GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

Eighteen months ago, a war took place in Europe between Russia and Georgia.  It was a little war by the standards of modern warfare but it nevertheless shook the world. It sparked the greatest crisis in European security since the Balkan wars of the mid-1990s and brought Russia and the West to the edge of a new Cold War.  Moscow not only invaded a neighbor for the first time since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. It broke the cardinal rule of post-Cold War European security that borders in Europe would never again be changed by force of arms. 

We already know a lot about the war from the extensive report conducted for the EU by Swiss Ambassador Heidi Tagliavini, including the mistakes made by Georgia and President Saakashvili.  But there are a number of core questions the report did not fully examine or answer.  This war was not fought over territory, minority rights or the future status of the separatist provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  Russo-Georgian relations were certainly troubled and these conflicts real. But the war's root cause was geopolitical. Georgia was determined to go West and Russia was determined to stop it -by regime change if necessary.  What happened in August 2008 was but the final act in a longer and complicated drama as Moscow concluded that Tbilisi would not bend to its wishes.

But we should also look in the mirror and ask ourselves why the elaborate system of European security we set up over the last 20 years to ensure that war never again happened in Europe failed.  Why were we unable to see this war coming or take the necessary steps to stop it?  International involvement and the mechanisms on the ground proved  inadequate for keeping the peace let alone resolving the conflict.  Western policy also contributed to Georgia's vulnerability and accelerated the path toward war in several ways.  Our recognition of Kosovo's conditional independence and handling of NATO's Bucharest summit in the spring of 2008 may have actually encouraged Moscow to act against Georgia.  

While the Russo-Georgia war of August 2008 may seem like ancient history that many would prefer to forget, the factors that caused it and the issues it raised are still with us.  The underlying tensions have not been resolved. There is no stable solution in sight for Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  Moscow has not abandoned the goal of breaking Georgia's desire to go West and reclaiming its so-called sphere of privileged interest.  Growing instability in the northern Caucasus is making the broader region more volatile. Will it lead Russia to be more careful or assertive toward the southern Caucasus?

More important, it casts a long shadow over the current debate over the future of the European security system.  As Washington and Moscow zero in on a new arms control treaty, a future reset in US-Russian relations must face the fact that one of the greatest gaps between Western and Russian thinking today is not on Afghanistan or Iran.  It is on the core issue of whether twenty years following communism's collapse in Europe, countries still have the freedom of choice to align themselves as they wish.  In the wake of the end of the Cold War, Moscow joined the West in writing the Charter of Paris in 1990.  It was a kind of bill of rights for a post-Cold war peace. We rejected spheres of influence and recognized the right of all countries, big and small, to equal security and to choose their own alliance relationships. Moscow agreed to those rules at a time when it, too, wanted to shed its imperial past and join an enlarging Western community.  

But those rules today have become a liability in Moscow's eyes.  As the pro-Western drive in Russia waned and the imperial impulse returned, Moscow concluded they were encouraging Western enlargement at its expense.  What was a problem in embryo then has since becomes much worse and was a major factor underlying the Russo-Georgian war of 2008.  Those principles too were attacked in Georgia eighteen months ago.  The war was followed by statements asserting a Russian sphere of privileged influence and the right to intervene beyond its borders-polices that make a mockery of previous commitments. 

This is also why Moscow's new draft treaty on European security is so important.  Packaged in diplo-speak, it is an attempt to rewrite those rules and to attempts legally limit and prevent Western moves that Russian would consider hostile, such as the further NATO enlargement.   The same trend was clear in a Russia proposal tabled late last year by Foreign Minister Lavrov at the NATO-Russia Council.  That proposal bears a certain resemblance to a Soviet proposal from the mid-1950s on the neutralization and de-militarization of Germany and would give Russian a de facto veto over NATO military deployments even on the territory of new members.  Russian officials have also brazenly stated that NATO should not even holding meetings in countries in the post-Soviet space without Moscow being in the room.

Such proposals and calls are the culmination of a series of policy moves by a revisionist Russia to change the rules of the game governing security on the continent since the Russo-Georgina war of August 2008.  Rather than moving into the 21^st century, Moscow at times seems determined to go back to the kind of spheres of influence thinking associated with the 19^th century.  With the Obama Administration understandably focused on the Afghanistan war and the looming challenge of Iran, Moscow may hope that a West in need of its cooperation on these issues may be will to acquiesce to its claim for a sphere of influence on its borders to stop any further enlargement of Western institutions closer to its borders.  

Let's not forget why we wrote the Charter of Paris in the first place.  We did so because Europe's bloody history had taught us that spheres of influence do not produce real security and that compelling nations to align themselves with others against their will is a recipe for conflict.  We wrote them to guard small states from larger, more powerful ones. And we wrote them because we were convinced that democratic integration was the best foundation for peace on the continent. 

President Obama is right to try to reset relations with Moscow and engage on this latest proposal. Dealing with a revisionist Russia requires engagement.  But let's be clear in our own minds which Russian interests we consider legitimate and which we do not.  Moscow has a legitimate right to equal security and to ensure that no new threat appears on its borders.  It does not have the right to dominate and interfere in the affairs of its neighbors, to seek to topple their governments, or to deny them their own foreign policy aspirations.  On those issues, we must draw the right lesson from the Russo-Georgia war and have a clear answer.  Resetting relations with Moscow must include the Kremlin's returning to the principles of the Charter of Paris as well.

For the article as published in German, please download the file.