The new cold war

The long struggle between the US and Russia has found a new focus

Jonathan Steele
Saturday January 3, 2004
The Guardian

In the dying weeks of another war-filled year, one bit of good news was the non-violent uprising which toppled Eduard Shevardnadze's regime in Georgia. But as the Caucasian republic goes to the polls tomorrow to choose a successor, the risk of bloodshed remains high and powerful external forces are trying to determine how the new president behaves.

Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that Georgia is the cockpit of a new cold war. During the Soviet period the struggle between the US and Russia was on a global scale. Massive arsenals were locked in stalemate in Europe, but wars ravaged Africa and Asia as the superpowers found it easier to compete there by interfering in local conflicts without the fear of nuclear conflagration. These were the so-called proxy wars.

The USSR's collapse did not end the rivalry. It merely recast it on a more complex stage which stressed deviousness rather than outright hostility. Washington wooed post-communist Russia with offers of partnership while expanding the old anti-Russian alliance, Nato, to take in former Soviet allies as well as the three Baltic states.

Even as that task was being completed, the Clinton administration was turning its attention to Russia's southern flanks in central Asia and the Caucasus. With Russia's formal system of control dismantled, the aim was to reduce as much of Moscow's political and economic influence as possible.

Georgia was a good candidate to start the process because Shevardnadze, as Soviet foreign minister, had shown great readiness to comply with western demands. Aid money poured in, making Georgia the biggest per-capita recipient of American government funding after Israel. Help also went to develop a range of civil society organisations, from private media to polling organisations and new political parties. While few would quarrel with the need for "good governance" initiatives in authoritarian or failed states, it would be better if they were run by less partisan bodies, like international non-governmental organisations or the United Nations agencies, than by states with an imperial agenda.

However, by 2003, after 10 years of Shevardnadze's rule, "reform" in Georgia was unimpressive. The country had become an archetype of the worst kind of post-communist state, where a corrupt rentier class of narrowly selected officials and mafia businessmen enriched itself through smuggling, crony privatisation, theft from the few remaining state enterprises, and control of customs duties and port revenues.

They tolerated opposition newspapers and multiparty polls on the assumption that state control of television would allow them to manipulate the electoral contest, while loyal officials would announce fraudulent results if voters went wrong. The last line of defence was always the army and police who, it was thought, would put down protests by force in order to save the regime because they were part of it.

Serbia broke the mould in September 2000. Popular frustration over corruption and a failing economy, plus anger over too many lost wars, produced Europe's first post-communist revolution. When the regime tried to cheat on the election results, people took to the streets in huge numbers and the army split. This was different from the revolutions of 1989, which were more political than economic. They also took place under a single-party system in which large sections of the leadership had themselves lost faith and wanted a soft landing.

Milosevic's downfall led to predictions that Georgia would be the next post-communist state to have an uprising. There was similar anger over crony capitalism. Shevardnadze had not sparked any wars, but nationalists were upset that he had failed to regain two lost provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Mikhail Saakashvili, who led the November street protests and is expected to win tomorrow's election, is a nationalist who regularly plays that card in his speeches.

Bush's people supported Clinton's strategy of diminishing Russia. In power, they sharpened it. They exploited the terrorism scare of 9/11, plus Putin's desire for US acquiescence to his failed war in Chechnya, as a way to get Moscow's consent to the establishment of US bases in central Asia. Geared as a temporary measure against the Taliban, they are determined to keep them for possible use against Russia, China and the Middle East. They accelerated the "pipeline wars" in the Caucasus by pressing western companies to cut Russia out of the search for oil in the Caspian and make sure that none was transported through Russia.

Why then did Washington decide to abandon Shevardnadze? It was not an uncontested move. Before the November fraud, most US officials hoped to see him remain in office until his term expired next year, provided he let the opposition form a majority in parliament, start to root out corrupt officials, and debate the drafting of a new constitution which might reduce the power of the presidency.

Even after the fraud some US officials wanted to keep Shevardnadze in power. There were sentimental ties, as well as the argument that direct US interference in regime change could play badly in central Asia and Azerbaijan, raising their rulers' suspicions and encouraging them to balance between Moscow and Washington rather than lean too heavily to the US side. Worries over Saakashvili's impetuous nationalism and the risk that as president he might try to regain the lost provinces by force, or at least take provocative actions on the border, also played a restraining role.

In the end the US tipped against the old dictator and told him to go. Anger over his cheating in last November's elections was not the main factor - equally fraudulent behaviour by the Aliev dynasty in nearby Azerbaijan in elections last October produced minimal American protest, even though hundreds of opposition demonstrators were detained and several editors and politicians remain in prison.

Two things probably triggered the US shift. One was fear of instability and even civil war, if the demonstrators did not quickly get their way. The other was the fact that Shevardnadze, for all his pro-western sympathies, was a realist who understood that Georgia needs good political and economic ties to Russia.

The Bush administration was furious last year when Russia's state-controlled gas giant Gazprom made a long-term deal for continuing supplies to Georgia. First the US ambassador Richard Miles complained that Washington must be informed of such deals in advance. Then Bush's energy advisor Steven Mann flew to Tbilisi to warn Shevardnadze not to go ahead with it. Meanwhile Saakashvili, and even his more moderate allies like Nino Burjanadze - who is expected to be speaker of parliament again - denounced the Gazprom negotiations.

Saakashvili is sure of election tomorrow, but what happens next is unclear. Like Turkey, Georgia's other big neighbour, Russia is no longer an imperial power. It has normal regional interests and Georgia is doomed by geography and economics to need good relations with it. Will the new team in Tbilisi move towards a more confrontational anti-Russian nationalism, or will they understand that supporting Bush's policy of a new cold war in the Caucasus offers Georgia no benefit?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/georgia/story/0,14065,1115293,00.html