Russia in the Caucasus:
Reversing the Tide
Dmitri Trenin
Director
Carnegie Moscow Center
The Russia­­-Georgia war of August 2008 transformed the situation in Georgia and
has had a profound effect on both the North and South Caucasus. However, the fundamental realities and trends in the region, which can be traced back to the collapse of
the Soviet Union, continue to evolve. Russia is transitioning from a historical empire
to a nation-state and a great power. To Moscow, the North and South Caucasus are
inevitably interlinked. Historically, Russia’s conquest of the North in the 19th century
became a necessity once the empire had absorbed Georgia and thus established a
foothold in the South. Today, the North is a breeding ground of the principal internal
threats to Russian security: separatism, religious radicalism, terrorism, and ethnic conflicts. The South is an area of historical competition between Russia and the United
States (and to a much lesser extent other outside and regional powers). The Caucasus
is wedged between two economically and strategically important regions, the Caspian
Basin and the Black Sea. The outcome of the U.S.–Russian competition there will have
a significant influence on the feasibility of Moscow’s goal of reconstituting a sphere of
interests in the post-Soviet space.
Russia does not have anything resembling a grand strategy for the region. Yet, it
has a set of more or less clearly defined interests in the Caucasus. These include, among
others, preventing the disintegration of Moscow’s control of the North Caucasus;
thwarting other nations’, especially the United States’, efforts to win formal allies and
deploy forces to the South Caucasus; establishing Russia’s political primacy in the South
Caucasus as the primary external power; retaining as much control over the oil/gas
transit routes from the Caspian as possible; restoring Russia’s position as the cultural
model for the South Caucasus; and keeping Russian as the foreign language of choice
for the educated classes and the elites there.
Dmitri Trenin is director of the Carnegie Moscow Center at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. He is the author, most recently, of Getting Russia Right (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment,
2007).
Copyright © 2009 by the Brown Journal of World Affairs
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In the North Caucasus, Russia has achieved a degree of pacification in Chechnya,
albeit at a huge cost and with currently ambiguous consequences. The fighting has
stopped, but today’s Chechnya is a de facto feudal khanate, linked to the rest of Russia by a personal union between its strongman Ramzan Kadyrov and Vladimir Putin.
Russia has kept an appearance of stability elsewhere in the region, but this appearance
is deceptive. Moscow has failed to keep order in Ingushetia and finds it increasingly
difficult to keep order in Dagestan. There are mounting problems in Kabardino-Balkaria
and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, since both republics have experienced a rise in Islamist
militancy and violence, epitomized in a major armed attack on government offices in
Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, in 2005. The war with Georgia over South
Ossetia has created additional imbalances around North Ossetia. The onslaught of
Islamist radicalism from the Caspian to the Black Sea creates a difficult challenge for
the Russian state.1
Russia’s policies toward the South Caucasus have often lacked focus and frequently
contradict one another. Through its devastating counter-attack against Georgia, it sent
a message to Washington: red lines—such as opposition to NATO’s enlargement and
U.S. military deployments into the former Soviet territory and attempts to unfreeze the
frozen conflicts against Moscow’s interests—do matter, and one only crosses them at
one’s peril. Russia has defeated Georgia and recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as
independent states, but the war itself reflected the inefficacy of Russian peacemaking.
Russia has maintained its relationship with Azerbaijan and kept Armenia as Moscow’s
regional ally, but it is still not in a position to deliver a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, which is necessary to fulfill its ambition as the guarantor of stability in
the South Caucasus.
The Caucasus richly displays the stark contrast between Great Game–style confrontation policies (such as those that characterized 19th century great power rivalry) and
globalized soft power competition. Traditionally, Russian foreign and security policy has
leaned toward the former, but Russia can only be successful if it learns the ways of the
latter. Almost two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, post-imperial reconstruction is not complete either in the northern or in the southern section of the Caucasus.
The empire is gone, but the issues of borders, nation-building, and national identity
have been anything but resolved. The solution is not NATO/EU-type integration, as
on the western shores of the Black Sea; the Caucasus is probably a bridge too far. But
the Caucasus is also distinct from the secular Muslim autocracies across the Caspian.
The challenge for the region’s leaders is to chart a course toward sustained economic
growth, to learn to manage outside powers—including Russia—and to keep peace and
encourage cooperation among themselves. Among other things, this would positively
inform Russia’s approach to the region.
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Russia in the Caucasus: Reversing the Tide
The Significance of the Georgia War
The South Caucasus—which was a remote and ethnically picturesque corner of a huge
empire until it became, for two decades, a mess of local armed conflicts—suddenly
became in 2008 the place for a major political showdown between Russia and the
United States, and even potentially between
The Caucasus richly displays the
Russia and much of the West. In the immediate aftermath of the Georgia conflict, the stark contrast between Great Game–
prospect of a confrontation between the erst- style confrontation policies and
while adversaries from the Cold War appeared
globalized soft power competition.
surprisingly real. It was the global financial
crisis that eventually saved the situation by transporting policymakers in Russia and
elsewhere from the geopolitics of the 19th century-style Great Game to the 21st century
global economics, but the five-day war left a deep scar.
That war was a product of wrong assumptions, outright mistakes, and policy
failures. Georgian President Mikheil Saak’ashvili was clearly adventurous, reckless, and
brutal. He miscalculated his own strengths and his enemy’s weaknesses. Saak’ashvili’s
plan was to retake South Ossetia in a lightning strike and present the slow-moving Russia
with a fait accompli. The Bush administration had aided and abetted the Saak’ashvili
145
regime, which led a hardly–recognizable democracy; however, while Washington encouraged this behavior, it failed to control Saak’ashvili. The Kremlin, for its part, had
long relied on the frozen conflicts in the Caucasus as a means of preventing NATO
accession by Georgia. The endless game of provocations and counter-provocations
that was designed from the Russian perspective to make Georgia look unfit for any
club—above all, NATO—and from the Georgian angle, to raise alarm over Russia’s
growing assertiveness, had spun out of control.
In Russian government circles, Saak’ashvili’s sudden attack on Tskhinvali confirmed the worst thinking about the United States. Both Putin and Medevdev were taken
by surprise: they expected “provocations,” but what they got instead was a full-scale
attack. In the heady days that followed, even as people in Europe were wondering where
Russia would strike next, the Russian leadership saw Saak’ashvili’s action as a proxy war
waged by Tbilisi on behalf of the United States. It was impossible for them to imagine
that anything of this scale would not have been planned, or at least authorized, by the
United States. Their logic was that as Russia was rising and turning resurgent—a popular
phrase in 2007 and early 2008—the United States would seek to hold it down. The
method to achieve that goal was to involve Russia in a string of conflicts along Russia’s
periphery. Not only would these conflicts divert Russian resources, but they would also
help restore the unity of the West on an anti-Russian platform.
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An additional concern related to the reconfiguration of the Russian leadership
itself was that the newly-inaugurated president Dmitry Medvedev imagined himself
in the position of a Cold War leader tested by the other side, a latter-day Kennedy or
Carter. When he entered office in May 2008, Medvedev vowed to focus his presidency
on building institutions, promoting innovation, developing infrastructure, and making
smart investments. Instead, he was thrust into the thick of real battle, for which the
trained lawyer had to rely—more than he had expected—on the advice and guidance
from his predecessor, war-savvy Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The shock was so strong
that Medvedev publicly called Georgia’s offensive “our 9/11.”2
Provoked, Moscow decided to deliver a full-scale armed response. Its message—for
Washington as much as for Tbilisi—was: red lines are real, and they mark the border
between peace and war. Russian forces did not merely engage another country’s military.
They fought against a quasi-ally of the United States, which had equipped, trained,
and advised the Georgian military.
The Russian military action in Georgia reversed the tide of post-Soviet Russian
foreign policy. It had long been unhappy with the post-Cold War developments in
Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, such as NATO’s eastern
enlargement, Western military campaigns in the Balkans, and U.S. military deployments in former Warsaw Pact nations and ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia. Moscow,
however, was at first powerless to do anything about these developments, and then it
lacked a good cause to resist. Georgia’s action changed that by delivering Russia a just
cause for going to war.
Russia has turned revisionist as well. It has embraced a revision of the post-Cold
War order, which it refuses to recognize. The Kremlin has resolved to give the United
States no more advantages in the territory which it had claimed as constituting, in
Medvedev’s words, its “sphere of privileged interests.” It also seeks to reverse Western
gains made in the previous years, which culminated in 2004 in the dual enlargement
of NATO and the European Union and the color revolutions, which had replaced the
early post-Soviet regimes with more pluralistic and Western-oriented ones in Georgia,
Ukraine, and, initially, in Kyrgyzstan. In responding forcefully to the Georgian action, Putin and Medvedev demonstrated that they would not shy away from possible
confrontation with the United States.
In the run-up to war, it was the prospect of a NATO membership for Georgia
that played the key role in Russian considerations and practical actions. Moscow saw
NATO membership for any of its ex-satellites or former provinces as both a symbol
of U.S. political influence and a potential platform for the U.S. military to use against
Russia. Stopping NATO’s eastern advance beyond the 2004 lines—beyond the Baltic
States—thus became its overriding foreign policy and security goal.
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Russia in the Caucasus: Reversing the Tide
This is essentially a zero-sum approach. By preventing NATO enlargement and
U.S. military deployments and installations, Russia means to confirm the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a zone of Russian privileged interests. Moscow’s
“privilege” does not claim a reconstitution of the historical empire, or an intention to
establish a Warsaw Pact-like system of tight control. Rather, Moscow wants to exclude
any outside influence in the post-Soviet region that would threaten Russia’s own. This
stance calls for neutrality of the new states (at minimum), security alliances with some,
unencumbered access for Russian business interests, and strong Russian cultural influence across the board.
In early 2007, Moscow was still offering a deal to Georgia: normalization of
bilateral relations, as well as assistance in conflict resolution for Abkhazia and South
Ossetia, in exchange for Georgia’s nonalignment—a non-NATO status. Tbilisi rejected
this out of hand. At NATO’s April 2008 summit in Bucharest, Georgia did not get
a Membership Action Plan, usually seen as a guarantee of a future admission into
NATO, which the United States supported but France and a number of other European
members believed to be risky and premature.3 In a dubious compromise, the European
doubters, however, had to formally accept the notion of an eventual NATO membership for Georgia (and Ukraine). Between Bucharest and the attack on Tskhinvali, Cold
War-style tensions had been constantly mounting. Both Moscow and Tbilisi saw the
Bucharest decision as a shaky truce, unlikely to last a long time. In the ensuing war of
nerves, Georgia jumped the gun.
Russia’s counter-attack was the first case of Moscow using force against a foreign
adversary and invading a neighboring country since the Afghan war (1979-1989). As
such, it was fundamentally different from both Chechen campaigns and engagement
in post-Soviet conflicts, from Transnistria to Tajikistan. Despite the conventional accusations, the Russian military action against Georgia, while being resolute, was also
deliberate, careful, and measured. This systematic counter-attack thus resulted in major
damage to Georgian military capability and infrastructure, went beyond the zones of
conflict in South Ossetia and Abkhazia proper, and occupied for weeks the Georgian
towns of Gori, Poti, and Senaki, to humiliate Tbilisi and let it feel its defeat. Yet, even
though the Russian intervention was styled after the 1999 NATO war against Milosevic’s
Yugoslavia, Moscow did not bomb Georgia’s bridges, roads, TV transmitters, or government ministries. Very tellingly, it was careful to keep all the pipelines from the Caspian
intact. The number of civilian casualties was also small.4
Like the West with regard to Milosevic after the start of the 1999 Kosovo conflict,
Russia after the Tskhinvali attack branded Saak’ashvili a criminal, refused to deal with
him, and did not hide its desire to see him leave office. Yet, whatever Putin may have
told French President Nicolas Sarkozy about the proper punishment to be meted out to
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Dmitri Trenin
the Georgian leader, he resisted the temptation to go after him to Tbilisi. The Russian
hope appears to be similar to the West’s a decade ago: that the Georgian people, like
the Serbs before them, will draw the consequence from their leader’s misadventure and
will remove him from power. Saak’ashvili, Moscow hoped, would be ousted by his own
people, just as Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic was in 2000, 15 months after the Kosovo
war. After that, the Russians would prefer to put Saak’ashvili on trial (as Milosevic was)
but do not believe that they are able to do this.
By roundly defeating a U.S. friend, Russia aimed to undermine Washington’s
credibility as a security patron of pro-U.S. governments in the CIS. Others were also
impressed. In the wake of the Caucasus crisis, most Poles worried that Russian tanks
might roll in, their country’s NATO membership notwithstanding. The Baltic States
Moscow has assumed the right to decide fretted, too: the United States, their
protector, was far away while Russia
for itself what is right and what is wrong was a direct neighbor. Even more
in the affairs of the world, something importantly, the United States has
that the Soviet Union claimed but which seemingly demonstrated its unwillingness to put itself in danger to dethe Russian Federation abandoned. fend a friend, while Russia has shown
it had no such problems. Cold War analogies notwithstanding, Georgia in 2008 was
148
no Germany in 1948. That set the stage for the next round of competition for the
former Soviet Union, in which Moscow would enjoy a psychological advantage over
Washington.
Beyond the CIS, Moscow sought to counter the formation of a united Western
front against it. It tried to play the European Union off the United States and NATO
by letting Sarkozy, conveniently in the chair of France’s EU presidency, clinch a ceasefire deal in Georgia, thereby establishing Europe, rather than the United States, as the
principal Western mediator and Russia’s main partner in the Caucasus. Within the
Union, Russia reached out to the major countries of continental Europe—France,
Germany, Italy, and Spain—to thwart the Russo-skeptics, led by the United Kingdom,
Poland, and Lithuania.
The Russian leadership showed willingness to take the Western media flak and
sit it out. Over time, it relished in the fact that early Western reporting of the Caucasus war, which put the onus on Moscow and de facto exonerated Saak’ashvili, was
exposed as biased. The symbolic delay in the start of EU–Russia negotiations over a
new partnership agreement did not last long. The NATO–Russia dialogue, likewise,
was suspended only briefly. The Bush administration’s decision to put the G-8 format
on hold was overruled by the need to convene the G-20, in which Russia duly participated. The election of Barack Obama to the White House closed a chapter gone
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Russia in the Caucasus: Reversing the Tide
sour in the U.S.–Russian relations and offered the prospect of a fresh start between
Washington and Moscow.
To make their message to Washington about the dangers of trespassing on other
people’s turf crystal clear, Russia embarked on a token military demonstration in the
western hemisphere. Its strategic bombers and ships practicing off Venezuela were designed to put the U.S. government in an uncomfortable position of watching a foreign
power play in its backyard. Even though this show of force did not impress many people
in the United States and won Moscow no friends, from the Kremlin’s perspective, it
was worth it; an important point had been made.
In a more lasting move, Russia created new realities on the ground by formally
recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, something it had been avoiding for more
than a decade and a half. Among the many reasons for recognition, perhaps the most
important one is the pragmatic need to deploy regular Russian forces in both enclaves in
order to deter Georgia and the United States from trying to retake them. Today’s Russia
is ruled, at the top, by avowed legalists, who insist on their actions being covered by the
Russian Constitution. Under the Constitution, deployments of Russian troops abroad
require consent of the legal foreign authorities; hence, granting recognition was the only
way to satisfy the domestic constitutional requirements. Other factors, from the need
to show strength and determination in the North Caucasus, to the nod to the military
that their sacrifice was not in vain, to letting off the pent-up frustration caused by the
Western recognition of Kosovo despite Russia’s pleas, certainly played some role.
The importance of the Russian action is not only that it is basically irreversible.
Moscow has assumed the right to decide for itself what is right and what is wrong in the
affairs of the world, something that the Soviet Union claimed but which the Russian
Federation abandoned in favor of pleasing the “the international community.” With
the war between Russia and Georgia, Russia challenged the wisdom of the West, which
it saw as self-serving, and came up with its own interpretation of what constitutes, in
this particular case, genocide, humanitarian intervention, and the responsibility to
protect. In other words, Moscow took international law in its own hands, where its
interests were directly affected.
Despite the Kosovo analogy, Russia’s military action and diplomatic recognition
of Abkhazia and South Ossetia had more in common with Turkey’s move in Northern Cyprus. Moscow had to accept that even its few close allies within the Collective
Security Treaty, a security pact that unites Russia with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and its friends in the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization––above all, China––decided against following its lead on recognition.5
Yet, the Russian leadership was richly compensated for this by a surge of patriotism and
nationalism at home, reminiscent of the broad public support given to Putin in the fall
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Dmitri Trenin
of 1999 as he was taking on Chechen terrorists in the Caucasus amid the apartment
house bombings in Moscow. To an outside observer, the Putin-Medvedev tandem had
gone through a major crisis with flying colors, and the younger of the two had received
his baptism of fire. Within six months, another crisis was upon them and the rest of the
world—this time, financial—putting Georgia and the Caucasus on the back burner.
The Implications for the Northern Caucasus
150
Russia’s military action in Georgia was largely welcomed in the North Caucasus. The
North Ossetians saw their southern brethren rescued and their enclave on the other
side of the mountains secured. The Adyghe peoples, especially the Kabardinians, who
are closely related to the Abkhazians, cheered Abkhazia’s recognition as an independent country. Had Moscow refused to act, the wrath and scorn of both ethnic groups
would have been directed against it. In the summer of 2008, Ossetian and Kabardinian
volunteers were getting ready to fight against Georgia, which evoked the memories of
the intervention south of the mountains undertaken by the Caucasian Confederation
between 1992 and 1993. Then, amid the chaos that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union, thousands of very loosely-organized volunteers from the North Caucasus,
including from de facto independent Chechnya, crossed the Russian-Georgian border
into Abkhazia and helped the Abkhaz defeat the Georgian forces. In a spectacular
reversal from the 1990s, a Chechen unit (Battalion East) fought in South Ossetia as
part of the intervening Russian regular force.6
Even a brief war, from which Russia emerged an easy victor, had an underside.
The Georgian–Ossetian conflict in the south had been paralleled by the Ossetian-Ingush one in the north. There, the Ingush, claiming part of what is now North Ossetia,
clashed in 1992 with the Ossetians: the conflict has stopped, but remains “frozen” to
this day. Moscow’s efforts to resolve it had been as ineffective as in the former case.
True, there could be no organized violence any longer within the Russian Federation;
but there could be no real peace, either. By the time the South Ossetian situation had
come to a head, Ingushetia emerged as the biggest headache for Moscow in the entire
Northern Caucasus. Ingushetia’s leadership was thoroughly loyal, but wholly ineffective,
and inter-clan warfare was claiming more lives. Moscow’s aid to the Ossetian people,
while giving more material and financial resources to the Ossetian elites, turned into
a cause of envy among their Ingush neighbors. In an effort to shore up its position
in the region’s smallest republic, the Kremlin moved to replace the embattled Ingush
leadership with more flexible men––a standard tactic and one of the few instruments
of maintaining order across the region.
This reveals the key weakness of Moscow’s approach to the region, which consists
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Russia in the Caucasus: Reversing the Tide
of subcontracting the Northern Caucasus republics to individual local loyalists who
are entrusted with power and resources—all local budgets are filled from the federal
coffers—and expected to manage their fiefdoms in Moscow’s name. In essence, this
represents a colonial model of indirect control. The principal downside of this approach
is that it allows no avenue to political power and administrative positions for those
excluded from the ruling clans and automatically turns them into opponents of the
local regimes and, by extension, of Moscow itself. Ingushetia under President Murat
Zyazikov (2002–2008) was a prime example of this unhappy situation. Constructing
a system of checks and balances at a local level in the absence of a similar system at the
federal one is a mission impossible.
Inevitably, during the crisis with Georgia, North Ossetia was presented as the
mainstay of the entire Russian geopolitical position in the Caucasus. A regional
crossroads, it lies right in the middle of the Northern Caucasus and on the main axis
linking it to the South Caucasus. The name of the North Ossetian capital cannot be
more eloquent: Vladikavkaz, which literally means “Rule the Caucasus.” By the same
token, however, the role that Ossetia has played in the Russian conquest, and later
control of the Caucasus, provokes feelings that the Kremlin would rather see dormant.
Another frequent public relations theme added to the unease: Ossetians were portrayed
in the Russian media as fellow Orthodox Christians (which is only partially true) in
a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. The bitter irony here is that in the 2008 war
they were pitted against the Georgians, who are among the oldest Orthodox Christian
nations in the world.
The war has produced other unintended consequences. Chechnya, although it
advertises itself as a model of postwar reconstruction and has helped Moscow against
Georgia, now has to compete with Ossetia as the principal recipient of federal assistance.
The Adyghes, encouraged by Abkhazian independence, are raising the issue of a forming larger Circassian autonomous unit within the Russian Federation. The Lezghins
in Russia’s southern Dagestan who, alongside with the Ossetians, had been the other
divided nation in the Caucasus (part of them live in northern Azerbaijan), are reviving the issue of national unity. Even though ethnic separatism has taken a back seat to
Islamist radicalism across the Northern Caucasus, each major upheaval shakes up the
entire region, where too many borders, even within nations, remain contested.
What Next for Russia in the South Caucasus?
Russia’s relations with Georgia are in a deep freeze. Tbilisi broke off diplomatic ties and
filed for withdrawal from the CIS. Moscow maintains that, for any improvement in the
situation, Georgia has to make the first step. Tbilisi realizes that any such step would
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mean de facto recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, something no Georgian leader
is prepared to consider. Add the very personal and highly intense animosity between
the top leadership in both countries, and the deadlock is complete.
The Geneva negotiations, which bring together Georgia, Russia, North and
South Ossetia, and Abkhazia—as well as Europe and the United States—have also been
deadlocked from the start. For Georgia, this is a platform for insisting on the territorial
integrity of their country. For Russia, this is a way to claim “indirect” recognition of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as well as part of the deal concluded with the French EU
Presidency at the end of the five-day war. Both principal parties will continue to use
Geneva mostly for public relations rather than meaningful negotiations.
Russia will not even consider a serious dialogue with Georgia while Saak’ashvili
is in power. When and if there is a different leadership, Moscow will explore whether
the new people in power in Tbilisi have learned the lesson of the August war. To the
Russian “teachers,” the lesson cannot be clearer: mind your geography. One cannot
live next to a big country, such as Russia, and openly flout its interests. In plain language, this means: forget about NATO membership, institutionalize your nonaligned
status, and forbid any stationing of foreign forces in your territory. EU accession, on
the other hand, is your business: Russia will not stand in your way, but this will take
a very long time.
It is less clear what Russia can offer Georgia as its part of the bargain. Certainly,
the terms of settlement will be much harsher than those that Moscow had in mind in
2007. Russia will not “deliver” Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Georgia, but it might
reduce the Russian garrisons there after they have completed their deterrence function. Moscow might offer to “mediate” between Tbilisi and Sukhum, and Tbilisi and
Tskhinval, to forge a formula for new relations between Georgia and its ex-provinces.
If Russia is very creative, it would come up with a formula which will purport to save
face for Tbilisi: a loose confederacy of formally independent entities, which will ease
economic and humanitarian contacts, but will not return the situation, even notionally, to a status quo ante.
For now and the foreseeable future, it is unthinkable that Georgia will accept
either the restrictions that Russia will impose on it, or the concessions that it will offer.
Tbilisi seeks to get fresh assurances from Washington, and its Euro-Atlanticist orientation is unchanged. Yet, the environment in which Georgia operates is changing. It
may happen that in the medium term a new leadership team in Tbilisi will critically
review the history of its existence as a modern independent state and come to its own
conclusions.
A useful example for that leadership to examine is that of Russia’s other neighbor
incorporated into the Tsarist Empire in the early 19th century, a few years after Georgia:
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Russia in the Caucasus: Reversing the Tide
Finland. Since its independence, which was immediately challenged by the communists,
Finland has had a difficult history of relations with Soviet Russia. It was attacked by
Stalin, lost a wide swath of territory in Eastern Karelia, fought a war of revenge in the
unsavory company of Hitler’s Germany, lost again, and barely escaped occupation,
but Finland was preserved as a Western democracy and a capitalist economy on the
condition of neutrality between the Soviet Union and the West.
To the credit of the Finnish leadership, much derided and pitied in the rest of
the West, they got the key thing right. They respected the Soviet strategic interest, and
insisted the Soviet Union respect their independence. “FinOne cannot live next
landization” was mocked, but it worked. At the end of the
Cold War, Finland emerged as one of the more advanced, to a big country, such
dynamic, and open societies in the entire world. They saw as Russia, and openly
off the USSR to the ash heap of history and moved on.
They revised the postwar treaty that used to bind them to flout its interests.
Moscow. In the mid-1990s, they took a fully sovereign decision to join the European
Union. If they want to be in NATO tomorrow, they will join––whether Moscow likes
it or not. Should anyone in the Kremlin run amok and decide to threaten Finland in
order to bar it from joining the alliance, Russia will be immediately confronted with a
common front of NATO and the EU, and will have to beat a hasty retreat. If Finlandization is not a success story, what is?
Like any success story, the Finnish one is based on a set of ingredients. One
was a proven capability to resist foreign armies and foreign agents. Another one was
a capability to take hard and unpopular decisions. Yet another one was a long-term
strategic view. This combination provided the country with a framework within which
to create a modern economy, modernize society, and integrate into the broader world.
The Finns did that all under conditions of a Cold War which constantly threatened
to erupt into a hot one. The international environment for Georgia today, for all its
vaunted complexity, is much milder than what the Finns faced then.
It is not clear what the future holds for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They have
been recognized by Russia (and Nicaragua), but what has changed for them? Abkhazia, in principle, wants independence pure and simple: from Georgia as well as from
Russia. So far, it has achieved the former for the price of more dependence on its great
protector. Does it want to be a Russian protectorate? The 2004 presidential election
in Abkhazia, which saw the pro-Kremlin candidate snubbed by the electorate and the
elites, is still fresh in memory. If Abkhazia decides in favor of full independence, can
it succeed as a viable state? How will Moscow react to that?
The doubts about South Ossetia’s viability as an independent entity are much
stronger. Before 2004, it could have evolved into a Caucasian Andorra, but it is too late
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154
for that. What happens if Russia decides to annex the small enclave and create a greater
Ossetia within the Russian Federation? This was an option that Moscow decided not
to exercise in 2008, but what does the future hold? Revising former Soviet borders is
one thing; starting to move Russia’s borders is another. But what if Moscow concludes
this is the only option it has?
Russia’s revived ambition to be the security manager of the Caucasus represents
a new departure. In the early 2000s, Moscow pretended the conflicts in the region
were above all the responsibility of the parties concerned. In the wake of the Georgia
war, Russia was quick to send word its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia was
a “special case,” an exception rather than the rule, and did not signal a change of its
general approach toward the frozen conflicts. It saw the need to publicly revive the
Moldova/Transnistria dialog, and hosted, in November 2008, a new round of summit
talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan on Nagorno-Karabakh.
In the Karabakh dispute, Russia continues to cooperate closely with the two other
co-chairs of the Minsk group, the United States and France. It seeks to build up its economic presence and political influence in Armenia, where it also keeps a military base,
even as it cultivates the pragmatic leadership of Azerbaijan. Displaying pragmatism of
its own, Moscow has welcomed Turkey’s initiative to work toward peace and stability
in the Caucasus, which was announced by Prime Minister Recep Erdogan during a
visit to Moscow immediately after the end of hostilities in Georgia. The hope is that
Ankara, rather than serving as a U.S. proxy, will pursue its own national interests,
and could emerge as an important regional partner for Moscow. Russia’s willingness
to work with Turkey, as well as the European Union, seeks to redress the balance in
the Caucasus and to diminish U.S. involvement. Russia’s general principle is that the
Caucasus, and the Black Sea, should be up to the regional actors: the littoral states,
Russia, the European Union, and Turkey.
Conclusion
Until about 2004, Russia’s policy towards the Caucasus, both North and South, was
centered on Chechnya. Other issues were of secondary or tertiary importance. Since
the pacification of the once rebellious province, the focus of the Russian policy has
shifted to resisting the spread of U.S. and Western influence in the CIS, including in
the South Caucasus. Moscow identified the CIS as part of the Russian “power center”
in a multi-polar world. From this perspective, Armenia featured as Russia’s regional
bulwark and security base; Georgia, a pro-U.S. implantation within Russia’s sphere;
and Azerbaijan, a nominally neutral battleground in Russian-U.S. competition. The
competition is likely to continue, especially in the energy and geopolitical spheres.
the brown journal of world affairs
Russia in the Caucasus: Reversing the Tide
In the North Caucasus, Chechnya has been touted as a flagship and a model for
rehabilitation and prosperity. At the other end, Ingushetia has been a problem case,
which Moscow has been treating carefully. In Dagestan, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and
Kabardino-Balkaria, the federal authorities have been concerned with maintaining an
ethnic balance while fighting Islamist extremists. Finally, Russia will need to factor in
the impact of Abkhazia’s independence on Adyghe solidarity in the western Caucasus.
Having won the right to host the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi, only a couple of
dozen kilometers from the Abkhazian border, Moscow will use the preparation for the
sports event as a major stimulus for regional development and, as a consequence, for
strengthening Russia’s hold on the North Caucasus. With Sochi, the principal seaside
residence of the Russian leadership, functioning as an informal “third capital” of Russia
(after Moscow and St. Petersburg) which attracts Russian leadership and the political,
business, and cultural elite, Russia’s interest in the Caucasus is likely to continue to
A
rise in the future. W
Notes
1. Aleksei Malashenko, “Islam and the State in Russia,” Russian Analytical Digest, 2 July 2008; Konstantin
Kazenbin, “Tikhie” konflikty na Severnom Kavkaze (“Quiet” Conflicts in the Northern Caucasus): Adygheya,
Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia (Moscow: Regnum, 2009).
2. Dmitri Medevedev’s remarks at a meeting with members of the Valdai Club, 12 September 2008,
http://kremlin.ru/appears/2008/09/12/1518_type63374type63376type63381type8; Dmitri Medvedev’s
remarks to NGO representatives, 19 September 2008, www.kremlin.ru/text/appears/2008/09/206639.
shtml; The President’s Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, 5 November 2008,
http://www.kremlin.ru/text/appears/2008/11/208749.shtml; See also “Conversation with Vladimir Putin,”
a national call-in event held on 4 December 2008, www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=229865&cid=1.
3. See remarks by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a joint press conference with Dmitri Medvedev, St. Petersburg, 2 October 2008, http://www.kremlin.ru/text/appears/2008/10/207176.shtml.
4. “The Russian Invasion of Georgia––Facts and Figures,” Civil Georgia, 8 September 2008.
5. The Declaration of the Moscow Session of the Collective Security Council of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization, 5 September 2008, http://www.kremlin.ru/text/docs/2008/09/206174.shtml; The Dushanbe
declaration of the Members States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, 28 August 2008, http://www.
infoshos.eu/?id=39.
6. “‘Vostok’ I ‘Zapad’ prishli v Yuzhnuyu Osetiyu,” 13 August 2008, www.trud.ru.
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