Georgia - The Crisis That Won't Calm Down

By Cernig

By now, in normal times, the crisis in Georgia would be calming down. Senior statesmen and diplomats would be sitting around tables negotiating, working out peacekeeping arrangements, defusing tempers, doing diplomacy.

Germany's Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said Europe must play a "strong and levelheaded role" to settle the conflict in the Caucasus, a German newspaper said.

"We need a strong and levelheaded role for Europe, to ensure that there can be a return to reason and responsibility," he told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

"Unfortunately, the situation has become bogged down in unilateral actions in the last few days," he said, adding that he expects the European Union to give a clear response at its emergency summit on the conflict in Georgia on Monday.

"The dangerous spiral of violence must be stopped," he said.

Not a lot of that is happening however, mainly because all the principal actors see benefits for their domestic political aims - benefits based in the power of nationalist fervor and fearmongering - to keep the thing bubbling.

(While America has been distracted by the Democratic convention and McCain's Veep pick, our tireless researcher Kat has been keeping her eye on events which will play larger in the 2008 presidential campaign as time goes on. Many of the links in this post are ones she has flagged up for us, particularly those from the Russian press).

McCain's going to want to bang the "tough talk" drum in debates and try to paint Obama as an appeaser. Obama's going to try to show America that McCain is a dangerous hothead who will only harm America's interests by embroiling it in needless feuds. And Georgia's confrontation with Russia is going to be the focus for much of that debate rather than Iraq or Iran.

Russia has tried to divorce it's relationship with the West from its relationship with "near foreign" nations - making that distinction is clearly in its long-term strategic interests and Putin only needs the "near foreign" feud for a useful spurt of domestic patriotic fervor. It has called for the nuclear agreements between it and the US to be postponed, not killed; has rejected claims it's about to cut off Europe's oil; asked for more discussions on US missile defense plans and even said it would like to maintain diplomatic relations with Georgia.

But, of course, Georgia has said no in retaliation for Russian recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent. It has even gone as far as withdrawing from the Moscow 1994 deal between the two nations - the one that set up the original ceasefire and installed Russian troops as peacekeepers. The Russians have upped the ante by announcing that South Ossetia will rejoin Russia and that Russian permanent military bases will be built in the two breakaway regions. An Abkhazian port, in particular, gives Russia an alternative to Ukraine for its Black Sea Fleet - one that's actually better positioned to control the sea.

The Bush administration hasn't exactly tried to calm matters, for domestic political reasons - it believes a continuing crisis will aid McCain's presidential bid. Bush hasn't moved on keeping US/Russian nuclear co-operation deals alive despite them being the best defense against terrorists with nuclear ambitions. Cheney is going to Georgia next week to talk about aid - and to talk about how best to re-arm Georgia's military specifically against Russia. Ten (soon to rise to 18) US and NATO warships are in Russia's backyard, as provocative as if Russian ones were in the Gulf. Not that the Russian navy's particularly worried - "We will not strike first, and they do not look like people with suicidal tendencies," said one former Russian Admiral - but its still confrontational. In turn, Russia has been reaching out with offers of military aid and bases to those Mid East states least friendly to the US. In the UN, the two nations have exchanged sharp words over Georgia - words that include "Kosovo" and "Iraq".

There are signs that Russia feels it has played the Georgia crisis to its useful limit - and that it is now time to let normal diplomatic means take over again.

During Saturday's telephone conversation with Mr Brown, President Medvedev said Russia was "in favour of the deployment of additional OSCE [Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe] monitors in the security zone" in Georgia, the Kremlin statement said.

It said observers in the security zone would provide "impartial monitoring" of Tbilisi's actions.

Earlier this month, the OSCE decided to increase the number of its military observers by up 100 in Georgia.

Mr Medvedev also said that Russia recognised Georgia's regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia because of Tbilisi's aggression.

He said that the Georgian move "fundamentally altered the conditions in which, during 17 years, attempts were made to settle the relations between South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Georgia," the statement said.

In a separate development, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke to his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

They both "agreed on the need to put an end to attempts to use the situation surrounding Georgia... to raise tensions in Europe by speculating on non-existent threats concerning other post-Soviet countries," a Russian foreign ministry statement said.

But I think it unlikley that the Bush/McCain camp and their proxy, the Georgian president, will agree. they've still got mileage in keeping disagreements hot.