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What Rule Does the Exception Prove?
// The price of the question
The dramatic increase of diplomatic activity in the Moscow-Chisinau-Tiraspol triangle is meant to show that Russia is seriously concerned about a Transdniestrian settlement and has decided to move that cause out of its dead end. But the point of Moscow's actions are not only that, and not even mainly that.
Russia had plenty of opportunity to take up a Transdniestrian settlement earlier. Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin has noticeably moderated his position toward Moscow lately and sent repeated signals of his readiness to normalize relations and solve the Transdniestria problem in the process. The clearest signal was the note with a plan for normalizing relations that, according to various sources, Voronin gave Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Kremlin Cup horseraces in July.
But Voronin received no reaction from the Kremlin then, or during his visit to Moscow in August. In September, he practically supported the referendum on independence in Transdniestria. And now, less than a month later, a sudden burst of activity.
The Kremlin did not hose this moment for action on the Transdniestrian front by chance. It is taking place at the height of tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi for the last several years. Tbilisi is using the standoff to accuse Moscow (among other things) of not wanting to not being able to settle the Abkhazian and South Ossetian conflicts.
Those accusations are unpleasant for Moscow and could have unpleasant consequences. If the West agrees with Georgia, the issue of including Europe and the United States in the settlement of the conflicts is unavoidable, and that threatens Russian with the hated prospect of being squeezed out of the process altogether. Moscow will avoid that at any cost.
That cost would be very high indeed if Russia decided on an open confrontation with the West. Therefore, that is not an attractive option for the Kremlin.
Much more attractive and much cheaper is a demonstration for the world of Russia's readiness to solve conflicts in the former Soviet Union. In Abkhazia and South Ossetia, those conflicts are not unsettled because of the Kremlin's stubbornness, but because of Georgia's poor behavior. Where a country's leadership does not argue with Moscow or call its policies “fascist,” the conflict can be resolved to the satisfaction of both sides. Take Moldova, for instance. And if the game plays out successfully for Moscow, it will have a solid argument in the West in favor of its peacekeeping efforts in the former Soviet Union.
There is, of course, one “but.” By solving the Transdniestrian problem so well on schedule, Moscow risks confirming one of the main contentions of its opponents, that is, that the conflicts in the CIS are not unsettled because the conditions are wrong, but because Moscow doesn't want them settled.
Gennady Sysoev
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 11, 2006
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