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THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Hans-Joachim SPANGER
Ph.D. (Political Science), Member of the Executive Board and Head of the Research Department on Governance and Societal Peace at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (Frankfurt, Germany).
GREAT POWER PREDICAMENTS AND THEIR ROLE IN THE CAUCASUS CONFLICTS
Abstract
C
ompared to other conflicts, the great powers have played only a limited role in conflict resolution in the Caucasus.
The only exception to their virtual absence was the August war in 2008, in which Russia and the EU became directly and the U.S.
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indirectly involved. The war revealed features of the great power interplay that are instructive for the broader picture.
For Russia, the August war was a defining moment in its role as an independent power center. This is still relevant today. In the U.S., the Caucasian War called into question fundamental assumptions in its policy toward Russia and the CIS, but it also revealed the deep split between neo-
conservatives and liberal internationalists, on the one hand, and pragmatic realists, on the other. The latter prevailed, but only after Obama assumed office. Within the European Union, the war equally intensified the fundamental differences concerning Russia and the nature of the Russian regime. However the French president was able to prevent the Union from being completely deadlocked.
Introduction
The conflicts in the Southern Caucasus have one thing in common: they have produced only losers. Territories were seized, but only at the price of remarkable losses in population: in Abkhazia the number of people decreased from 525,000 to 200,000, in South Ossetia from 99,000 to 34,000, and in Nagorno-Karabakh from 200,000 to 145,000, not to mention the occupied Azerbaijani territories that have been completely emptied. Large groups of people were "ethnically cleansed" and, as of today, more than a million of refugees are forced to live in deplorable conditions. National economies have stalled, state budgets are overburdened, and only one segment in the state and society seems to be thriving: the military.1 This has been going on for two decades with not much change and no end in sight.
This raises the question, why? Obviously, rational actors are in short supply, which is the essence of war. Hence suffering alone has hardly ever been sufficient reason to make peace; and the proponents of letting wars bleed out have never managed to determine a plausible level of sufficiency. But what about external support? In our times, terminating war is in most cases brokered and in some instances even forced upon the warring parties by outside great powers displaying a measure of rationality and disposing of the necessary sticks and carrots. However, apparently not so in the Caucasus.
This is all the more surprising as the Caucasus is by no means a remote spot on the map of world politics. Just the opposite: its geostrategic location is of vital importance to many great powers. Iran, Afghanistan, and energy are only three of the currently most contentious issues in which the area holds many keys. Nevertheless, engagement has been miniscule, confined to OSCE missions, intermittent mediation, and a negligible presence (the 110-mile-long ceasefire line between Azerbaijan and Armenia, for instance, is monitored by only six unarmed observers from the OSCE).2 This is true of the U.S., the European Union, and Russia. And it is all the more striking if compared to direct military interventions such as those in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, the great efforts aimed at achieving a peace settlement in Bosnia (the Dayton Agreement), and high-profile diplomatic activities such as the current preoccupation with the civil war in Syria.
The low profile of the great powers is hard to explain. Their interests invariably point in the direction of engagement, but that, obviously, is only one of the minimally required condition. Yet awareness, certainly another of the more important minimally required conditions, has varied. The CNN factor, for instance, has been as conspicuously absent most of the time as the rivalry between the great powers in pursuing their interests in the region.
1 Between 2006 and 2008 Georgia and Azerbaijan had the highest increases in military spending globally.
2 See: Th. de Waal, "Armenia and Azerbaijan Are at it Again," 30 March, 2011, available at [http://nationalinterest. org/commentary/armenia-azerbaijan-at-it-again-5087].
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The latter raises the question as to how and to what extent the conflicts in the Caucasus influence great power relations. These conflicts could be a divisive force or the opposite, i.e., situated at the receiving end of great power relations. Being a bone of contention in its own right, the respective conflicts in the Caucasus could translate into a deterioration of great power relations proper. Conversely, the state of these relations could also be reflected in the ways the conflicts in the Caucasus are developing and how they are being dealt with—from escalation via mediation to neglect.
The only noticeable exception to the virtual absence of the great powers was the August war in 2008, when one of the allegedly "frozen" conflicts raised tension to boiling point: Russia and the EU became directly involved—the former militarily, the latter diplomatically—and the U.S. stopped short of showing an equally high profile. The war revealed a number of features of the great power interplay that are also instructive for the broader picture. Some came and went, while others are of a more lasting nature. It is therefore worth looking back at how these powers—notably Russia, the U.S., and the EU—perceived the war and each other and what role the war played in their overall predicament.3
Russia—Assertive and Offensive
For Russia, the August war 2008 was a defining moment for putting into practice what previously remained merely declaratory: its role as an independent power center to be reckoned with.
Since 2007, the latest—i.e., Putin's legendary speech at the Munich Security Conference—basic premise of Moscow's foreign policy has been that besides the U.S. and China, as well as to a lesser extent India or Brazil, Russia is the only country capable of having a "truly independent foreign policy."4 This notion has several implications.
For one, it ought to be evident that the vision of Russia as an ultimate part of the West has definitely become obsolete.5 This expectation of liberal internationalism was just as illusionary from the very beginning as Francis Fukuyama's postulate that history had come to an end with the victory over the socialist system.
Moreover, it has become part of the standard repertoire of officially announced self-affirmation that during the first decade of the new millennium Russia managed to return "to global politics, the global economy and finance as an active, fully-fledged actor."6 Since in the view of Moscow's political class this is not being sufficiently noticed or appreciated elsewhere, it is linking its demands to be given a hearing, to be allowed to participate on an equal footing, and to have its interests taken into consideration with the rejection of any kind of "lecturing" and "colonial-style restrictions" handed down from the 1990s.7 The demand for a multipolar world order is based on this. And the present world order is greeted with dissatisfaction because Russia has no appropriate place in it. Criticism of the U.S. is correspondingly militant.
3 The following is partly based on: M. Dembinski, H.-J. Schmidt, B. Schoch, H.-J. Spanger, "After the Caucasian War: Engaging, not Containing Russia," PRIF Reports, Frankfurt/M, No. 86, 2008.
4 V. Putin, Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, 10 February, 2007, available at [http://archive.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2007/02/10/0138_type82912type82914type82917type84779_118123. shtml].
5 This was ascertained by a critic some time ago, who called for the West "to calm down and take Russia for what it is: a major outside player that is neither an eternal foe nor an automatic friend" (D.B. Trenin, "Russia Leaves the West," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 4, 2006, p. 95).
6 S. Lavrov, "Russia and the World in the 21st Century," Russia in Global Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 3, 2008, p. 10.
7 V. Putin, Transcript of Annual Big Press Conference, 14 February, 2008, available at [http://archive.kremlin.ru/ eng/speeches/2008/02/14/1011_type82915_160266.shtml].
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However, Russia as an autonomous gravitational center in a multipolar cosmos is still hampered by capabilities not exactly commensurate with its ambitions: even in the narrow orbit of the CIS its gravitational force remains so small that no formative power in international politics can be derived from it.8 Thus the Caucasian War provided the opportunity to achieve great effect at a relatively small price. And this signal was not only sent to the immediate neighborhood but equally beyond—to the West and its efforts to draw individual CIS member states into its own orbit, in particular into NATO.
Yet the Caucasian War also lent new meaning to the Russian postulates of equality as Moscow practiced and declared the very same it had been reproaching Washington for: an explicit declaration of its own sphere of influence and an implicit departure from its previous understanding of international law. As justification of its military intervention Moscow simply adopted the Western discourse: "humanitarian intervention" and "responsibility to protect," which it had previously denounced as a flagrant violation of international law and flimsy legitimizing formulae for geostrategi-cally motivated expansion by the West.9 And with regard to unilateral recognition it enacted the right to "national self-determination" and referred to a peculiar (Western) role model it had previously completely rejected: "We have taken the same course of action as other countries took with regard to Kosovo,"10 embellished with the astounding finding that, "according to international law, a new state becomes a subject of law, as the lawyers say, from the moment it gains recognition from at least one other country."11 In contrast to Western practice in Kosovo, however, Russia in 2008 did not make the slightest effort to enlist the aid of the U.N. in at least lending some legitimacy to its violation of both principles. So far, however, Moscow has also shied away from applying this precedence to Nagorno-Karabakh as well.
Hence, it will hardly be possible in the future to dedicate Russia to the power ofjustice in opposition to the alleged Western justice of power. It sounded hollow when Putin, on the occasion of Victory Day 9 May, 2012, reiterated: "I stress today that strict respect for international law, state sovereignty and the independent choice of each people is one of the crucial guarantees for ensuring that the tragedy of World War II never happens again. Russia is consistent in its policy of strengthening secu-
8 Moscow still shies away from being banded together with the "axis of evil" and the likes. This is true despite the fact that Medvedev, in the wake of the 2008 war, indicated that "any" state which strives for friendly relations with Russia will receive a "friendly response" ("Transcript of the Meeting with the Participants in the International Club Valdai," 12 September, 2008, GUM Exhibition Center, Moscow, available at [www.kremlin.ru]). In this way, adopting zero-sum logic, Moscow is cultivating relations with governments which like Venezuela, Syria, and Iran are targeted by the U.S. Based on the conviction "that the future world order will be based on competitive interactions of principal centers of power," Russia is clearly focusing its interests on Eurasia: "Russia would like to use its assets in remote parts of the world, such as Latin America and Africa, to strengthen its positions in the Eurasian space. For example, it appears that Moscow's interest in cooperation with non-conformist states of Latin America—Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador—grew markedly as the United States increased its presence in the post-Soviet space" (F. Lukya-nov, "Rethinking Russia: Russian Dilemmas in a Multipolar World," International Affairs, Vol. 63, No. 2, Spring/ Summer 2010, pp. 19-32).
9 This has also been systematically reinforced by the "five principles" announced by the president on 31 August, 2008. These reiterated not only Russia's multipolar leanings ("The world should be multipolar. A single-pole world is unacceptable. Domination is something we cannot allow. We cannot accept a world order in which one country makes all the decisions, even as serious and influential a country as the United States of America"). More specifically it confirmed Moscow's determination to protect its "citizens" wherever they happen to live ("Protecting the lives and dignity of our citizens, wherever they may be, is an unquestionable priority for our country") and it admitted the quest for a special sphere of interest ("As is the case for other countries, there are regions in which Russia has privileged interests. These regions are home to countries with which we share special historical relations and are bound together as friends and good neighbors") (see: Interview given by Dmitry Medvedev to television channels Channel One, Rossia, NTV, 31 August, 2008, available at [www.kremlin.ru]). The final item, as Medvedev clarified on request, is not limited to neighboring states alone, because "our priorities do not end there."
10 See: President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev. Interview with BBC Television, 26 August, 2008, available at [http:// archive.kremlin.ru/eng/text/speeches/2008/08/26/2131_type82915type82916_205790.shtml].
11 Interview given by Dmitry Medvedev to television channels Channel One, Rossia, NTV, 31 August, 2008.
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rity in the world."12 In light of this "consistency," it is not by chance that none of Moscow's CIS allies wanted to follow Russian recognition. They find themselves in a similarly inferior position relative to Russia as Russia finds itself in relative to the U.S., and they view themselves, therefore, as just as dependent on the promised protection offered by the standards of international law.
In principle Moscow adheres to a foreign policy that pursues classic realism. Thus the premise applies that one is simply and quite pragmatically pursuing one's own interests contrary to the "ide-ologization of the world" cultivated by the West with its export of democracy. Yet ideological formulations that point to different and even competing "development models" are still around. In mid-2008, Foreign Minister Lavrov even placed this competition in a world historical context commensurate with Russia's size: according to this, the end of the Cold War marked the end of a 400-500-year-long period in world history that had been dominated by European civilization or the "historical West." Now in contrast an alternative existed, that either the world adopted Western values and became a "Greater West" (much in the sense of the "end of history"), or—the Russian view—competition would become "truly global," including also "values and development models". In July 2008 this became part of Russia's official foreign policy concept.13
The model Russia espouses, however, is not yet clear. This does not necessarily come as a surprise since the de-ideologized competition between political concepts is meant to serve the purpose of multipolarity in the first place. This entails recognizing the "multiformity of the contemporary world" without imposing "borrowed value systems." And irrespective of substance it also entails rejecting the "different, unifying approach" attached to the West, which "would lead to interventionism—a strategy that is hardly realistic, since its effectiveness can be achieved only in a transition toward global imperial construction."14
Moscow's response to the Color Revolutions, which it ascribes to this kind of mindset and to Western complaints about the growing value gap, consequently focuses entirely on the geostrategic elements. Putin thus keeps complaining that, in the "ever more complicated and tougher" world, "lofty slogans of freedom and an open society are sometimes used to destroy the sovereignty of a country or an entire region" that Russia regarded as a particularly important target because of its "God-given" resources.15 Or he denounced elections as an instrument of the West's democratization policy, a new form of "colonialism" designed to strip Russia bare: "Today, 'civilization' has been replaced by democratization, but the aim is the same—to ensure unilateral gains and one's own advantage, and to pursue one's own interests."16
This gulf between Russia and the West has not widened since 2008. But it has by no means disappeared. Concentrating on common interests—the rationale of the reset policy between Obama and Medvedev—has only let a little steam out of the hotpot. Here wrangling over zones of influence, in particular over Russia's self-declared backyard, is probably the hottest issue.
The U.S.—Indecisive but Vocal
In Washington, the Russian intervention of 8 August, 2008 was felt in many ways to be a "turning point" in bilateral relations. Following the election year, however, it took a turn in a direction
12 Speech at the Military Parade Celebrating the 67th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, 9 May, 2012, available at [http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/3780].
13 See: S. Lavrov, op. cit., p. 8; The Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, Approved by Dmitry A. Med-vedev, President of the Russian Federation, on 12 July, 2008, available at [www.mid.ru].
14 S. Lavrov, op. cit., p. 11.
15 V.V. Putin, Speech at the Expanded Meeting of the State Council on Russia's Development Strategy through to 2020, 8 February, 2008, available at [www.kremlin.ru].
16 Putin's Address to the Federal Assembly at the end of April 2007, available at [www.kremlin.ru].
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unforeseen by the pundits of the Bush administration. And only in one respect did the outgoing and incoming administrations concur: the Caucasian War elevated Russia's status in the U.S. political discourse.
In the American debate on the causes and consequences of the Caucasian War, two broad positions can be distinguished. The first is represented by neo-conservatives and defenders of U.S. supremacy, i.e., the most vocal quarters of the Bush administration, as well as by liberal interventionists, i.e., prominent representatives of the Obama administration. In their view, the Kremlin bore sole responsibility for the war. Russian aggression was seen as the direct expression of its strategic objective to roll back Western influence in the former Soviet Union.17 "Russia's actions in Georgia constituted just one more front of a comprehensive campaign to reassert Russian dominance in the region through both coercive and cooperative means," stated Michael McFaul, currently U.S. Ambassador to Russia and prior to this Barack Obama's Senior Advisor on Russia in the National Security Council.18 This assessment was shared by many Republican senators and representatives who perceived a direct line from Budapest 1956 to Prague 1968 and to Gori 200819 and warned against a domino effect, which could affect the Ukraine and the Baltic states next.20
The Bush administration essentially adopted this view. Its leading members blamed the Russian strategy for intimidating Georgia as a motive for the outbreak of the war,21 and stressed the risk of further attempts by Moscow to apply pressure on its "near abroad."22 Segments of the Bush administration around his vice president even contemplated dispatching the U.S. navy.23
The second position was adopted by representatives of the liberal spectrum, pragmatic realists, and the few supporters of an isolationist course who jointly back a purely interest-based approach in dealing with Russia. The latter see the war as a corroboration of their long-standing criticism of Bush's costly world policy which involved the risk of dragging the U.S. unnecessarily into the disputes of others. Instead of blaming Russian ambitions, they stressed the danger of aligning America with unreliable foreign powers, as former presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan bluntly put it: "If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war."24
Proponents of the liberal camp and the pragmatic-realist approach had for quite some time argued for a policy toward Russia based on common interests. They held American negligence of Russia's concerns and interests at least partly responsible for the deterioration in relations between America and Russia.25 Thus Samantha Power, advisor in Obama's election campaign for a while, de-
17 Cf. R.D. Asmus, R. Holbrooke, "Black Sea Watershed," Washington Post, 11 August, 2008, A15; R. Kagan, "Putin Makes his Move," Washington Post, 11 August, 2008, A15.
18 See: M. McFaul, Prepared Statement, U.S. Congress House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hearings: U.S.-Rus-sia Relations in the Aftermath of the Georgia Crises, 9 September, 2008, p. 2. Going one step further, Zbigniew Brzezin-ski compared Russian policy out of hand with that of Stalin and Hitler (see: Zb. Brzezinski, "Russlands Vorgehen ähnelt dem Hitlers," Welt Online, 11 August, 2008).
19 Cf. J. McCain, "We are all Georgians," Wall Street Journal, 14 August, 2008 (see also: Th. McCotter, "Russia's Invasion of Georgia. What Should the United States do about Moscow's Attack against its Neighbor," Washington Times, 11 August, 2008). McCain's intervention in favor of Saakashvili appears in a dubious light however, since his security policy advisor Randy Scheunemann with his lobbying firm "Orion Strategies" was rewarded handsomely by Georgia for representing the country's interests in Washington (cf. M. Mosk, J. Birnbaum, "While Aide Advised McCain, His Firm Lobbied for Georgia," Washington Post, 13 August, 2008, A3).
20 See: L. Graham, J. Lieberman, "Russia's Aggression is a Challenge to World Order," Wall Street Journal, 27 August, 2008.
21 See: D. Fried, The Current Situation in Georgia and Implications for U.S. Policy, Testimony before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Washington D.C., 9 September, 2008.
22 See: R. Cheney, "Vice President"s Remarks at the Ambrosetti Forum," 6 September, 2008, available at [www. whitehouse.gov].
23 See: R.D. Asmus, A Little War that Shook the World, Palgrave, New York, 2010, pp. 186-187.
24 P.J. Buchanan, "Who Started Cold War II," Medium, 19 August, 2008 (see also: T.G. Carpenter, "What Russia Wants," The American Conservative, 22 September, 2008).
25 Cf. St.L. Myers, "No Cold War, but Big Chill over Georgia," New York Times, 16 August, 2008.
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nounced the long list of Russia's humiliations, beginning with American triumphalism over the Cold War victory, through NATO expansion, to the recognition of Kosovo.26 Francis Fukuyama passed a similar judgment: "Diplomacy, such as it was, consisted of persuading Russia to accept all of the items on our list and telling them their fears and concerns were groundless."27
From this perspective two aspects of Bush's policy toward the Caucasus region appeared particularly problematic. On the one hand, there was the unbalanced assessment of democratic qualities. While independent observers gave an equally critical assessment of both Georgia's and Russia's democratic credentials, the Bush administration castigated a return to authoritarian rule in Russia while lauding the Georgian president as a beacon of democracy in the region.28 And on the other hand, there was an overestimation of American power, which immunized the Bush administration against the possibility that Russia could challenge America at all. This feeling of unparalleled strength also led to the uncritical support of Georgia and thus the "irresponsible encouragement of the Georgian president" in his actions.29
The Caucasian War thus called into question fundamental assumptions in America's policy toward Russia and the CIS. For the first time, NATO expansion encountered resolute Russian resistance and moreover the prospect of NATO membership obviously did not allow the U.S. to exert any moderating influence on the Georgian leadership and did not lead to responsible behavior. This experience not only cast doubt on the assumption of a virtuous circle, the ultimate fate of the Color Revolution governments also called into question the whole idea of a secular trend toward democracy.
And last but not least, the war demonstrated that Russia's interests could no longer safely be ignored. Instead, Moscow demonstrated that it possesses the means to react to challenges in its vicinity and that it is ready to lend emphasis to its "red lines."
The European Union—Quarrelling and Acting
Whereas for Washington, relations with Russia and beyond are one problem among many, for the European Union, they are one of the most important tasks of European politics. This task, as the Caucasian War painfully demonstrated, is also most difficult to solve. On the one hand, developing a constructive relationship with Russia has become more difficult due to Russia itself, which has also moved away from the West following Putin's domestic political Thermidor. While on the other hand, it is due to fundamental differences within the EU concerning Russia and the nature of the Russian regime, as well as differences concerning relations with other states in the region such as Ukraine or Georgia.
The Caucasian War further intensified these opposing views. The loudest criticism of Russian action in the Caucasus came from some of the newcomers that former French president Jacques
26 See: S. Power, "A Question of Honor," Time, 14 August, 2008.
27 F. Fukuyama, "Russia and a New Democratic Realism," Financial Times, 3 September, 2008.
28 See: P.J. Saunders, "Georgia's Recklessness," Washington Post, 15 August, 2008, A21; idem, "Lessons of the Russian-Georgian War and its Implications for U.S. Policy, Testimony before the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe," 10 September, 2008, available at [www.nixoncenter.org/georgiatestimony.doc].
29 D.K. Simes, "Talking Sense on South Ossetia," The National Interest, 8 November, 2008 (see also: A. Lieven, "The West Shares the Blame for Georgia," Financial Times, 14 August, 2008). Anthony Cordesman of the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies takes the same view: "...we almost certainly played an inadvertent role in convincing a 'rabbit' that it could provoke a 'bear.' If anything, we are lucky that the 'bear' did not eat the 'rabbit'" (A. Cordesman, "The Georgia War and the Century of 'Real Power,' Commentary," CSIS, Washington D.C.).
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Chirac once preferred to keep quiet. While Hungary, Slovenia, and the Slovak Republic were as reticent as Bulgaria and Rumania, exceedingly harsh tones came from Poland, the Baltic States, and parts of the political class of the Czech Republic. According to the Polish President, "Russia has yet again shown its true face." Without consulting on the European level, he called upon his colleagues from the Baltic States to undertake a journey of solidarity to Tbilisi even while the fighting was still going on.30 In their view, the war threw a spotlight on the dangers of Russian revisionism, which directly threatened all countries of the former Warsaw Pact. Their reading of NATO expansion markedly differed from the post-Bush insights in Washington: through its decision not to offer Georgia any concrete membership perspective, NATO had even encouraged Russia in its military policy of spheres of influence. Against the backdrop of this analysis Poland and the Baltic States declined to return to business as usual after the war.31
Germany and France assumed the opposite standpoint, supported by Italy and Spain. In Germany, a cross-party consensus emerged according to which both Russia and Georgia were to blame for the outbreak of the war. Isolation of Russia was to be avoided, and the prospect of its institutional inclusion was to be maintained.32 In this way Berlin found itself aligned with the French government, whose policy was dictated by the slogan, "No to sanctions, yes to dialog."33
These discrepancies in the evaluation of the causes of the war and the question of appropriate reactions reflect fundamental differences among the European states in their policy toward Russia and, by extension, toward the CIS. Hence, forging a common line has proven a true challenge, only partially eased by the Russian-Polish realignment after the Smolensk air crash in 2010.
During the crisis, however, the EU proved capable of action, although only due to a very favorable combination of factors. One was the French EU Presidency, which succeeded in negotiating a ceasefire and creating the preconditions for a Russian withdrawal of troops from core Georgia. Furthermore, Nicolas Sarkozy arranged the deployment of the European EUMM observer mission and convinced the conflicting parties to commit to a political process aimed first of all at the settlement of practical issues. Never before had the European Union demonstrated such a presence in the Caucasus region, where it previously preferred to work around the conflicts and has now decided to take at least one conflict head on. So far, however, the bold start has not achieved much.
The European capacity for action in a crisis was encouraged by three more factors.
■ Firstly, despite the differences there was some European common ground. The EU was united over the cornerstones of a program for overcoming the crisis: Russia must withdraw its troops, the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia would not be recognized, and the resolution of the Bucharest NATO summit to eventually admit Georgia and Ukraine would not be revoked, pro forma at least. Finally the EU would intensify its commitment to the independence and democratic orientation of the countries in its neighborhood program.
■ Secondly, and more importantly, Nicolas Sarkozy made clever use of the institutional opportunities of EU presidency so as to place the Union in a common position. He convinced the EU foreign ministers to acknowledge his negotiated Six-Point Agreement and shroud this document in a European mantle.34 The European Council upheld this line of action at its extraordinary meeting on 1 September, 2008.
30 See: Das Parlament, No. 35/36, 25 August-1 September, 2008, p. 17.
31 See: V. Pop, "EU-Russia Talks Likely to Resume in November," EUobserver, 22 October, 2008, p. 3.
32 See: A. Schockenhoff, "Russlands Wahl: Partner oder Widerpart," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 September, 2008, p. 10.
33 S. Besancenot, "EU-Krisenmanagement zwischen Atlantizismus und Pragmatismus—Die Sicht aus Paris," in:
Krieg um Südossetien. Analysen und Perspektiven aus Hauptstädten der Welt, ed. By P. Bungarten, M. Buhbe, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Berlin, 2008, S. 25-28.
34 See: Council of the European Union: Press Release, Extraordinary Meeting General Affairs and External Relations, 12453/08, Brussels, 13 August, 2008.
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■ Thirdly, this capacity for action was achieved thanks to compromises with the group of EU countries critical of Russia. The first concession was not very far-reaching: negotiations over the new EU-Russia Partnership Agreement were suspended, and their resumption made conditional on keeping the Six-Point Plan. However, at the EU-Russia summit on 14 November the resumption of talks was announced, although according to the EU reading the requirements of Russia's critics had not been met. Under dispute to date are the interpretations of the provision reinforced by the European Council's resolution of 1 September that the Russian troops should withdraw "to the positions held prior to 7 August."35 The member states critical of Russia understand this to include the 7,000 soldiers that Russia has stationed in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In contrast, member states favoring a rapprochement with Russia do not insist on such a withdrawal. After discussions with Georgia and Russia about the implementation of the Six-Point Plan, an EU delegation under the leadership of Council President Sarkozy confirmed the withdrawal of Russian troops from "core Georgia," but said nothing about the additional troops in both rebel provinces.36
The second compromise concerned the attitude toward neighboring countries, in particular Ukraine. Here a gradual change in direction was agreed upon. While before the war the EU was careful to run relations with the neighboring countries in parallel to those with Russia, later it started to prioritize relations with Ukraine and others, obviously for purely geostrategic reasons. For instance, the EU enhanced the Eastern Partnership, originally dating back to a Swedish-Polish initiative of the summer of 2008, thereby placing a new main emphasis on its neighborhood policy. It furthermore offered Ukraine an Association Agreement, whereas before the war talk was merely of replacing the existing Partnership and Cooperation Agreement signed in 1998 with a New Enhanced Agreement. The agreement, however, fell far short of the demands by Poland and the Baltic States to open up the prospect of membership to Ukraine. And finally, the EU started a—yet short-lived—rapprochement with Belarus. This process was also accelerated by the war, and here too Poland and Lithuania were the driving forces.37
Conclusion
The 2008 August war and the subsequent Russian-sponsored secession of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has laid two of the three conflicts in the Southern Caucasus to rest, at least for the time being. Does that mean anything for the third conflict in and around Nagorno-Karabakh? Probably not. More than 30,000 casualties and much deeper running memories and claims have made this conflict incomparably more entrenched in both societies. Moreover, it is a territorial conflict between two states of comparable size and stature. And the foreign powers have neither particularly pronounced stakes in the conflict, nor do they necessarily find themselves on the opposite sides of the warring parties: rather, since 1997 France, Russia, and the U.S. have jointly chaired the OSCE Minsk Group. Incidentally, these three were the most active foreign powers—and to some extent even parties—in the 2008 war, and Russia, for obvious reasons, was subsequently the most active in getting the Karabakh peace process up and running again along the lines of the 2007 Madrid Principles. Hence, in this conflict, the competition among these powers is not about their position, rather about the most promising mediation. And their competition does not serve broader objec-
35 Council of the European Union, Conclusions of the Chair: Extraordinary Meeting of the European Council of 1 September, 2008 in Brussels, 12594/08, Brussels, 6 October, 2008.
36 Cf. Council of the European Union, Council Conclusion of Georgia/Russia. 2897th External Relations Council Meeting, Luxemburg, 13 October, 2008.
37 See: Ph. Runner, "EU States Still Keen to Relax Belarus Sanctions," EUobserver, 30 September, 2008.
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tives, but remains within the scope of the conflict itself. In other words, it is less about furthering their own much broader interests as it is about meeting their much narrower normative duty. This obviously is not enough of a driving force.
