A Second Cold War with Russia? Not Likely

By Noam Chomsky, CounterPunch. Posted September 15, 2008.

It's in America's best interests to regard Russia a resurgent power
and not apply a strategy of confrontation against it.

Aghast at the atrocities committed by US forces invading the
Philippines, and the rhetorical flights about liberation and noble
intent that routinely accompany crimes of state, Mark Twain threw up
his hands at his inability to wield his formidable weapon of satire.
The immediate object of his frustration was the renowned General
Funston. "No satire of Funston could reach perfection," Twain
lamented, "because Funston occupies that summit himself Â… [he is]
satire incarnated."

It is a thought that often comes to mind, again in August 2008 during
the Georgia-Ossetia-Russia war. George Bush, Condoleezza Rica and
other dignitaries solemnly invoked the sanctity of the United Nations,
warning that Russia could be excluded from international institutions
"by taking actions in Georgia that are inconsistent with" their
principles. The sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations
must be rigorously honored, they intoned -- "all nations," that is,
apart from those that the US chooses to attack: Iraq, Serbia, perhaps
Iran, and a list of others too long and familiar to mention.

The junior partner joined in as well. British foreign secretary David
Miliband accused Russia of engaging in "19th century forms of
diplomacy" by invading a sovereign state, something Britain would
never contemplate today. That "is simply not the way that
international relations can be run in the 21st century," he added,
echoing the decider-in-chief, who said that invasion of "a sovereign
neighboring state Â… is unacceptable in the 21st century." Mexico and
Canada therefore need not fear further invasions and annexation of
much of their territory, because the US now only invades states that
are not on its borders, though no such constraint holds for its
clients, as Lebanon learned once again in 2006.

"The moral of this story is even more enlightening," Serge Halimi
writes in Le Monde Diplomatique and CounterPunch newsletter, "when, to
defend his country's borders, the charming pro-American Saakashvili
repatriates some of the 2,000 soldiers he had sent to invade Iraq,"
one of the largest contingents apart from the two warrior states.

Prominent analysts joined the chorus. Fareed Zakaria applauded Bush's
observation that Russia's behavior is unacceptable today, unlike the
19th century, "when the Russian intervention would have been standard
operating procedure for a great power." We therefore must devise a
strategy for bringing Russia "in line with the civilized world," where
intervention is unthinkable.

There were, to be sure, some who shared Mark Twain's despair. One
distinguished example is Chris Patten, former EU commissioner for
external relations, chairman of the British Conservative Party,
chancellor of Oxford University and a member of the House of Lords. He
wrote that the Western reaction "is enough to make even the cynical
shake their heads in disbelief" -- referring to Europe's failure to
respond vigorously to the effrontery of Russian leaders, who, "like
19th-century tsars, want a sphere of influence around their borders."

Patten rightly distinguishes Russia from the global superpower, which
long ago passed the point where it demanded a sphere of influence
around its borders, and demands a sphere of influence over the entire
world. It also acts vigorously to enforce that demand, in accord with
the Clinton doctrine that Washington has the right to use military
force to defend vital interests such as "ensuring uninhibited access
to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources" -- and in the
real world, far more.

Clinton was breaking no new ground, of course. His doctrine derives
from standard principles formulated by high-level planners during
World War II, which offered the prospect of global dominance. In the
postwar world, they determined, the US should aim "to hold
unquestioned power" while ensuring the "limitation of any exercise of
sovereignty" by states that might interfere with its global designs.
To secure these ends, "the foremost requirement [is] the rapid
fulfillment of a program of complete rearmament," a core element of
"an integrated policy to achieve military and economic supremacy for
the United States." The plans laid during the war were implemented in
various ways in the years that followed.

The goals are deeply rooted in stable institutional structures. Hence
they persist through changes in occupancy of the White House, and are
untroubled by the opportunity for "peace dividends," the disappearance
of the major rival from the world scene, or other marginal
irrelevancies. Devising new challenges is never beyond the reach of
doctrinal managers, as when Ronald Reagan pulled on his cowboy boots
and declared a national emergency because the Nicaraguan army was only
two days from Harlingen Texas, and might lead the hordes who are about
to "sweep over the United States and take what we have," as Lyndon
Johnson lamented when he called for holding the line in Vietnam. Most
ominously, those holding the reins may actually believe their own
words.

Returning to the efforts to elevate Russia to the civilized world, the
seven charter members of the Group of Eight industrialized countries
issued a statement "condemning the action of our fellow G8 member,"
Russia, which has yet to comprehend the Anglo-American commitment to
non-intervention. The European Union held a rare emergency meeting to
condemn Russia's crime, its first meeting since the invasion of Iraq,
which elicited no condemnation.

Russia called for an emergency session of the Security Council, but no
consensus was reached because, according to Council diplomats, the US,
Britain, and some others rejected a phrase that called on both sides
"to renounce the use of force."

The typical reactions recall Orwell's observations on the
"indifference to reality" of the "nationalist," who "not only does not
disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but Â… has a
remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

The basic facts are not seriously in dispute. South Ossetia, along
with the much more significant region of Abkhazia, were assigned by
Stalin to his native Georgia. Western leaders sternly admonish that
Stalin's directives must be respected, despite the strong opposition
of Ossetians and Abkhazians. The provinces enjoyed relative autonomy
until the collapse of the USSR. In 1990, Georgia's ultranationalist
president Zviad Gamsakhurdia abolished autonomous regions and invaded
South Ossetia. The bitter war that followed left 1,000 dead and tens
of thousands of refugees, with the capital city of Tskhinvali
"battered and depopulated" (New York Times).

A small Russian force then supervised an uneasy truce, broken
decisively on August 7, 2008, when Georgian president Saakashvili's
ordered his forces to invade. According to "an extensive set of
witnesses," the Times reports, Georgia's military at once "began
pounding civilian sections of the city of Tskhinvali, as well as a
Russian peacekeeping base there, with heavy barrages of rocket and
artillery fire." The predictable Russian response drove Georgian
forces out of South Ossetia, and Russia went on to conquer parts of
Georgia, then partially withdrawing to the vicinity of South Ossetia.
There were many casualties and atrocities. As is normal, the innocent
suffered severely.

Russia reported at first that ten Russian peacekeepers were killed by
Georgian shelling. The West took little notice. That too is normal.
There was, for example, no reaction when Aviation Week reported that
200 Russians were killed in an Israeli air raid in Lebanon in 1982
during a US-backed invasion that left some 15-20,000 dead, with no
credible pretext beyond strengthening Israeli control over the
occupied West Bank.

Among Ossetians who fled north, the "prevailing view," according to
the London Financial Times, "is that Georgia's pro-western leader,
Mikheil Saakashvili, tried to wipe out their breakaway enclave."
Ossetian militias, under Russian eyes, then brutally drove out
Georgians, in areas beyond Ossetia as well. "Georgia said its attack
had been necessary to stop a Russian attack that already had been
under way," the New York Times reports, but weeks later "there has
been no independent evidence, beyond Georgia's insistence that its
version is true, that Russian forces were attacking before the
Georgian barrages."

In Russia, the Wall Street Journal reports, "legislators, officials
and local analysts have embraced the theory that the Bush
administration encouraged Georgia, its ally, to start the war in order
to precipitate an international crisis that would play up the
national-security experience of Sen. John McCain, the Republican
presidential candidate." In contrast, French author Bernard-Henri
Levy, writing in the New Republic, proclaims that "no one can ignore
the fact that President Saakashvili only decided to act when he no
longer had a choice, and war had already come. In spite of this
accumulation of facts that should have been blindingly obvious to all
scrupulous, good-faith observers, many in the media rushed as one man
toward the thesis of the Georgians as instigators, as irresponsible
provocateurs of the war."

The Russian propaganda system made the mistake of presenting evidence,
which was easily refuted. Its Western counterparts, more wisely, keep
to authoritative pronouncements, like Levy's denunciation of the major
Western media for ignoring what is "blindingly obvious to all
scrupulous, good-faith observers" for whom loyalty to the state
suffices to establish The Truth -- which, perhaps, is even true,
serious analysts might conclude.

The Russians are losing the "propaganda war," BBC reported, as
Washington and its allies have succeeded in "presenting the Russian
actions as aggression and playing down the Georgian attack into South
Ossetia on August 7, which triggered the Russian operation," though
"the evidence from South Ossetia about that attack indicates that it
was extensive and damaging." Russia has "not yet learned how to play
the media game," the BBC observes. That is natural. Propaganda has
typically become more sophisticated as countries become more free and
the state loses the ability to control the population by force.

The Russian failure to provide credible evidence was partially
overcome by the Financial Times, which discovered that the Pentagon
had provided combat training to Georgian special forces commandos
shortly before the Georgian attack on August 7, revelations that
"could add fuel to accusations by Vladimir Putin, Russian prime
minister, last month that the US had 'orchestrated' the war in the
Georgian enclave." The training was in part carried out by former US
special forces recruited by private military contractors, including
MPRI, which, as the journal notes, "was hired by the Pentagon in 1995
to train the Croatian military prior to their invasion of the
ethnically-Serbian Krajina region, which led to the displacement of
200,000 refugees and was one of the worst incidents of ethnic
cleansing in the Balkan wars." The US-backed Krajina expulsion
(generally estimated at 250,000, with many killed) was possibly the
worst case of ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II. Its fate
in approved history is rather like that of photographs of Trotsky in
Stalinist Russia, for simple and sufficient reasons: it does not
accord with the required image of US nobility confronting Serbian
evil.

The toll of the August 2008 Caucasus war is subject to varying
estimates. A month afterwards, the Financial Times cited Russian
reports that "at least 133 civilians died in the attack, as well as 59
of its own peacekeepers," while in the ensuing Russian mass invasion
and aerial bombardment of Georgia, according to the FT, 215 Georgians
died, including 146 soldiers and 69 civilians. Further revelations are
likely to follow.

In the background lie two crucial issues. One is control over
pipelines to Azerbaijan and Central Asia. Georgia was chosen as a
corridor by Clinton to bypass Russia and Iran, and was also heavily
militarized for the purpose. Hence Georgia is "a very major and
strategic asset to us," Zbigniew Brzezinski observes.

It is noteworthy that analysts are becoming less reticent in
explaining real US motives in the region as pretexts of dire threats
and liberation fade and it becomes more difficult to deflect Iraqi
demands for withdrawal of the occupying army. Thus the editors of the
Washington Post admonished Barack Obama for regarding Afghanistan as
"the central front" for the United States, reminding him that Iraq
"lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some
of the world's largest oil reserves," and Afghanistan's "strategic
importance pales beside that of Iraq." A welcome, if belated,
recognition of reality about the US invasion.

The second issue is expansion of NATO to the East, described by George
Kennan in 1997 as "the most fateful error of American policy in the
entire post-cold-war era, [which] may be expected to inflame the
nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian
opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian
democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West
relations."

As the USSR collapsed, Mikhail Gorbachev made a concession that was
astonishing in the light of recent history and strategic realities: he
agreed to allow a united Germany to join a hostile military alliance.
This "stunning concession" was hailed by Western media, NATO, and
President Bush I, who called it a demonstration of "statesmanship Â… in
the best interests of all countries of Europe, including the Soviet
Union."

Gorbachev agreed to the stunning concession on the basis of
"assurances that NATO would not extend its jurisdiction to the east,
'not one inch' in [Secretary of State] Jim Baker's exact words." This
reminder by Jack Matlock, the leading Soviet expert of the Foreign
Service and US ambassador to Russia in the crucial years 1987 to 1991,
is confirmed by Strobe Talbott, the highest official in charge of
Eastern Europe in the Clinton administration. On the basis of a full
review of the diplomatic record, Talbott reports that "Secretary of
State Baker did say to then Soviet foreign minister Eduard
Shevardnadze, in the context of the Soviet Union's reluctant
willingness to let a unified Germany remain part of NATO, that NATO
would not move to the east."

Clinton quickly reneged on that commitment, also dismissing
Gorbachev's effort to end the Cold War with cooperation among
partners. NATO also rejected a Russian proposal for a
nuclear-weapons-free-zone from the Arctic to the Black Sea, which
would have "interfered with plans to extend NATO," strategic analyst
and former NATO planner Michael MccGwire observes.

Rejecting these possibilities, the US took a triumphalist stand that
threatened Russian security and also played a major role in driving
Russia to severe economic and social collapse, with millions of
deaths. The process was sharply escalated by Bush's further expansion
of NATO, dismantling of crucial disarmament agreements, and aggressive
militarism. Matlock writes that Russia might have tolerated
incorporation of former Russian satellites into NATO if it "had not
bombed Serbia and continued expanding. But, in the final analysis, ABM
missiles in Poland, and the drive for Georgia and Ukraine in NATO
crossed absolute red lines. The insistence on recognizing Kosovo
independence was sort of the very last straw. Putin had learned that
concessions to the U.S. were not reciprocated, but used to promote
U.S. dominance in the world.Once he had the strength to resist, he did
so," in Georgia.

Clinton officials argue that expansion of NATO posed no military
threat, and was no more than a benign move to allow former Russian
satellites to join the EU (Talbott). That is hardly persuasive.
Austria, Sweden and Finland are in the EU but not NATO. If the Warsaw
Pact had survived and was incorporating Latin American countries --
let alone Canada and Mexico -- the US would not easily be persuaded
that the Pact is just a Quaker meeting. There should be no need to
review the record of US violence to block mostly fanciful ties to
Moscow in "our little region over here," the Western hemisphere, to
quote Secretary of War Henry Stimson when he explained that all
regional systems must be dismantled after World II, apart from our
own, which are to be extended.

To underscore the conclusion, in the midst of the current crisis in
the Caucasus, Washington professes concern that Russia might resume
military and intelligence cooperation with Cuba at a level not
remotely approaching US-Georgia relations, and not a further step
towards a significant security threat.

Missile defense too is presented here as benign, though leading US
strategic analysts have explained why Russian planners must regard the
systems and their chosen location as the basis for a potential threat
to the Russian deterrent, hence in effect a first-strike weapon. The
Russian invasion of Georgia was used as a pretext to conclude the
agreement to place these systems in Poland, thus "bolstering an
argument made repeatedly by Moscow and rejected by Washington: that
the true target of the system is Russia," AP commentator Desmond
Butler observed.

Matlock is not alone in regarding Kosovo as an important factor.
"Recognition of South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's independence was
justified on the principle of a mistreated minority's right to
secession -- the principle Bush had established for Kosovo," the
Boston Globe editors comment.

But there are crucial differences. Strobe Talbott recognizes that
"there's a degree of payback for what the U.S. and NATO did in Kosovo
nine years ago," but insists that the "analogy is utterly and
profoundly false." No one is a better position to know why it is
profoundly false, and he has lucidly explained the reasons, in his
preface to a book on NATO's bombing of Serbia by his associate John
Norris. Talbott writes that those who want to know "how events looked
and felt at the time to those of us who were involved" in the war
should turn to Norris's well-informed account. Norris concludes that
"it was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and
economic reform -- not the plight of Kosovar Albanians -- that best
explains NATO's war."

That the motive for the NATO bombing could not have been "the plight
of Kosovar Albanians" was already clear from the rich Western
documentary record revealing that the atrocities were, overwhelmingly,
the anticipated consequence of the bombing, not its cause. But even
before the record was released, it should have been evident to all but
the most fervent loyalists that humanitarian concern could hardly have
motivated the US and Britain, which at the same time were lending
decisive support to atrocities well beyond what was reported from
Kosovo, with a background far more horrendous than anything that had
happened in the Balkans. But these are mere facts, hence of no moment
to Orwell's "nationalists" -- in this case, most of the Western
intellectual community, who had made an enormous investment in
self-aggrandizement and prevarication about the "noble phase" of US
foreign policy and its "saintly glow" as the millennium approached its
end, with the bombing of Serbia as the jewel in the crown.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to hear from the highest level that
the real reason for the bombing was that Serbia was a lone holdout in
Europe to the political and economic programs of the Clinton
administration and its allies, though it will be a long time before
such annoyances are allowed to enter the canon.

There are of course other differences between Kosovo and the regions
of Georgia that call for independence or union with Russia. Thus
Russia is not known to have a huge military base there named after a
hero of the invasion of Afghanistan, comparable to Camp Bondsteel in
Kosovo, named after a Vietnam war hero and presumably part of the vast
US basing system aimed at the Middle East energy-producing regions.
And there are many other differences.

There is much talk about a "new cold war" instigated by brutal Russian
behavior in Georgia. One cannot fail to be alarmed by signs of
confrontation, among them new US naval contingents in the Black Sea --
the counterpart would hardly be tolerated in the Caribbean. Efforts to
expand NATO to Ukraine, now contemplated, could become extremely
hazardous.

Nonetheless, a new cold war seems unlikely. To evaluate the prospect,
we should begin with clarity about the old cold war. Fevered rhetoric
aside, in practice the cold war was a tacit compact in which each of
the contestants was largely free to resort to violence and subversion
to control its own domains: for Russia, its Eastern neighbors; for the
global superpower, most of the world. Human society need not endure --
and might not survive -- a resurrection of anything like that.

A sensible alternative is the Gorbachev vision rejected by Clinton and
undermined by Bush. Sane advice along these lines has recently been
given by former Israeli Foreign Minister and historian Shlomo ben-Ami,
writing in the Beirut Daily Star: "Russia must seek genuine strategic
partnership with the US, and the latter must understand that, when
excluded and despised, Russia can be a major global spoiler. Ignored
and humiliated by the US since the Cold War ended, Russia needs
integration into a new global order that respects its interests as a
resurgent power, not an anti-Western strategy of confrontation."

Noam Chomsky's most recent book is Failed States: the Abuse of Power
and the Assault on Democracy.