The present crisis over South Ossetia has virtually no parallels with the Cold War which it historically predates. To understand its present nature it is better to train our binoculars on the last ten years, not to seek out villains, but to piece together a series of interlinked realpolitik decisions. Most of those actions were understandable at the time – and some of them a long way from Cyprus – but they have cumulatively produced a dangerous gulf of incomprehension between Washington and Moscow. From the invasion of Kosovo in 1999 to the invasion of Georgia in 2008 a series of misunderstandings and a refusal to sufficiently respect each other’s national interest has led to a political divide, fed by a polarised presentation in each countries’ media about the realities of the Cold War and the difficulties that the world was bound to face in its aftermath.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall there was virtual unanimity in Moscow and Washington that everything possible should be done to avoid secessionism and changing historic national boundaries in Europe.

The emergence of the Russian Federation and the dismantling of the Soviet Empire was spectacularly successful. A judgement call was made under the Clinton Administration that buttressing democracy in these newly independent states could not wait for the “acquis communitaire” and eventual EU entry but needed earlier entry into NATO. Broadly that policy, though disliked by the Russian Federation, was initially successful, in part because Russian sensitivity to NATO membership for the Ukraine and Georgia was recognised and this was deliberately put on the backburner. President Putin’s response to the 9/11 attack in 2001 on the US was statesmanslike and imaginative. Sadly, it was met by an unprecedented wave of US unilateralism. His early readiness to even contemplate NATO membership, and to understand and facilitate US bases in Uzbekistan slowly changed as did his policies.

Conflict Frontiers
Conflict frontiers were an inevitable legacy of the break up of the Soviet Empire. There are lessons in how they were dealt with.

Handling the break up of the former Yugoslavia was formally passed by Moscow and Washington in August 1992 to the EU and the UN. That combination was always going to be insufficient for Germany and Italy were not then politically ready to deploy their armed forces, under the UN or NATO, to the former Yugoslavia. In December 1992, with the support of the UN Secretary General, and the tolerance of Yeltsin, the President of the Russian Federation, NATO started to become involved in the Balkans imposing a ’no fly zone’ and to help implement various peace plans.

Chechnya was accepted by the UN Security Council as a Russian responsibility to resolve, despite worldwide humanitarian protests.

Georgia inherited four disputed separatist boundary disputes, and though heavily influenced by Russia, the Western democracies, by financing the Caspian pipeline, had a big financial stake in Georgia’s stability. Only after 2003 did Georgian membership of NATO come on to the political agenda and Washington began to push with scant regard for Russian interests.

In Nagorno Karabakh an uneasy peace emerged. Turkey now holds the key to a diplomatic long term solution and what has happened in Georgia should be a stimulant to giving this a far higher diplomatic priority. The Turkish Prime Minister’s visit tomorrow to Armenia is a very welcome development.

NATO / Russian Relations
NATO / Russian relations, as they have emerged, also has important lessons. In late 1992 / early 1993 Russia began to accept, as did the UN, that there was a role for NATO in the Balkans enforcing a “no fly zone” and preparing to help implement various peace plans. It needs to be remembered that in February, 1994 when NATO issued an ultimatum to the Bosnian Serbs to withdraw their heavy weapons around Sarajevo, following the controversial market place bomb explosion, it was the Russians who moved their UN forces overnight to the Bosnian Serb front line in the centre of Sarajevo, which ensured that General Mladic had no military excuse to not comply with NATO’s demand when he was called to a stormy meeting next day with Serb Generals in Belgrade.

It also needs to be remembered that in August/September 1995, the Russians, in the Contact Group, raised no real objection to the NATO bombing of Bosnian Serb military positions which, with UK and French heavy weapons recently introduced mainly around Sarajevo, helped the Croatian and Bosnian government forces recapture sufficient territory around the country to change the map on the ground and force a ceasefire paving the way for the Dayton Accords. Russian forces were asked to join NATO in December in an implementation of Dayton which they did with commitment and success.

It was only as the situation in Kosovo deteriorated in 1998 that a real difference began to develop between Russia and the NATO effort in the Balkans. In a sense, this was inevitable as Milosevic had no intention of restoring the autonomy to Kosovo that he had removed in 1989. As the American line hardened, Russia could see NATO was likely to intervene and distanced themselves from this since it was certain that Kosovo would secede from Serbia.

The Rambouillet conference in 1999 – called to provide diplomatic cover for the military threat of imposing a settlement – had to win over the Kosovo Liberation Army. The US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, privately, gave a realpolitik commitment to a referendum on independence to the KLA. NATO threatened to bomb unless Serb forces were withdrawn from Kosovo and President Yeltsin, knowing that he would have to veto any UN Resolution favouring this, let it be known that Russia, under protest, would acquiesce in NATO action provided they were not asked to authorise it in the UN. The Russians, however, always believed that bombing alone would not force a Serb withdrawal. Moscow’s diplomacy was put on hold during weeks of bombing until it became obvious to President Clinton that he needed their diplomatic help if he was to avoid having to put US ground troops into Kosovo. In a way, Yeltsin paid Clinton back for his years of friendly support. Milosevic was given no alternative to supporting the package formally delivered in Belgrade by the former Finnish President, Martti Ahtisaari, and former Russian Prime Minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin. It has never been admitted what was the crucial lever that Russia used, but it is highly likely that Milosevic was told that a refusal to comply would be met by no more Russian gas. To add that hardship on Serbia in addition to the NATO bombing of factories and bridges, far away from Kosovo itself, was sufficient to force Milosevic to order his troops out. His order was deeply resented by the Serb military who knew they had not been defeated, and were relishing a fight against invading NATO troops over very difficult terrain. Even so, as part of the settlement terms, Yugoslav and Serbian personnel were to be permitted to maintain a presence at key border crossings. An indication that independence for Kosovo was not formally conceded.

The situation was very fragile when a column of 30 Russian armoured vehicles, with KFOR freshly painted on their sides, and some 250 soldiers, drove through Serbia to Pristina airfield in Kosovo. Fortunately, the Head of KFOR, General Mike Jackson, a Russian speaker, read the Russian forces’ decision not as a threat but a demonstration of frustration and determination that Russian forces would be part of the settlement. To SACEUR General Wesley Clark, it was a move to allow Russian reinforcements to be flown into Kosovo despite the fact that NATO was in total control of the airspace.

The two diametrically different ways of handling the Russian military was expressed in Jackson’s famous exchange with SACEUR: “Sir, I am not going to start World War III for you”. In the event neither Paris, London, or the Pentagon were prepared to support General Clark.

Georgia
Georgia is very different geographically, politically and militarily, from Kosovo. But what is happening there has been influenced by Kosovo. President George W Bush and Vice President Cheney have all along wanted to offer Georgia early NATO membership without calculating the practical realities for NATO of being automatically obliged to come to the defence of Georgia under NATO’s Charter. Eventually it fell to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Bucharest, in the spring of 2008, to wisely lead the opposition within NATO to early membership being offered, recognising that NATO membership cannot be used as a political tool, to be discardable, as if in a game of bluff.

It was always on the cards that the Georgian President, Saakashvili, would decide, as he did unilaterally, to “restore constitutional order” on the separatist province of South Ossetia. Had Georgia been seen to be about to become a NATO member on 7 August, when Georgia launched missiles and tanks against South Ossetia, NATO would have suffered a devastating blow if it had not responded with force when Russia – as it was clearly poised to do – invaded Georgian territory. President Sarkozy was right to avoid committing either NATO or the EU to restoring the territorial integrity of Georgia as part of the EU ceasefire initiative. Retrospectively trying to restore this obligation is not serious politics.

In the Western democracies our politicians and our press are only talking about the Russian invasion and ignoring the prior Georgian military attack. You should try in your reporting to keep these issues linked. Memories are short and this linkage is particularly important when you in the media do not always have sufficient space or time to dwell on all the complexities of the Georgian problem.

To liken South Ossetia to the Soviet Union’s military action in Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968 is neither serious history nor realistic politics. There are sound reasons why NATO membership cannot be handed out simply to any country that asks. The basis of their democracy has first to be proven, the people in the applicant country have to overwhelmingly want membership, their foreign policy has to be shown to be stable and aligned with that of the other member states. Also, wherever possible, the national boundaries of a new member state should be accepted by their neighbours.

For some years it has been clear that the wise course has been to put EU membership for Georgia and for the Ukraine in advance of their membership of NATO. The first lesson from the fighting in Georgia is to speed up EU membership for both the Ukraine and Georgia, not to advance NATO membership while boundary disputes remain.

Multiple Pipelines
The other key lesson is to make EU membership for Turkey a priority. Turkey is the one country which can help the EU seriously diversify its gas and oil supply. Turkey, along its entire length, can and should have a gas and oil pipeline to supply Europe, from not just the Caspian Sea, and the countries surrounding the Caspian, but eventually when Iraq stabilises from Iraq too, and when the nuclear weapons proliferation questions are satisfactorily dealt with, and energy sanctions lifted, from Iran.

Turkey must be a partner in this EU energy enterprise and they will be far more committed to the project when they see that the previous objections to their EU entry, as raised by France and to a lesser extent, Germany, have been put to rest and there is an emerging specific timetable on which they can definitely plan for EU entry.

This is not an anti-Russian statement. Diversity of energy is a national interest, for Russia as well as European nations. In their case they need to have a diversity of customers, Europe needs a diversity of suppliers. Russia is building a pipeline to take their oil out to the Far East, with very substantial financial funding from Japan. Eventually a gas pipeline will follow. Russia is also pledged to build an oil pipeline, as an offshoot, into China. Russia is also moving into shipping oil and gas as liquid natural gas (LNG).

A realpolitik solution
It has been suggested in our discussion today that “anything is possible” and that “it’s scary”. Yes, it is but only if we lose objectivity and forego realism. At the end of his magisterial summation of the Cold War, the historian John Lewis Gaddis, in 2005, wrote, “It began with a return of fear and ended in a triumph of hope, an unusual trajectory for great historical upheavals. It could easily have been otherwise: the world spent the last half of the 20th Century having its deepest anxieties not confirmed. The binoculars of a distant future will confirm this, for had the Cold War taken a different course, there might have been no one left to look back through them.” We must chart a different course.

I have been doing business within Russia for 12 years, with Yukos in oil and also in steel and iron ore. Nothing I have experienced convinces me that a clash of cultures or of national interests will bring back the Cold War. There is much hard diplomacy ahead for Moscow, Washington and Brussels over South Ossetia and Abkhazia that will probably have to await a new US President before it reaches a final solution based on realpolitik. Washington and Moscow will have to halt recrimination and accept that exceptional, though different, circumstances in Serbia and Georgia have resulted in both countries invading other countries without UN authority. China and other Central Asian countries are right to keep their distance from Russian recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia until the UN recognises any new boundaries. Kosovo will have to be recognised by Russia. It will not be an easy settlement to arrive at, but it is an international interest that it is achieved some time in 2009.