Georgia, the Russian Federation, and NATO – what has changed and what has not Armando Marques Guedes Rhetoric and outcomes of the November 2010 Lisbon NATO Summit1 The Lisbon Summit appears to have paved the way for a long-due rapprochement between NATO and Russia After in August 2008, as a response to the Russian invasion of Georgia, the then Secretary General of the Alliance, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, stated that “business as usual is no longer possible”; and the Summit in Lisboa opened the path for an apparently clear “resetting of the button” that everyone – NATO, the US, and Europe – was waiting for But was it really so? The de facto situation Moscow created on the ground in places like Georgia, in the South Caucasus, with its “recognition” of entities like “South Ossetia” and “Abkhazia”, have thrown the re-encounter into a limbo which threatens, at best, to render it all incomplete And these are only some of the various hindrances the Atlantic Alliance faces, as engaging with and connecting to Russia presents a variety of challenges The Lisbon Summit was a large stride – to many observers and analysts the biggest in the long NATO-Russia bilateral history And, indeed, for a very first meeting after “the guns of August”, the steps taken give an impression of auspiciousness It is, however, well-nigh impossible to predict how the NATO Summit will come to affect the rapprochement, since one would be hard put to evaluate the extent to which the Alliance is ready to either impose strict conditionalities on Moscow demanding its withdrawal or to, instead, assume a Realpolitik stance by merely agreeing to disagree – and leaving it at that These two rejoinders are not, of course, the only possible ones Between these two extremes many in-between alternatives are available, from the setting up of “external (and perhaps transitional) administrations” on UN or EU moderately well-seasoned models (of the Kosovo or East Timor-style) to a mere maintenance of the status quo (as in Cyprus), not excluding power-sharing arrangements of all sorts But they constrain responses As a bottom line: NATO will not want to further weaken its Article clause, by just folding up on decisions taken; and Russia will not want to give up gains it fought for – these are, I think, the material, concrete limits between which “solutions” are thinkable These restrictions are hard to reconcile And unless both sides reach a compromise of some sort, the current deadlock is bound to continue A smaller and re-ordered version of this paper was published as an interview, conducted and annotated by Dr Sergey Markedonov, as Кавказский меловой круг: “укрепление России в южной части постсоветского пространства - эпохальное событие”, in Russian, on the 26th of December, 2010 I am grateful to Dr Markedonov for his very astute questions If we widen our scope things get even more intricate Matters are further rendered difficult once we take stock of what was actually agreed upon in Lisbon, and turn even harder when we try to ascertain what was accomplished and what may still be achieved – of a still vague and multidimensional meeting of agendas and announced convergence of political wills A page was indeed turned; but no one really yet knows what is written on it Unfolding issues brings these difficulties out rather neatly Did this NATO Summit and, within it, that of the NATO-Russia Council meeting, merely spell harmonization of the ties between Moscow and the Alliance or did it actually make relations begin to veer toward promise of actual integration? Was this triggered by a mutual recognition that cooperation is imperative in the new threat ecosystem we seem condemned to share, was it a real thaw, or did it merely respond to conjunctural and ephemeral overlaps of momentary interests and demands like fighting global terrorism, the AfPak débacle, the nuclearization of Iran and the threat that represents, and so on and on? Are MAPs (NATO Membership Action Plans) over and done with, as a figure? Are the April 2008 Bucharest Summit NATO promises to Georgia and Ukraine alive, dead, or simply recast? And if the latter – if they have been reconfigured – in what ways were they redrawn? Real maps and tangible territories The truth is, it is way too early to know – but if History is to guide us, we have ample reasons to not go beyond becoming cautiously optimistic, and to be careful and hesitant about real-world, on-the-ground results Large as they may have seemed as promises, the steps taken in Lisbon were way too small to indicate outcomes with any degree of certainty Such caution does not apply only, at a macro level, to NATO-Russia relations, or only at a micro one as relates to Georgia and Ukraine Prudence must be more broad-spectrum This is of course true for all Eurasian conflict resolution issues which are pending – and many are, namely the so-called “frozen” or “protracted conflicts”, from the very special case of Transnistria to that of Nagorno-Karabakh (to mention only those that are enduring outside the Russian Federation) And once more, the situation is still far from clear One should not expect homogeneity here, as the first of these two instances constitutes a politico-geographical buffer – together with Moldova – which both Moscow and Brussels will continue finding advantageous to maintain as is; while the second much less so, and is far more politico-military and economic – since its context rather relates to control and security of energy routes Thus conflict resolution models, if they are to be of any use, must be of variable geometry and should be soundly pragmatic too – to the extent that mechanisms for resolving these and other underlying conflicts may be foreseen and planned for It is hard to conceive of an all-use template for what, ultimately, is really only a cohesive grouping of problems if and when envisaged from an external perspective We should also be weary of seeing in them simple replays of passé Cold War games The worse-case scenario, at any rate, would be for Russia and ‘the West’ to continue fanning all of them as cloned “neo-proxy wars”, a point to which I shall want to return At any rate, it is unlikely that, as a problem, stresses will go away anytime soon This much becomes clear once one asks oneself what these stresses are The widespread legitimating narrative that the de facto “creation” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia “states” was the outcome of local ethno-political conflicts is indeed only a small part of a much larger chronicle Although the entire Caucasus is a cauldron – indeed, and perhaps nowadays particularly, in its Northern reaches too, well within the Federation – it would, in fact, be rather difficult to exaggerate the manifold changes the Five-Day War really spelled Listing a few of the transformations induced makes that obvious: what happened signified a sudden rise in international unpredictability; a severe blow to the principle of inviolability of borders outside any sort of involvement of international organizations – the ‘Kosovo question’, on the contrary, and notwithstanding the Russian and a few other claims that it constituted “a legal precedent”, was only settled after nine years of negotiations backed by a Security Council Resolution in 1999, after a 2005 UN-commissioned report backed by a UN Security Council Presidential Address in the same year supporting the ‘final status’ suggestions contained in it, and in terms of a UN-commissioned 2007 draft status settlement proposal called the ‘Ahtisaari plan’ – a plan that was never approved, given Moscow assurances that it would be vetoed, but which nevertheless received wide support from both States and multilateral organizations Most crucially and perhaps more to the point, the Five-Day War also sent out the clear message on a growing impotence of these very organizations, from the UN, to the EU, to the OSCE; and even of NATO In this sense, it spelled a risk-fraught return to international dynamics based on ‘spheres of influence’ and Great Power politics Sécurité oblige, according to the new Russian post-2000 Weltanshauung So, in many senses, the Kremlin’s expeditionary thrust into a kernel area of its southern post-Soviet near-abroad was indeed a watershed event It turned the region into a turmoil of change and precipitous adjustments and rang a new tone for much harsher international relations the world over This flows from the evidence that Moscow’s spree into Georgia and the swift dismembering of the country which fast ensued was, mostly, a truly geopolitical gambit – even if thought (or of) it was ultimately mostly aimed at an external audience including in its energy-related scope From a more ‘classical’ perspective, the conflict and its aftermath signalled rather unambiguously the strategic importance of the Caucasus to Russia – and the Russian view that its southern “soft belly” cannot be effectively defended without securing the Caucasus Mountains and Moscow’s own Northern Caucasus areas, from their southern slopes And this, of course, heavily rose the stakes for a post-Soviet space now openly envisaged by the Kremlin as, among other things, a central ingredient of the Russian national elites’ representation of what the vital ‘strategic depth’ the Federation should be Again, the centre feels that for its preservation it strongly needs a buffer that offers it both geographical depth and a physical barrier The full implications of this new recalibration are yet to be ascertained It is clear, however, that any effective outside response to Moscow must take such re-proportioning into account Again, it is now visible to all that to cast the plight in the Greater Caucasus as ethno-nationalism, as most analysts did for almost two decades, is both partial and deceptive – although troubles certainly fed on that and even if those were, in a rhetorical sense, the motives invoked To understand the goings-on, one must now take into account much of the Northern Caucasus, and also the adjacent Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the many post-Soviet States beyond the Caspian and their neighbours – as well as energy issues related to the control and security of oil and gas, for instance – have to be carefully laid out and pondered To be sure, these are important dimensions of what is taking place, and thus essential to take into account if we want to built a reliable picture of events and rapidly changing balances in the greater region But as I have argued earlier, they are perhaps best envisaged as “neo-proxy wars”: ethnic tensions taken out of their surroundings, reprocessed and sent back as deeply changed proxy entities, often as ‘sleeper’ conflicts, ready to explode at a moment’s notice Unlike ‘classic’ proxy-wars, their dynamics are not subsumable under ‘domino’ models – a ‘boomerang’ image is more adequate to describe them Both Russia and radical political islamists have become adept at the ‘import-export’ mechanics involved It follows that a major rethinking of the ‘regional’ board becomes even more essential for any decisions of what to do: new situations are easier to handle if we understand them A few examples will suffice: the game-plan for the EU approach to the questions posed by the creation of such entities – or the ones for NATOs, OSCEs, or UNs, or those of the various States from both within and outside the area which feel bilaterally concerned – must start by a comprehensive assessment of the many new issues at hand, rather than buy into the wholesale picture painted by one or another of the sides involved in the ongoing assorted estrangements For instance, it is now rather difficult to fathom any efficacy in a stance based on a de-contextualized reading of ‘South Ossetia’ and ‘Abkhazia’ – or, indeed, of any attempts to treat them as self-contained events Again, as for instance Sergey Markedonov’s work reminds us, it makes less and less sense not to take into account the risks posed by organized political Islam, both within and around the ‘region’ Having said this, it is not at all clear that the EU, for example, will be capable of influencing regional matters, for all its hopes and claims of being a force skilled at playing stabilizing roles The return of Great Power politics, no matter how novel they may be, spells precisely that nowadays only actions of Great Powers can sway events And a Great Power the EU certainly is not, in the greater region To have a glimpse at how much the EU is not a crucial player there, consider the following: after Russia put an end to the UN and OSCE missions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, by vetoing in the respective organizations any extension of mandates – the only remaining international observers on the ground who could report on these events and try to defuse tension are the members of the EU’s Monitoring Mission (EUMM) in Georgia, deployed since October 1, 2008 – an unarmed civilian monitoring mission The fact that EUMM’s mandate is confined to the Georgian side of the demarcation line with no access into Abkhazian and South Ossetia granted by the Russian forces is something that seriously hampers its capacity to properly monitor and in any way act so as to stabilize the situation in this incident-prone area – quite apart from the insignificance of the manpower the Union can actually mobilize In spite of its silence, Brussels surely understood the limitations we must contend with and their scope; witness the changes quickly brought about in what concerns its old “Neighbourhood Policy” and the doubts about an enlargement still in progress, namely in the ‘inner neighbourhood’ of the so-called “Western Balkans” – albeit not any longer toward the East Mutatis mutandis, much the same could be said as concerns the UN or OSCE A Copernican Revolution? Be it as it may, I not think the Russian Federation August 2008 invasion and dismemberment of Georgia really transformed Europe’s security into a topical matter; at least not half as much as it rendered patent to all – participants and observers alike – that Russia had been transfigured into an actor (and an assertive one, at that) which had to be taken into account What took place was rather an awakening: this much was both directly and indirectly stated loud and clear by the Kremlin in all sorts of external and internal fora; and it has indeed been widely perceived as such – as, simultaneously, Moscow was emblematically active in other fronts, from Venezuela to the Ukraine to the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia or the Arctic, busily making itself felt in all these arenas with some vehemence Taken together, all these actions make better sense as a device designed to trumpet Moscow’s resurgence as an regional and global actor that wants to be heard – composing a simultaneously defensive and offensive security strategy of a Kremlin reborn At all levels above the macro-regional one, the Russian Georgia foray was a political, not a security, wakeup call A foreign policy ‘speech act’ Again, context and follow-up are crucial President Dmitry Medvedev’s late November 2009 call for a “new security agreement” which would supplant “outdated” NATO and OSCE entities was a parcel of that sort of symbolic action Indeed, it was dismissed as “empty” by most analysts, as a mostly performative act – albeit opinion remains strongly divided on its intentions Mostly, readings of it are critical, and dismiss his statements and “plan” as declarative and of virtually no substance – at best a transparent, and rather hopeless, attempt to split the European emergent consensuses on matters of security and defense A few more sympathetic analysts, however, view the proposals as a bona fide Kremlin project as a serious effort to articulate a security vision for the 21st century, one all the more necessary given recent tensions in Europe – and between Europe and Russia All the same, and whatever our preferred interpretation, President Medvedev’s initiative was most certainly an attempt at setting out the Russian position on what the agenda should be for discussions – and, as such, an opening negotiating position, a means of drawing Europe into an alternative “collective security” dialogue Here, analysts seem inclined to agree, when they tend to cast Medvedev’s proposals as a politico-diplomatic maneuver for “resetting the button” in Moscow’s terms: ones which drew Europe’s attention away from the South Caucasus events in themselves (both military and economic) by harboring what is claimed to amount to “a wider vision” What of the EU and it’s much trumpeted ‘soft power’ and ‘effective multilateralism’ innovations? Much of the revamping which is being felt must now, as a matter of course, count with NATO’s re-emergence as an interlocutor of the Kremlin – and, as pointed out earlier, should that work out according to script, it is not at all that clear Europe will be called upon to play any but an ancillary role there, or even that Europe could play any meaningful role, were it to be asked to so – an anyhow quite unlikely scenario For changes never come alone: the Franco-German axis of old is no longer alive and well, and the – however mitigated and recast – return to 19 th Centurystyle Great Power politics appears to be extensive Just consider: Britain recently celebrated security and defense agreements with a Paris which a couple of years ago surprised everyone by rejoining NATO’s military arrangements; Germany has been speedily and widely linking up its manifold interests with a Moscow it deems as containable because complementary; and NATO (and the US) have inched closer to their old adversary, Russia, implicitly giving the new ‘Putin-era’ Kremlin’s moves a degree of legitimacy it was erstwhile denied – all in the name of a much needed cooperation in regions and domains of mutual concern When put together with the unleashing of political forces made all but inevitable by the financial and economic crises assailing and dividing the Continent, the up-coming future appears more and more as that of a misentente pas trop cordiale looming in the horizon An unhappy outcome, for the ‘West’ as well as for Georgia Do comparisons help? How Moscow’s reactions in the Greater Caucasus and beyond compare to other cases of territorial contraction, or dismemberment – like, say, the Portuguese 1970s withdrawal from its colonial empire in Africa, from Angola, Mozambique, Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau, and São Tomé e Príncipe? To my mind, not easily World-views die hard, particularly when they concern crucial and deeply engrained matters like sovereignty and identity issues; and strong structural dissimilarities exist between the Portuguese and the Russian case These are two clusters of reasons for both convergences and differences between one case and the other As was the case in Portugal in what concerns the African five Portuguese-speaking ex-colonies lost in 1975, it may take one full generation before the Russian elites in power will be capable of accepting their loss of influence in the post-Soviet space and the outlying areas around it, from the three Baltics and Poland or Bulgaria to Ukraine and Georgia Feelings shall presumably run deeper as concerns the post-Soviet space proper So will qualms At first sight, this may appear to render the two cases comparable But it would be hard to draw comparisons at a higher level of resolution, as, structurally, the Russian and Portuguese “post-imperial” situations are quite different from each other “Lusophone” African ex-colonies are not located close to Portuguese borders – they are remote and located in the South Atlantic They thus pose no issues of ‘strategic depth’; in fact, they were arguably acquired as a means for avoiding too heavy a dependence on our neighbors in Europe Instead, their spread and distance promises opportunities for an increased weight of Portugal in global affairs if we can mobilize their allegiances – seen as flowing from a “community of history and destiny” – in international fora Rather differently, Moscow’s critical “spheres of influence” tended to be mainly constituted by layers of cordons sanitaires protecting the heart of the Motherland, or, as “stepping stones”, by offering desirable access routes to the outside – the Baltics on the one hand, and Georgia or Ukraine on the other, to look at only a handful of the many possible ones, are good cases in point of each of these This is aggravated by Russia’s tendency to envisage “good neighbors” as nothing less than submissive subordinates, largely by conceptualizing them as parts of the Federation’s crucial “near abroad” As far as the two States ‘lost lands’ are concerned, these are differences that make all the difference Moscow’s tendencies, whatever the ideological takes we may articulate as to their raison d’être, are defensive and focused on generating in its ex-domains effective political affinities While Lisboa’s propensity tends to favor the construction of projective linkages, irrespective of any similarities of political or ideological choices Russia’s pro-activeness in what it sees as it “sphere of influence” centers on political acquiescence in relation to perceived clear and present dangers The Portuguese lateral equivalent of this “sphere of influence” – if indeed our representations may be seen as ‘equivalent’ in any meaningful sense – focuses instead on the eventual partaking of a shared future based on a negotiated recasting of a common past Style also differs, as a consequence Where Russian attitude hinges on present-centered power reassertion and needs, Portugal’s stance is founded on the politics of reinvention of a common past for present and future purposes – so that what for Moscow are deep-seated politico-military issues of timely survival, for Lisboa amount to strategic bets for continuous specific weight Means count, too, of course Russia fights when she feels she needs to Portugal seduces when she thinks she can so A comparison between cases such as those of Angola and Georgia does bring out these intrinsic differences with greater granularity Portugal never felt the need to get Angola back, or to impede its capacity to hurt Lisboa’s interests – for instance, against the grain of ideological differences, Portugal, in spite of being a NATO founding member, sided with Angola’s Soviet-backed MPLA government in its civil war against the US-backed armed opposition, UNITA; Lisboa quickly and formally recognized the independence of the five African excolonies; and in spite of reacting to Luanda loudly expressed resentments, Lisboa’s policy makers always made it a point to placate any bilateral rasping – even when this meant alienating the almost ten percent of the Portuguese population who had been forced back from Angola in 1975 Russia, on the contrary, always sided, often quite openly, with South Ossetian and even Abkhasian secessionist-minded groups against an iron-fisted Tbilisi rule, sending in ‘peace-keepers’ which largely propped-up their separatist intentions; and when Georgia mounted bilateral tensions, Moscow, through the 90s, toughened her stance – to the point, on August 7th, 2008, of moving in militarily, and rapidly promoting and supporting – even trying to so, albeit unsuccessfully, at the level of the UN – the unilateral declarations of independence of the two “states”, even as hardly any other state in the international system did abide Largely as a result, Lisboa was virtually universally praised for its “decolonization” – mostly outside the country Moscow was very widely condemned for its “aggressiveness” – although not often within borders Portugal also quickly normalized her relations to the five Portuguese-speaking African countries, something that Russia will be hard put to be able to manage with its ex-domains My point is that, at the end of the day, any fine-grained comparisons between the two cases are seriously misleading – and I am convinced one should avoid engaging in such comparative exercises, as they may be disingenuous Other comparisons not fare much better The situation we now live in, although some parallels render it somewhat more intelligible, is amply sui generis For better and for worse, a ‘veil of ignorance’ hides the future from us What there is What we know is that Moscow now no longer has a South Ossetia which could complicate matters in her own North Ossetia, that she has influence and troops and airfields there and in that large chunk of Black Sea coast called Abkhazia – which is of use for her expanding Sevastopol-based Black Sea Fleet We know too that she at least potentially increased her stranglehold on energy flows from inner Asia into Europe and beyond We also know that the Kremlin is no longer treated as severely a subaltern as an interlocutor The price paid was a shrinking of Georgia – something not even a full-fledged regime change in Moscow (anyway not too likely an event) would probably, and unfortunately, be able to alter ‘Freezing’, i.e protracting, the Moscow-Tbilisi issue seems to be the only available option – whishing it away, somehow With a modicum of hindsight, placing faith on the good fruition of NATORussia renewed relations, or on the EU’s capacity to decisively influence Moscow, seem to play as little more than wishful thinking Since the 2008 war, all meetings, up onto and including last November’s Summit, have usually been declared successful if they accomplished nothing more than to preserve the fragile entente which has been on and off since 2000, and which the Kremlin’s Georgian campaign appeared to fatally challenge – or, if matters are read from Moscow’s perspective, after the American-led NATO expansion eastwards became unbearable and was thus duly put to a stop On this front, it is too early to claim the Lisbon marked the close of a period of what has sometimes cynically been regarded from above as one of “colonial rivalry” In spite of a mostly symbolical START redux agreement on the reduction of an operationally irrelevant number of obsolete nuclear warheads, and as the WikiLeaks flare-up glaringly showed us all, only careful nursing has kept the flimsy entente alive during the last couple of months It should be easy to understand the systemic constraints which push for this to be so At least in what concerns Russia’s “near abroad”, Russian and ‘Western’ plans are close to incompatible, compromises hard to arrange, and the all attempts so far made have failed Vladimir Putin’s nationalist appeal, with its strength constantly growing, definitely advocates more active opposition to ‘Western’ policies near Russia’s borders – a point the Kremlin has made abundantly clear in the terrain Russia’s election results, as well as their procedural hindrances, could hardly augur well for the future It is not at all likely the upcoming May 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago will help in that front, as it is not even clear, in March, if the NATORussia Council shall be reactivated for the effect The breach has been steadily widening: historians of the future may point to the Georgian expedition and its background narratives as the ultimate cause for a “foreign policy and diplomatic meltdown” ... between the Portuguese and the Russian case These are two clusters of reasons for both convergences and differences between one case and the other As was the case in Portugal in what concerns the. .. perspective, the conflict and its aftermath signalled rather unambiguously the strategic importance of the Caucasus to Russia – and the Russian view that its southern “soft belly” cannot be effectively... Summit NATO promises to Georgia and Ukraine alive, dead, or simply recast? And if the latter – if they have been reconfigured – in what ways were they redrawn? Real maps and tangible territories The