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THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Alexander KUKHIANIDZE
Ph.D. (Philos.), Professor, Chair of Political Science, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Tbilisi, Georgia).
GEORGIA: CONFLICTS, CRIME, AND SECURITY
Abstract
The end of the Cold War pushed civil security concerns to the forefront, but no one can say that the war's echoes have died away: they can still be heard during local armed conflicts. The author analyzes the civil conflicts and criminalization
of Georgia in the post-Soviet period; the Russian-Georgian conflict and the crimes and violence against civilians in the conflict zones; the causes of Russia's armed intervention in Georgia; and Georgia's security issues after the August war of 2008.
Introduction
The end of the Cold War led to reassessment of the security system at the global, regional, national, and local levels. Collapse of the communist system put an end to the old fears of a nuclear war and pushed new threats to the fore: local armed conflicts; international and local terror; and the spread of fissionable materials and other forms of transnational organized crime (illegal trade in weapons, drugs and people, money laundering, violence, and violation of human rights in the zones of armed conflicts). Corruption, which can be likened to a malignant tumor, is spreading far and wide in all spheres of criminal activity; in the armed conflict zones it directly threatens the states' national security. In the last few decades, it has become clear that the security conception should be readjusted to take into account the new threats caused by global warming (natural fires, earthquakes, floods, drought, and unexpected cold
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spells); mankind should protect itself against so-called non-traditional threats. While during the Cold War the state relied on its military and defense capability as society's main "security provider," in the post-Cold War period this function is gradually being appropriated by all sorts of civil (governmental and non-governmental) organizations that concentrate on man and human rights. During the Cold War military security was the main concern in the global security system, while in the post-Cold War period civil security is coming to the fore. This is a contradictory trend which clashes with the echoes of the Cold War obvious in the relations between Russia and the West, in the local armed conflicts in the postSoviet expanse, and particularly in the Russia-Georgia confrontation.
Civil security is a fairly capacious and multisided concept; here I will concentrate on one of its aspects, that is, security of the civilian population in the conflict zones in Georgian territory. Security of the civilian population during a conflict should be seen as a civilized method of cooperation between the conflicting sides. In the Caucasus, the conflicting sides prefer to ignore their own responsibility to concentrate on hurling accusations of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and ideological warfare at each other. Armed groups do not hesitate to shoot civilians, plunder and burn down their homes, and resort to other forms of violence; not infrequently, settlements are deliberately wiped out to make the results of ethnic purges irreversible. All sorts of volunteer paramilitary detachments are nothing more than armed bands of marauders and nationalists taking commands from their political leaders; guilty of grave crimes against civilians, they escape unpunished.
Unlike in Western Europe, in the Caucasus, civilian security has not yet received full attention. Armed conflicts affect both the civilian and the military levels in conditions of limited democracies or openly authoritarian regimes that still exploit the Cold War rhetoric not only to perpetuate confrontation, but also to promote personal aggrandizement and enrichment through violations of human rights and violence against political opponents. None of the conflicts in which the civilian population is involved against its will is free from criminal acts committed for political or nationalist reasons and for the sake of personal gain.
The still unresolved conflicts, stretches of state borders which await delimitation, strategically important transportation routes, oil and gas, and the clashing local, separatist, national, and global interests of cultures, ethnicities, confessional groups, and states make the Caucasus one of the most volatile regions of the world. Global and regional powers compete for oil, gas, transportation routes, and political influence, while local corrupt clans (particularly in the Northern Caucasus), criminal groups, and terrorist organizations are taking advantage of the political instability; they fan religious fundamentalism and ethnic enmity to control public opinion.
Russia, with its high level of corruption and nuclear know-how, and Iran, seen by the international community as a potential nuclear threat, can be described as authoritarian states with interests in the Caucasus. In the post-Soviet era, instances have been repeatedly registered of smuggling nuclear and radiological materials from Russia through the Caucasus.
The region is one of the corridors via which Afghan heroin reaches Western Europe and Russia. Russia's war in Chechnia turned the Northern Caucasus into a war zone and a safe haven for corruption, organized crime, and religious radicalism. Terrorist acts, street fights, and murders on nationalist grounds in other Russian regions have become a common feature. In 2010-2011, a wave of nationalist clashes between ethnic Russians and people from the Caucasus swept Moscow, Saratov, Rostov on Don, and other cities.
Civilian Conflicts and Criminalization of Georgia in the Post-Soviet Period (1991-2003)
The collapse of Soviet ideology caused a political and economic crisis amid mounting destabi-lization, chaos, nationalism, and ethnic contradictions over the post-Soviet territories' political fu-
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ture. Georgia, in which ethnic minorities live in compact groups, suffered more than many other republics. Disintegration of the state structures, demoralization of the law-enforcers, the spread of weapons of the Soviet Army across the formerly united country, and armed ethnopolitical conflicts led to full-scale criminalization of Georgia.
In December 1991-January 1992, confrontation between the opposition and President of Georgia Gamsakhurdia, who was determined to set up an authoritarian regime, ended in a civil war; two weeks of fighting in the Georgian capital claimed over 100 young lives, while criminalization rapidly developed into an important factor obvious to all. The conflicting sides turned to the people for support; arms were distributed left and right. Many of those who got their hands on weapons then absconded with them. As could be expected, several months later, Tbilisi and the provinces were flooded with armed robberies and other violent crimes. Arms were in great demand, the Russian military and Georgian police being frequent targets of attack. However, more often than not, paramilitary and semi-criminal Georgian bands found a common language with the Russian officers and bought weapons from them. Within just a few weeks, bands developed into small armies equipped with the latest Soviet machineguns, pistols, grenades, anti-tank grenade launchers, and even armored personnel carriers. The Georgian police armed with small weapons was helpless; it quietly left the stage and abandoned the people to their fate.
Unlike the purely criminal structures, the paramilitary units were set up by political groups of all sorts posing as independence fighters. Jaba Ioseliani set up a paramilitary group he called Mkhedrio-ni; Tengiz Kitovani became commander of a similar structure called The Guard. Both were instrumental in deposing President Gamsakhurdia. The military coup that removed him created chaos, not without help from the Russian military. These and similar paramilitary structures, which called themselves "brotherhoods," were not alone; the Armenians who lived in compact groups in the country's south formed their own armed units, while the Abkhazians in the northwest and the Ossetian separatists in the north did the same to pursue their own aims. Those who remained loyal to the deposed president controlled Samegrelo in the west. These groups were knocked together from ill-trained volunteers who knew next to nothing about discipline; they blindly obeyed their leaders, who ruled like feudal lords. They were not alien to plundering when fulfilling political assignments; Mkhedrioni was repeatedly dispatched to Western Georgia to suppress Gamsakhurdia's supporters; it indulged itself in plundering the local people; it also fought in Abkhazia. Back in the 1950s, its leader Ioseliani, a hardened criminal crowned by the criminal community with several prison terms behind him, was caught after several residential holdups in Leningrad.
Eduard Shevardnadze, who headed Georgia at the time, was not alien to using the paramilitary structures of Ioseliani and Kitovani against the armed detachments of former President Zviad Gamsa-khurdia. Known as crusades among the local people, these marches were accompanied by plundering, violence, robberies, and murders. Later, when the armed struggle spread to Abkhazia, these units did not miss the chance of plundering those who lived in the Soviet Union's richest and most sumptuous region, known as the Soviet Riviera. Later, Abkhazian armed groups behaved in a similar way in the houses of ethnic Georgians.
The war in Abkhazia, in which the Georgian armed units were defeated, helped Eduard Shevardnadze switch Georgian public opinion to Russia and the separatists, two external enemies of Georgia. By the same token, Shevardnadze delivered a heavy military and ideological blow on the Zviad-ists (supporters of Gamsakhurdia). Mkhedrioni and The Guard coped with the task; with the Zviadists out of the way, they became an impediment1: the leaders were imprisoned, and Mkhedrioni was disbanded in 1995. In 1992, Shevardnadze organized parliamentary elections to become the speaker and later president of Georgia; he restored the police, set up a Georgian army, and did not miss an opportunity to distribute the best posts among his former colleagues.
In the 1990s, criminals crowned by the criminal community not only controlled the smaller fry in Georgia, they were also actively involved in the country's economy—in privatization, money
1 The fate of Vostok, a Chechen battalion, was even worse after Russia's attack of Georgia in 2008.
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laundering, control of the markets and small businesses, and smuggling. They worked together with the police, demoralized by the criminal and corrupt elements that had wormed their way into its ranks. Violations of human rights, torture, illegal arrests, extortion of businessmen and traffic offenders, bribery, falsification of investigation results, direct involvement in crimes, and even murders were common among the policemen.
In 1991-2003, criminalization of the political sphere was manifested in illegal and unfair redistribution of public property through vouchers, privatization, and tenders, embezzlement of Western grants, widespread corruption, and direct involvement of politicians in crime and smuggling across the porous Georgian borders.2
In the 1990s, the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, emboldened by the weakness and absolute corruption of the central and law-enforcement structures and encouraged by Russia, stepped up their activities. Russia used all the methods at its disposal to restore its former influence in the region: it extended military, financial, moral, and political support to the separatist regimes and increased its economic, political, and direct military pressure on Georgia.
In 1990-2003, large nation-states and international organizations paid particular attention to Georgia, not only because of Caspian oil, but also because of the wide-scale smuggling of drugs, weapons, fissionable and radiological materials, and people, illegal migration, and the international terrorist structures that sought refuge there. Georgia's national security was threatened, while other countries did not feel safe either.
Smuggling across Abkhazia and South Ossetia presented the greatest threat as an element of separatism and criminal activities in the breakaway regions. The self-proclaimed republics created zones, outside state control, in which force and crowned criminal leaders lay down the law; from them violence spread far and wide, while murders, abductions, and other grave crimes became a common feature. The unresolved conflicts allowed the local clans to remain in power by limiting democracy or destroying its remnants altogether, spreading militarism, and abusing power for personal enrichment. This threatened Georgia's national security.3
The ailing economy, repeated budget cuts, disintegration of morals, social pessimism, and falsified results of parliamentary and presidential elections pushed the country toward a deep political crisis. The regime change and radical anti-corruption and anti-crime reforms after the Rose Revolution of November 2003 proved to be the only coherent answer to the threats and challenges.
The Russian-Georgian Conflict
After the Rose Revolution, Georgia demonstrated good progress in its struggle against organized crime and corruption and finally achieved noticeable economic growth. Relations between Russia and Georgia, however, were steadily moving from bad to worse: Russia openly supported the separatist sentiments in Georgian territory and frowned at Tbilisi's bias toward Euroatlantic integration. In 2006, the spy scandal in Georgia sent the tension to its highest point. Russia introduced economic sanctions against Georgia: it banned the import of Georgian wines, mineral water, and agricultural products, discontinued car, railway, naval, air, and postal communications, and deported ethnic Georgians from Russia in great numbers. It was the ordinary people, rather than President Saakashvili's regime, who felt the blow: the Georgians were deeply offended and developed a negative attitude toward Russia.
Throughout 2007 and 2008, Russia and Georgia moved rapidly toward a clash. In 2007, Russia suspended its participation in the CFE Treaty signed in Paris on 19 November, 1990 and enacted on
2 See: A. Kukhianidze, A. Kupatadze, R. Gotsiridze, The Problem of Smuggling in Georgia: Abkhazia and the Tskhinval Region, Tbilisi, 2004 (in Georgian), available at [http://traccc.gmu.edu/pdfs/publications/Georgia_Publications/ Kukhianidze_Kupatadze_Smuggling_Georgia_Geo.pdf].
3 Ibidem.
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9 November, 1992.4 This meant that Russia waived its obligation to close down its military bases in Georgia (the Gudauta base in Abkhazia, in particular); it even acquired the opportunity to build new bases (it did this after the August war of 2008 when Moscow set up military bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia). After the NATO Summit in Bucharest in April 2008 that denied Georgia and Ukraine the status of candidate states for NATO membership, the Russian leaders pulled out of the treaty of the CIS presidents of 19 January, 1996 on sanctions against the separatist regime of Abkhazia. From that time on, Russia was free to deliver all sorts of civilian and military cargoes to Abkhazia.
Having blocked these international instruments, in May-July 2008, Russian paratroopers posing as peacekeepers moved in to occupy Abkhazia, which was part of Georgia; the Russian railway troops restored the railway between Sukhumi and the Ochamchira district, allegedly to bring humanitarian aid to the distressed population. The Georgian leaders interpreted this as the first steps toward occupation of the entire country and the first evidence that the military infrastructure was war-geared. By late July 2008, Tbilisi had been expecting an attack through the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia, part of Georgian territory with a Georgian population. Early in August 2008, the situation in South Ossetia became severely aggravated: Ossetian separatists blasted a police vehicle; Georgian settlements around Tskhinvali were shelled; the Ossetian population began moving in great numbers into Russia; contrary to their obligations, the Russian peacekeepers refused to pacify the separatists; Russia organized wide-scale military exercises in the Northern Caucasus to coordinate invasion of Georgia via South Ossetia and Abkhazia; and the Russian public was consistently brainwashed to justify Russia's attack of Georgia. The Russian leaders justified the attack by the need to defend the Russian citizens in South Ossetia, while an independent international fact-finding mission headed by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini pointed out that shortly before the war Russia had illegally imposed its citizenship on these people. This means that Russia's attack was illegal. On the other hand, Georgia was responsible for the lives, health, and property of its citizens in its own territory: it had to intercept the criminal activity of the armed separatists who were shelling Georgian villages. The Georgian leaders, however, never realized that the events were unfolding according to a Russian scenario: the provocations of the Ossetian separatists were intended to draw Georgia into a big war. Russia was pursuing several aims: to detach Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia; to bring about a regime change in Georgia; to establish its control over the strategically important Southern Caucasus in order to disrupt the oil- and gas-transportation projects from the Caspian and Central Asia bypassing Russia; and to keep Georgia away from NATO. Moscow never achieved all of these aims: it occupied Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but Tbilisi did not abandon its Eu-roatlantic orientation; and the plans to transport energy resources bypassing Russia (from the Caspian and Central Asia via the Central Caucasus to Europe) survived. "Russia did not accomplish its goals in the first war," Baku-based political analyst Shahin Abbasov said in May 2009 on RFE/RL's "Caucasus Crossroads" program. "The goal was not the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The goal was to shut the West out of Georgia and the entire region. That goal was not achieved."5
Crime and Violence during Russia's Military Invasion of Georgia in August 2008
War in itself means brutal violence and mass murder; however there is a great difference between armed clashes on the battlefield and the violence and crime perpetrated by the military or ill-
4 See: N.A. Baranov, "DOVSE i problemy ogranicheniya obychnykh vooruzheniy," available at [http://nicbar. narod.ru/nazbez_lekzia10.htm].
5 "Gruziiu ozhidaet novaia voina s Rossiei?" Novy Region, 27 May, 2009, available at [http://www.rferl.org/con-tent/Is_A_New_RussiaGeorgia_War_On_The_Horizon/1740028.html].
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disciplined volunteers against civilians or disarmed POWs. The Russian-Georgian conflict proved to be a classic example of uncivilized treatment of the ordinary people. Admittedly, it differed in some ways from the armed conflicts of the 1990s in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Chechnia. A decree issued by President of Georgia Saakashvili as early as 2004 banning all informal volunteer paramilitary units in Georgia, the largest being the Forest Brothers and White Legion guerilla units based in the Gali District of Abkhazia and the Zugdidi District of Megrelia, was responsible for the main difference. It meant that by the beginning of Russia's invasion of Georgia, there was not a single "volunteer" non-state armed formation in the country, and the crime level had dropped to its historical lowest across Georgian territory, with the exception of the breakaway regions. All the armed units represented the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs; they had both been reformed: professional skills had been upgraded; equipment improved; discipline tightened; and responsibility increased, while corruption had been all but eliminated. By August 2008, Georgia had small, but well-trained troops equipped in keeping with NATO standards and a reformed and uncor-rupt police force at its disposal. This radically changed the nature of relations between the Georgian military and law-enforcers, on the one hand, and the civilians in the conflict zone, on the other. By that time, anticorruption and anti-crime reforms had practically eliminated organized crime in Georgia (with the exception of Abkhazia and South Ossetia); criminals no longer threatened the people both in the fighting zone and outside it.
During the war and immediately after it, the sides vehemently accused each other of violations of human rights, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. The world community, however, finds it hard to accept what the Russian Prosecutor General and South Ossetia are saying about the genocide of Os-setians by Georgia because the Russian side did not allow any of the international structures, even those representing the most neutral countries, wishing to investigate possible military crimes to enter the occupied Georgian territories. The Heidi Tagliavini commission concluded that there had been no signs of genocide of the Ossetians by the Georgian defense and security structures.
On the other hand, from the very beginning of the fighting in South Ossetia and the Gori District, numerous groups of armed volunteers from the Northern Caucasus, especially Cossacks and Chechens (well-known for their cruelty towards the civilians of the Northern Caucasus), joined forces with Ossetian criminal groups to murder civilians, plunder, and burn down their homes, as well as steal cattle and cars. When the war ended, they consistently destroyed one Georgian settlement after another around Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. The Russian army did nothing to stop them; the results of the deliberate destruction around Tskhinvali can still be clearly seen on the Internet (the Goodle.map program). The mass plundering and humiliation of the local people in which armed volunteers from Russia indulged was part of the operation known as "peace enforcement in Georgia." One finds it hard to believe that Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin, who personally commanded the operation, knew nothing of these crimes against Georgians. Ethnic cleansing depopulated the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia when over 20 thousand Georgian citizens were driven away from South Ossetia (there were also ethnic Ossetians among them). The Russian military got their share too: they plundered the Poti sea port and Georgian military bases, taking everything they could lay their hands on (even toilet bowls and linen), and robbing civilian facilities, including automatic teller machines, in passing. This was recorded and shown on TV by Georgian and foreign journalists who worked in the conflict zone.
According to a parliamentary commission of Georgia, the civil defense system failed to take civilians out of the zone of hostilities in South Ossetia, the Gori District, and the Kodori Gorge; and foreign tourists were unable to leave Svanetia, Ajaria, and other resorts. It proved next to impossible to extinguish the fires deliberately fanned by Russian helicopters in the Borjomi National Park of Georgia.
The August 2008 invasion of Georgia fomented extreme hostility between the two countries, whereby there is no hope that their relations will return to normal any time soon.
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Georgian Security after Russia's Military Invasion of August 2008
The August war aroused euphoria in the Russian military, political, and expert community. Russian military experts took up the pen en masse to prove that Georgia should be destroyed as an independent state or divided into vassal quasi-states. Mikhail Aleksandrov, Head of the Department of the Southern Caucasus at the Institute of the CIS Countries, criticized the Russian leaders, who, unwilling to aggravate the already faltering relations with the West, had halted the onslaught on Tbilisi; he wrote that Georgia should be divided to become a loosely connected confederation with its symbolic center in Tbilisi.6 Alexey Vashchenko, another Russian expert, believes that there is an anti-Russian arc in which the Silk Road project is being actively implemented with the direct participation of the West, China, and the CIS countries, all working against Russia. He insists that the arc crosses Georgia, NATO's main toehold. It presents the greatest threat to Russia, which means that what remains of Georgia should be divided into smaller parts.7 In November 2008, during his official visit to Ankara, Defense Minister of Russia warned that if Georgia tried to join NATO, a more serious conflict between the two countries could not be avoided.8 Finally, in November 2008, President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev openly admitted that the war against Georgia had been started to prevent Georgia from joining NATO.9
In Georgia these statements are interpreted as the real cause of the August war of 2008, while protecting the Russian citizens was nothing more than a pretext, similar to the one Nazi Germany used in 1939 to invade Czechoslovakia. The pet idea of the Russian leaders about certain exclusive influence zones and Russia's special interests in the post-Soviet expanse are potentially dangerous for Georgia and the other Soviet successor-states: "Russia wants to be a Eurasian center of attraction of sorts with the other countries of the post-Soviet expanse obeying its commands."10
The war between Georgia and Russia was not to protect Russian citizens: Russia was driven by very different values and foreign policy priorities. Georgia wants to join the Euroatlantic structures and hopes to join NATO and the EU some time in the future, while Russia is hostile toward NATO and wants to prevent Georgia's EU membership. Georgia has already opted for Western liberal democracy as its political ideal, while Russia is still devoted to the Great Power ideas and claims the role of the center of the post-Soviet expanse. This shows that the gap between Georgia and Russia is wide indeed. The Russian leaders and the Russian army, which exterminated hundreds of thousands in Chechnia and treated all Chechen separatists as terrorists to be "soaked [here it means: killed] in the john" (mochit v sortire)," invariably supported the Abkhazian and Ossetian separatists. While posing as a peacekeeper and intermediary, Russia illegally supplied the separatists with machine guns, tanks, armored personnel carriers, combat helicopters, and aircraft and
6 See: M. Aleksandrov, "Nachalo kontsa yeltsinskoy epokhi. Kak nam obustroit postsovetskoe prostranstvo," 10 March, 2008, available at [http://www.apn.ru/publications/article20771.htm].
7 See: A. Vashchenko, military expert, "Raschlenenie Gruzii kak politicheskaia neobkhodimost. Antirossiyskaya duga i ee arkhitektory," 29 September, 2008, available at [http://www.apn.ru/publications/article20753.htm].
8 See: "Glava MO Rossii: vtiagivanie Gruzii v NATO mozhet sprovotsirovat bolee ser'ezny konflikt," Novy Region, 18 November, 2008, available at [http://nregion.com/txt.php?i=27870].
9 See: "Medvedev: Voyna s Gruziey predotvratila rasshirenie NATO," Grani.ru, 21 November, 2011, available at [http://grani.ru/Politics/Russia/d.193273.html].
10 "Amerikanskiy ekspert ob otnosheniyakh Rossii i SShA: NATO, PRO, Gruzia, Ukraina, Iran, Nagorny Karabakh, Afghanistan," 8 July, 2009, available at [http://www.regnum.ru/news/fd-abroad/georgia/1183941.html].
11 A Russian jargon expression which President Putin used at one of the press conferences when talking about the leaders of the Chechen resistance by way of comment on the missile and bomb strikes on the airport of Grozny, oil refinery, and housing estates in the northern outskirts of Grozny on 23 September, 1999 (see: [http://ru.wikipedia.org.wiki]).
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encouraged their use against Georgia. This ended in a military confrontation between the two countries and a dramatic worsening of the geopolitical situation in the Caucasus, including the Northern Caucasus.
Russia's desire to preserve its monopoly on the energy resources of the Caspian and Central Asia (Georgia as a transit territory undermined this monopoly) was another reason for the war. Moscow is convinced that those who control Georgia control oil and gas transit to the West. Russia, which is pursuing a neo-imperialist policy, is striving for domination in post-Soviet territory (particularly in Georgia) to remain in control of the local energy resources in order to siphon billions of Euros from the European Union by setting exorbitant oil and gas prices. During the war, Russia showed that it knows how to disrupt Georgia's strategically important transport communications; it blasted the main railway and bombed dangerously close to the BTC oil pipeline, which threatened the rest of the world as well.
Before the war, the local people in the conflict zones feared organized crime which lived on smuggling; after the war, Russia's military threat came to the fore as the main danger. A public opinion poll carried out in December 2008 among the people living on the cease-fire line along the Inguri (the Zug-didi District of Georgia) revealed that 80% perceived the Russian troops stationed in the Gali District as the main threat to their safety; 53% regarded the Abkhazian criminal structures as such; 41% feared the armed Abkhazian detachments; while 17% saw Georgian criminals as a particular menace.12
The recently adopted conception of Georgia's national security describes Russia as the main threat to the security of the Georgian state and its people.13
Since in August 2008 neither side achieved its aim by force, the conflict has not been resolved; the lingering confrontation might erupt as an armed invasion. The Iranian nuclear file, the tension around it, and the threat of a clash between Iran, on the one hand, and Israel and the United States, on the other, do nothing to improve the situation in the Caucasus. Russia is trying to fortify its position by preparing for the Kavkaz-2012 military exercises in September 2012 to rehearse another invasion of the Central Caucasus.14 Indeed, in the past, the Kavkaz-2008 military exercises, which imitated invasion of South Ossetia, eventually developed into a war.
Can Georgia ensure its national security by remaining a neutral country? In 1918-1921, the Menshevist government tried strict neutrality. German Social-Democrat Karl Kautsky, who was in Georgia from September 1920 to January 1921, wrote about the policy of strict neutrality, especially in relation to Russia and Turkey reflected in the Declaration of Georgian Independence adopted on 26 May, 1921, which announced that Georgia would remain neutral in all possible international conflicts.15 In February 1921, this did not save Georgia from the invasion of the 11th Red Army and Soviet occupation. The present leaders of Russia, likewise, are still determined to undermine Georgia's statehood and its territorial integrity; this leaves Georgia no chance of preserving its sovereignty through neutrality.
Can "soft power" ensure civil security and conflict settlement as is frequently suggested by Western politicians and experts? Soft power and a free democratic society have good prospects in Georgia, but they will not return Abkhazia and South Ossetia to the fold in the near or distant future.
12 See: A. Kukhianidze, "Ways of Resolving the Problems of Crime and Ensuring Security of the Population in the Zugdidi District of Georgia and Along the Left Bank of the River Enguri," in: Georgian and Abkhaz Perspectives on Human Security and Development in Conflict-Affected Areas. A Policy Research Initiative, CITpax, Madrid, May 2009.
13 See: "National Security Concept of Georgia," pp. 7-8, available at [http://www.nsc.gov.ge/files/files/ National%20Security%20Concept.pdf].
14 See: S.I. Konovalov, "Manevry osoboy vazhnosti. Genshtab razrabatyvaet plan masshtabnykh strategichsekikh ucheniy, iskhodya iz vozmozhnoy ataki Izraelya i SShA po Iranu," 16 January, 2012, available at [http://www.ng.ru/poli-tics/2012-01-16/3_kartblansh.html].
15 See: K. Kautsky, Georgia: A Social-Democratic Peasant Republic—Impressions and Observations, Chapter X, "The Foreign Policy of the Republic," International Bookshops Limited, London, 1921, available at [https:// epress.anu.edu.au/archive/kautsky/1921/georgia/ch06.htm].
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This will only happen if Russia and the separatist regions plunge into a deep crisis. The two German states reunited because of the crisis in the Soviet Union. On the other hand, even though for many years South Korea remained an attractive example of success, the two Koreas have not yet unified. This will not happen until the communist dictatorship in North Korea collapses; in the same way the attractions of American democracy have not yet led to a regime change in Cuba where the communists have been ruling for the last 54 years.
The hopes for democratic developments in Russia and its drawing closer to the West were dashed after the presidential election of 2012 and Vladimir Putin's victory. So relations between the two countries in the coming decade will take the form of a small Cold War at best, or another military invasion by Russia, at worst. Only Georgia's accession to NATO will avert the latter scenario, something the three Baltic republics have indirectly proven. Their membership in NATO has drawn a red line that Russia is unable to cross, and the military-political situation in the region has stabilized. So far Georgia is not protected by a similar red line and the situation remains unstable, while Russia is ready to attack from its military bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The problem is that while it remains outside NATO Georgia is highly vulnerable to the threat of a direct military invasion. The declarations of Georgia's future NATO membership and intensification of the integration process do not guarantee Georgia's safety in the face of the Russian threat. This means that the closer Georgia comes to joining NATO, the greater the threat of an armed invasion by Russia and the more vulnerable Georgia becomes. NATO is not providing any answer to the question of who will stop the Russian army if the Alliance decides to accept Georgia's membership in the future.
Conclusion
The measures taken after the Rose Revolution—reforms of the army and the police and the ban on non-state volunteer paramilitary armed structures—have made life in the confrontation zones much safer. The existence of large volunteer Cossack and North Caucasian armed groups and local Ossetian bands had led in the past to a multitude of crimes being committed against the local people and their property by Russia and the Ossetian separatists.
As distinct from the Russian side, which while readying for the attack evacuated most of the civilians from the Ossetian capital on time, the Georgians failed to do this because their civil defense system was not functioning. This meant that in the areas controlled by Georgia, people were killed and their property plundered, while Russian and South Ossetian marauders were involved in ethnic cleansing.
Neutrality will not protect Georgia against the Russian military threat, while integration into NATO, too, will merely increase the danger of another Russian armed assault. So the only solution is for the U.S. and NATO to give Georgia legally binding guarantees of its safety even before the country joins NATO.
Soft power and a free democratic society will make Georgia an attractive country, but without a deep-cutting crisis in Russia and the breakaway Georgian regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia are unlikely to reunite with Georgia now or anytime in the future.
