Wall Street Journal - 12.02.2003

 

 

 

 

The Wall Street Journal

GLOBAL VIEW
By GEORGE MELLOAN

Putin Is Not Amused By the Coup in Georgia

Emissaries from Washington will arrive in Tbilisi this week to a warm welcome. The U.S. policy of spreading democracy played an important role in toppling Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze 10 days ago. American, IMF and World Bank officials are on their way with aid offers for the new regime. No one is burning American flags.

President Vladimir Putin, up in Moscow, would probably do so if it weren't unseemly. Not at all pleased about America's intrusion into a former Soviet republic, he already is taking measures to harass the 35-year-old U.S.-educated lawyer, Mikhail Saakashvili, who will likely be elected Georgia's new president January 4.

Clearly, the former Cold War adversaries, although nominally at peace, still have points of friction. Russians, by and large, never really accepted the collapse of empire. They acknowledge that taking over Poland and Hungary was a bit of a stretch. But most never accepted the independence of former members of the Soviet "union," as the Communists chose to call it. Russians now have voting power, and Mr. Putin, a politician of some skill, has been trying to assuage the sense of loss by trying to piece the empire back together

It's tough going. Most of empire's subjects were unwilling ones. Ukrainians, for example, voted overwhelmingly for independence when Boris Yeltsin left the door open for their escape. The folks down in the Caucasus, in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan -- and let's not forget Chechnya, inside Russia -- have well-founded distrust and dislike for Moscow central and a strong streak of independence.

The U.S. has kept hands off Chechnya, by and large, with the result that when Mr. Putin calls the Chechens terrorists and allies of al Qaeda he doesn't get any argument from George W. Bush. But the sovereign states in the Caucasus region are a different matter. Western oil companies have plans for developing the oil riches of Azerbaijan and piping the oil across Georgia to Turkey. That bypasses Russia, which still has a nasty habit of using the control of oil and gas to extract political concessions. The U.S. having entered the former Soviet space for economic reasons (not to mention for military bases in Central Asia) it was perhaps inevitable that it would encroach politically as well.

Mr. Putin knows that the U.S. has a big advantage. He may have proximity and irredentist claims -- and not a few Russian colonizers in places like Kazakhstan. But he also has the harsh Soviet imperial legacy to live down. America, on the other hand, proffers to these former captives help in establishing democracy and freedom.

That's what the popular Mr. Saakashvili is selling in Georgia. He promises honest elections, unlike the rigged parliamentary vote last month that raised the howl of protest that brought down Mr. Shevardnadze. He will try to reduce rampant corruption. Mr. Shevardnadze attempted to play off the Russians and Americans against each other to protect his power. Mr. Saakashvili, although once a Shevy protege, seems to be firmly in the American camp.  Mr. Shevardnadze, 40 years senior, maneuvered his way up through the communist system to become foreign minister and a member of the politburo, so nothing in his experience prepared him for democratic rule. Mr. Saakashvili, who studied civil rights law at George Washington University in Washington, has said, "I was raised on American democracy."

It must be said on Mr. Shevardnadze's behalf that he did not try to operate a Soviet-style police state, despite the adversities he faced. These included a Russian-inspired civil war, in which the Abkhazia region split off from Georgia, and a number of attempts to assassinate him. Russia cut off Georgia from markets, which contributed to its descent into poverty. Despite all this, Georgia developed a relatively free press and was fertile ground for the Western groups that came in to promote a civil society capable of self-government.

Among them was the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) set up in the U.S. 20 years ago to promote democratic processes abroad. Funded by Congress, its main instruments are two institutions representing the Democratic and Republican parties. The Democratic wing, known as the National Democratic Institute, helped introduce Mr. Saakashvili to the methods insurgents in Serbia used to depose dictator Slobodan Milosevic. The U.S. ambassador in Tbilisi, Richard Miles, also encouraged the political opposition, or so Mr. Shevardnadze claims. Nino Burdzhanadze, interim president since the coup, says that Mr. Bush assured her in a telephone conversation that if there is a genuine threat to her government, "internal or external," the U.S. would give prompt assistance.

It should be mentioned that Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, reportedly after conferring with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, brokered the negotiations that led to the Georgian president's surrender of power. But Mr. Ivanov no doubt was playing catch-up when it became evident that the situation was slipping out of Russian control. Mr. Putin has no love for Mr. Shevardnadze, so he was expendable.

Even without posing an overt threat, Russia has the power to make trouble for whatever new regime emerges after the election. Until the new pipeline is built, Russia will remain the principal supplier of natural gas to Georgia. A Russian utility headed by the powerful Anatoly Chubais owns the Georgian electric power system. Russia has threatened to grant open visas to the people of two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in effect making them Russian citizens.

Another Russian puppet, Aslan Abishidze, is dictator of yet another small Georgian region, Ajaria, on the Black Sea. He and representatives of Abkhazia and South Ossetia recently met with Mr. Putin in Moscow, one might think to plot ways to make things tough for Mr. Saakashvili. Russia already has reneged on a promise by Boris Yeltsin to close down four military bases in Georgia by July 1, 2001. It only closed two and is now talking of holding the other two for 10 years, because of the "Chechen threat."

Probably the U.S.-Russian sparring in the Caucasus will remain low-key. But the fact remains that Russia and the U.S. will never become truly compatible until Mr. Putin gives up his imperial ambitions or America gives up its campaign to promote freedom and democracy. Neither seems imminent.

George Melloan is the Journal's Deputy Editor, International. He began writing "Global View" in 1990, when he took over responsibilities for the overseas pages after 17 years as deputy editor in New York. During the first five years of his present assignment he was based in Brussels, traveling extensively from there to write about such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the Soviet empire and the collapse of the Japan's stock market and real estate bubble. He returned to New York in 1994.

Mr. Melloan invites comments to george.melloan@wsj.com