... An insecure Russia, of course, is no good for anyone-least of all
Russians. There seems little that the outside world can do to help.
Russia is undoubtedly capable of acting as a positive force in its
region. But only Russia itself can decide whether it wishes to play such
a role. One good start, though, might be to exercise a bit more caution
in how we employ historical analogies. In reality we are not entering a
"New Cold War" or anything like it. What we are facing is the messy
challenge of figuring out where a big, ailing, mournfully post-imperial
Russia fits into the chaotic twenty-first century. That can't be done by
giving Russia a pass when it comes to obeying the basic rules of
international discourse. Treating Russia like an eternal enemy-one that
deserves only isolation and quarantine-probably won't be very effective,
either. Finding the way between these two paths must be tried, and it
won't be easy.


http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22277?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Email+
marketing+software&utm_content=155618285&utm_campaign=February+12%2c+200
9+issue+_+dtkkf&utm_term=The+Russians+Are+Coming%3f

Volume 56, Number 2 * February 12, 2009
The Russians Are Coming?
By Christian Caryl

The New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West
by Edward Lucas

Palgrave Macmillan, 260 pp., $26.95

The day after the American presidential election, Russian President
Dmitri Medvedev issued a harsh warning to the West. He announced plans
to station short-range missiles in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad,
on the Baltic Sea, as part of a military strategy to neutralize the
missile defense shield the United States is aiming to build in Eastern
Europe. The Americans and their allies in Poland and the Czech Republic,
where some elements of the system are to be built, insist that it is
designed to protect against a threat from a potentially nuclear-armed
Iran, and argue that even at its most ambitious, it would be essentially
useless against a Russian attack. The Russians strongly reject that
rationale. "We have told our partners more than once that we want
positive cooperation, we want to act together to combat common threats,"
said Medvedev. "But they, unfortunately, don't want to listen to us."

When the Kremlin sent its tanks and soldiers into Georgia this past
August, it demonstrated to the world that it is prepared to confront a
Western-backed nation in the most forceful terms possible-up to and
including military action, if need be. Since then foreign policy experts
and politicians in Europe and the US have embarked on a vigorous debate
about how best to respond to Russia's growing assertiveness.

Their fears were further heightened in early January when Moscow, in an
escalating feud with the Ukrainian government, briefly shut down
pipelines running through Ukraine, which provide Europe's principal
supply of natural gas. Coming during a deep winter cold spell, the move
left several Eastern European countries without heat, causing schools
and factories to close-and forcing European leaders into a round of
urgent diplomacy with Russia.

Few of those striving to analyze the situation, however, have gone about
the task with the passion of Edward Lucas, a journalist with The
Economist who has been covering Central and Eastern Europe for nearly a
quarter of a century. The title of his new book, The New Cold War:
Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West, was treated by some reviewers
as a bit of a stretch when it first appeared in 2008; since the conflict
in Georgia and this winter's natural gas crisis, though, it has looked
more like prescience, as commentators have tripped over each other to
announce the revival of geopolitical confrontation between Russia and
the West.[1] Lucas is refreshingly direct:

Twenty years after Mikhail Gorbachev started dismantling communism,
Russia is reverting to Soviet behavior at home and abroad, and in its
contemptuous disregard for Western norms.

This is a pretty bold assertion, but Lucas immediately sets about
qualifying it.

It turns out that quite a lot has changed. For one thing, Russia has
embraced capitalism-albeit a form of capitalism marred by
institutionalized cronyism, minimal rule of law, and endemic corruption.
The ex-KGB men who returned to power with Putin have close relations
with the organized crime syndicates and some of the oligarchs who played
such a prominent part in the Yeltsin era. (Today's secret policemen are
quite different from the Jacobin executioners of Lenin's day or the
torturers of Stalin's Lubyanka; modern-day Chekists, as Lucas points
out, are more likely to be high-paid CEOs than ascetic servants of the
state.) The result is a hybrid regime described by Putin and his
supporters as "managed democracy"-in fact a markedly authoritarian
system that merges select trappings of liberalism (elections, the right
to own property, and the freedom to travel) with an ideological mishmash
of tsarist imperialism, Soviet nostalgia, and xenophobia inspired by
nationalist visions of a Greater Russia.

It does not add up to a pretty picture. Prominent critics of the
regime-such as the journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the ex-secret
policeman turned dissident Alexander Litvinenko-have been murdered under
mysterious circumstances. Those who have tried to pose serious
challenges to Putin's hold on power-such as the former chess champion
and presidential candidate Garry Kasparov and the ex-prime minister
Mikhail Kasyanov-have faced official harassment. Freedom of the press,
one of the few undeniably positive achievements of the Yeltsin years,
has been sharply curtailed. Business interests with close ties to the
state bully domestic or foreign investors out of their assets with
impunity; indeed, tycoons who have defied the regime now find themselves
in exile (Boris Berezovsky) or prison (Mikhail Khodorkovsky). School
textbooks glorify Stalin's leadership in World War II and pass over his
crimes. In December Russian police raided the St. Petersburg office of
Memorial, a human-rights organization that has chronicled Stalinist
horrors, and confiscated computer disks containing thousands of
interviews with victims.

And yet, as Lucas concedes, the picture is not entirely gloomy.
Putin-who assumed the office of prime minister earlier this year after
completing his second term as president-remains enormously popular among
Russians:

    For all his attacks on other freedoms, he has preserved the ones
that the "new Russians" most care about. More than ever before Russians
can plan their lives: they can save, educate themselves, travel, and
bring up their children as they like; they can buy anything they can
afford, own property at home or abroad, worship (mostly) as they like;
they can even live according to their sexual preference (if not always
publicly).

    Though they lack the freedom to choose their elected
representatives, to organize publicly to influence their government, or
to change their political systems, never in Russian history have so many
Russians lived so well and so freely. That is a proud boast, and one
that even those who dislike Russia's current path must honestly
acknowledge.

Sky-high oil prices didn't hurt either, of course, and now that they've
dropped sharply as a result of the economic crisis, Russia suddenly
finds itself facing straitened circumstances. Yet Putin deserves
considerable credit for his cautious macroeconomic management and his
success in introducing some necessary reforms (for example, implementing
sensible tax policies that have dramatically boosted government
revenue). Nor-despite the surge in oil wealth-did he succumb to the
temptation to boost defense spending. Only recently has the Kremlin
decided to reverse this course, vowing to ramp up military expenditures
dramatically over the next few years. Even if the Russian government
pushes ahead with these plans (which could be affected by its recent
economic travails), it would still take decades to reach a level
comparable to the old USSR, which at the peak spent as much as 30
percent of its GDP on defense. Right now the figure is less than one
tenth of that.

Whatever else this new Russia is, in other words, the old Soviet Union
it is most definitely not. So how can we reasonably speak of a "New Cold
War"? While coming close to acknowledging that the label might contain a
bit of hyperbole, Lucas insists that its essence applies. It is
precisely Russia's intense, revisionist nationalism, born out of the
perceived humiliations of the Yeltsin period, that represents a threat
not only to its own neighbors but also to Russia itself. Putin famously
declared the collapse of the USSR, comparatively peaceful as it was, to
be the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century"
(which would make it worse than the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin's
terror, or the two world wars).

The new Russia may not intend to challenge the West throughout the
globe, but according to Lucas, it clearly strives to reassert its
influence regionally-particularly in Europe. It may no longer have the
enormous military arsenals of Brezhnev's day, but its armed forces-as
was recently made clear in Georgia-are certainly enough to threaten or
cow its neighbors. Lucas compares it to "an aggressive man on crutches."
In his book-written well before the events of last August-he notes that
Russian military intervention "is unlikely in the case of Estonia, a
NATO member, but conceivable in an artificially stoked conflict between
Georgia and South Ossetia or Abkhazia, or both." So he was certainly
right about that. (Though he does not make specific predictions for
Ukraine, he describes the ominous machinations of Kremlin-inspired
groups of local "Russian citizens" in the Ukrainian territory of Crimea,
something that certainly bodes ill for the future.)

The central irony of Lucas's analysis is that Russia's most dangerous
weapon in its crusade to restore its place in the world is none other
than capitalism itself. And it's not just that Russian mobsters threaten
to infiltrate Western financial institutions. The most potent foreign
policy lever at the disposal of Putin and Medvedev is their country's
huge energy reserves. Russia is second only to Saudi Arabia in oil
exports, but it has no serious competitors when it comes to natural gas.
And gas, as it happens, is a resource that seems virtually designed for
geopolitical mischief. Unlike oil, which can be transported in a variety
of ways, the most practical and economical technology for transporting
natural gas remains the pipeline.

Natural gas pipelines are immensely expensive. Once a line connecting a
particular field with a particular consumer has been built, investors
tend to be leery of putting money into duplicate or partially
overlapping routes. And if the builder of the first pipeline refuses to
allow it to be used by competing suppliers, consumers will be left with
only one choice. This means that the monopolistic supplier can exploit
its route to its own advantage in a myriad of ways-including, in the
case of Russia, to exert political pressure.

And this, indeed, is precisely what Gazprom, Russia's powerful
state-dominated gas monopoly, has done. Gazprom-whose chairman during
much of the Putin administration was Medvedev, the current president and
close Putin ally-doesn't just own most of Russia's gas fields; it also
controls access to the pipelines that bring that gas to markets-above
all to the European Union, which despite its status as the world's
largest economy has relatively little in the way of indigenous energy
resources and finds itself correspondingly dependent on Russian
petroleum products. (By 2004, Russia was the sole gas supplier to
Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Slovakia; and the
principal supplier to Germany, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland,
Austria, the Czech Republic, and Turkey. Overall, it accounts for nearly
30 percent of the EU's gas supply.) Gazprom has already shown its
willingness to employ its stranglehold over energy supplies as a
political weapon, even if it often does so in the guise of dispassionate
adjustment to market realities.

As we have seen in the startling recent dispute with Ukraine,
governments that disagree with Russian policy have been punished by
overnight price hikes or interruptions in service. The Ukraine standoff
began in the last days of 2008, ostensibly over Russia's demand for a
large increase in the price Ukraine pays for its gas; but the ensuing
shutdown affected much of Europe, including leading nations such as
Germany, and some analysts suggest that the standoff has been a way for
Russia to warn the West about exerting too much influence in Ukrainian
affairs. In fact much of the gas Russia sends westward actually comes
from the Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan, which is forced to sell
to the Russians at bargain-basement rates since Gazprom pipelines are
the only way the Turkmens can get their gas to market.

In Europe, as Lucas explains, Gazprom has used its leverage to purchase
large equity stakes in national energy companies such as ENI in Italy,
BASF in Germany, and Gaz de France, which, of course, amplify its
already disproportionate influence.

So what is to be done? Russia's August invasion of Georgia proper
appears to have been provoked by the Georgian government's attack in
South Ossetia. But Russia's subsequent penetration into areas well
beyond the trouble zones of South Ossetia and Abkhazia suggests that the
new nationalists in the Kremlin are willing to resort to drastic
measures to assert their perceived national interest-even if that comes
at the cost of a sharp rise in tensions with the countries of the West.
Indeed, Russia's apparent willingness to project its sense of grievance
into its foreign policy makes it a dangerous and potentially
destabilizing rival.[2] This is not just a matter of academic concern.
Europe's energy security, and to some extent its political independence,
are at stake. (Lucas notes, for example, that in relying on Gazprom, the
EU is dealing with a company that not only is run by the Kremlin but
also is, because of its involvement in state-run press and television,
"directly linked to the end of press freedom in Russia.")

There is also the question of the broader political and economic future
of the countries like Georgia, Ukraine, and Belarus that lie along the
fault line between the European Union and Russia. Georgia will continue
to be at issue -not only because of its two separatist republics whose
independence has now been officially recognized by Moscow, but also
because it is a key point of exit to world markets for energy from the
Central Asian republics.[3]

But the real flashpoint-the fulcrum of Eurasia's destiny, as the recent
natural gas crisis reminds us-is Ukraine, a big and unstable country
that has always been a focus of geopolitical competition. A large chunk
of Russia's navy, the Black Sea Fleet, is still based in Crimea, and
many Russians continue to regard Ukraine in much the same way that Serbs
see Kosovo-as a heartland of their own national culture. At the same
time, although more than 20 percent of the Ukrainian population are
ethnic Russians, a large and apparently growing number of Ukrainians
increasingly link their own national identity and historical destiny
with Europe rather than their neighbor to the east. Just for good
measure, lately even the "pro-democratic camp" in Kiev has been riven by
the long-running feud between President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime
Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who recently traveled to Moscow for a round
of surprisingly convivial negotiations with Putin. The potential for
conflict should be apparent.

Lucas has some useful ideas to offer:

    The regulators of the world's financial centers must rethink how
they deal with Russian (and for that matter Chinese) companies wanting
to use them. The free market cannot be decoupled from the free society.
The industrialized world has shown its capacity for collective action in
dealing with money laundering. It could do the same for corporate
governance and property rights. That would mean, for example, that any
company wanting to list its shares or sell its bonds in London, New
York, or Frankfurt would have to make it clear that it was engaged in a
real business, not the collection of artificial rents; that its property
was not stolen; and that its ownership was clear and truly private.
Gazprom and [the Russian oil company] Rosneft, along with most big
Russian companies, would be immediately disqualified.

Implementing such a high standard may be hard at a time of international
economic turmoil. But such restrictions can be framed as positive
incentives that will-by allowing greater integration of the Russian
economy into Western markets and systems of regulation-contribute to
economic stability back in Russia. Lucas would like to see a concerted
effort to fight money laundering, including tougher action against the
Western front companies that are used by Moscow's oligarchs to sanitize
corrupt profits. He would also like to see a crackdown on Russian spying
in Europe and the US, which, as many security experts agree, has, in
fact, reached levels comparable to the bad old days of the Soviet Union.

Measures to enforce stricter financial standards in Western marketplaces
do not need to target Russia. They could be embedded in broader codes of
conduct applying to the sovereign wealth funds-owned by China or various
Middle Eastern companies, for example-that have become such powerful
actors in international commerce in recent years. Indeed, though Lucas
mentions China glancingly in this context, it would have been
interesting to see him expound on this point at greater length.

Lucas also insists that Russia should only be allowed to maintain its
membership in international organizations if it actually follows their
rules. For example, Russia was welcomed into the European Union's human
rights forum, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, in
1996, at a moment when Russia aspired, more or less, to democratic
standards. Now that Russia has chosen a different path-and, moreover,
insists that its new one is more to its liking-Lucas writes that its
membership "looks a catastrophic mistake" and should be suspended. Like
John McCain during the US presidential campaign, Lucas also questions
the rationale for Russia remaining a member of the Group of Eight, the
club of leading industrial democracies:

    Either [the G-8] should become a big-economies club (in which case
China, India and Brazil should join), or it is a body for rich countries
that respect the rule of law and political freedom. In that case Russia
does not even belong in the waiting room.

The G-8's function is largely symbolic to begin with, and I'm not sure
what purpose Russia's exclusion would ultimately serve, but he certainly
has a point about the need to redefine the group.

Interestingly, Lucas eschews sanctions, rightly pointing out that they
have usually proven ineffective, "create wonderful opportunities for
corruption," and contribute to isolationism. He's also refreshingly
skeptical about supporting "democracy assistance" programs inside
Russia, arguing that, under current conditions, they will be taken by
many Russians as evidence of continued Western interference. What he
insists upon very strongly is that Europe must make every effort it can
to reduce its dependency on Russian energy supplies by creating a
Europe-wide energy market with diversified sources of supply. (Right now
that market is divided up into fragmented national grids that all too
often end up operating at cross-purposes.)

Somewhat confusingly, given his clear preference for market solutions,
Lucas argues at the same time that European countries should cooperate
in developing pipelines that would connect their market with Central
Asian suppliers such as Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan while bypassing
Russian intermediaries[4] -even if investors are unwilling to shoulder
all the risk themselves. In this case, he says, pipeline policy is a
matter of national security-and "national security is a job for
politicians, not those in business." Indeed, while many economists might
argue that the experience of East Asia in particular demonstrates that
successful capitalism doesn't necessarily have to coincide with liberal
democracy, Lucas turns the argument on its head:

    If you believe that capitalism is a system in which money matters
more than freedom, you are doomed when people who don't believe in
freedom attack using money.

Markets, he argues, should be subordinated to freedom, not the other way
around. This is actually something of an intellectual leap, and it will
be interesting to see how such ideas develop as the liberal democracies
continue to be challenged by authoritarian capitalism-particularly in
the aftermath of the current financial crisis.

Perhaps most controversially, Lucas believes that offering NATO
membership to Georgia and Ukraine is a key component of any strategy for
constraining Russian designs on its neighbors. Opponents of the previous
enlargement of NATO-including, of course, many Russians-say that
expanding membership to members of the former Warsaw Pact was an insult
to Russian sensitivities and a threat to Russian security. What this
argument ignores is that NATO enlargement had a positive influence in
knitting together a region that might otherwise have fallen into chaos.
Contrary to popular belief, NATO enlargement was driven less by a
grasping, hegemonic United States than by the desire of Washington's
European allies to stabilize the belt of newborn democracies to the
east. There is no question that they have succeeded in this aim.

Just as the opportunity to join the EU compelled many countries in the
region to undertake difficult political and economic reforms, NATO's
requirement that candidate countries resolve border conflicts with their
neighbors before they can be admitted forced would-be members to
confront and air old historical grievances that could have easily
poisoned the region's future. In the early 1990s, for example, Hungarian
nationalist leader Jozsef Antall described himself as the "Prime
Minister of 15 million Hungarians"-that is, including five million
ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia, Romania, and Serbia-and vowed to defend
them against alleged discrimination there. Italy and Slovenia, Lithuania
and Poland, and Germany and the Czech Republic all had to confront
long-running historical disputes with one another. The security benefits
of NATO membership provided a powerful incentive to defuse these
controversies. NATO also forced aspirant countries to consolidate
civilian control over their militaries.

This success, now widely acknowledged, could not have been achieved
without a firm political will to reconciliation among all the sides
concerned. In the case of both Georgia and Ukraine, by contrast, there
are few signs that such conditions can be fulfilled anytime soon. Russia
may have done an effective job of exploiting and aggravating these
divisions, but the dispute between ethnic Georgians and the ethnic
minorities concentrated in Abkhazia and South Ossetia has a long and
rocky history that is now, if anything, much farther away from being
satisfactorily resolved than it was before Tbilisi attacked the South
Ossetians this past August-thereby offering the Russians a perfect
excuse for intervention.[5] Unless Georgia can make progress on these
issues, allowing it to join the alliance would represent a betrayal of
NATO's own principles.

The situation with Ukraine is, if anything, more complicated. Were a
pro-Western government in Kiev to vote on NATO accession, political
turmoil would immediately ensue. The eastern part of the
country-dominated by Russia and with a large proportion of
Russians-would almost certainly respond with mass protests, possibly
culminating in violent opposition to the central government or demands
for secession. The consequences in the Crimea-where, as rumor has it,
Moscow has been issuing Russian passports to local sympathizers just as
it has done in Abkhazia and South Ossetia-would probably be even more
explosive. The attempt would probably rebound to devastating effect on
NATO itself, which would almost certainly find itself deeply divided
over how to respond.[6]

In truth, not many of the European members of NATO are particularly
enthusiastic about the prospect of admitting Georgia and Ukraine to the
group -even if Russia's actions in Georgia pushed many hitherto hesitant
countries (most notably Germany) into publicly endorsing the possibility
of membership down the road. It is problems like this that Lucas has in
mind when he insists, throughout his book, that the West must be united
if it is to formulate anything like a serious response to the rising
Russian threat.

The reality is that there has never been less of a sense of common cause
between Europe and the United States since the end of World War II than
there is today. These are not good times for Atlanticists, and the
reasons run much deeper than European dissatisfaction with the policies
of the Bush administration. Since the late 1980s and the collapse of the
Soviet empire, historical circumstances have pushed the United States
into a quasi-imperial position at a time when Europe's consolidation has
given it a renewed sense of its own economic power and "post-national"
destiny. It was Madeleine Albright, not Donald Rumsfeld or Condoleezza
Rice, who referred to the US as the "indispensable nation," and though
President-elect Obama has emphasized the need to pay more attention to
the wishes of our allies and the broader international community, there
is little to suggest that he disputes the fundamental premise of a
leading role for the US. Of course, this view of America's dominance
seems particularly ironic at a time when more and more countries around
the world have adopted their own versions of market economics and
democratic institutions-meaning that America, in that sense, has become
more dispensable than it was when the cold war, the real, bipolar,
Manichaean cold war, divided the world fairly neatly into friends and
foes.

This is one reason why talk of a "New Cold War" ultimately misses the
mark. The other is that Russia, contrary to all the feverish talk about
its presumed status as a revived superpower, is nothing of the kind. It
is a rising regional power that enjoys the benefit of immense
geographical reach and huge natural resources. Yes, it has a nuclear
arsenal and a big army-but, as Lucas correctly notes, the former is
outdated and poorly maintained, and the latter, as its less-than-stellar
performance against Georgia's tiny army demonstrated, is still a long
way away from a state-of-the-art modern force.[7]

Meanwhile, the financial crisis has dramatically highlighted the anemic
basis of Russia's supposedly formidable economy. The impending
recession, and a corresponding fall in commodity prices, had been
depressing Russian markets even before August. Since then, as a result
of its attack on Georgia, Russia's international image has deteriorated
sharply, and investors both domestic and foreign have bolted. As a
result, the past few months have seen Russia's stock markets lose up to
75 percent of their value; Moscow's once feverish stock exchanges had to
be shut down repeatedly to stanch the panic.

Meanwhile, the country's extraordinary demographic decline-aggravated by
a nationwide drug and alcohol epidemic, a catastrophically underfunded
health system, and the rapid spread of AIDS-continues seemingly
unchecked.[8] On this count, the supposedly benevolent despots in
today's Kremlin have done little to improve on the dismal record of
Boris Yeltsin. An insecure Russia, of course, is no good for
anyone-least of all Russians. There seems little that the outside world
can do to help. Russia is undoubtedly capable of acting as a positive
force in its region. But only Russia itself can decide whether it wishes
to play such a role.

One good start, though, might be to exercise a bit more caution in how
we employ historical analogies. In reality we are not entering a "New
Cold War" or anything like it. What we are facing is the messy challenge
of figuring out where a big, ailing, mournfully post-imperial Russia
fits into the chaotic twenty-first century. That can't be done by giving
Russia a pass when it comes to obeying the basic rules of international
discourse. Treating Russia like an eternal enemy-one that deserves only
isolation and quarantine-probably won't be very effective, either.
Finding the way between these two paths must be tried, and it won't be
easy.

-January 14, 2009
Notes

[1]A random search for the term "New Cold War" on Lexis-Nexis turns up
1,358 uses of the term between August 8 and September 23. That's more
than the 1,325 uses the same database notes for the entire year before
August 8.

[2]President Medvedev placed the language of national honor at the
center of his remarks on the Georgian crisis, as quoted in Andrew E.
Kramer's report, "Russia Seems to Be Hunkering Down in Georgia," The New
York Times, August 18, 2008:

    Obviously, if anyone thinks he can kill our citizens, our soldiers
and officers who are serving as peacekeepers, and go unpunished, we will
never allow this. Anyone who tries this will receive a devastating
response. For this, we have all the means-economic and political and
military.... We do not want to aggravate the situation, but we want to
be respected, and our government to be respected, and our people to be
respected, and our values.

Russia's willingness to protect its citizens is understandable enough,
but it's rather hard to see how this need was answered by sending
Russian forces deep into Georgian territory, occupying Georgian ports,
and destroying civilian as well as military infrastructure.

[3]The Baku-Tbilisi oil pipeline, running from the Caspian Sea to the
Mediterranean via Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey, was completed in 2005
after three years of construction. It was built by a British
Petroleum-led consortium as a way of circumventing the Russian hold on
energy transport networks in the region. Denting investor confidence in
the pipeline-which has proven more successful in commercial terms than
its founders might have hoped-was apparently one of the aims of the
Russian incursion into Georgia proper.

[4]Lucas is particularly insistent that the EU should support the
Nabucco Pipeline project, which is supposed to link Austria with the
eastern Turkish border town of Erzurum. Many Europeans have so far
balked at the projected cost of around $6 billion, but, ironically, the
fears stirred up by Russia's actions in Georgia have now given the
project a new lease on life.

[5]The Georgians have persistently claimed that they began shelling
Tskhinvali only in response to provocations from the Russian side, but
the available evidence calls this account into question. Most recently
several monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe have gone on the record to state that they detected no signs of
an attack by the Russians or their allies prior to the start of the
Georgian bombardment. See "Accounts Undercut Claims By Georgia on Russia
War," by C.J. Chivers and Ellen Barry, The New York Times, November 7,
2008. See also "Civilians in the Line of Fire: The Georgia-Russia
Conflict," Amnesty International, 2008.

[6]That said, the European Union and the US should do everything they
can to provide a broad range of aid and political support to both
Georgia and Ukraine-as they say they intend to do.

[7]Some military analysts gave the Russian military good marks for its
performance, noting that its troops operated much more efficiently than,
say, during its dismal efforts in Chechnya in the 1990s. Still, this is
a notably low baseline, and the fact remains that in August, Russia
somehow managed to lose six planes to the ill-equipped Georgian air
defense system. Some have objected that recent US programs for training
and equipping the Georgian army should have enabled it to put up a
better fight than it did. What this ignores is that the Americans were
preparing the Georgians primarily for counterinsurgency and peacekeeping
operations. No one in the Pentagon or the State Department would have
ever expected Georgia to be able to fight, much less win, a war against
Russia-which is the main reason why the Americans (and even some Eastern
European governments friendly to Tbilisi) repeatedly and insistently
warned Mikheil Saakashvili and his administration to avoid provoking the
Kremlin.

[8]See Murray Feshbach, "Behind the Bluster, Russia Is Collapsing," The
Washington Post, October 5, 2008.