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Politkom.ru, Russia
Aug 8 2013
Fifth Anniversary of Five-Day War
by Sergey Markedonov, Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies, Washington, USA
In the past five years, the subject of the Transcaucasus has
invariably been raised during August discussions. Today the heat of
emotions over the events of the "hot August" of 2008 has declined
significantly. Professional forecasters are no longer so busy with
their political weather-forecasting studies, that is, compiling
predictions of a repetition of the "five-day war" every August.
Caucasus issues have been squeezed out of the first few lines of the
news reports and the newspaper headlines by features and reports on
the state of affairs in the Middle East, Central Asia, and
Afghanistan...
Ahead lies the reformatting of the NATO (in effect, American-British)
Afghan operation, which gives rise to far more questions than
ready-made answers. Many heroes or antiheroes (it all depends on your
angle of vision) of those five days five years ago have either left
their jobs or are close to leaving big politics. Eduard Kokoiti no
longer leads South Ossetia; second President of Abkhazia Sergey
Bagapsh has departed this life. One of the main "hawks" and eminences
grises of Georgian politics, former Internal Affairs Minister and head
of government Vano Merabishvili, is in prison. Another member of the
Georgian president's "inner circle," ex-Minister of Justice Zurab
Adeishvili, has been sentenced to imprisonment in absentia. And
Mikheil Saakashvili himself is awaiting the presidential elections and
his departure from the post of head of state after the significant
curtailment of his powers and their redistribution in favour of the
prime minister. The American administration headed by Barack Obama,
unlike George Bush Junior's team, does not regard the Georgian
president as a model democratic reformer. On the contrary, in fact,
despite the significant help in the Afghan operation (the contingent
from the Caucasus republic is the largest of the subunits from
countries that are NATO's allies but not members of the Alliance),
Washington is setting Tbilisi new tests again and again. First
parliamentary, then presidential elections. And in Russia too the
Putin-Medvedev "tandem" is seldom recalled. And then for the most part
only by experts or journalists. Although it is Dmitriy Medvedev's name
on the edict recognizing the independence of the two former autonomous
formations of the Georgian SSR [Soviet Socialist Republic].
However, interest in the geopolitical dynamics in the South Caucasus
is still strong. And consequently, referring to the "hot August of
2008" in the context of today's events appears justified. To what
extent are the events of five years ago continuing to determine the
present agenda? What has changed since that time and in what direction
are these changes developing?
Many authors, assessing the significance of the "five-day war" hot on
the heels of that event, jumped to conclusions and tried to present it
as some kind of geopolitical surprise that shook and shocked the whole
world. In reality the five days of the "hot August" were only links,
admittedly important ones, in a chain by the general name of the
"transformation of the regional status quo." The first status quo in
the Greater Caucasus reflected the realities of the breakup of the
Soviet Union. Only an incorrigible optimist could ever have considered
that this disintegration and the formation of new nation states out of
the ruins of a once united country could take place strictly in line
with the borders sketched out by party and Soviet leaders. The borders
disappeared along with the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union]
as a system of power and governance (which had guaranteed their
observance), leaving behind, instead, contentious sovereignties,
disputed borders, and conflicting civil, political, and ethnic
identities. Proclaiming independence turned out to be by no means the
same as ensuring the loyalty of the new citizens of the new state
formations. As a result, in the South Caucasus, instead of the three
states recognized by the international community, a further three
unrecognized republics emerged, and for six years a fourth also
existed in the North Caucasus - the "Chechen Republic of Ichkeria," to
say nothing of the failed attempts at self-determination on both sides
of the mountain range.
Naturally this first status quo had not only its adherents but also
its ardent opponents, who sought a revision of this legacy. In
1999-2000 Moscow took its revenge for the Khasavyurt Accords of 1996,
although to this day the problem of the integration of Chechnya into
the Russia-wide space is far from being resolved. In 2004-2008 Georgia
pinned its hopes on a total review of the conditions that completed
the hot phase of the two ethno-political conflicts in Abkhazia and
South Ossetia. The latter republic was regarded as the "weak link" and
the process of reviewing the rules of the game set out in the Dagomys
Accords (1992) proceeded at an accelerated pace compared with the
Abkhazian line. The "hot August" of 2008 virtually completely
overshadowed the start of the "unfreezing" of the conflict in May
2004. Meanwhile the road to the August tragedy of five years ago began
with the deployment of subunits of the Georgian MVD [Ministry of
Internal Affairs] that were not stipulated in the earlier accords,
followed by the first military confrontation between the Georgian and
South Ossetian side since the 1992 cease-fire (8-19 August 2004). It
was after these events and over the next four years that the "minor
foul" tactics became an everyday reality in South Ossetia, until
quantity turned into quality.
The "unfreezing" of the conflict, threatening Moscow's exclusive
interests, forced the Russian leadership to make up its mind clearly,
and ultimately gave rise to tough retaliatory actions, the recognition
of the two former autonomous formations of the Georgian SSR, and the
participation in the destruction of the old status quo.
However, over the subsequent five years Russia has not carried out any
offensive geopolitical operations either within the limits of the
Caucasus or in the post-Soviet space in general, although there was no
shortage of predictions on that subject in August 2008. In this
context it may be recalled that an escalation of the interstate
standoff with Ukraine, which sympathized openly with Georgia, did not
happen. In fact the Grand Treaty between Kiev and Moscow was extended.
In 2010 even Moscow's Western partners were prepared for some degree
of intervention by the Russian Federation in Central Asia (the
situation in Kyrgyzstan), but the Kremlin did not make up its mind to
this. Also in 2010 the Russian Federation reached an agreement on the
demarcation and delimitation of the state border with Azerbaijan
despite the fact that this decision had and still has its critics,
first and foremost with regard to the "price paid" (the Dagestani
enclaves in Azerbaijani territory). In effect Moscow played the role
of a selective revisionist reacting in a tough way to being squeezed
out of its sphere of interest but not proposing a fundamentally new
agenda. Integrationist ideas (the Customs Union and the Eurasian
Union) were an attempt to escape from the post-Soviet greatcoat in
which ideas of a common past supplanted pragmatic factors. The extent
to which these ideas were thought through, were considered, and were
attractive to the potential partners is another matter. But their very
existence attests not to "re-Sovietization" but to attempts to build
relations with the former republics of the USSR not by a common
yardstick but on an individual basis.
Particular mention should be made of the fact that after recognizing
the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia did not start
manoeuvring with a view to further weakening Georgia, whether it be
scenarios of destabilization in Armenian-inhabited Samtskhe-Javakheti
or the cultivation of certain pro-Russian forces. Once again, in 2008
there was no shortage of predictions on this subject. At the same time
Moscow has no constructive programme for Tbilisi. But Tbilisi also has
no programme that might suit Moscow. The recognition of Abkhazia and
South Ossetia makes such programmes impossible. However, a general
demand for the pragmatization of relations, the desacralization of
conflict, and the lowering of the level of hostility exists. Georgia
is trying to avoid Saakashvili's foreign policy extremes and return to
more balanced relations with its northern neighbour. The plan to turn
Tbilisi into a magnet for North Caucasus national movements did not
work, despite the ostentatious recognition of the "genocide of the
Cherkess" (May 2011), the abolition of visas, and the regular
conferences on the subject of Caucasian unity under Georgia's
auspices.
Furthermore last year's events in the Lopota Gorge showed
unequivocally that a Russian failure in the North Caucasus is fraught
with risk for the Georgian state itself. If the Russian Federation
could theoretically "stop feeding the Caucasus," Georgia simply has no
geographical space, owing to the absence of a Urals or Siberia of its
own. In the event of Russia's collapse in the North Caucasus these
problems would almost automatically become Georgian domestic and
foreign policy challenges. For all the complexities in relations with
the Kremlin, the West also did not welcome Georgia's North Caucasus
manoeuvreings. On the contrary, it treated them rather with caution.
Let us add to that the decline in personal support for the third
president of Georgia, which admittedly does not negate political
support for the Caucasus republic itself and its territorial
integrity.
The consequence is the attempts by Ivanishvili's new Georgian
Government to establish communication by means of contacts with the
primate of the Georgian Orthodox Church, the start of direct bilateral
diplomatic meetings (Grigoriy Karasin and Zurab Abashidze), and the
opening of the Russian market to Georgian goods. Normalization without
concrete results. After the "unfreezing of the conflicts" and the
cessation of diplomatic relations, this is not the worst possible
result. Its future trajectory is hard to predict, because the actual
configuration of "Georgia after Saakashvili" is none too clear. Too
many questions still have no answers. Will Bidzina Ivanishvili keep
his promise and leave the post of prime minister after the
presidential election? How successful will the constitutional reforms
be? What will happen to Mikheil Saakashvili himself? At the same time,
the realization of each of the above points in one direction or
another (all together or individually) carries the risk of serious and
unpredictable reverses.
All of this is also making the United States and the EU exercise
caution. On the one hand, in 2013, like five years ago, the West
supports Georgia on such basic issues as the territorial integrity of
the country, its cooperation with NATO, and European integration. On
the other hand all this support is not tantamount to an unlimited
confidence in Saakashvili. Both the United States and the EU are today
interested not so much in the personal fate of the Georgian head of
state as in the political predictability of an ally and peaceful
regime change in the country. It should not be forgotten that
throughout the post-Soviet period Georgia has never experienced the
peaceful replacement of one top leader by another. Hence the absence
of concrete guarantees of admission to NATO. There is the rhetorical
status of "aspirant to the Alliance," but there is no clarity
regarding the time scale for granting the MAP (Membership Action
Plan). The story of the Association Agreement with the EU is
developing largely according to a similar scenario. In November 2013
at the summit of the EU and the Eastern Partnership countries in
Vilnius this document will only be initialed, although the Georgian
president has repeatedly made out that it will be a question of
signing it. But initialing and signing are not the same thing. After
the initialing of the agreement in the Lithuanian capital, the
procedure for approval of the agreement by the parliaments of the EU
member countries is launched, and that means not the "end of the
story" but a new stage on a long path.
On the "Georgian point" the interests of Russia on the one hand and
the United States and the EU on the other still differ. However, today
it is by no means Caucasus issues that are creating the main
difficulties in relations between Moscow and the West. In 2013 much
more importance is attached to the Syria situation, the domestic
political dynamics within Russia, and the new spy scandal surrounding
former CIA and NSA staffer Edward Snowden, who has been granted
temporary asylum in the Russian Federation (we will soon have an
opportunity to verify the truth of the expression that there is
nothing more permanent than the temporary). And although the idea of a
boycott of the Sochi Olympics has only been put forward thus far by
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, it is worth pointing out that this
politician was one of the authors of the 30 July 2011 Senate
resolution. This document said that support for Georgia's territorial
integrity should be the starting point in establishing US relations
with Russia in the sphere of the Caucasus. The resolution also
emphasized the rights of refugees and displaced persons to return to
their former places of residence and called on Moscow to implement in
full the cease-fire agreements concluded in August and supplemented in
September 2008. In this connection it cannot be ruled out that
Caucasus issues may be exploited in wider international contexts, even
if only as a second-ranking issue.
[Translated from Russian]
Aug 8 2013
Fifth Anniversary of Five-Day War
by Sergey Markedonov, Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies, Washington, USA
In the past five years, the subject of the Transcaucasus has
invariably been raised during August discussions. Today the heat of
emotions over the events of the "hot August" of 2008 has declined
significantly. Professional forecasters are no longer so busy with
their political weather-forecasting studies, that is, compiling
predictions of a repetition of the "five-day war" every August.
Caucasus issues have been squeezed out of the first few lines of the
news reports and the newspaper headlines by features and reports on
the state of affairs in the Middle East, Central Asia, and
Afghanistan...
Ahead lies the reformatting of the NATO (in effect, American-British)
Afghan operation, which gives rise to far more questions than
ready-made answers. Many heroes or antiheroes (it all depends on your
angle of vision) of those five days five years ago have either left
their jobs or are close to leaving big politics. Eduard Kokoiti no
longer leads South Ossetia; second President of Abkhazia Sergey
Bagapsh has departed this life. One of the main "hawks" and eminences
grises of Georgian politics, former Internal Affairs Minister and head
of government Vano Merabishvili, is in prison. Another member of the
Georgian president's "inner circle," ex-Minister of Justice Zurab
Adeishvili, has been sentenced to imprisonment in absentia. And
Mikheil Saakashvili himself is awaiting the presidential elections and
his departure from the post of head of state after the significant
curtailment of his powers and their redistribution in favour of the
prime minister. The American administration headed by Barack Obama,
unlike George Bush Junior's team, does not regard the Georgian
president as a model democratic reformer. On the contrary, in fact,
despite the significant help in the Afghan operation (the contingent
from the Caucasus republic is the largest of the subunits from
countries that are NATO's allies but not members of the Alliance),
Washington is setting Tbilisi new tests again and again. First
parliamentary, then presidential elections. And in Russia too the
Putin-Medvedev "tandem" is seldom recalled. And then for the most part
only by experts or journalists. Although it is Dmitriy Medvedev's name
on the edict recognizing the independence of the two former autonomous
formations of the Georgian SSR [Soviet Socialist Republic].
However, interest in the geopolitical dynamics in the South Caucasus
is still strong. And consequently, referring to the "hot August of
2008" in the context of today's events appears justified. To what
extent are the events of five years ago continuing to determine the
present agenda? What has changed since that time and in what direction
are these changes developing?
Many authors, assessing the significance of the "five-day war" hot on
the heels of that event, jumped to conclusions and tried to present it
as some kind of geopolitical surprise that shook and shocked the whole
world. In reality the five days of the "hot August" were only links,
admittedly important ones, in a chain by the general name of the
"transformation of the regional status quo." The first status quo in
the Greater Caucasus reflected the realities of the breakup of the
Soviet Union. Only an incorrigible optimist could ever have considered
that this disintegration and the formation of new nation states out of
the ruins of a once united country could take place strictly in line
with the borders sketched out by party and Soviet leaders. The borders
disappeared along with the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union]
as a system of power and governance (which had guaranteed their
observance), leaving behind, instead, contentious sovereignties,
disputed borders, and conflicting civil, political, and ethnic
identities. Proclaiming independence turned out to be by no means the
same as ensuring the loyalty of the new citizens of the new state
formations. As a result, in the South Caucasus, instead of the three
states recognized by the international community, a further three
unrecognized republics emerged, and for six years a fourth also
existed in the North Caucasus - the "Chechen Republic of Ichkeria," to
say nothing of the failed attempts at self-determination on both sides
of the mountain range.
Naturally this first status quo had not only its adherents but also
its ardent opponents, who sought a revision of this legacy. In
1999-2000 Moscow took its revenge for the Khasavyurt Accords of 1996,
although to this day the problem of the integration of Chechnya into
the Russia-wide space is far from being resolved. In 2004-2008 Georgia
pinned its hopes on a total review of the conditions that completed
the hot phase of the two ethno-political conflicts in Abkhazia and
South Ossetia. The latter republic was regarded as the "weak link" and
the process of reviewing the rules of the game set out in the Dagomys
Accords (1992) proceeded at an accelerated pace compared with the
Abkhazian line. The "hot August" of 2008 virtually completely
overshadowed the start of the "unfreezing" of the conflict in May
2004. Meanwhile the road to the August tragedy of five years ago began
with the deployment of subunits of the Georgian MVD [Ministry of
Internal Affairs] that were not stipulated in the earlier accords,
followed by the first military confrontation between the Georgian and
South Ossetian side since the 1992 cease-fire (8-19 August 2004). It
was after these events and over the next four years that the "minor
foul" tactics became an everyday reality in South Ossetia, until
quantity turned into quality.
The "unfreezing" of the conflict, threatening Moscow's exclusive
interests, forced the Russian leadership to make up its mind clearly,
and ultimately gave rise to tough retaliatory actions, the recognition
of the two former autonomous formations of the Georgian SSR, and the
participation in the destruction of the old status quo.
However, over the subsequent five years Russia has not carried out any
offensive geopolitical operations either within the limits of the
Caucasus or in the post-Soviet space in general, although there was no
shortage of predictions on that subject in August 2008. In this
context it may be recalled that an escalation of the interstate
standoff with Ukraine, which sympathized openly with Georgia, did not
happen. In fact the Grand Treaty between Kiev and Moscow was extended.
In 2010 even Moscow's Western partners were prepared for some degree
of intervention by the Russian Federation in Central Asia (the
situation in Kyrgyzstan), but the Kremlin did not make up its mind to
this. Also in 2010 the Russian Federation reached an agreement on the
demarcation and delimitation of the state border with Azerbaijan
despite the fact that this decision had and still has its critics,
first and foremost with regard to the "price paid" (the Dagestani
enclaves in Azerbaijani territory). In effect Moscow played the role
of a selective revisionist reacting in a tough way to being squeezed
out of its sphere of interest but not proposing a fundamentally new
agenda. Integrationist ideas (the Customs Union and the Eurasian
Union) were an attempt to escape from the post-Soviet greatcoat in
which ideas of a common past supplanted pragmatic factors. The extent
to which these ideas were thought through, were considered, and were
attractive to the potential partners is another matter. But their very
existence attests not to "re-Sovietization" but to attempts to build
relations with the former republics of the USSR not by a common
yardstick but on an individual basis.
Particular mention should be made of the fact that after recognizing
the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia did not start
manoeuvring with a view to further weakening Georgia, whether it be
scenarios of destabilization in Armenian-inhabited Samtskhe-Javakheti
or the cultivation of certain pro-Russian forces. Once again, in 2008
there was no shortage of predictions on this subject. At the same time
Moscow has no constructive programme for Tbilisi. But Tbilisi also has
no programme that might suit Moscow. The recognition of Abkhazia and
South Ossetia makes such programmes impossible. However, a general
demand for the pragmatization of relations, the desacralization of
conflict, and the lowering of the level of hostility exists. Georgia
is trying to avoid Saakashvili's foreign policy extremes and return to
more balanced relations with its northern neighbour. The plan to turn
Tbilisi into a magnet for North Caucasus national movements did not
work, despite the ostentatious recognition of the "genocide of the
Cherkess" (May 2011), the abolition of visas, and the regular
conferences on the subject of Caucasian unity under Georgia's
auspices.
Furthermore last year's events in the Lopota Gorge showed
unequivocally that a Russian failure in the North Caucasus is fraught
with risk for the Georgian state itself. If the Russian Federation
could theoretically "stop feeding the Caucasus," Georgia simply has no
geographical space, owing to the absence of a Urals or Siberia of its
own. In the event of Russia's collapse in the North Caucasus these
problems would almost automatically become Georgian domestic and
foreign policy challenges. For all the complexities in relations with
the Kremlin, the West also did not welcome Georgia's North Caucasus
manoeuvreings. On the contrary, it treated them rather with caution.
Let us add to that the decline in personal support for the third
president of Georgia, which admittedly does not negate political
support for the Caucasus republic itself and its territorial
integrity.
The consequence is the attempts by Ivanishvili's new Georgian
Government to establish communication by means of contacts with the
primate of the Georgian Orthodox Church, the start of direct bilateral
diplomatic meetings (Grigoriy Karasin and Zurab Abashidze), and the
opening of the Russian market to Georgian goods. Normalization without
concrete results. After the "unfreezing of the conflicts" and the
cessation of diplomatic relations, this is not the worst possible
result. Its future trajectory is hard to predict, because the actual
configuration of "Georgia after Saakashvili" is none too clear. Too
many questions still have no answers. Will Bidzina Ivanishvili keep
his promise and leave the post of prime minister after the
presidential election? How successful will the constitutional reforms
be? What will happen to Mikheil Saakashvili himself? At the same time,
the realization of each of the above points in one direction or
another (all together or individually) carries the risk of serious and
unpredictable reverses.
All of this is also making the United States and the EU exercise
caution. On the one hand, in 2013, like five years ago, the West
supports Georgia on such basic issues as the territorial integrity of
the country, its cooperation with NATO, and European integration. On
the other hand all this support is not tantamount to an unlimited
confidence in Saakashvili. Both the United States and the EU are today
interested not so much in the personal fate of the Georgian head of
state as in the political predictability of an ally and peaceful
regime change in the country. It should not be forgotten that
throughout the post-Soviet period Georgia has never experienced the
peaceful replacement of one top leader by another. Hence the absence
of concrete guarantees of admission to NATO. There is the rhetorical
status of "aspirant to the Alliance," but there is no clarity
regarding the time scale for granting the MAP (Membership Action
Plan). The story of the Association Agreement with the EU is
developing largely according to a similar scenario. In November 2013
at the summit of the EU and the Eastern Partnership countries in
Vilnius this document will only be initialed, although the Georgian
president has repeatedly made out that it will be a question of
signing it. But initialing and signing are not the same thing. After
the initialing of the agreement in the Lithuanian capital, the
procedure for approval of the agreement by the parliaments of the EU
member countries is launched, and that means not the "end of the
story" but a new stage on a long path.
On the "Georgian point" the interests of Russia on the one hand and
the United States and the EU on the other still differ. However, today
it is by no means Caucasus issues that are creating the main
difficulties in relations between Moscow and the West. In 2013 much
more importance is attached to the Syria situation, the domestic
political dynamics within Russia, and the new spy scandal surrounding
former CIA and NSA staffer Edward Snowden, who has been granted
temporary asylum in the Russian Federation (we will soon have an
opportunity to verify the truth of the expression that there is
nothing more permanent than the temporary). And although the idea of a
boycott of the Sochi Olympics has only been put forward thus far by
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, it is worth pointing out that this
politician was one of the authors of the 30 July 2011 Senate
resolution. This document said that support for Georgia's territorial
integrity should be the starting point in establishing US relations
with Russia in the sphere of the Caucasus. The resolution also
emphasized the rights of refugees and displaced persons to return to
their former places of residence and called on Moscow to implement in
full the cease-fire agreements concluded in August and supplemented in
September 2008. In this connection it cannot be ruled out that
Caucasus issues may be exploited in wider international contexts, even
if only as a second-ranking issue.
[Translated from Russian]