Balkan Lessons for Caucasus
Why the Caucasus is not the Balkans? Both are mountains. Both have unrecognized states. There are three in the Caucasus: Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Karabakh. The first two are very similar to Kosovo: in early 1990s, the first post-Soviet presidents of Serbia and Georgia played with the nationalities map and abolished the autonomous status of these territories. Then followed war, expulsion of a part of residents, and carve-up of property by the ‘title nation’. Ethnic mythology seems to be carbon-copied, just replace ‘Serbs’ with ‘Georgians’, and ‘Albanians’ with ‘Ossetians’.
The world is not quite ready yet to acknowledge Kosovo’s independence. However, it is unlikely someone admits that Serbian three-colored flag would flutter over Pristina. It is also unlikely that Georgian flag would be raised over Sukhumi and Tskhinvali: the local population would prefer the same Serbian three-color, but turned upside down, -- the flag of Russia. In this situation, what is the price of the question for us?
To estimate it, we should look at the situations’ dissimilarity. Belgrade quarreled with Pristina, and then kept it under its control for almost a decade, which included both the ethnic purges of Albanians and the murders of Serbian servicemen and policemen. Milosevic was smoked out of Kosovo by bombings. The West is not a mediator, but a direct participant of the Kosovo conflict. And Belgrade for the West is a ‘bad guy’. Meanwhile, the ‘Georgian guy’ has never been too bad for the West, neither when the country was ruled by Gorbachev’s minister of foreign affairs, nor when the current hero of the ‘revolution of roses’ came to power. Russia was always rather a third party that separated those fighting.
Can Russia make the world perceive Abkhazia in the same way as Kosovo? No, because there is one more difference. Present-day Serbia left Milosevic far behind: it is trying to jump into the train of European integration, in which all its neighbors are already sitting. Thus, let it be with reluctance, but Serbia might agree to Kosovo’s separation, just like it has already voluntarily agreed to divorce with Montenegro. On the contrary, agreeing to the separation of autonomous territories is a political suicide for any Georgian leader.
First lesson for Russia: one can sleep with another man’s wife, but one cannot marry her until the husband agrees to divorce her, and Tbilisi will not agree to divorce.
Second lesson: Russia should help Serbia in the struggle for Kosovo’s status, but it should not encourage it to stonewall mediators’ efforts. Serbian policy’s falling into nationalism and quarrelling with Europe is a headache for Russia: the latter will again have to pull chestnuts out of fire for the outcasts who will let it down at the earliest opportunity, just like Milosevic was doing it.
Third lesson: it is necessary to understand that Russia’s long-term interest in the Caucasus does not lie in the status of former Georgian autonomies. Russia needs to keep the autonomies protected from adventurism and power politics, its peace-keeping mission – legitimate and safe from provocations, and its relations with Georgia – in the state of peace, even if cold peace. Any departure from these parameters will embroil Russia either with the West, or with Georgia, or, rather, with both, and without any benefits for Russia.
Boris Makarenko, first deputy director of the Political Technologies Center
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 12, 2007
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