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Putin Makes His Move
Accident of geography puts Georgia in Russia's way
By ROBERT KAGAN
19/08/08 "Washington Post" -- - The details of who did
what to precipitate Russia's war against Georgia are not very
important. Do you recall details of the Sudeten Crisis that led
to Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not,
because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as
a minor part of a much bigger drama.
This war did not begin because of a miscalculation by Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili. It is a war that Moscow has
attempted to provoke for some time.
The man who once called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the
greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century" has
re-established virtual czarist rule in Russia and is trying to
restore his country's dominant role in Eurasia and the world.
Armed with wealth from oil and gas; holding a near-monopoly over
the energy supply to Europe; with a million soldiers, thousands
of nuclear warheads and the world's third-largest military
budget, Vladimir Putin believes that now is the time to make his
move.
Georgia's unhappy fate is that it borders a new fault line along
the western and southwestern frontiers of Russia. From the
Baltics in the north through Central Europe and the Balkans to
the Caucasus and Central Asia, a geopolitical power struggle has
emerged between a resurgent and revanchist Russia on one side
and the European Union and the United States on the other.
Putin's aggression against Georgia should not be traced only to
its NATO aspirations or his pique at Kosovo's independence. It
is primarily a response to revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia in
2003 and 2004, when pro-Western governments replaced pro-Russian
ones. Ever since, Putin has been determined to stop and, if
possible, reverse the pro-Western trend on his borders. He seeks
to bring Georgia and Ukraine under Russian control and to carve
out a zone of influence within NATO, with a lesser security
status for countries along Russia's strategic flanks. That is
the primary motive behind Moscow's opposition to U.S. missile
defense programs in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Russia precipitated a war against Georgia by encouraging South
Ossetian rebels to raise the pressure on Tbilisi and make
demands that no Georgian leader could accept. If Saakashvili had
not fallen into Putin's trap this time, something else would
have eventually sparked the conflict.
Diplomats in Europe and Washington believe Saakashvili made a
mistake by sending troops to South Ossetia. Perhaps. But his
truly monumental mistake was to be president of a small, mostly
democratic, adamantly pro-Western nation on the border of
Putin's Russia.
Historians will come to view Aug. 8, 2008, as a turning point no
less significant than Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell.
Russia's attack on sovereign Georgian territory marked the
official return of history, indeed to an almost 19th-century
style of great-power competition, complete with virulent
nationalisms, battles for resources, struggles over spheres of
influence and territory, and use of military power to obtain
geopolitical objectives.
Yes, we will continue to have globalization, economic
interdependence, the European Union and other efforts to build a
more perfect international order. But these will compete with,
and at times be overwhelmed by, the harsh realities of
international life that have endured since time immemorial.
The next president had better be ready.
Robert Kagan is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. His most recent book is "The Return of
History and the End of Dreams." He served in the State
Department in the Reagan administration.
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