West reeling and Russia walking tall..

The Kremlin's decision today to call a halt to its five-day assault on Georgia leaves Russia calling the shots in the energy-rich Black Sea littoral and Caspian basin.

The quick and easy victory exposes the west's lack of leverage over a resurgent Russia despite years of heavy American political investment in Georgia.

In the tussle for supremacy in a vital strategic region, the balance has tilted. Russia has successfully deployed its firepower in another country with impunity for the first time since communism's collapse.

"This is not the Russia of 93 or 94, a terribly weakened Russia," said a European official. "The Russians are now negotiating from a position of strength."

The impact of Mikheil Saakashvili's rash gamble storming South Ossetia last week and of Vladimir Putin's comprehensive rout of the Georgians will ripple in many directions.

In less than a week, Putin has redrawn the geopolitical map of the contested region between Russia, Turkey, and Iran.

"We don't look very good," said a former Pentagon official long involved in Georgia. "We've been working on [Georgia] for four years and we've failed. Everyone's guilty. But Putin is playing his cards brilliantly. He knows exactly what he's doing and the consequences are all negative."

While Russia walks tall, Saakashvili will struggle to survive as one of the world's youngest presidents. The Europeans are already divided and vulnerable to charges of indecision and impotence. Nato splits over Georgia and Ukraine will widen. American policies in the region have been severely set back. Western energy policy is looking flaky.

"This was a proxy war, not about South Ossetia, but about Moscow drawing a red line for the west," said Alexander Rahr, Russia expert at Germany's Council on Foreign Relations and a biographer of Putin. "They marched into Georgia to challenge the west. And the west was powerless. We're dealing with a new Russia."

Ceasefire

Following President Dmitri Medvedev's call for a halt today, the first priority is a proper ceasefire. That has to be agreed, then implemented, then monitored, all very tricky with ample scope for further confusion, breakdown and bloodshed.

Moscow is dictating the terms. According to European officials briefed on today's talks in Moscow with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, the Russians are insisting on an end to 15 years of Georgian troops being part of the peacekeeping contingent in breakaway South Ossetia and are demanding that Saakashvili sign a legally binding pledge abjuring the use of all armed force in relation to the two pro-Russian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

In recent months, Saakashvili has repeatedly refused to sign such a commitment. "Russia seems to have all the cards," said another European official. "Russian soldiers have been in South Ossetia and Abkhazia for 15 years. The outcome of the negotiations will probably be the entrenchment of the Russian presence in both of the enclaves."

Such an outcome leaves the 40-year-old Georgian president wounded, perhaps fatally. Moscow has already launched a concerted propaganda offensive painting the Georgian leader as a war criminal and using analogies from the Balkan wars to accuse him of "genocide". The Russians will control South Ossetia and send in military prosecutors to find evidence of atrocities. Moscow wants rid of him. Character assassination and secret service shenanigans will increase doubts about Saakashvili at home and abroad in the Russian hope that Saakashvili's own electorate will turn against him, although there is no obvious successor.

Saakashvili has enjoyed strong American support. "He has to be protected at all costs," said the former Pentagon official. But many European governments are lukewarm about him, regarding Saakashvili as "his own worst enemy" and are hoping that Barack Obama will distance himself from the Georgian president.

The price of victory

If the Kremlin is celebrating an apparent win-win situation, much of the world has been appalled at Russia's invasion of a small defenceless neighbour. How will the west respond?

Obama has talked of blocking Russia's ambition to join the World Trade Organisation. There have been calls to throw Russia out of the G8. Some of the former Soviet satellites in eastern Europe now in the EU are calling on Brussels to freeze negotiations with Moscow on a new long-term partnership pact.

But with a surfeit of petro-dollars in the bank and its fingers on the energy valves that keep Europe warm, the Kremlin appears blithely contemptuous of any potential western retribution. Relations between Russia and the west are already poor and will worsen further, but there are unlikely to be any concrete penalties.

"What can have an impact on the Russians without damaging us more than them," asked one of the European officials.

Full article -
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008