By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
United States Vice President Dick Cheney heads to Georgia next week, complementing the port visit of US warships delivering humanitarian assistance, most likely to pledge American military assistance to beleaguered Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who must now deal with Russia's recognition of the independence of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Concerning the latter, in an opinion column in Financial Times, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has justified Moscow's move, citing "international precedents" and claiming that Russia has "reconciled itself to the loss" of 14 former Soviet republics [1]. Judging by how Moscow has tried to keep those republics under its sway one way or another, for example forcing Georgia to join the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in 1994, Medvedev's claim may be taken with a pinch of salt.
Given Tbilisi's adamant rejection of South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's desire for independence and Saakashvili's vow to regain his country's full territorial integrity, the Georgian crisis is bound to linger for months, if not years, without resolution, particularly if the US continues to push for Georgia's inclusion into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Theoretically, with Germany dropping its opposition to Georgia's bid to join NATO, as it did at the recent NATO summit in Bucharest, nothing stands in the way of NATO's expansion to the South Caucasus, or Ukraine for that matter, also on Cheney's travel itinerary. There is, though, the geopolitical reality of a stern Russian reaction that could further complicate the now-frozen NATO-Russia relations, given Moscow's decision this week to suspend all cooperation with NATO, including planned joint exercises.
Any aggressive push by NATO to induct Georgia at this critical hour would be nothing short of recklessness, since it would automatically throw NATO into direct conflict with Russia.
The US under the George W Bush administration has however not been averse to military recklessness, which would explain its decision to send naval vessels to the war zone.
The US-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline passes through Georgian territory and letting Russia dictate events in Georgia has a definite implication in terms of energy security, given the fierce pipeline geopolitics in the Eurasian landmass, Europe's heavy energy dependency on Russia and Moscow's willingness to rely on the energy card for security bargaining with Europe.
This alone may explain why the European Union, which has been divided over a response to the Georgian crisis, has largely consented to the US's muscular reaction. The issue has now turned into a defining moment of the post-Cold War era because of its broader implications.
From Russia's point of view, carving out Georgia into separate territories is the proper antidote to NATO's planned expansion, to offset the US's growing encroachment, and a clear warning to neighboring states, such as Azerbaijan and Ukraine, to refrain from cozying up to US or NATO.
Russia is now devoting more energy to building up both the CIS network and the implementation of its collective security principle, and equally important, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which had a summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, this week (attended by Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad as an observer).
Should the SCO, which comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, consent to Iran's quest for full membership, then Russia may reciprocate the US's unwanted encroachment into its backyard by gaining a foothold in the US's traditional turf, the oil-prized Persian Gulf, via Iran.
With the Russians building a power plant in Bushehr in Iran and Russian oil and gas companies energetically involved in Iran's energy sector, the door has already been opened for a future security dimension to such a Russian presence in the Persian Gulf.
In a worst-case scenario, should the US pile up the pressure on Moscow in the Caucasus (Ukraine has already expressed an interest in a US-installed anti-missile system), Moscow may resort to backing anti-NATO forces in the region, including the Taliban in Afghanistan.
As Cheney heads to Georgia to pledge firm American support for the combative Tbilisi government, he and other White House officials may want to think twice before taking steps that could have such dire consequences. These include Moscow possibly substantially increasing its naval presence in the Baltic Sea.
This fissure between Russia and the US throws into turmoil the future of Russia's cooperation with the West on such international issues as the nuclear program's of Iran and North Korea, as well as the future of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty agreement that expires in December 2009.
The US's triumphalism prevents Washington policy-makers from properly gauging the numerous instances in which Russia could counteract the US's encroachment by taking advantage of US vulnerabilities, such as military overstretch and multiple and diversified foes.
Cheney would also want to beware of not making over-commitments to Georgia that would tie the hands of next administration in the White House.
Note
1. Medvedev told the SCO summit, "I told them about the real events [in South Ossetia] not the ones told by the Western media, which indicated a different culprit for the fierce battle." He also mentioned that "SCO has broadened the possibilities of observer states [such as Iran]. From now on, they can take part in the organization's activities and we may invite certain countries to the solution of certain important problems." Russia's envoy to SCO, Vitaly Vorobyov, has expressed a great deal of optimism about SCO's potential.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction. For his Wikipedia entry, click here.