The American answer: enlarging Nato?

Wirepullers: quanto successo l'anno scorso in Georgia potrebbe essere solo un assaggio della nuova (fase della) guerra fredda. L'arrivo di Putin al Cremlino ha riportato il mondo indietro di decenni, per dare nuova linfa a un confronto, quello tra Est e Ovest, che sembrava appartenere a un passato già entrato nei libri di storia. Il continuo ampliamento della NATO da una parte e una nuova generazione di politici di estrazione KGB dall'altro invece mostrano come la storia non sia ancora finita. Con gli occhi del mondo puntati sul Medio Oriente, si stanno gettando le basi dei conflitti del futuro prossimo. Uno sguardo sulla Georgia. (3)

La videomappa di Limes Hertland sull'allargamento della NATO.

Finishing the Job

Wirepullers: quanto successo l'anno scorso in Georgia potrebbe essere solo un assaggio della nuova (fase della) guerra fredda. L'arrivo di Putin al Cremlino ha riportato il mondo indietro di decenni, per dare nuova linfa a un confronto, quello tra Est e Ovest, che sembrava appartenere a un passato già entrato nei libri di storia. Il continuo ampliamento della NATO da una parte e una nuova generazione di politici di estrazione KGB dall'altro invece mostrano come la storia non sia ancora finita. Con gli occhi del mondo puntati sul Medio Oriente, si stanno gettando le basi dei conflitti del futuro prossimo. Uno sguardo sulla Georgia. (2)

As the summer heat spreads through the Caucasus, it is once again accompanied by fears of war. Memories are still fresh from last summer, when after months of meticulous planning, Russian tanks rolled through the separatist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and far into Georgian land. After the official withdrawal date a few weeks later, Russian troops remained in force (and in violation of an EU-mediated cease-fire) in the two separatist territories. Russia recognized them as independent states and stationed permanent military bases there, within striking distance of Georgia's major cities.

Given recent events, keeping an eye on Moscow's Caucasian machinations will be difficult. Just this week, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's mission in Georgia closed down, taking with it its last observers working in South Ossetia. Russia was able to veto the mission's extension last winter. Earlier in June, Moscow went further by vetoing the extension of the U.N. observer mission in Georgia, which monitored security in Abkhazia. Russia refuses to provide access to either territory for the EU monitoring mission that was launched following last year's war. Moscow has thus effectively isolated the two territories from the international community, preventing oversight of Russian activities there, whether it is military buildups, human rights violations, or smuggling and organized criminal activities.

The main question today is whether Russia's leaders think they finished the job during the 2008 amputation, or whether they still hope to force out Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's democratically elected government. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told French President Nicolas Sarkozy last August that he intended to "hang Saakashvili by the balls," but in spite of domestic political troubles, the Georgian leader is still in power and all sensitive body parts appear intact. This salient fact, as well as Russian saber rattling including a major military exercise just north of the Georgian border, suggests to many analysts that a new war may be in the making.

Although Saakashvili's prospects for survival remain an important topic of discussion, developments in Abkhazia and South Ossetia are no less significant. The bottom line: Moscow, by expanding its military presence in the two regions and hindering international observation has made the annexation of the territories a fait accompli that Georgia and its Western powers are now essentially powerless to reverse.

Russia's designs for the two territories did not begin with the 2008 war. On the contrary, Moscow's long-standing and accumulative efforts to control Abkhazia and South Ossetia were the single major reason for the deterioration of Russia-Georgia relations over the past five years. In 2000, Moscow began distributing Russian passports to the inhabitants of the two provinces, which later enabled it to claim a right to protect its "citizens" there. In 2001, it engineered the election of a Russian favorite to the leadership of South Ossetia. By 2006, South Ossetia's defense minister, national security council secretary, and security chief were all Russian nationals. Meanwhile, Russian investment flowed into the two regions, particularly Abkhazia's coastal resorts. Russia also allowed its Ossetian proxies to ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of the thousands of ethnic Georgians who had lived in the territory for centuries.

By 2008, Moscow appeared to have realized that Georgia had irreversibly moved away from its "sphere of influence" (a cherished term among Russian policymakers) and that a pliant, pro-Russian government in Georgia was simply not going to happen. The only option left therefore was to punish Georgia by making its territorial amputation official through overt conquest.
Events since the war are consistent with this narrative. After the cease-fire, Moscow refused to honor its commitment to withdraw troops from the territories and immediately engaged in fortifying its positions there, announcing the building of permanent military bases that officially were to host 3,800 Russian troops in each of the two territories, far in excess of prewar numbers.

In fact, Moscow's decision to officially recognize the independence of the two territories was closely related to its basing needs. Given that Russia could no longer reasonably call its troops on Georgian soil "peacekeepers," it needed a new, if ever so tenuous, legal basis to station its forces there. Hence, recognition. Given Moscow's veto power in the U.N. Security Council, all the West could do was denounce the maneuver. But in essence, Russia has annexed the two territories in blatant violation of international law.

South Ossetia, effectively cleansed of all ethnic Georgians, is now essentially a Russian military post, with a civilian population not exceeding 30,000. There is no civil society to speak of, and the territory is under the firm control of the Russian military and security services. It is likely to remain so in the foreseeable future.

Abkhazia, on the other hand, is multiethnic, consisting of roughly equal-sized communities of Abkhaz, Armenians, and Georgians, the latter living predominantly in the southern Gali district. It also has a small but growing Russian population. Moreover, Abkhazia has experienced true participatory politics in the past decade (if only within the narrow Abkhaz ethnic community, and marginalizing ethnic minorities, particularly Georgians). Within the Abkhaz elite, there are divergent views of the territory's future, including those of a limited but nevertheless vibrant civil society and a substantial Abkhaz nationalist faction that is wary of excessive Russian dominance over the territory.

Unlike in South Ossetia, Abkhazia's economic and demographic realities are subject to change. A renowned tourist destination in the Soviet period, with its Black Sea beaches and lush mountains, it has in the past several years once again become a vacation spot of choice for the Russian public, particularly military officers and their families. Now that Moscow feels more confident about expanding its presence in Abkhazia, Russian investment in the tourist sector will likely expand, as will the number of Russians settling in the territory. The Russian government will probably encourage settlement to make its annexation complete.

The future of the Armenian and Georgian communities in Abkhazia is also a major question. In the past decade, the Armenian community has gradually grown thanks to migration from Russia and is now estimated to be the largest community in the territory. That trend is likely to continue and perhaps pick up speed. In contrast, the situation of the Georgians of the Gali district is precarious. Already severely discriminated against, the Georgians are now increasingly isolated from the rest of Georgia, effectively hostages to Russia's whims. Whether Moscow will seek to expel them to stoke tensions with Georgia remains to be seen.

Ethnic Abkhaz are likely to make up a shrinking percentage of Abkhazia's population over the coming years, almost certainly leading to increased tensions with Russia. Here, Moscow's performance in the republics of the North Caucasus is instructive. The Russian state's heavy-handed rule over not only Chechens but Dagestanis, Ingush, and Kabardins has gradually alienated large portions of the local societies, fueling extremist anti-Russian movements. If the security service presence continues to grow in Abkhazia, the same might take place there.

In the end, however, it is doubtful that such resentment will constitute a problem for Moscow. Like many small minorities under Russian control, the Abkhaz -- who number less than 75,000 -- have little prospect of standing up to Russian excesses should they even wish to do so. Abkhazia and South Ossetia have essentially become Russian protectorates, and the international community is increasingly shut out.
So far, the United States and the European Union have shown little interest in doing anything about this tragic state of affairs. That's a mistake: Although shaping developments in the Caucasus will be an excruciatingly slow and difficult process, the de facto borders between these Russian protectorates and Georgia are certain to remain a flash point in European security for the foreseeable future.

Maintaining a presence near these borders -- as the EU monitoring mission is trying to do -- will be crucial for understanding what is going on in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and for preventing flare-ups of violence along their borders. Given where the situation now stands, this outcome is probably the best we can hope for.

Autore: Svante E. Cornell

Fonte: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/

Georgia's pluralistic feudalism: a frontline report

Wirepullers: quanto successo l'anno scorso in Georgia potrebbe essere solo un assaggio della nuova (fase della) guerra fredda. L'arrivo di Putin al Cremlino ha riportato il mondo indietro di decenni, per dare nuova linfa a un confronto, quello tra Est e Ovest, che sembrava appartenere a un passato già entrato nei libri di storia. Il continuo ampliamento della NATO da una parte e una nuova generazione di politici di estrazione KGB dall'altro invece mostrano come la storia non sia ancora finita. Con gli occhi del mondo puntati sul Medio Oriente, si stanno gettando le basi dei conflitti del futuro prossimo. Uno sguardo sulla Georgia. (1)

Georgia's leader-fixated politics lacks an institutional base and competing visions of the country's future. No wonder the gap between the rhetoric and reality of democracy is so sharp, finds Ilia Roubanis in Tbilisi.

The monitoring of democracy always involves the questionable belief that one has the political and moral credentials to judge how other people's democracy operates. This is not how I found myself in Georgia. Nor is this article an assessment of how Georgian democracy ought to be; rather, this is a more a self-reflective exercise of a recovering "transitologist" questioning my theoretical certainties. Thus, in calling Georgia a system of pluralistic feudalism, my criticism mainly addresses those who prescribe democratic reform.

I made a first-ever visit to Tbilisi on 23-29 April 2009 as a member of a fact-finding mission organised by the European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity: an Amsterdam-based platform promoting cooperation between social-democratic parties, organisations, personalities and political think-tanks. In a privileged capacity, I had the opportunity to meet with all the main leaders of the opposition, a government spokeswoman, foreign think-tank operatives, a member of the European Union delegation and the few civic organisations of some consequence that exist.

In making personal preparations for this mission, I also met with an Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) military observer; and with Tedo Japaridze, a respected career diplomat and academic, who is conveniently (for me) based in Athens. So, the following assessment comes from this limited-in-scope political experience rather than long-term area-studies expertise.

With my own share of academic engagement with "transitology" and "consolidology", I am well versed in the practice of evaluating the degree of democratisation of a state. In fact, following traditional patterns of evaluation, Georgia may appear to be a country that is very close to what emerging democracies are expected to be. This is precisely the problem.

The context
Indeed, this is a country that has undergone its own difficult transition, coming up with its own brand of "colour revolution", bringing to power a man who was not stained by attachment with the former Soviet nomenklatura, namely Mikheil Saakashvilli; a leader who was furthermore a polyglot and cosmopolitan personality and, until recently, charmed western audiences and commanded "our" attention.

This is a political system that has undergone a significant alteration of political parties in power, removing from office a man who enjoyed significant prestige in the west, such as Eduard Shevardnadze. Indeed, despite small incidents of violence - not unknown in the streets of Athens and Paris - this is a country with relatively free expression of oppositional beliefs.
Moreover, Georgia has greatly reduced micro-corruption, which is remarkable for the region's standards, not to mention other regions more close to home. Indeed, this is a country with a glorious transition to a market economy, being heralded as such by the World Bank. This is a country that has also shown ample commitment to Euro-Atlantic integration, a choice that comes hand-in-hand with the strings of democracy promoting conditionality. From the outside, some pardonable blemishes aside, it all looks kosher.

The system
A closer look gives rise to questions. This is a country where politics is about leadership and not representation. All parties are founded on a personality, which probably explains why there are more than 180 registered organisations. In addition, the most prominent members of the oppositions are themselves former ministers of the incumbent administration who "jumped off the boat" following the war with Russia in August 2008. Further, not one party that has been in power and has remained a viable organisation following defeat in elections. In fact, politics is so personalised that legitimate divergence in political opinion often go unnoticed.

A case in point: the main opposition alliance is composed of one leader who wants presidential democracy, one who wants constitutional monarchy and one who wants a strong prime minister. If they require the incumbent president to resign placing on the table as their first and foremost requirement the revision of the constitution and, at the same time, they cannot agree on a basic constitutional-reform agenda, it seems that their lowest common denominator is merely their anti-presidential stand.

Clearly, this is a country that has not as yet developed substantial political cleavages. I addressed each and every party leader with the same type of questions: "Describe your constituency and the political nature of your opposition to the government." The response was similar: each claims to represent the middle class, each finds the reforms implemented by the president in recent years progressive; but that apart, each finds him particularly incapable. What's more, this criticism began in August 2008, following the war, since most of the leaders of the opposition were until that time serving in the president's cabinet as ministers. In sum, this is a feudal-type political system, where hours of positive exposure on television and individual patron-client networks constitute the main vehicle to power.

The absence
A small detail that comes to mind is that in Georgia there is no such as thing as a middle class. How could there be a middle class in a country wih no social insurance, public health infrastructures, public education, public or "strategic" transport infrastructures? In Europe, from Otto von Bismarck to JM Keynes, these were the foundations of a middle-class society, which on the basis of public goods founded disposable incomes and gave each social formation a stake in the system.

On the contrary, Georgia appears to be a big free-trade zone, with no social cost on capital investment. Georgia is a society with no social partners: unions are forbidden by law to have any involvement in politics and, in any event, the absence of law on collecting bargaining makes unionism an obsolete concept; in a predominantly agricultural state, there is not a single cooperative movement; for some reason, the church is the only civic organisation of some consequence and can have its say on everything and anything.

The absence of social partners, the absence of interest-aggregation, historically translates to the absence of a European social model. Since 1989, transitologists have focused on the necessity to affirm individual rights, but in Georgia it seems appropriate to ask whether the absence of universal social rights is the recipe for a de-substantiated pluralism. If politicians are individuals, if voters are individuals, and if society is the aggregation of individuals, why not turn the political system into a shareholding firm?
Critically, the absence of a social bearing for all political parties means that there are no alternative strategic visions for the future of the country. What happens if trade gates open between Armenia and Turkey? What precisely is the role this state wants to play as an energy-route in the region; and, in this context, is sterile anti-Russian rhetoric good for the country? Also, if the opposition's best offer to Abkhazia and South Ossetia for a return to the status quo ante is "freezing the conflict" while making Georgia "a better option of citizenship" than that of a Russian protectorate, what are the tactical/mundane steps towards achieving this objective? How is it ever going to be better or worse to be Georgian?

The reality
There are no convincing answers to these questions from the present or any past administration. This is because the country is consistently run as a business environment rather than an entity with long-term objectives in its own right. It is all very well for President Saakashvilli to claim that the "world learns from Georgia how to deal with the economic crisis"; but, if World Bank appreciation was in itself an adequate evaluating criterion, there would be no need for elections. What the president lacks at the moment is not the credentials of western approval but popular legitimacy, for he has carved for himself an office that would make Charles de Gaulle appear weak by comparison.

In Georgia there is rule by law, but questionable rule. The government passes bills and goes forward to interpret them without any checks and certainly no balances. The fact that some of those accused of staging a Russian-inspired coup are now dead and unable to be tried is problematic; the fact that anyone who financially supports the opposition is blatantly threatened is problematic. But the biggest problem is that it is personalities rather than the people who make a stand against this abuse of power. Political experience across Europe and the world testifies to the fact that unless opposition is socially rooted, the only guarantee is of an alteration of people in power rather than the reform of power-structures as such.

There is no shortage of personal charisma or charm in Georgia; but, instead, politicians seem to find no strings attached to power, no social demands, no aggregated interest-articulation: in sum, a blank cheque for the duration of a presidential term. As in feudal times, the only problem at hand is that a king's power is checked by the feudal lords of his court who aspire themselves to become kings.

In sum, Georgian democracy may be likened to "pluralistic feudalism" and it is sad to observe that "we" as transitologists are asking the wrong type of questions on what is the way forward. It is clear in my mind that we should first and foremost rethink how our reform agenda is impacting upon such post-Soviet societies. Perhaps, in the midst of this economic crisis, we should question our moral and political confidence when dictating reform; perhaps, it is precisely these reforms that are creating a type of individualism that is not conducive to democracy.

Autore: Ilia Roubanis

Fonte: www.Opendemocracy.net