The knock-on effects worldwide of America’s war on terrorism are endless. Domestic politics have been put on hold, strategic alliances changed, countries’ relationships with others recast. No country or region is immune. But some will feel the consequences more painfully than others, even if unconnected to the events of Sept. 11. The Caucasus is such a place.
There is already sufficient evidence that the Chechens have been sacrificed by the US and Europe as the price of Russia’s support in the war on terrorism; but it appears that Moscow’s regional shopping list is much bigger. In its sights it now has Georgia. Russia is now busy exploiting its new relationship with America by trying to haul Georgia back into a state of dutiful subservience. America shows every sign of being willing to go along with it.
Last week, Georgia’s President Eduard Shevardnadze was in the US on an official visit. The reception he received was very different from the last time he was there. Fourteen years ago, President Bush’s father paid much more attention to what he had to say. Understandably so; he was foreign minister of the Soviet Union, not as now the president of a small, impoverished and inconsequential state.While in the US, Shevardnadze made a speech that, had it come a month earlier. would have been eagerly received in Washington. He said that Georgia’s foreign policy orientation now focuses on NATO and the West and that Georgia may soon quit the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Moscow-dominated association of 12 of the 15 post-Soviet states. It is a sign of the times that Washington politely ignored his suggestions.
Over in Moscow, the Russians are using that disinterest to haul him in. They have long appreciated the value of destabilization for political ends. Over the past decade, those post-Soviet states that tried to go their own way have been systematically brought back into line by using it: a grateful Armenia, by the simple expedient of arming and backing the separatists in the disputed province of Nagorno-Karabakh; a disgruntled Azerbaijan, by the realization that the issue would not be settled if it stood aloof from Moscow; and desperate Central Asian republics, by leaving them just long enough exposed to the threat of rebels supported by the Taleban before coming in and crushing them.
In Georgia, the variant was to support rebels in its province of Abkhazia. For the past ten years, thanks to Russian backing, the province has effectively been an independent state. It was Russian support for Abkhazia that belatedly forced Georgia into the CIS in 1973. It cannot be a coincidence that fighting between Georgia and still Russian-backed Abkhazia has now broken out again, just when Moscow hopes to re-exert a stronger level of control over the former Soviet Union.
The Kremlin now has the excuse to make life very uncomfortable for the last post-Soviet state to hold out against its stifling embrace — and it will use it, all the more so given the presence of Chechen rebel bases there. There are already veiled threats to invade because of the Chechen presence. Moscow presumably hopes to hit two birds with one stone while the rest of the world’s attention is elsewhere.
