over the coun- been recast by the Kremlin into a zero-sum game in try’s politics, media, and law and the repossession of the which Russia automatically loses whenever Western country’s key economic “commanding heights” have influence or institutions take root. Be they the democra- become the regime’s paramount goals inside the country, tization of the “color revolutions”; oil and gas exports so has the recovery of the geostrategic and geopolitical that bypass Russia; or, especially, membership in Western assets lost in the Soviet Union’s collapse—which Putin political, economic, and military organizations such as called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twen- the European Union and NATO, such developments are tieth century”—gradually turned into Moscow’s key for- now considered antithetical to Russia’s interests and eign policy priority. Along with reviving former Soviet opposed strenuously. anti-Western alliances to bolster Russia’s influence in Asia (China), the Middle East (Iran and Syria), and The Putin-Medvedev Doctrine. Referring to the pos- Latin America (Venezuela) and selling advanced mili- sibility of Georgia’s membership in NATO, Medvedev tary hardware and nuclear technology to the new allies said in September: “This situation is humiliating to - 3 - Russia. We won’t be able to tolerate it any longer. It is erally” to reestablish sovereignty over the breakaway not a simple choice for us but we will not tolerate [this region, bypassing Moscow and Transdniester’s capital of situation], and there should be no doubts on this Tiraspol, and that “the president of Russia has given a score.”14 In pursuit of regional hegemony, threats and tough warning to the president of Moldova about the energy blackmail have now been supplemented by mili- consequences of abandoning the peaceful solution to tary aggression against a defiant nation. the Transdniester problem.”18 Smirnov’s statement was In his August 31 interview with Russia’s top three likely in response to Moldova’s criticism of Russia’s television networks, Medvedev added several dimensions recognition of South Ossetian and Abkhazian “inde- to this doctrine. Henceforth, Moscow’s “unqualified pri- pendence” and reported contemplation about “chang- ority,” he said, was to protect “the life and dignity of our ing . the existing peacemaking format,” which until citizens, wherever they might be.”15 A lawyer by educa- then had included only the Russian and Transdnies- tion, a law professor, and counsel to several top Russian trian authorities.) corporations in the 1990s (as well as to the foreign rela- tions department of St.
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