In Focus: Russia and the Caucasus Galal Nassar traces a seismic shift in international relations Recent weeks have seen clear signs that the monopolar era is ending and the world is returning to a multipolar order in international relations. Perhaps the most important development was the Russian response to the American deployment of components of an antiballistic shield in Poland. The Russian deputy military chief-of- staff said that the deployment in Europe would jeopardise Russian-US relations and elevate Poland's risk of nuclear attack "100 per cent". On 14 July it was revealed that, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, Moscow was drawing up plans to station missiles facing towards Europe. According to British news reports citing defence sources in the Kremlin, Russia felt that it had to take measures against the encroachment of the American strategic arsenal towards Russian territory, which it regarded as a possible bid to weaken Russia's deterrent capacity and, hence, a threat to its national security. The London Times reported that the plan the Kremlin is currently considering entails deploying ballistic missiles in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave located between Lithuania and Poland. Kaliningrad was declared a nuclear free zone under an agreement concluded at the end of the Cold War. The other significant development is the Russian military intervention in Georgia, followed by Moscow's unilateral sponsorship of the secession from South Ossettia and Abkhazia which was then followed by Ankara's support of the move. Demons do not usually resurface unless summoned. Clearly, George Bush, Mikheil Saakashvili and Vladimir Putin set the stage well. They all contributed, each for their own reasons, to igniting the southern Caucasus. Bush, as we know, had a holy mission to perform. He had been divinely instructed to set off on the battle against the "axis of evil". This led to the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and to its sponsorship of the Israeli war against Lebanon in the summer of 2006, all in the noble cause of changing the map of the Middle East. It is quite likely that a voice from on high whispered to him to plant the flags of America's victory in the Cold War around the borders of Russia, the leader of another axis of evil that had been defeated but that may still be lurking somewhere. These victory flags took the form of spreading democracy into erstwhile Soviet territories, annexing Moscow's neighbours into NATO and the EU, stationing star wars defence components in the Czech Republic and Poland (the latter only metres away from the Russian pocket of Kaliningrad), subduing the remnants of former Yugoslavia and supervising the independence of Kosovo preparatory to building a military base in the Balkans and, last but not least, playing with the glowing embers that constitute the Caucasus. The second protagonist in the Caucasus, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, is the golden boy of democratic promise who one day led a demonstration, carrying the red rose of "freedom", that stormed the parliament building in Tbilisi and ousted President Eduard Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze had been the last Soviet foreign minister. Like Mikhail Gorbachev he believed that the West would reward him for helping end the Cold War by allowing him to remain as a local president. As young and inexperienced in government as he is, Saakashvili was quick to realise that he owed his political survival not to the ballot box but to those who brought him from the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights in Belgium. He ignored the protests of tens of thousands of demonstrators who staged a sit-in in front of the parliament building, dismissed his former foreign minister and most dangerous rival and closed down two radio stations that had the nerve to describe his foreign policy as reckless. Then, ignoring cautions from Moscow, he proudly welcomed Israeli and US military units and conducted military manoeuvres that were unmistakably exercises for taking control over Ossettia and Abkhazia, both of which received direct protection from Russia in accordance with a bilateral agreement between Moscow and Tbilisi. Sure enough, he followed through on the exercise with a military assault against South Ossettia, taking Putin by surprise as he was absorbed in the Olympics in Beijing and Dmitri Medvedev was holidaying in Sochi. Saakashvili may be hot-headed but he would not be foolish enough to set fire to the southern Caucasus without approval from Washington. In fact, according to one Parisian newspaper, US officers helped Georgian forces take aim at Russian forces. The Americans may have had several goals in helping Saakashvili in his blitzkrieg against Ossettia. They may have wanted to weaken the Georgian president's rivals by pushing a nationalist concern (Georgian territorial unity) to the forefront of the domestic political agenda. Simultaneously, they were testing how Russia would respond after the slap in the face it received on the Kosovo issue. It could also have been a means to pressure the Europeans, who had refused Georgia and Ukraine entry to NATO, and trigger an alarmist attitude among eastern European countries which had recently emerged from the Soviet fold, thereby smoothing the path for the spread of the US missile defence shield in the region. Finally, it was probably also intended as a way to sap the impetus the Kremlin had acquired recently by focussing on the defence of Russian borders instead of attempting to expand Russia's influence across the seas in the Middle East and Latin America. It could be that Saakashvili was aware of these objectives when he lit the fuse in the Caucasus. It could equally be that those who issued the order to open fire did not care the slightest what he thought. The third protagonist in the Caucasus war is Vladimir Putin, the man who raised his country from the rubble of the Cold War, the victor in the war in Chechnya, riding high on increased oil and gas prices that have allowed him to bring his country back to centre stage in the international arena, benefiting from the American administration's train of drastic failures in its so called war against terrorism, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, as well as from the series of intractable crises that have defied the will of the West, from Darfur, Somalia and Zimbabwe to Beirut, Pyongyang and Tehran. Not only has Putin set the Russian house in order and revived its international role, but the former Russian president and current prime minister also presided over the rebirth of the Russian military-industrial complex. Russia now manufactures the world's most advanced fighter plane and recently announced that a super high- tech multi-warhead transcontinental missile capable of outwitting the American antiballistic missile shield will soon be on the production lines. In defiance of Washington, Moscow has concluded a major arms deal with the Bush administration's outspoken Latin American adversary, Venezuelan President Xavier Chavez, supplied Syria with advanced ballistic missiles and continues to help Tehran with its nuclear programme. Moscow has also been increasingly nettlesome to Washington in the chambers of the Security Council. It opposed a resolution calling for tougher sanctions against Iran, lodged reservations over another resolution to form an international tribunal to try the assassins of former prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri and opposed yet another resolution to close the Iraqi WMD file. It was vehemently critical of American policy in Kosovo and has taken a firm stand against the European missile shield project, in response to which Putin threatened to halt disarmament talks and cease cooperating on anti- terrorist issues. Not all of Putin's venom was directed against Bush. He also expelled four British diplomats, refused to grant visas to British officials, suspended cooperation with the UK on antiterrorism matters and refused to hand over a Russian wanted for murder in the UK to British security officials on the grounds that the Russian constitution prohibits the surrender of Russian citizens to other countries. All the signs point to the resurgence of the Cold War, albeit tempered by an element of pragmatism and the absence of ideological polarities. It seems likely that the US administration, which is aware of how the Russian game in the southern Caucasus could affect developments in Europe, particularly in light of European dependency on Russian energy supplies, was keen not to give Putin enough time to prepare the theatre of operations as he would have liked. It therefore pre- empted Russia by means of the impetuous Georgian president who, by lighting fire in the Caucasus, propelled Washington's European allies into a win-or-lose test of strength. Recent developments mark the threshold of a new era in international relations and the end of that brief anomaly in which Yankee say-so in the international decision-making process superseded international treaties and conventions. The current transition underscores several facts that have governed the course of history since the dawn of civilisation: In international relations there are no permanent friendships. Relations are governed by interests and disputes have nothing to do with misunderstandings or "clashes of civilisations" and everything to do with clashes of will. Secondly, partnership is a very loose term. Ultimately, it is also governed by balances of power in the sense that the stronger partner generally has his way. Thirdly, from the ancient empires of Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome and Byzantium through to the empires of today, international relations are ruled by the laws of might and adversary. The rivalries of the multipolar order created climates and conditions that contributed to subduing international tensions and to the rise of treaties and conventions that bolstered movements for independence, freedom and self- determination in the oppressed world. Among the fruits of this process are the Declaration of Human Rights, the universal acceptance of the principles of freedom, equality and social justice; the establishment of the League of Nations and then the United Nations and the emergence of non-governmental organisations that champion the rights of peoples and nations against tyranny and injustice. The monopolar order that arose after the Cold War was a dark period in human history. It gave rise to a new and rabid form of McCarthyism, the most salient features of which were a clampdown on the freedom of thought and other civil liberties, the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the attempt to transform the Middle East into a series of ethnic/sectarian cantons through the creation of fundamentalist identities, sparking civil wars (in Iraq, Algeria, Somalia, Yemen and Lebanon) and precipitating social fragmentation in other Arab countries. If the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq are the true manifestation of the repercussions of the end of the Cold War and the rise of the monopolar order, the events in Georgia and Russia's stance on the American missile shield destined for Eastern Europe may prove the turning point. Perhaps we are on the threshold of an era that will rehabilitate international treaties and conventions, thereby reviving confidence in international law and the UN. Perhaps, too, in this new era the map of international alliances will be redrawn in a manner that will enable some countries to free themselves from an iron grip.
