The Possum Bistro

Uncomfortably close for comfort? He did warn you.

Future of Russian external relations

1. The decision of US Vice-President Cheney to visit Georgia on 4 September 2008 was a powerful, symbolic move that promises to further inflame existing relations between the US and Russia. With oil prices demonstrating volatility and potential to spike in recent months, the perspective of both sides towards each other will continue to be narrowed in terms of resource competition and energy security. The immediate side-effects of their rivalry will be felt by the EU as it struggles to develop a coherent framework in interacting with Russia, while smaller ex-satellite states like Georgia and Ukraine will be hard-pressed to pursue an independent track for fear of becoming staging grounds for proxy battles.

2. The hawks within the Bush administration have perceived the latest moves by Russia as indicative of the continuation of Putin's foreign policy – nostalgic for Russia's great power status in Europe – under newly-appointed president Dmitri Medvedev. Any illusions held previously that Medvedev's entrance would usher in a new era of constructive diplomacy were brutishly shattered with Russian troops forcefully invading Georgia, signalling that Putin's influence still remained the primary determinant of Russian foreign policy. As such, the US is determined to send a strong signal to Putin, reminding him that while he may be able to trick the Europeans into cognitive dissonance with Medvedev as the new, friendlier face of Russia when dealing with the EU, the US will not be fooled into dismissing this violation of national sovereignty as symptomatic of the negotiation process arising from the transfer of power from Putin to Medvedev that will “eventually” be sorted out.

3. Sanctions might be the convenient, diplomatically correct approach to deter Russia should it be perceived as infringing on American interests, but the true linchpin of American strategy to reduce Russia's leverage on its neighbours – especially those in the Caucasus that have become geopolitically useful allies because they lie on the periphery of Russian territory and thus serve as conduits for Caspian oil and gas to be transported to the West – is effective control of alternative pipeline routes such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipelines, both of which involve Georgia as the primary middleman.

4. It is unlikely that the US foreign policy stance towards pipeline politics will considerably change in the near future, given that the intention to acquire Caspian oil and gas was already evident during the Clinton administration in the 1990s. Clinton had pursued a bold but precarious strategy that involved supplying Georgia with technical expertise and infrastructural assistance to build the BTC pipeline, thereby preempting any Russian attempts to rebuild its influence through abusing its monopoly of energy resources. It was bold because the construction of new pipelines through Azerbaijan and Georgia were intended "to break Russia's monopoly of control over the transportation of oil from the region," Sheila Heslin of the National Security Council bluntly told a Senate investigating committee in 1997. No effort was made to disguise the fact that the US was intent to continue playing hardball by literally starving Russia of any chance to rebuild itself post-Cold War. It is little wonder that Putin entered the scene with such misgivings – the US showed little willingness to extricate itself from the Cold War mentality, exporting its encirclement strategy to the domain of energy security.

5. Yet this strategy was precarious because it was contingent on Georgia's ability to deflect Russian pressure to reassert itself, and that ability was circumscribed significantly more by how hard Russia wanted to push. Clinton decided that the best approach to bolster Georgian confidence would be to arm its military forces – a move that in retrospect seems extremely unwise. From 1998 to 2000 alone, Georgia was awarded $302 million in U.S. military and economic aid – more than any other Caspian country – and top U.S. military officials started making regular trips to its capital, Tbilisi, to demonstrate support for then-president Eduard Shevardnadze. This protocol towards boosting US-Georgian ties continued under the Bush administration with the training of troops to protect existing pipelines, the promise of NATO membership and unwavering US support for Saakashvili. The Georgians had seriously miscalculated and through some reckless, pretentious ambition of theirs, decided to invade South Ossetia on 7 August 2008, handing the Russians the perfect pretext on a silver platter to reassert its geopolitical dominance.

6. The initial utility of boosting Georgian military infrastructure and robustness has been proven to be rather feckless, and this concern is reflected in the promise of US$1b of aid on 4 September 2008 in purely humanitarian and economic assistance. Wracked by the devastation wrought by Russian firepower; its military capabilities nullified almost too easily that it has cast doubt on how effective US military aid and training actually is in deterring Russian military might; breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia that have become emboldened by this misadventure on the part of a Georgia that has been strongly cautioned against second-guessing Russian designs in its near abroad – all point to the unavoidable conclusion that this crisis cannot be solved by more political brinkmanship that would threaten to plunge Georgia in even greater domestic turmoil.

7. The EU may have issued threats to exclude Russia from various international forums and institutions such as the G8, but it has continued to struggle with competing priorities of its member states. Deep rifts within the EU have robbed the institution of its coherence in its foreign policy stance towards Russia, resulting in mere rhetoric being issued by member states with little concrete disciplinary or deterrent action to back their harsh condemnations. This has left the initiative of action to be taken up by the US, which has hurt the EU's own diplomatic efforts to engage Russia on a less confrontational tone. Furthermore, several key member states have energy interests in Russia itself, and therefore are less willing to be seen as offending the latter. The EU's difficulty in achieving coherence in its foreign policy is deeply rooted in institutional procedures and traditions, and thus it can be expected that the EU will continue to play a secondary role in resolving the current crisis.

8. Russia will be expected to leverage the EU's dependency on itself against the US to further maintain the status quo that allows it to concretise its control over energy distribution from the Caspian basin. The US will find it difficult to override the Europeans' considerations that the immediate effects of any deterioration of US-Russia relations will be felt by the EU itself. Furthermore, the degree to which the US can secure its own foreign policy interests in energy security is heavily dependent on the EU's on-the-ground effectiveness in co-opting the fragile nation-states in Russia's near abroad (such as Georgia) through the promise of enlargement. While the US' better option is to cede the initiative of bargaining and negotiation to the EU, Russia's constant provocation of US leaders via pointed attacks – either physical or verbal – on pro-US statesmen of the fragile nation-states in the Caucasus and Central Asia has effectively lured the Americans to take the bait time and again. The Russians thus have predicted accurately that they can continue to count on the US' inability to suppress the urge to escalate tensions and allow their European counterparts to engage Russia on a more conciliatory tone, hence promoting stagnation of the crisis that benefits Russia itself.