RUSSIA AND Georgia agree on few things, least of all the causes and effects of last year’s war. Moscow claims it reluctantly sent troops into “enforce peace” after President Mikheil Saakashvili’s forces shelled and stormed the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Tbilisi insists its troops simply responded to attacks on ethnic Georgian villages by South Ossetian rebels which were followed by a long-planned and unprovoked Russian invasion. Twelve months after Russia crushed Georgian resistance, the antagonists are utterly at odds over who is winning the peace.
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev says the war did no damage to Russian relations with the West, enhanced its international prestige and changed the map of the Caucasus, giving birth to two legitimate independent states – South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another separatist province of Georgia. Mr Saakashvili contends the fighting exposed the Kremlin’s willingness to use any means to dominate its neighbours and prevent them becoming stable and prosperous states allied with the European Union and Nato. Both are partly correct.
The war exposed the West’s inability and unwillingness to take military action on the edge of Europe in defence of a small, friendly nation. It was forced to plead with the Kremlin not to march on Tbilisi, and it has failed to make Moscow adhere to the eventual peace deal and allow EU monitors into the rebel regions. After a period of mostly impotent outrage, EU states went back quietly to dealing with Russia – the bloc’s biggest single supplier of energy – and the US administration of Barack Obama has made it a priority to “reset” damaged relations with Moscow.
Mr Saakashvili is right to note that the war highlighted the hawkish nationalism that prevails in today’s Russia in the form of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his closest allies. But this plays well with the majority of Russians and in no way reduces the West’s dependence on Russia in key areas. The EU will rely on Russia for oil and gas for the foreseeable future and Brussels and Washington need the Kremlin’s help to deal with Iran and North Korea and to keep supplies flowing to troops in Afghanistan.
Where last year’s display of power may ultimately hurt Russia most is the place where it was intended to have greatest effect: its own backyard. The usually obedient ex-Soviet republics have resisted Kremlin pressure to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – only Nicaragua has done so – and they appear to have been deeply troubled by the war.
Since Russia’s bid to cement its pre-eminence across the old Soviet Union, several states have sought ways to offset Moscow’s influence, from Belarus seeking a rapprochement with the EU and Kyrgyzstan reversing plans to close a US military base, to Tajikistan proposing to limit use of the Russian language. Russia’s defeat of Georgia may have been more impressive than intended: rather than merely cow its neighbours into obedience, it may have scared them enough finally to seek alternatives to Russian domination.