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4 A new dividing line in
Europe By M K Bhadrakumar
Yushchenko, is hedging. "It's a
multi-layered discussion and every layer must be
discussed," he told the Russian media, while
reminding the Kremlin that "it is a sovereign
right of any nation to form its defense and
security policy".
Again, preparations are
under way for the deployment of a powerful US
military radar in the Kazbegi district of Georgia,
close to the Russian border, and another radar
system is to be located in the Georgian-Ossetian
region. Russian reaction to any US
deployments of missile
defense in Ukraine or Georgia has been predictably
very sharp. Lavrov warned on Wednesday, "Deploying
the missile shield to cover the Caucasus, Ukraine
and other countries bordering on Russia
contradicts Russia's approach to security."
Germany has the most to lose if the US
presses ahead with the unfolding strategy to
create a standoff with Russia in central Europe
and the midriff of Eurasia. Berlin cannot be
faulted in perceiving that Washington's strategy
can only shackle Germany once again to a Cold
War-like straitjacket of confrontation with
Russia.
German Foreign Minister
Frank-Walter Steinmeier wrote, using exceptionally
strong language, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Sonnatagszeitung newspaper, "A missile-defense
system should be neither a cause of nor a pretext
for a new arms race ... Are we returning to the
period of the confrontation between blocs and the
accumulation of US and Russian missiles?"
Right across the spectrum of political
opinion, German politicians are questioning the US
strategy of containing Russia. Merkel raised the
issue during her visit to Warsaw last week.
Curiously, in contrast with the muted British
response to the US deployments in central Europe,
France's Chirac too has been forthright, saying,
"We should be very careful about encouraging the
creation of a new dividing line in Europe, or a
return to the order of the past."
But the
Rice-Gates team in Washington doesn't appear to be
deterred by the profound disquiet in Europe over
the US strategy of forestalling any alignment of
Russia to Europe and European structures. Yet
Washington holds several cards with which to
disrupt the development of a pragmatic
relationship between Russia and Europe in the
coming months.
The unresolved Balkans
question The trickiest of these concerns
the future of Kosovo, the breakaway province of
Serbia. Russia's opposition to Kosovo's
independence pits it against the US, NATO and
especially Germany. The heated exchanges at the
United Nations Security Council meeting this week
called to discuss the plan by the special envoy of
the UN secretary general on Kosovo, Martti
Ahtisaari, reveal that the Kosovo issue may be a
minefield in Russia's relations with Europe.
Russia's stance is that it is premature to
determine Kosovo's status without fully taking
into account the opinion of the government in
Belgrade and the various ethnic groups in Kosovo.
Underlying this is the Russian disquiet over the
profound implications of the UN Security Council
endorsing the principle of national
self-determination. Moscow is apprehensive that
the so-called "frozen conflicts" on the
post-Soviet territory might aspire to emulate
Kosovo's example.
Washington insists,
however, that Kosovo's independence is an
imperative if the province is not to erupt into
ethnic conflict and violent secessionism. Richard
Holbrooke, assistant secretary of state in the
Bill Clinton administration, who negotiated the
Dayton Accords, recently warned in apocalyptic
terms: "If Moscow vetoes or delays the Ahtisaari
plan, the Kosovar Albanians will declare
independence unilaterally. Some countries,
including the United States and some Muslim
states, would probably recognize them ...
Bloodshed would return to the Balkans. NATO, which
is pledged to keep peace in Kosovo, could find
itself back in battle in Europe."
To be
sure, Washington is finessing the Kosovo issue as
the single biggest international test for Putin
this year. It has thrown the gauntlet at the
Kremlin. To quote Holbrooke, "If Russia blocks the
Ahtisaari plan, the chaos that follows will be
Moscow's responsibility and will affect other
aspects of Russia's relationship with the West ...
European security and stability - and Russia's
relationship with the West - are on the line."
The resilience of Russia's ties with
Europe, which Putin has assiduously cultivated
during his seven years in power, is being directly
put to test. Washington derives particular
satisfaction that Russia and Germany find
themselves taking different perspectives on the
Kosovo independence issue, and that the issue can
pit Russia against NATO as a whole.
Even
shrewder has been the US attempt to inject
religion into the issue by insinuating that Russia
is blocking the emergence of a Muslim country on
the map of Europe. It is particularly awkward for
Russian interests to be cast in this juncture as
an Orthodox Christian country supporting another
country that is co-religionist and harboring
"anti-Islamic" sentiments. (Serbia is also an
Orthodox Christian country.)
Holbrooke
said, "Moscow's point about protecting 'fraternal'
Slav-Serb feelings is nonsense. Everyone who has
dealt with the Russians in the Balkans, as I did
for several years, knows that their leadership has
no feelings whatsoever for the Serbs." On the
other hand, Russia faces the prospect of being
thrown out lock, stock and barrel from the Balkans
if it proves unable to withstand the US pressure
on the Kosovo-independence issue.
To wrap
up the success story in the Balkans conclusively
and to consolidate it by relating it to the
tentative successes so far in the Caucasus (wooing
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia), the US needs to
develop a comprehensive regional policy toward the
Black Sea region. But there are other complicating
factors.
Among the littoral states of the
Black Sea, Russia and Turkey share a commonality
of interests in keeping foreign powers out of the
region - an outlook that has "anti-American"
implications. Furthermore, the US has to contend
with its roller-coaster relationship with Turkey
during the past four years since the Iraq invasion
in March 2003.
Moscow anticipates that it
is only a matter of time before Washington begins
to work on the complex interplay of Russian and
Turkish interests (a backlog of history) by
projecting Turkey as a regional hub for the
movement of oil and gas from the Middle East and
Central Asia to Europe. Thus the US has backed
several pipeline projects bypassing Russian
territory, which would envisage Turkey as the
conduit for energy supplies transported from east
to west.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC)
pipeline is the most celebrated case. Two other
projects on the table are the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum
(BTE) gas pipeline, which will run parallel to the
BTC, and the Nabucco pipeline that will connect
Caspian/Central Asian/Iranian gas via the Turkish
gas network to Europe through Romania, Hungary and
Austria.
Simultaneously, with US
encouragement, Turkey has been progressively
tightening the screws on Russian tanker traffic
through the straits of Bosporus and Dardanelles on
the pretext of
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