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  • Caucasus Domino

    CAUCASUS DOMINO
    by Oleg Dvinsky

    WPS Agency, Russia
    What the Papers Say Weekly Review (Russia)
    September 1, 2008 Monday

    EVENTS IN SOUTH OSSETIA WILL CHANGE THE GEOPOLITICAL MAP OF THE REGION
    FOR YEARS TO COME; Georgian escapade in South Ossetia changed the
    geopolitical map of the region.

    Destabilized by the Georgian move against South Ossetia, situation
    in the Black Sea - Caspian Sea region remains tricky. Tension did
    not even abate with withdrawal of the Russian army from the Georgian
    territory in keeping with the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan.

    Three NATO ships sailed into the Black Sea (German Luebeck, Spanish
    Adm. Juan de Bourbon, and Polish General K. Pulaski) through the
    Bosporus and their appearance did not ease the tension either. NATO
    feigns innocence and claims that the ships are there for the planned
    exercise and not because of the events in Georgia, but nobody is
    fooled. Appearance of NATO's surface combatants in the region when
    the Russian-Georgian war barely ended is nothing short of provocation.

    Tbilisi in the meantime keeps making militaristic statements and
    aggressive gestures. Georgia requested $1-2 billion from the United
    States for restoration of the military infrastructure. Analysts wonder
    what will happen in the Black Sea - Caspian Sea region now.

    The first conclusion is inescapable: Georgian aggression against
    South Ossetia voided all previous international agreements concerning
    political geography of the Caucasus. Absence of any global strategic
    view on the region in the United States and its NATO allies,
    their efforts to preserve the administrative territorial borders
    set up by the Bolsheviks, lack of professionalism on the part of
    Western diplomacy and provincialism on the part of the local - all
    of that resulted in gross political mistakes that leave the issue of
    territorial integrity of the countries of the region unanswered.

    It is clear that the turn of events that already transpired in the
    Balkans may repeat itself in the Caucasus. It is gradually dawning on
    the international community that neither South Ossetia nor Abkhazia
    will return to Georgia ever again. Neither does Nagorno-Karabakh
    appear to be eager to return to Azerbaijan.

    The second conclusion: The process of unification - provided it is
    possible in the first place - is going to take place in no foreseeable
    future. It is possible only in theory, provided the local leaders
    want something like the Caucasus Confederation with an emphasis on
    a common market, hard currency, and legislation rather than on the
    territorial integrity principle.

    The third conclusion: when Washington recovers from the emotional
    shock caused by Georgia's unexpected military-political fiasco, the
    United States had better come up with a more constructive approach to
    evaluation of the situation in this region. It requires an unprejudiced
    view on the existing correlation of forces and exact knowledge of
    America's own national interests. It should be remembered as well
    that only a chance put Georgia into the epicenter of the international
    politics.

    Two variants are possible. The optimistic one is as follows:
    putting an end to the phase of the military-political confrontation
    and transforming the Caucasus into a region of mutually beneficial
    cooperation. The pessimistic one is this: unless cooperation is chosen,
    the United States will be eventually ousted from the Caucasus.

    As things stand, Professor Ali Demir of the University of Galatasarai
    suspects that Georgian escapade in South Ossetia compromises
    fulfillment of several promising economic projects Azerbaijan
    counted on. The Turkish analyst does not rule out the possibility
    that economic interests of the EU may shift now from Azerbaijan to
    Iran with its colossal oil and gas fields. And that will mean wholly
    different geopolitics.
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