Putin’s provocation of Georgia a threat to us all
Speed up our membership of Nato, pleads defence minister, or risk losing an ally on Russia’s border
THE West must wake up to the threat posed by Russia to the civilised world, Georgia’s defence minister has said as she urged Nato to honour its delayed promise of membership for her country.
The Kremlin is attempting to provoke armed conflict with Georgia by mounting a low-level but intensifying campaign of intimidation, kidnappings and aerial incursions, the minister warned, in an attempt to prevent a democratic, prosperous and pro-Western outpost emerging as a model in Russia’s back yard. In an interview with The Daily
Telegraph, Tinatin Khidasheli suggested Russia should be stripped of the 2018 World Cup and warned that unless Europe wakes up to what is happening, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president will try to annex a state that is already a full Nato member in an attempt to rebuild the Soviet Union.
Georgian membership of Nato would infuriate Russia, which regards the alliance as a strategic threat. The annexation of Crimea and the stand-off with the West over east Ukraine has been portrayed inside Russia partly as a response to aggressive Nato encirclement.
Moscow stands accused by Georgia of mounting a campaign of “creeping annexation” against the country after its victory in the 2008 war.
Earlier this year, Russia signed treaties with the disputed Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to all but incorporate them into the motherland.
Over the summer, Russian soldiers moved border posts several hundred yards further into Georgia to take control of a pipeline. On Tuesday, a Russian military helicopter buzzed Stalin’s birthplace of Gori.
Peasants and mushroom pickers near the border are being abducted and held for a number of days by Russian soldiers with increasing frequency.
“If you fly your military helicopter around the territory of an independent state, you might expect that someone will shoot down that plane,” said Ms Khidasheli, a Yale-educated lawyer and Georgia’s first female defence minister.
“We are trying our best to keep calm, and not to react. The whole idea is to provoke us, to get us involved and have an excuse to manipulate public opinion domestically and internationally against Georgia. What matters to us is that Georgia goes smoothly and strategically on this path to membership of the EU and Nato. They’ve stopped us for seven years, and we cannot allow for that to happen again.” Georgia was first promised Nato membership in 2008 after a national referendum and has the strong support of the United States. Some European members, however, are more nervous – in March, François Hollande announced that the alliance should
not expand. Ms Khidasheli said this has provoked doubts about whether the “world is ready to accept us”.
She said: “Frustration and scepticism might be growing, but it is not changing attitudes to those guys standing 20 minutes’ drive from the capital with the tanks, or towards you as a final destination for us.”
Georgia has committed 11,000 troops to Nato operations in Afghanistan, and Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general, yesterday visited the country to open a joint training centre. He praised the country’s progress on internal reforms but said more needed to be done.
The Russian foreign ministry described the opening of the new base as “a serious destabilising factor for security in the region”.
Nato, Ms Khidasheli said, cannot allow a new “iron curtain” to fall between its members, which are protected by the Article 5 commitment to mutual defence, and its broader allies. She said European leaders should recognise that Russia poses an “existential threat” to the entire international order by exerting power through blackmail and military muscle.
While events in Ukraine have removed much of the naivety about Mr Putin’s intentions, “even now you hear those voices saying ‘Russia can be seen as a partner in problems, be it in Syria or Cuba or Iran,’ ” said Ms Khidasheli. She stressed: “If we have a disagreement of the basic understanding of Russia, and the kind of threat it constitutes, it will be much more difficult.”
The case of South Ossetia, a tiny region of 50,000 people, is a test of resolve for the West, she said. “Everything we are talking about is not just Georgia’s problem. We will die as heroes or survive as a normal civilised nation, but that is not a big deal for Europe.
“It’s about you – Europe – and whether it will stand as one united voice against something that is beyond the rules you agreed on many centuries ago when you said ‘this is civilisation, this is international law, these are the rules that modern states should be ruled with.’ ”
The annexation of Crimea could have been averted if the West had imposed sanctions on Russia after the war with Georgia in 2008, she said. Instead, Russia believes “it got away with Georgia and was forgiven, so why not try something else?”
Russia’s ability to hold the 2018 World Cup should be “absolutely correlated” to the economic sanctions imposed by the EU and United States on the Kremlin’s favoured businessmen,” she said.
“Putin said that the biggest mistake of the 20th century was the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
“If they get away with Ukraine they will try something even bigger, because they will have proved they can make their own rules, pursue their own goals, and nobody can stop them.”
‘We are trying to keep calm. The whole idea is to provoke us, to have an excuse to manipulate public opinion’
On September 5, 2014, Russian agents crossed into Estonia and kidnapped an Estonian security official. Last week, after a closed trial, Russia sentenced him to 15 years.
The reaction? The State Department issued a statement. The Nato secretary-general issued a tweet. Neither did anything. The European Union (according to The Wall Street
Journal) said it was too early to discuss any possible action.
The timing of this brazen violation of Nato territory last year – two days after President Obama visited Estonia to symbolise America’s commitment to its security – is testimony to Vladimir Putin’s contempt for the American president. He knows Obama will do nothing. Why should he think otherwise?
When Putin broke the arms embargo to Iran by lifting the hold on selling it S-300 missiles, Obama responded by excusing him, saying it wasn’t technically illegal and adding, with a tip of the hat to Putin’s patience: “I’m frankly surprised that it held this long.”
When Russia mousetrapped Obama at the eleventh hour of the Iran negotiations, joining Iran in demanding that the conventional-weapons and ballistic-missile embargoes be dropped, Obama caved.
When Putin invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, broke two Minsk ceasefire agreements and erased the Russia-Ukraine border, Obama’s response was: pinprick sanctions, empty threats and a continuing refusal to supply Ukraine with defensive weaponry, lest he provoke Putin.
The Eastern Europeans have noticed. In February, Lithuania decided to reinstate conscription, a move strategically insignificant – the Lithuanians couldn’t hold off the Russian army for a day – but highly symbolic. Eastern Europe has been begging Nato to station permanent bases on its territory as a tripwire guaranteeing a powerful Nato/US response to any Russian aggression.
Nato has refused. Instead, Obama offered more military exercises in the Baltic States and Poland. And threw in an additional 250 tanks and armoured vehicles, spread among seven allies.
It is true that Putin’s resentment over Russia’s lost empire long predates Obama. But for resentment to turn into revanchism – an active policy of reconquest – requires opportunity. Which is exactly what Obama’s “reset” policy has offered over the past six and a half years.
Since the end of the Second World War Russia has known that what stands in the way of westward expansion was not Europe, living happily in decadent repose, but the United States as guarantor of Western security. Obama’s naivete and ambivalence have put those guarantees in question.
It began with the reset button, ostentatiously offered less than two months after Obama’s swearing-in. Followed six months later by the unilateral American cancellation of the missile shield the Poles and the Czechs had agreed to install on their territory. Again, lest Putin be upset.
By 2012, a still clueless Obama mocked Mitt Romney for saying that Russia is “without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe”, quipping oh so cleverly: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.” After all, he explained, “the Cold War’s been over for 20 years”.
Turned out it was 2015 calling. Obama’s own top officials have been retroactively vindicating Romney. Last month, Obama’s choice for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared that “Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security”.
Two weeks ago, the retiring army chief of staff, Raymond Odierno, called Russia our “most dangerous” military threat. Obama’s own secretary of defence has gone one better: “Russia poses an existential threat to the United States.”
Turns out the Cold War is not over either. Putin is intent on reviving it. Helped immensely by Obama’s epic misjudgment of Russian intentions, the balance of power has shifted – and America’s allies feel it.
And not just the Eastern Europeans. The president of Egypt, a country estranged from Russia for 40 years and our mainstay Arab ally in the Middle East, has twice visited Moscow within the last four months.
The Saudis, congenitally wary of Russia but shell-shocked by Obama’s grand nuclear capitulation to Iran that will make it the regional hegemon, are searching for alternatives, too. At a recent economic conference in St Petersburg, the Saudis invited Putin to Riyadh and the Russians reciprocated by inviting the new King Salman to visit Tsar Vladimir in Moscow.
Even Pakistan, a traditional Chinese ally and Russian adversary, is buying Mi-35 helicopters from Russia, which is building a natural gas pipeline between Karachi and Lahore.
As John Kerry awaits his upcoming Nobel and Obama plans his presidential library (my suggestion: Havana), Putin is deciding how to best exploit the final 17 months of his Obama bonanza.
The world sees it. President Obama doesn’t.