By August 20, Russia has deployed approximately 20,000 land, sea and air forces  to recapture South Ossetia, occupy Abkhazia and invade Georgia, while also bombing civilian and military targets, and instituting a naval blockade. Russia’s goals are clear: to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia, destroy Georgia’s defense capacity and economy, and in all likelihood continue to occupy Georgia until Saakashvili’s government is deposed. In other words, Moscow seeks to reduce Georgia to a satellite renouncing its Euro-Atlantic integration. This in turn is intended to prevent any other CIS member of joining NATO, although its actions demonstrate precisely why NATO and the EU cannot leave the CIS to Russia’s tender mercies.

BACKGROUND: Despite numerous Russian statements that Georgia was actively preparing for war and that it was a reckless and provocative player, in this particular drama Georgia was the bull, not the matador.  Although Georgia clearly engaged in provocative statements and behavior despite much Western counseling to refrain from replying to Russian provocations, Russia’s claims of reacting to ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide are mendacious and tendentious. 

The best evidence suggests that Georgia’s invasion and Russia’s counterattack were carefully planned provocations by the Siloviki in Moscow and their confederates in South Ossetia.  The latter evidently feared that they might be forced by other elements in Moscow to engage at long last and despite all previous Russian blocking of such talks, in direct negotiations with Tbilisi.  The FSB agents who run South Ossetia and its pervasive smuggling rackets appear to have believed that this pressure signaled their being sold out by other elements in the Russian government.  So instead, they launched a series of escalating provocations in an environment already burdened down by political and military tensions as well as numerous previous provocations. 

The South Ossetian attacks in July and early August clearly aimed to lead Georgia to invade, knowing full well that Moscow, who clearly was mobilized, would reply in overwhelming force.  The extent, sequence and scope of the South Ossetian provocations as well as the size, readiness, and speed of the Russian counterattack suggests all the hallmark of a classic KGB provocation, and evokes earlier Soviet armed invasions of other countries in its planning.  Russia’s doctrine of invading to protect Russian citizens (who were actually not Russian citizens but citizens of Georgia to whom Russia had granted passports to undermine Georgia’s sovereignty) also evokes Hitler’s practice and rhetoric, particularly the Sudetenland episode of 1938.

This episode also shows that President Medvedev remains subordinate to Putin regarding Russian national security policy.  There is good reason to argue that this entire operation was planned by these Siloviki elements together with their subordinates in Tskhinvali to assert their control over Russian policy and to accomplish the aforementioned objectives. They also intend to demonstrate to the West that Russia can and will use force to assert its exclusive control over the CIS and to demonstrate Moscow’s contempt for the West’s feeble efforts to do anything for Georgia.  Presumably, this will show all other CIS regimes that the West is powerless to help them in a crisis; demonstrate to the West its own feebleness, irresolution, and the futility of opposing Moscow; threaten the BTC pipeline if not destroy it; and establish the primacy of a tough and belligerent anti-Western line led by the Siloviki in Russian domestic, defense, and foreign policy. 

IMPLICATIONS: As a result of this invasion, it is possible to conclude not only that the rule of force has reemerged in Europe, but that the CFE treaty is dead.  Russia will continue to strongly militarize the Caucasus as a whole, and disregard Western efforts to bring it back to the treaty regime.  Moscow is already building airbases in South Ossetia and near its borders with Ukraine, from which to threaten that state, and has apparently decided to place missiles in South Ossetia, Belarus and possibly Kaliningrad with which to threaten forthcoming missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic.

This invasion also shows why NATO and the EU cannot let Russia be the sole Ordnungsmacht (force of order) in Eurasia because its regime rests on force, official violence, criminality, and despotism.  Second, it highlights the irresolution and weakness of European security organizations.  Their demonstrated irresolution, impotence and  penchant for blaming the victim are habits of behavior suggesting a guilty conscience concerning their own inaction. But beyond that, this episode is the harvest of over a decade of relative neglect by European security organizations of a situation that everyone recognized could easily explode with serious repercussions throughout Eurasia.  This neglect emboldened Russia to believe, with apparent justification, that in the crunch the West would fall prey to divided counsels and do nothing to help Georgia.

Thus, one lesson of this affair is the need for a much stronger, coordinated, and concerted Western effort, including both the EU and NATO, to establish an unshakable position regarding conflicts in its “common neighborhood” with Russia and to support pro-Western governments there.  Indeed,  Ukraine already faces Russian threats.  Vladimir Putin has already stated that Ukraine is “not a state” and that if it seeks to join NATO, “we will dismember it”.  Russian politicians are using every resource at their disposal to meddle in Ukraine’s politics, extend the Black Sea Fleet’s presence there beyond 2017, and now in addition attack Ukraine for its alleged arming of Georgia to the teeth and what Moscow disingenuously terms “support for genocide”.

Finally, this operation also confirms that the structure of Putin’s regime represents a permanent standing invitation to military adventurism. (See author’s analysis published by the Joint Center http://www.isdp.eu/files/publications/pp/08/sb08putinsuccession.pdf)  The absence of democratic controls over all the instruments of force – regular military, paramilitary, internal troops, and intelligence forces – renders Russia permanently vulnerable to domestic and external coups as in 1994, 1999, and now in 2008.  Just as the Chechen war of 1999 was in many respects a provocation and coup d’état against more democratic elections and accountability, so too today’s operation partakes of elements of the Siloviki’s unremitting desire to seize and hold power even at the risk of foreign war.

COCNCLUSIONS: This war possesses immense implications, going far beyond the normal scope of this paper.  Every other CIS state is now potentially at risk.  Russia already is claiming that the Baku-Tbilisi Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is as a bad investment risk.  If this pipeline and the parallel Baku-Erzurum gas pipeline fail or are endangered, EU hopes for a Nabucco pipeline to transport greater quantities of gas from Azerbaijan and other Caspian states will wither with them.  Russia will then be the exclusive gas supplier from the CIS to Europe; moreover, it is likely to establish a direct connection to Iran’s energy reserves by linking its energy networks with the Iran-Armenia pipeline, which Gazprom bought into, and bypass the BTC pipeline. It can then monopolize Caspian energy flows to Europe and use that power and those revenues to corrupt and subvert European political institutions peacefully, a process that it has already begun notably in the Council of Europe.

Similarly, we should expect pressure against Armenia and Azerbaijan and other CIS governments to subordinate themselves to Moscow’s dictates, abandon democratizing reforms,  cease their flirtations with the West, and let Russia gradually take over their energy and other key economic sectors.

If unchecked, this  Russian aggression against a small state invariably generates greater tension and insecurity, especially if Europe and America remain disunited.  The need for concerted and expanded European resistance to Russian intimidation is clearer than ever and must be followed by the effort to bring about a united and coordinated Western position in the states of the former Soviet Union that will expand Western influence, prevent aspiring democracies from losing their independence and territorial integrity, and forestall the return of bipolarity in Europe. 

Russia has conclusively demonstrated that its system of government – and the imperial appetites that derive from the inherent nature of that system – remains the greatest threat to security in Eurasia.  Given the asymmetry of power between Russia and its former colonies, concerted Western action in the CIS is necessary to prevent the creation of a closed authoritarian bloc with an inherent inclination towards the unrestricted use of force at home and abroad.  That kind of system must be checked, because the temptation of military adventurism can only breed ever-larger crises and threaten the entire post-Cold War international order. 

That is the real message to come out of this crisis. The question is, who is prepared to listen, and who is prepared to lead the resistance to these threatening developments?

AUTHOR’S BIO: Professor Stephen Blank, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013. The views expressed here do not represent those of the U.S. Army, Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.