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Return of the Cold War?
AFTER having met Vladimir Putin for the first time. President Bush claimed that he could look into the Russian leader's heart, and found a "good man” in it worth doing business with. Such hope soon came crashing down when American and Russian interests clashed violently In the Caucasus. Flummoxed at the development, Bush has thus far chosen to keep his cool, presumably taking it to be a minor aberration on the part of Russian invaders against one of the US client states in the region.
The reality around what has been brewing in the Caucasus is, however, far more complex, and dates back to the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. It grew out of a historic transformation that brought to naught the concept of balance of power, enunciated as far back as 1648 in the Treaty of Westphalia.
Even if western scholars and think-tanks saw in the collapse of the Soviet Union the triumph of democracy and free market economy and hastily proclaimed the "end of history," it was a gross simplification of how history awards its verdict in the rise and fall
of powers. No wonder, soon the prognosis proved to the premature and preposterous.
After having emerged as the world's sole superpower after the fall of the Soviet Union, an unchallenged US embarked on a policy that showed scant regard either for Russia's own vital interests or its pride as a millennium old country and once-supcrpower that closely competed with the US.
As Russia, the successor state of the Soviet Union, lay supinely in a state of drunken stupor during the chaotic years of Boris Yeltsin, the US took full advantage to further weaken the country. Moscow's global and regional issues were summarily ignored, while the former communist states of Eastern Europe were integrated within the West's fabric of economic and military alliances.
Against this backdrop, it was inevitable that at some point Moscow would reassert its position, for no nation takes such humiliation lying down. A turning point came with Putin's strong and resolute leadership, coupled with the country's growing clout as an energy power. Obviously, that has altered tremendously its bargain-
Ing power and given the country a newfound confidence, enabling the Kremlin to exert Influence far afield even renewing nuclear bomber patrols near Guam and Scotland.
But it was in the Caucasus where an increasingly assertive Kremlin decided to put its foot down, helped unwittingly by an irrespon sible Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who, by committing the tactical error of occupying the break away province of South Ossetia, provided Russia with a solid ground to act with its own military incursion.
Obviously, the US, which considers its interests threatened in the region, reacted, with senior US officials claiming that Russian action could not be permitted "in this era." They threatened Russia with unspecified "consequences" for the latter's action in Georgia.
Russia is least unnerved by the ducat, for it holds a few potent economic and diplomatic cards of its own to parry any such "consequences." Whether it opts to play them will depend on what measures the US and its allies choose to impose, impacting both tactical and strategic cost benefit calculus
in Moscowas future events unfold.
Among the most obvious instruments at Russia’s disposal, to dissuade hostile Western action, arc its energy resources on which Europe relies heavily, though analysts differ on whether Moscow would put then into play In its confrontation with the West.
“The biggest card that Russia holds is its energy resources," said Alexander Golz, a Russian military expert, "but there is a lot of mutual dependence here. Russia can't use them in a big way against the opponents. If Russia stops delivering oil and gas to Europe, it would cut off a major portion of its national revenue.”
According to him, the strong popular support for Putin was anchored largely in the country's prosperity. Most Russians will be loath to see that curtailed. The people are willing to share the antiWest rhetoric of the authorities as long as they are not asked for big economic sacrifice.
Other experts view the issue differently. They refer to earlier instances of the Kremlin using its control of energy to bear in international disputes. "The energy card is clearly a big one to play," said Bob Ayers, an associate fellow
at the London-based think-tank Chatham House.
Ayers, however, acknowledged that any curtailment of energy deliveries would certainly cause a financial crunch, but argued that Russia could ride such a storm for some time while Europe could not Chris Wcafer, an analyst with the investment bank Ural Sib, forecast that Russian might soon try to flesh out plans for a new "Geo-Opec," highlighting Moscow's determination to boost its power through control of energy.
"One of many upshots of recent events is that Moscow is expected to pursue its global energy objectives with great vigour," Weafer wrote. The US and Europe, while equally worried, have reacted to the Georgian crisis in a strikingly different way, as they formulate whatever "consequences" they plan to impose.
In a stark departure from the
past practices of the Bush adminis tration, the US quickly took the military option off the table as a possible response to Russia over Caucasus. Jonathan Eyal of the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) aptly wrote: "The stage is set for confrontation. That's not what the West wanted ’
In the meantime, after having made its point in the Caucasus, further confrontation is the least favoured option now in Russia. Notwithstanding the presence of all the elements and syndromes of renewed Cold War, reality seems to have dawned on both sides, and both are treading carefully to pursue their common global objectives concerning nuclear proliferation, resurgent extremism, climate change, and preservation of the common heritage of the mankind.
Bng (retd) Hafiz b former DG of BUSS