Russia Holds All The Cards On Georgia

By MARTIN SIEFF
Published: Aug. 12, 2008 at 10:50 AM
Courtesy Of United Press International

WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 (UPI) -- The good news is that Russia has stopped its offensive in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The bad news is that it can start it again at any time.

The Russian government had clearly carefully calibrated the political and strategic dimensions of its military operations in the remote former Soviet republic in the Caucasus on the eastern shores of the Black Sea.

The Russian army knows firsthand, from its experiences in both Chechen wars, how bloody and grueling street-by-street fighting in even a small city can be. The Kremlin is prepared to bombard the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, if it feels it has to, but it is clear Russia wants to avoid getting sucked into that kind of conflict.

The key strategic goals for Russia from its rapid and highly successful military operations in Georgia have not yet been achieved, but they probably will be very soon.

First, Russia wants to topple Georgia's pro-American President Mikheil Saakashvili, who was determined to bring his little country into NATO. It currently appears that this goal -- the fall of Saakashvili -- will be achieved within a matter of days rather than weeks.

President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday the Russian army already had been given the go-ahead to launch new military attacks if Georgia carried out any further actions against the Russian-backed secessionist area of South Ossetia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly demanded that Saakashvili resign. "We believe that Mr. Saakashvili cannot be our partner in negotiations. It would be better if he went," he insisted at a Moscow news conference.

The Kremlin appears to be backing Nino Burjanadze, a former acting president and former speaker of Parliament, and a former political ally of Saakashvili who, in the volatile and emotional tradition of local Georgian politics, has been feuding fiercely with him. She has been signaling strongly that in Georgia's current national crisis, she is prepared to tackle the country's discredited leader.

Saakashvili's strategies and policies are now a shambles: He never thought Russia would dare invade his country. Although he welcomed as much NATO and U.S. military aid as he could get his hands on, the Russian army brushed his armed forces aside with contemptuous ease. His capital, Tbilisi, has been cut off from most of the rest of Georgia by Russian forces who took the town of Gori. And the Russian army now sits ominously only a few miles outside Tbilisi itself.

There really isn't much the United States and the European Union can do, faced with this fait accompli. The 27-nation EU has no significant armed forces capable of rapid power projection into Georgia, and its northern tier of nations is already hugely dependent on Russian supplies of natural gas. At the NATO Bucharest summit in March, America's main continental European allies made clear they refused to have Georgia in NATO anyway.

U.S. President George W. Bush is in a similar quandary: He was totally taken by surprise by the Russian invasion, even though the Moscow press has been full of strong indications that war was coming for at least the past six months. We have repeatedly cited these reports in UPI columns and analyses. No one in the State Department, the Pentagon, the National Security Council or the White House dreamed it could actually happen.

Not only was Bush taken unawares, but, unlike Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, he did not dash home from attending the Beijing Olympics to deal with the crisis.

The U.S. government was unable to bring any credible pressure to bear on Russia in real time. It did not begin to assemble any credible diplomatic coalition against Moscow. Bush made no credible threats of diplomatic retaliation if Russia did not halt and fully withdraw its forces, and he currently shows neither the will nor the credible power to force Russia to withdraw from Georgia.

There can be no doubt that Saakashvili's dream of getting Georgia into the NATO alliance, where it could defy Russia with impunity, is now completely dead.

Further, the success of the Russian invasion of Georgia now throws huge new doubts over the prospects of Ukraine joining NATO, too.

Ukraine is vastly more important than Georgia, but it had been banking on the new oil pipeline from the Caspian basin to the Black Sea through Georgia guaranteeing its fuel supplies without being dependent on Russia. That anticipated lifeline has just been cut.

If Ukraine were to push ahead with seeking NATO membership, what bold actions would Russia take to prevent that happening?

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