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Category: Russian Federation

  • Adrian Hamilton: It’s economics, not politics, that will influence Russia

    Adrian Hamilton: It’s economics, not politics, that will influence Russia

    Among all the dramatic and doom-laden suggestions this week of how to deal with Russia after Georgia, one of the most naive must be the suggestion that we can somehow separate the politics from the commerce, playing hardball with the one and softball with the other. Tell that to BP. Tell that indeed to the Ukrainians, the East Europeans or the Baltic states in their price negotiations for Russian gas.You can’t separate politics from business, not in Africa, Asia and most of all not in the countries of the former Soviet Union. In the fall of the Berlin Wall it might have been possible to see Europe’s future simply in terms of the spread of democracy and the autonomy of new states. The growing shortages of of raw materials, and particularly oil and gas, have changed all that.

    In the first place, it has altered the bargaining power of Russia itself, as a major oil exporter in its own right. When the Russian state was in disarray and its assets in the hands of the oligarchs, the West as customers could play the game by their rules.Once energy went into short supply and the Russian state acted to retrieve its control of raw materials, the bargaining power moved across the table.

    If that were all, that would be hard enough. But the part of the story that is only now developing – and the part that being so harshly illuminated by the Georgian crisis – is Russia’s role as the distribution centre for the oil and gas discovered in the former Soviet republics along its southern border. Georgia is already the pipeline route for oil and gas from Azerbaijan. It was specifically developed by the West as a route that would bypass Russia on the route to Turkey and hence Europe.

    The difficulty for Europe is that Georgia remains, for the moment, the only alternative route to Russia for supplies from Kazakhastan and Kyrgistan as well as additional supplies from Azerbaijan. The obvious non-Russian route would be by Iran, which has been nullified by the present policy of confrontation with Tehran. For the producers of the Caspian the choice is either Turkey via Georgia or Europe by way of Russia.

    Not for nothing have Russian troops been firmly and visibly in possession of Gori, the Georgian town at which the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline hinges from Azerbaijan to the east to Turkey in the south. Nor is it for nothing that the Russians are so determined to send out a clear message as to who is in charge in their nether regions and how little the West can be relied on.

    Presidents Bush and Sarkozy may see the Russian message of Georgia as directed against the West. In reality it has far more resonance, and is likely to have the greatest effect, on the other states of the Caucasus and Caspian. The Ukraine is irrelevant to what matters most. So are Poland and the Baltic states. Look to where the oil and gas are and there you will find the real interests of Moscow.

    So should we be confronting Moscow in a battle for “spheres of influence”, as Nato leaders argued this week? No, absolutely not. The very worst thing to do is what we did in Georgia and load a specific local situation with all the panoply of East-Westconfrontation. It is not in the interests of the countries concerned to play this. Many of them, such as Kazakhstan and Georgia (if the enclaves are included), have sizable Russian minorities and long-established relations with Moscow. They cannot afford to choose sides against their bigger neighbour, however much they may resent it.

    But most also have commercial as well as political interests in encouraging alternative sources of investment and influence. If we were to regard Russia less as a rampant bear to be contained and more as a commercial competitor to be competed with, we would get a lot further. We have the money and the skills to offer and we present a countervailing influence, cultural as much as political, to Russia.

    The trouble is that, even in straight commercial terms, we have let so much slip through our fingers. We have been terribly slow to commit ourselves to new pipeline plans, including the proposed Nabucco gas line. EU engagement through trade and aid is slight and diffuse, and attention is now being diverted by President Sarkozy’s mad schemes for a Mediterranean Union. Europe still hasn’t got a proper common energy policy. EU policy towards Iran is both futile and self-defeating.

    This is far more a European responsibility than an American one, if only we’d pick it up and handle it effectively. Condi Rice, David Miliband and Nicolas Sarkozy got it precisely wrong this week. What we need in dealing with Russia and the former Soviet Republics is to play softball on the politics and hardball on the commerce.

    a.hamilton@independent.co.uk

    Source : The Independent

  • PUBL.- Ismail Gasprali, French and African Letters, Edition by A.-A. Rorlich

    PUBL.- Ismail Gasprali, French and African Letters, Edition by A.-A. Rorlich

    PUBL.- Ismail Gasprali, French and African Letters, Edition by A.-A. Rorlich

    Posted by: Azade-Ayse Rorlich <arorlich@college.usc.edu>

    Ismail Gasprali
    French and African Letters

    Azade-Ayse Rorlich, transl., ed., and Introduction

    Isis Press, Istanbul, 2008

    For information: isis@tnn.net

    The present book provides scholars as well as students access to
    primary sources critical to understanding the intellectual life of
    Russia’s Muslims in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
    Through Ismail Gasprali’s French and African Letters Professor Rorlich
    offers evidence regarding the scope of Muslim modernism in late
    imperial Russia contributing at the same time to a better
    understanding of the debates on gender issues that shaped the
    modernist discourse.

    This volume represents the first annotated English translation of
    Ismail Gasprali’s fictional travelogue, first serialized in his
    newspaper Terjuman between 1887 and 1891. Providing a window into the
    diversity of the issues that shaped the Muslim modernist discourse in
    Russia, this publication offers one of the few opportunities to
    examine primary source material in a field still marked by the paucity
    of such materials available in English translation. This annotated
    translation makes an important contribution to the field of Eurasian
    scholarship not only for bringing to the students of Muslim modernism
    and gender studies an important work of Ismail Gasprali — one of the
    leading Muslim reformers of the Russian empire, but also for offering
    an Introduction that places the French and African Letters in the
    broader context of his work.

  • Turkey: The Caucasian Challenge

    Turkey: The Caucasian Challenge

    MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AFP/Getty Images Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Moscow

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    The recent war in the Caucasus has shifted Turkish geopolitical priorities. Given that the United States is in no position to counter Russian moves, Ankara is unilaterally trying to deal with the Russian resurgence and the threat it poses to Turkish interests in the region.

    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Aug. 20 made a one-day trip to Azerbaijan, where he met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to discuss regional security issues in the aftermath of the Russian-Georgian war. Erdogan’s trip to Baku is the latest in a series of Turkish initiatives in the wake of the Russian resurgence. Ankara mooted the idea of a Caucasian Union on Aug. 11 to achieve regional stability. Separately, Turkey is reaching out to its (and Azerbaijan’s) regional foe, Armenia; talks reportedly are under way to get Yerevan on board with the Caucasian Union project.

    The recent war in the Caucasus has shifted Turkish geopolitical priorities. After Turkey’s failure to secure entry into the European Union, the Turks decided to emerge as a player in the Middle East. The most significant manifestation of this has been its role as mediator in the Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations. The brief but extremely significant war in Georgia dramatically changed the Turkish calculus, however, and, in a matter of days, Turkey went from playing minor league in the Middle East to having to deal with what is essentially a new Cold War between Washington and Moscow.

    Turkey cannot afford to view the resurgence of Russia in purely Cold War terms. It wants to emerge as a major player in what is essentially its front yard. But it cannot count on help from the United States, which is preoccupied with Iraqi-Iranian and Afghan-Pakistani issues and therefore is not in any position to counter Russian moves in the Caucasus at present. Unlike Washington, which has the luxury of addressing the situation in the longer term, Ankara must, in the short term, deal with the Russian invasion of the Caucasus — an area of core national security interest to the Turks.

    The Russians have a deep interest in reconfiguring the energy infrastructure that bypasses their territory and supplies European energy needs through Turkey. From the Kremlin’s point of view, this is the key to ensuring European — and Turkish — dependence on Moscow for the continent’s energy requirements. Therefore, Turkey must deal with the Russian stranglehold of Georgia and Moscow’s moves to force the hand of Azerbaijan regarding Baku’s energy export options..

    Judging from their behavior, the Turks are in no mood to confront the Russians and instead have chosen the diplomatic route (for their part, the Russians are not itching for a fight with Turkey either). Turkey knows it cannot succeed diplomatically with Russia by simply behaving as a U.S./NATO ally in the Caucasus, which would explain its efforts to distinguish its position from that of the United States. Under Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, Ankara has in general been trying to craft a more independent foreign policy.

    A recent example is President Abdullah Gul’s statement that the conflict in Georgia showed that the United States could no longer shape global politics on its own and should begin sharing power with other countries. In an interview with the British daily The Guardian published Aug. 17, Gul called for common decisions rather than unilateral action, saying “a new world order, if I can say it, should emerge.”

    The transformation of Turkish foreign policy notwithstanding, it is difficult for Russia to ignore Turkey’s reality as a NATO member state and hence not look at Turkish moves as part of a U.S. plan to counter Moscow. The Kremlin can afford not to seek a negotiated settlement with Turkey. After all, Russia controls the situation on the ground. Therefore, Turkish diplomacy could run into problems. Turkey must try the diplomatic work anyway, as the alternative raises specters of dark times long past.

    Should diplomacy fail, Turkey’s only other option would be to confront Russia militarily. Turkey is well-positioned to deal with Russia; for example, its navy is in a good position to defend the Bosporus from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

    But the critical missing element from the military option is the political will that would enable the Turks to return to their historic mode of dealing with Russians with force. Ankara is thus unlikely to readopt a course of action in a matter of weeks that it has not engaged in within some 90 years. Russia and Turkey (then known as the Ottoman Empire) fought several wars between the mid-16th century to the early 20th century, with the last one being fought in the Caucasus in 1917-1918.

    Facing a choice between unsuccessful diplomacy and reluctance toward military option, Turkey is pretty much in the same situation the United States finds itself in with regards to the Russians. The critical difference between Washington and Ankara, however, is that Ankara must deal with the situation now.

    Source : Stratfor

  • What Did We Expect? By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN / YORUM ATILLA BEKTORE TARAFINDAN

    What Did We Expect? By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN / YORUM ATILLA BEKTORE TARAFINDAN

    Thomas Friedmanin’nin NY Times daki makalesini entersan buldum, benim daha evvel bu mevzuda gonderdigim bir analizle paralleligi var. Atilla Bektore [bektorea@bellsouth.net]

     

    August 20, 2008

    OP-ED COLUMNIST

    What Did We Expect?

    By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

    If the conflict in Georgia were an Olympic event, the gold medal for brutish stupidity would go to the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin. The silver medal for bone-headed recklessness would go to Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and the bronze medal for rank short-sightedness would go to the Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams.

    Let’s start with us. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, I was among the group — led by George Kennan, the father of “containment” theory, Senator Sam Nunn and the foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum — that argued against expanding NATO, at that time.

    It seemed to us that since we had finally brought down Soviet communism and seen the birth of democracy in Russia the most important thing to do was to help Russian democracy take root and integrate Russia into Europe. Wasn’t that why we fought the cold war — to give young Russians the same chance at freedom and integration with the West as young Czechs, Georgians and Poles? Wasn’t consolidating a democratic Russia more important than bringing the Czech Navy into NATO?

    All of this was especially true because, we argued, there was no big problem on the world stage that we could effectively address without Russia — particularly Iran or Iraq. Russia wasn’t about to reinvade Europe. And the Eastern Europeans would be integrated into the West via membership in the European Union.

    No, said the Clinton foreign policy team, we’re going to cram NATO expansion down the Russians’ throats, because Moscow is weak and, by the way, they’ll get used to it. Message to Russians: We expect you to behave like Western democrats, but we’re going to treat you like you’re still the Soviet Union. The cold war is over for you, but not for us.

    “The Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams acted on the basis of two false premises,” said Mandelbaum. “One was that Russia is innately aggressive and that the end of the cold war could not possibly change this, so we had to expand our military alliance up to its borders. Despite all the pious blather about using NATO to promote democracy, the belief in Russia’s eternal aggressiveness is the only basis on which NATO expansion ever made sense — especially when you consider that the Russians were told they could not join. The other premise was that Russia would always be too weak to endanger any new NATO members, so we would never have to commit troops to defend them. It would cost us nothing. They were wrong on both counts.”

    The humiliation that NATO expansion bred in Russia was critical in fueling Putin’s rise after Boris Yeltsin moved on. And America’s addiction to oil helped push up energy prices to a level that gave Putin the power to act on that humiliation. This is crucial backdrop.

    Nevertheless, today we must support all diplomatic efforts to roll back the Russian invasion of Georgia. Georgia is a nascent free-market democracy, and we can’t just watch it get crushed. But we also can’t refrain from noting that Saakashvili’s decision to push his troops into Tskhinvali, the heart of Georgia’s semiautonomous pro-Russian enclave of South Ossetia, gave Putin an easy excuse to exercise his iron fist.

    As The Washington Post’s longtime Russia watcher Michael Dobbs noted: “On the night of Aug. 7 …, Saakashvili ordered an artillery barrage against Tskhinvali and sent an armored column to occupy the town. He apparently hoped that Western support would protect Georgia from major Russian retaliation, even though Russian ‘peacekeepers’ were almost certainly killed or wounded in the Georgian assault. It was a huge miscalculation.”

    And as The Economist magazine also wrote, “Saakashvili is an impetuous nationalist.” His thrust into South Ossetia “was foolish and possibly criminal. But unlike Putin, he has led his country in a broadly democratic direction, curbed corruption and presided over rapid economic growth that has not relied, as Russia’s mostly does, on high oil and gas prices.”

    That is why the gold medal for brutishness goes to Putin. Yes, NATO expansion was foolish. Putin exploited it to choke Russian democracy. But now, petro-power-grabbing has gone to his head — whether it’s invading Georgia, bullying Western financiers and oil companies working in Russia, or using Russia’s gas supplies to intimidate its neighbors.

    If it persists, this behavior will push every Russian neighbor to seek protection from Moscow and will push the Europeans to redouble their efforts to find alternatives to Russian oil and gas. This won’t happen overnight, but in time it will stretch Russia’s defenses and lead it to become more isolated, more insecure and less wealthy.

    For all these reasons, Russia would be wise to reconsider Putin’s Georgia gambit. If it does, we would be wise to reconsider where our NATO/Russia policy is taking us — and whether we really want to spend the 21st century containing Russia the same way we spent much of the 20th containing the Soviet Union.

                                                                             ____________________________________________

     

    YORUM  BY ATILLA BEKTORE

    ————-

     

    the article by George Friedman regarding the Russo-Georgian conflict.

     

    The points indicated  in the the article “The Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power” regarding 

    the latest Russo–Georgian conflict are well taken.

     

    And here  is somewhat shortened view on the conflict from  my perspective:

     

    North Atlantic Treaty  was signed in Washington,_D.C. on 4 April 19949. It included  Netherlands, Luxembourg, France,  

    United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. And  the treaty stated that:

     

    The Parties of NATO agreed that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.

    Consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense will assist the Party or Parties being attacked, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

    Whom were they afraid of? Certainly not Germany or Japan who were already totally defeated in 1945. The new threat was the Soviet Union (a member of the Alliance defeating   Hitler) which at the occupied almost all the Eastern Europe including Eastern Germany. It was feared that her influence would tilt the post-war governments to be formed in parts of the  the Western Europe  towards socialism.  In April of 1949 with the help of CIA Italy barely escaped from  the clutches of the Communist Party of Italy. The so called “Cold War” was beginning and the so called “containment” of the Soviet Union was being  put into effect. The direct application of it was realized when in 1952 Greece and Turkey became members of NATO ( the Democratic Party government under premiership of Adnan Menderes was in power at the time). What has  Turkey had to do with North Atlantic? Black Sea or Mediterranean Alliances maybe, but certainly not North Atlantic. It did not really matter. The Soviet Union had to be contained, and Turkey could be instrumental in blocking its path to warm waters of the Mediterranean. American military aid poured into Turkey. But that was not all. American bases with nuclear tipped missiles were established in  Eastern Turkey aimed at the  Soviet Union (those missiles were later  removed from Turkey by a  secrete agreement between by J.F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev in Oct. of 1962,  following the Cuban Missile crisis, in exchange for removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba, but American bases stayed).

    Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, by its own weight. As a nuclear power in competition with the United State, the military budgets of the country  at times approached 80% of the total at the expense of civilian needs. Long lines for the ordinary items did not really  disappear  from the old days, when  I was  growing up as a kid in  the Soviet Union. USSR (Union  of the Soviet Socialist Republics) dissolved and transformed itself into the Commonwealth of the Independent Republics (Georgia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) the largest of them Russian Federation became today’s Russia. Michail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were instrumental in this transformation. 

    What precipitated   Russia’s latest anger towards Saakashvili resulting in military action in breakaway South Ossetia area of Georgia was not primarily his treatment of South Ossetians, but  his application for the Membership of NATO – supported by the US – and urging Ukraine to do so, and  his recent declaration that Georgia will leave the Commonwealth of the Independent Republics.  

    NATO is a defensive military alliance supported by military-industrial enterprises. Defense against whom one might ask? Its original formation was based against the threat of the Soviet Union against Western Europe. It is no more, but  Russians think it is still aimed  against them. That is why they cannot tolerate Georgia at their southern  border between  Caspian and Black seas armed with NATO’s weapons. It is that simple. US  by invoking  The Monroe Doctrine – which, on December 2, 1823, proclaimed that European powers were no longer to colonize or interfere with the affairs of the newly independent nations of the Americas– brought the successful removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba in 1962, but US to this day  ostracizes Cuba  by maintaining an economic embargo on the island located only 90 miles from the US. Could we call it a double standard? The world needs respite from the military alliances, and the tensions and economic hardships it creates. Enough already.

     

    Respectfully, 

    Atilla Bektore

  • Azerbaijan: Public Angry at Russian Offensive

    Azerbaijan: Public Angry at Russian Offensive

    Ordinary Azeris outraged by Moscow’s intervention in Georgia – but officials largely silent.

    By Tamara Grigoryeva in Baku (CRS No. 455, 19-Aug-08)

    “Our home looks like a dormitory now, because so many relatives have arrived,” said 23-year-old Azerbaijani Parvana Mamedova who has helped take care of a stream of relatives from Georgia’s Marneuli region, which has an Azerbaijani minority. “We don’t have enough space in our three rooms, but it’s our duty to receive them.”

    After August 8, when Russian planes bombed the military base in Marneuli, two families of relatives decided to move to Baku, until the situation settles down. Only her uncle, Asif, stayed in Georgia and joined a unit of Azerbaijani volunteers to support the Georgian army.

    Azerbaijan has strong ties to both Georgia and Russia. The private reaction in Azerbaijan, Georgia’s partner in the GUAM organisation and in several energy projects, has been stronger than the public one.

    Azerbaijani foreign ministry spokesman Khazar Ibrahim has been virtually the only official to comment. “Azerbaijan recognises Georgia’s territorial integrity and believes that the conflict must be settled within [the] framework…of international law,” he said.

    President Ilham Aliev has remained at the Olympic Games for the duration of the crisis and made no public comment.

    Opposition politicians and commentators have criticised him for doing this at a time of conflict in the Caucasus and suggested that the president is too beholden to Russia, with which he signed a cooperation agreement last month.

    “Our president preferred to stay and watch the Olympics and keep silent while the presidents of several other friendly countries personally arrived in Tbilisi and expressed their support for President Saakashvili,” said analyst Ilgar Mamedov.

    “I think that this position can be explained by the president of Azerbaijan’s commitment to good relations with the leadership of Russia, and his wish to preserve stability in the country on the eve of the forthcoming presidential elections.”

    Only last month, Aliev and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev signed a new cooperation treaty.

    Political analyst Hikmet Hajizade said the reaction was understandable. “Azerbaijan fears for of its own security,” he said. “It’s obvious that Russia shouldn’t be driven crazy, because we have seen the consequences.”

    The Azerbaijani public and media were much sharper in their reactions. There have been several statements accusing Russia of supporting separatists and urging it to withdraw. Six protest rallies have been held outside the Russian embassy in Baku.

    In response, the Russian ambassador to Azerbaijan Valery Istratov has held two press conferences. At the first, only four journalists, mainly representing Russian media accredited in Baku, were invited, a decision the Azerbaijani news internet site day.az described as “the ambassador’s desire to evade tricky questions from Azerbaijani journalists”.

    Inevitably, Azerbaijanis have also drawn parallels between the war over South Ossetia and their own unresolved conflict with Armenia over Nagorny Karabakh. “The parallels between these conflicts are obvious,” said Hajizade. “The conflict between Georgia and Ossetia will definitely have an impact on the Karabakh conflict. If the conflict ends with Russia’s full control over Georgia, it will be very bad for Azerbaijan. Georgia is our only route for our energy and transport projects to reach the outside world.”

    Hajizade also believes that “many of those in Azerbaijan, who have called for a military solution to the Nagorny Karabakh conflict have learned what lies in store for a country which defies Russia but has no real allies. On the other hand, Hajizade sees one advantage in the current crisis, “The forgotten Caucasian conflicts have become a focus of attention of the world.”

    As the situation deteriorated, Georgia announced it was quitting the Commonwealth of Independent States and urged other countries to follow suit. But Azerbaijan was cautious on this. “The decision to leave the CIS is Georgia’s internal affair. Each country has the right to take decisions independently,” said Azerbaijani deputy foreign minister Hafiz Pashayev.

    The conflict over South Ossetia is hurting Azerbaijan economically. The country’s main oil export route, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, was shut down anyway on August 5 after an explosion in eastern Turkey claimed by the PKK Kurdish rebels. The conflict ensured the closure of the other pipeline via Georgia, Baku-Supsa. Azerbaijan was forced to rely only on the alternative, Baku-Novorossisk via Russia. According to the Caspian Alliance Group, every day that the pipelines do not operate Azerbaijan loses more than 70 million dollars.

    Energy experts and officials say this is a temporary disruption and that the pipelines via Georgia will soon be operating again.

    Political analyst Rasim Musabekov called Russia’s actions in Georgia “deliberate energy blackmail towards Europe and Azerbaijan”.

    “As soon as we started oil deliveries via the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline, Russia started experiencing some problems,” he said. “This once again shows that the Baku-Novorossisk pipeline cannot be used as the main route to export Azerbaijani resources to Europe. Our main routes pass through Georgia. In the future we must pay more attention to their security.”

    Tamara Grigoryeva is an AFP correspondent in Baku.

  • America Must Choose Between Georgia and Russia

    America Must Choose Between Georgia and Russia

    By SERGEY LAVROV
    August 20, 2008

    In some Western nations an utterly one-sided picture has been painted of the recent crisis in the Georgia-South Ossetia conflict. The statements of American officials would lead one to conclude that the crisis began when Russia sent in its troops to support its peacekeepers there.

    Meticulously avoided in those statements: The decision of Tbilisi to use crude military force against South Ossetia in the early hours of Aug. 8. The Georgian army used multiple rocket launchers, artillery and air force to attack the sleeping city of Tskhinvali.

    Some honest independent observers acknowledge that a surprised Russia didn’t respond immediately. We started moving our troops in support of peacekeepers only on the second day of Georgia’s ruthless military assault. Yes, our military struck sites outside of South Ossetia. When the positions of your peacekeepers and the civilian population they have been mandated to protect are shelled, the sources of such attacks are legitimate targets.

    Our military acted efficiently and professionally. It was an able ground operation that quickly achieved its very clear and legitimate objectives. It was very different, for example, from the U.S./NATO operation against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999, when an air bombardment campaign ran out of military targets and degenerated into attacks on bridges, TV towers, passenger trains and other civilian sites, even hitting an embassy.

    In this instance, Russia used force in full conformity with international law, its right of self-defense, and its obligations under the agreements with regard to this particular conflict. Russia could not allow its peacekeepers to watch acts of genocide committed in front of their eyes, as happened in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica in 1995.

    But what of the U.S.’s role leading up to this conflict? U.S. involvement with the Tbilisi regime—past and future—must be addressed to fully understand the conflict. When the mantra of the “Georgian democratic government” is repeated time and time again, does it mean that by U.S. standards, a democratic government is allowed to act in brutal fashion against a civilian population it claims to be its own, simply because it is “democratic”?

    Another real issue is U.S. military involvement with the government of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Did Washington purposely encourage an irresponsible and unpredictable regime in this misadventure? If the U.S. couldn’t control Tbilisi’s behavior before, why do some in the U.S. seek to rush to rearm the Georgian military now?

    Russia, by contrast, remains committed to a peaceful resolution in the Caucasus.

    We’ll continue to seek to deprive the present Georgian regime of the potential and resources to do more mischief. An embargo on arms supplies to the current Tbilisi regime would be a start.

    We will make sure that the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan endorsed in Moscow on Aug. 12 is implemented, provided the parties to the conflict cooperate in good faith. So far we are not sure at all that Tbilisi is ready. President Saakashvili keeps trying to persuade the world that the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali was destroyed not by the Georgian attack but by the Russian forces who, according to Mr. Saakashvili, bombed the city after they entered it.

    Russia is committed to the ongoing positive development of relations with the U.S. That kind of agenda is set forth in the Foreign Policy Concept—the framework document that sets out the basic directions of Russia’s foreign policy—recently approved by President Dmitry Medvedev.

    However, it must be remembered that, as between any other major world powers, our bilateral relationship can only advance upon the basis of reciprocity. And that is exactly what has been missing over the past 16 years. I meant precisely that when I said that the U.S. will have to choose between its virtual Georgia project and its much broader partnership with Russia.

    The signs are ominous. Several joint military exercises have been cancelled by the Americans. Now Washington suggests our Navy ships are no longer welcome to take part in the Active Endeavour counterterrorism and counterproliferation operation in the Mediterranean. Washington also threatens to freeze our bilateral strategic stability dialogue.

    Of course, that strategic dialogue has not led us too far since last fall, including on the issue of U.S. missile defense sites in Eastern Europe and the future of the strategic arms reduction regime. But the threat itself to drop these issues from our bilateral agenda is very indicative of the cost of the choice being made in Washington in favor of the discredited regime in Tbilisi. The U.S. seems to be eager to punish Russia to save the face of a failed “democratic” leader at the expense of solving the problems that are much more important to the entire world.

    It is up to the American side to decide whether it wants a relationship with Russia that our two peoples deserve. The geopolitical reality we’ll have to deal with at the end of the day will inevitably force us to cooperate.

    To begin down the road of cooperation, it would not be a bad idea to do a very simple thing: Just admit for a moment that the course of history must not depend entirely on what the Georgian president is saying. Just admit that a democratically elected leader can lie. Just admit that you have other sources of information—and other objectives—that shape your foreign policy.

    Mr. Lavrov is the foreign minister of the Russian Federation.