Outside the Box

Eighteen months ago, a war took place in Europe between Russia and Georgia. It was little by the standards of modern warfare, but it raised big questions.

It sparked the greatest crisis in European security since the Balkan wars of the mid-1990s. Moscow invaded a neighbour for the first time since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, breaking the cardinal rule that borders in Europe would never again be changed by force of arms.

Why did the elaborate security system we set up over the last 20 years to ensure that war never again happened in Europe fail? Why couldn’t we see this war coming or stop it? This war was not fought over territory, minority rights or the future status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russo-Georgian relations were certainly troubled and these conflicts real. But the war’s root cause was geopolitical. Georgia was determined to “go West” and Russia was determined to stop it – by regime change if necessary.

What happened in August 2008 was but the final act in a longer drama as Moscow concluded that Tbilisi would not bend to its wishes. International involvement and the mechanisms on the ground were not only inadequate for keeping the peace. Western policy actually contributed to Georgia’s vulnerability. Our recognition of Kosovo’s conditional independence and handling of NATO’s Bucharest summit in the spring of 2008 may have actually encouraged Moscow to act against Georgia.

The Russo-Georgian war of August 2008 may seem like ancient history that many would prefer to forget or sweep under the rug. But none of the underlying tensions have been resolved. There is no stable solution in sight for the future status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow has not abandoned the goal of breaking Georgia’s desire to go West and reclaiming its so-called sphere of privileged interest. Growing instability in the northern Caucasus is making the broader region more volatile. Will it lead Russia to be more careful or assertive toward the southern Caucasus?

Above all, this war continues to cast a long shadow over the future of the European security system. As Washington and Moscow zero in on a new arms control treaty, a future reset in US-Russian relations must face the fact that perhaps the greatest gap between Western and Russian thinking today is not on Afghanistan or Iran. It is on the core issue of whether countries in Europe still have the freedom of choice to align themselves as they wish.

In the wake of the end of the Cold War, Moscow joined the West in writing the Charter of Paris in 1990. It rejected spheres of influence and recognised the right of all countries, big and small, to equal security and to choose their own alliance relationships. Moscow agreed to those rules at a time when it, too, wanted to shed its imperial past and join an enlarging Western community.

But those rules today have become a liability in Russia’s eyes. This is also why Moscow’s new draft treaty on European security is so important. Packaged in diplo-speak, it seeks to rewrite those rules. Rather than moving into the 21st century, Moscow at times seems determined to go back to the kind of spheres-of-influence thinking associated with the 19th century.With the Obama administration focused on Afghanistan and Iran, Moscow hopes a West in need of its cooperation may acquiesce to its claim for a sphere of influence on its borders.

Let us not forget why we wrote the Charter of Paris in the first place. We did so because Europe’s bloody history taught us that spheres of influence do not produce real security and that compelling nations to align themselves with others against their will is a recipe for future conflict. We did so because we were convinced that democratic integration was the best foundation for continental peace.

President Obama is right to try to reset relations with Moscow and engage a revisionist Russia. But we must be clear which Russian interests we consider legitimate and which we do not.

Moscow has a right to equal security and to ensure that no new threat appears on its borders. It does not have the right to interfere in the affairs of its neighbours, to topple their governments, or to deny them their own foreign policy aspirations. On those issues, we must draw the right lesson from the Russo-Georgia war.

Resetting relations with Moscow must include the Kremlin’s returning to the principles of the Charter of Paris as well.