From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Wed Aug 27 2008 - 01:26:06 EDT
Don't pick a fight you can't finish, Mr Miliband
When he visits Kiev, the Foreign Secretary should remember the threats
posed by Nato's drive eastwards
Anatol Lieven
Before making his speech on policy towards Russia in Kiev, Ukraine, later
this week David Miliband would do well to ponder some wise advice from a
great predecessor. Lord Salisbury, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister in
the days of the British Empire, dispensed immense global power; but that
did not mean that he liked playing about with that power.
Faced with proposals for British policy that he understood to be deeply
damaging to the interests of other great powers, Salisbury would look his
colleagues in the eye and ask simply: “Are you really prepared to fight?
If not, do not embark on this policy.”
If the events of the past fortnight in Georgia have demonstrated one thing
clearly, it is that Russia will fight if it feels its vital interests under
attack in the former Soviet Union - and that the West will not, and indeed
cannot, given its conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Other Western threats are equally empty. Russia itself pulled out of
co-operation with Nato. If a real threat is made of expulsion from the G8,
Russia will leave that organisation too - especially since a club that does
not include China and India is increasingly meaningless anyway. The threat
of being barred from joining the World Trade Organisation is a bit stronger
- but Russia has done so well economically without membership that this
goal too has lost much of its allure.
Moscow has reminded Nato of the importance of Russian goodwill to secure
the supply lines of the US-Nato operation in Afghanistan through Central
Asia. Alternatively, Nato can become wholly dependent on routes through
Pakistan. From where I am sitting, that does not look like a very good move
- and where I am sitting at this moment is a hotel room in Peshawar,
Pakistan.
By siding fully with Iran, Russia has the capability to wreck any
possibility of compromise between Tehran and the West, and to push the US
towards an attack that would be disastrous for Western interests - and
enormously helpful to Russia's.
However, if only he will take it, Mr Miliband's speech could be a
magnificent opportunity to set British policy towards Russia on a footing
of sober reality - strengthening Western unity and resolve on issues such
as reducing our energy dependence on Russia; but eschewing empty promises
and shelving hopeless goals such as restoring Georgian sovereignty over
South Ossetia and Abkhazia and forcing Russia to change its Constitution to
extradite Andrei Lugovoi, accused of killing the former KGB agent Alexander
Litvinenko.
Russia, for its part, will have to abandon or shelve its own hopeless goals
such as restoring Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo and forcing Britain to
change its laws to extradite Boris Berezovsky and the Chechen leader Ahmed
Zakayev.
Above all, Mr Miliband needs to think hard before committing Britain to
support Nato membership for Georgia and Ukraine. He should look carefully
at the widespread Western belief that Russia “set a trap for Georgia”
in South Ossetia. There was no Russian trap. In recent years Moscow has
made it absolutely, publicly and repeatedly clear that if Georgia attacked
South Ossetia, Russia would fight.
The obvious trap was set by President Saakashvili for the West, and was
based on the belief that if he started a war to recover Georgia's lost
territories, the West would come to his aid. This didn't work as well as Mr
Saakashvili wished, because we have not gone to war for Georgia. On the
other hand, every Western government statement offering future Nato
membership is an implicit promise that we will do so in future if
necessary. How can we make such a promise to a man who tried to involve us
in a war without even asking us first?
On Ukraine, Mr Miliband should study carefully a range of reliable opinion
polls showing that by a margin of about three to one, ordinary Ukrainian
voters are opposed to Nato membership. This is not only because they want
good relations with Russia, but because they fear being dragged into
disastrous American wars in the Muslim world.
Even when it comes to the wider question of alignment with the West rather
than Russia, the Ukrainian majority in favour of the Western line is slim -
about 53 to 47 per cent to judge by the last Ukrainian presidential
election. We should have learnt by now from the ghastly examples of Bosnia
and elsewhere that a narrow numerical majority is simply not enough when
existential national issues are at stake.
In other words, it is Nato's eastward drive, not Russian ambition, that is
the greatest threat to Ukrainian stability and unity. A realistic British
policy towards Ukraine should mean a genuine commitment to help it to
develop economically, socially and politically in ways that will gradually
draw it closer to the West and may one day make European Union membership
possible. Under no circumstances should it mean plunging Ukraine into a
disastrous crisis for the sake of a Nato alliance that cannot and will not
defend it anyway.
Viewing this conflict from Pakistan gives some interesting perspectives.
The first is the absolute insanity of the West's stoking a crisis with
Russia while facing such intractable problems in the Muslim world.
It is also striking that the Pakistani media have been very balanced in
their coverage of the crisis, despite their traditional hostility to
Moscow.
Is this because they have suddenly fallen in love with Russia? Not a bit.
It is because when it comes to international lawlessness, bullying and
aggression, they no longer see a great difference between Russia and
America. The moralising of Western leaders, therefore, no longer cuts much
ice in Peshawar - or anywhere else much outside the West itself.
Anatol Lieven is a professor at King's College London and a former Times
correspondent in the Soviet Union
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