Stratfor.com
August 27, 2007
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on Tuesday
recognized the independence of two regions in the
territory of the former Soviet republic of
Georgia: Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia and
Georgia fought a brief war over the territories
earlier this month which Russia clearly won. Now
Russia will undoubtedly enter into “formal”
negotiations with the two “states” about either
long-term military staging agreements or formal annexation.
The West, which has consistently backed the idea
of Georgia’s territorial integrity, broadly
condemned the move, but has taken no action
beyond rhetoric. Nor is it likely to in the short
term. The West could deploy naval forces that can
outmaneuver and box in Russia as a whole, but
that requires time and political will. In the
meantime, Russia has forces on the ground in the
two territories and loads more nearby. The West
doesn’t. The Russians clearly are the ones
determining the reality on the ground, and that for now is that.
But recognition is not something that seems to
serve Russia’s interest. Unlike the drama
surrounding the independence declaration of
Kosovo earlier this year, there is no broad
swathe of states standing by to recognize Abkhaz
or South Ossetian independence. Only Belarus
whose leadership is finding its leash
ever-shorter is likely to jump at the news, and
even then not until the appropriate recognition
speech is faxed to them from the Kremlin.
Additionally, Russia is packed to the gills with
its own separatist regions and Tuesday’s decision
will only give all of these disparate and
resentful groups food for thought. If Abkhazia
can be independent, why not Chechnya? If South Ossetia, why not Tatarstan?
So why open Pandora’s Box?
First and foremost, the recognition decision is
about Kosovo. In Kosovo, the West utterly ignored
Russian concerns and imposed a legal regime that
fit with Western interests. With Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, Russia is returning the favor in its own backyard.
Yet for that logic to hold, this must be only the
beginning. For the Russians the war and this
recognition is not really about Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, or even about Georgia. It is about
redefining the expectations of a broad swathe of
actors all along the Russian periphery. Since
1992 many entities have been eating away at the
Russian borderlands the West first and foremost
among them. In Moscow’s view, Russia needs to
roll that tide back not just in the Caucasus, but
in Central Asia, the Baltics, Ukraine, and maybe even the Balkans.
But that does not mean that tide will be rolled
back in a day. Russia holds most of the cards,
yet does not appear set to press its advantage,
or at least not immediately or overtly. There are
any number of things the Russians could do in
Azerbaijan, Ukraine, the Baltic states or even
in Georgia that they have chosen to put on hold
for now. Tuesday’s recognition had a feel similar
to that of the press statements of the Western
powers: rhetoric that danced around the real issue.
The reason for the (brief) break in the action is
likely rooted in Russia’s mindset, which in turn
is determined by Russia’s geography. Russia’s
borderlands are for the most part indefensible
and so the Russian psyche has been shaped by wave
after wave of foreign invasion. A certain
paranoia about outsiders is understandable.
But there is another layer. Built into this fear
of outsiders is a belief that Russia’s suffering
has allowed others to escape Russia’s dark fate
and thrive. For example, Russians feel that while
Russia languished under Mongol subjugation, their
resistance prevented the Mongols from conquering
Europe. Another common belief is that the Soviet
Union’s battles with Nazi Germany gave the United
States and United Kingdom the time they needed to
invade France. These national myths which is
not to say that they are fabrications, merely
interpretations – blend Russia’s natural paranoia
with the idea that the rest of the world owes
them something. Therefore, it is just a matter of
finding the right words to convince the world of that “fact.”
In the aftermath of the Georgian war we suspect
Russia is waiting for what they feel would
constitute an “appropriate” response from the
West. We suspect that the Russians expect to be
informed that the West will recognize Moscow’s
suzerainty in Russia’s sphere of influence and
see no reason to push the matter so long as the
balance of forces are so obviously in Moscow’s favor.
For better or worse, this buys everyone a bit of
time. Time to negotiate a West-Russia truce
perhaps. Or perhaps time for the two sides to
gear up for a much larger and broader conflict.