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Abstract
This article examines the reasons behind Russia's decision to go to war with Georgia in August 2008. It evaluates the key potential drivers of Russian policy relating to structural, domestic and perceptual factors. We find that initial responses to the war, which focused on Russia as the aggressor and raised the specter of a new ‘Cold War’, are overly simplistic. The wider Eurasian region is of critical strategic importance to decision-makers in Moscow, something we find has been overlooked or underestimated in many assessments of the war. By the same token, the idea of a new Cold War conflates the structural condition of bipolarity with the much more complex and fluid contemporary regional security order. We demonstrate that it is necessary to gain a more comprehensive and objective understanding of the roots of Russian foreign policy in order to better construct more durable and cooperative relations between Russia and the West. Here we argue that existing multilateral security institutions do not provide an effective mechanism to achieve this objective. We then offer suggestions for a new security framework for Eurasia, which would prevent a repeat of the Russia–Georgia war and the resulting deterioration in Russia's relations with the West.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) supporting research on this article.
Notes
1. For these quotes see respectively The Guardian, 12 August 2008 and www.russiatoday.ru.
2. Economist, 14 August 2008.
3. CitationFyodor Lukyanov, ‘Two Crises on the Way to Reshaping the World’.
4. CitationDmitri Simes refers to ‘The hysterical and one-sided US media coverage of the August war between Russia and Georgia…’, ‘Russian Roulette’, p. 4. For an excellent selection of Russian media coverage of the war, see Citation Countdown to War in Georgia .
5. The direct quote is from CitationStephen Blank, ‘Georgia: The War Russia Lost’, p. 39. For the argument that Russia is engaged in a new Cold War see CitationEdward Lucas, The New Cold War.
6. CitationCarr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939, p. 3.
7. CitationBrzezinksi, The Grand Chessboard.
8. CitationSergei Medvedev, ‘Power, Space, and Russian Foreign Policy’, p. 17.
9. On the SCO, see Jia Qingguo, Citation‘The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: China's Experiment in Multilateral Leadership’. Russian foreign and security concepts and strategies published after the Soviet Union collapsed already focused on the ethnic conflicts, terrorism, organized crime, and the health and stability of a declining population as threats to national security. See, for example, Citation Kontseptsiya natsional'noi bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii , Citation Kontseptsiya vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii and Citation Voenaya doktrina Rossiiskoi Federatsii .
10. Alexander Borotnikov is Chair of Russia's Anti-Terrorist Committee, as well as heading the FSB. See Ia Regnum, at http://www.regnum.ru from 5 September 2009.
11. CitationSakwa, Putin: Russia's Choice, p. 191.
12. Kommersant, August 13, 2008.
13. Quoted in CitationAndrew Monaghan, ‘An “Enemy at the Gates” or “From Victory to Victory”? Russia Foreign Policy’, p. 724.
14. Monaghan, ‘Enemy at the Gates’, p. 725.
15. Quoted in CitationThomas de Waal, ‘It Takes a Village’, p. 23.
16. Quoted in CitationStephen F. Jones, ‘Georgia: The Trauma of Statehood’, p. 505.
17. CitationInternational Crisis Group, Abkhazia Today.
18. As reported in RIA novosti, 10 July 2008.
19. See CitationVladimir Socor, ‘Georgia's Strategic Partner Gets Help When It Needs It’.
20. International Crisis Group, Abkhazia Today.
21. CitationSergei Ivanov, ‘Russia Must Be Strong’.
22. Ivanov, ‘Russia Must Be Strong’.
24. http://www.army.mil/-news/2008/07/17/109530cooperation-exercise-immdiate-response-2008. It is worth pointing out that these exercises took place simultaneously to Russian military exercises with local units from regions of the Russian Southern Federal District, including North Ossetia and other units from the North Caucasus Military District. The objective was to practice emergency measures in the event of a threat to Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia.
25. CitationJon E. Chicky, ‘The Russian Georgian War: Political and Military Implications for US Policy’, p. 10. The author of this article is a colonel in the US military who was once in charge of strategic planning operations responsible for training and equipping Georgian troops.
26. CitationJim Nichol, ‘Russian–Georgia Conflict in South Ossetia: Context and Implications’.
27. CitationOksana Antonenko, interview with Carnegie Council, New York, 14 October 2008 at http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/0069.html
28. CitationAleksandr Orlov, ‘The Echo of Tskhinval’, p. 67.
29. The Guardian, 12 September 2008.
30. CitationDennis Blair, ‘Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’.
31. Carter stated that ‘An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force’. See CitationDaniel Yergin, The Prize, p. 702.
32. CitationRobert J. Art, A Grand Strategy for America, p. 62.
33. See CitationMichael Klare, Blood and Oil, p. 68.
34. This can be found at http://www.energy.gov/about/nationalenergypolicy.htm.
35. CitationKlare, Rising Powers, Sinking Planet, p. 7.
36. Klare, Rising Powers, p. 17, p. 17.
37. Quoted in CitationLutz Kleveman, The New Great Game, p. xvii.
38. ‘An External Policy to Serve Europe's Energy Interests’. CitationEuropean Council, 2006.
39. De Waal, ‘It Takes a Village’, p. 23.
40. Klare, Blood and Oil, p. 155.
41. CitationMark A. Smith, ‘Russian Perceptions of the Iranian Nuclear Issue’, p. 5.
43. Atlantic Council of the United States, http://www.acus.org/atlantic_update/bric-summit2009.
44. CitationAzar Gat, ‘The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers’.
45. CitationFrancis Fukuyama, among others, has posited that the Russian model could challenge the West. See his ‘The Russian Model’.
46. CitationDmitry Furman, ‘A Silent Cold War’, p. 71.
47. Furman, ‘A Silent Cold War’, p. 72.
48. CitationSergei Karaganov, ‘Dangerous Relapses’, p. 76.
49. Klare, Rising Powers, p. 25.
50. For an interesting outline of neoconservative thinking, see CitationCharles Krauthammer, Democratic Realism.
51. CitationDavid S. Fogleson, The American Mission and the Evil Empire, p. 225.
52. See CitationRobert Kagan, ‘The Case for a League of Democracies’. Kagan prefers the term ‘Concert of Democracies’.
53. CitationJack Snyder, From Voting to Violence.
54. Jones, ‘Georgia: The Trauma of Statehood’, p. 508.
55. Jones, ‘Georgia: The Trauma of Statehood’, p. 510, p. 51.
56. International Crisis Group, Abkhazia Today, p. 7.
57. CitationNikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, p. 305.
58. CitationAmy Knight notes: ‘It is one of Soviet history's great ironies that Stalin and Beria, two of its most notorious political villains, were both born and raised in Georgia’ (Beria, p. 11).
59. CitationPhillip Longworth, Russia's Empires, p. ix.
60. Longworth, Russia's Empires, p. ix, p. ix.
61. The new lyrics were composed by Sergei Mikhalkov, who wrote the words for the original Soviet anthem.
62. See CitationArkady Ostrovsky, ‘Flirting With Stalin’.
63. CitationAleksandr Zharnikov, ‘Natsional'noe samoopredelenie v zamysle I ralizatsii’, p. 62.
64. CitationOlga Vornukova, ‘Politika Rossii v konfliktakh na kavkaze’.
65. GUAM was established in Yalta in June 2001. Uzbekistan was a member, but later withdrew.
66. CitationSergei Lavrov, ‘Russia and The World in the 21st Century’.
67. Moscow Times, 15 September 2008.
68. The Guardian, 12 September 2008.
69. See the poll in Vremya novostei, No. 168, 12 September 2008.
70. CitationSamuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
71. This latter scenario is something that CitationSamuel Huntington predicts as a likely scenario, with Mexico even seeking to reclaim lost territories. See his Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity.
72. RIA novosti, 4 February 2009.