*Moscow exploits fissures within an over-extended Alliance
*Russia promotes cultural and ethnic divisions within Ukraine
*Erdogan travels to Azerbaijan to regain Baku's confidence
Moscow Playing Hard-Ball in its Quasi-Partnership with NATO
Afghanistan certainly constitutes the main jaws of this trap, but Moscow -after orchestrating the closure of the U.S. airbase at Manas, Kyrgyzstan- has refrained from any actions that could further complicate NATO's under-strength operations. While U.S. President Barack Obama is pressing European allies for greater contributions, he is -as well as they are- perfectly aware that the sustainability of their collective effort is increasingly dependent upon Moscow's good-will, since more supplies have to be delivered through the northern routes. That sets the second part of NATO's trap: the Alliance needs constructive relations with Russia, while Moscow finds perfectly good reasons for exploiting tensions. Thus the "spy scandal" involving two Russian diplomats being expelled from Brussels after an intelligence operation had been exposed in Estonia was escalated beyond the usual "reciprocity" as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cancelled his participation in the planned "revival-of-partnership" session of the NATO-Russia Council (RIA-Novosti, May 5).
Georgia constitutes the last element of the trap, as NATO cannot withdraw its commitment to help the country in preparing for future membership and in repairing the war-inflicted damage, while attempting to avoid the bitter conflict between Saakashvili and the opposition. The Alliance also struggles to minimize the negative fallout in its relations with Russia (Kommersant, April 23). President Dmitry Medvedev did not mince words calling the NATO exercises a "blatant provocation," and Russia -much like in July 2008- staged its own exercises, but its main response had an unexpectedly asymmetric character.
At a special ceremony in the Kremlin, Medvedev signed agreements with the leaders of Abkhzia and South Ossetia on "delegating" to Russia the responsibility for protecting their borders (Vremya Novostei, May 5). Protestations from the U.S. and NATO were firmly dismissed, and Russian border troops swiftly moved to establish checkpoints and set up permanent quarters. This step directly violates what remains of Georgia's territorial integrity, but in fact Moscow had very little choice. There are no legal grounds for re-establishing Russian peace-keeping operations, but leaving border control in the hands of the Abkhazian and South Ossetian para-militaries would have been a recipe for endless incidents, which only a handful of poorly trained EU monitors were unable to prevent. Now the risk of cross-border raids and shootouts are practically eliminated, which is in everyone's interests, but NATO still feels obliged to sympathize with Georgian lamentations about "occupation."
Medvedev knows that every anti-NATO invective scores him a point in public opinion since there is a strong majority - 62 percent (up from 58 percent last October) according to a recent Levada Center poll - which believes that the Alliance constitutes a source of threat to Russia (www.levada.ru, April 1). There are, nevertheless, serious drawbacks in picking a quarrel with NATO over Georgia, and one of them is the rekindled instability in the North Caucasus. The much-trumpeted ending of the "counter-terrorist operation" in Chechnya has not signified its real pacification. In several districts the same conditions are now being reactivated; Moscow's ability to control Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's maverick president, has distinctly diminished (Vremya Novostei, April 29). The under-reported spread of Islamic radicalism in Dagestan may be even more dangerous, and the looming deficit in the state budget denies the federal center the opportunity to buy the loyalty of the local elites (Novaya Gazeta, April 24). Regional authorities all over the vast country feel a squeeze on their budgets, and in the North Caucasus questions about the priority financing of South Ossetia will inevitably be raised (www.gazeta.ru, May 5).
Another serious drawback, that Medvedev is trying to ignore but should be very worried about, is the brewing discontent within the armed forces that are subjected to long-postponed but unduly rushed reforms. Massive funding was promised for easing the pain from the draconian cuts within the officer corps, and now these promises are being quietly withdrawn, forcing the resignation of Lybov Kudelina, deputy defense minister in charge of financing (Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, April 24; Ezhednevny Zhurnal, May 5). Escalating tensions with NATO provides an unhelpful background for these reforms, as the discontent among the top brass blends with the artificially hyped "threat perceptions" and the resulting "patriotic mobilization" could generate far more powerful outbursts than an alleged coup d'etat in Tbilisi.
The principled non-cooperative attitude towards NATO has been a key element of Putin's assertive "take-that" foreign policy, launched with the famous "Munich speech" in February 2007. This policy is still very popular as it deliberately plays on the peculiar mix of superiority and inferiority complexes within an often contradictory Russian public opinion. Consequently, Medvedev dares not to step away from the "down-with-NATO" line. The downward spiraling economic crisis, however, inevitably destroys the foundation of this policy, as Russia does not have any justification to see itself as a rising power, even in comparison with "ungovernable Georgia" or "forever-squabbling Ukraine." The reckoning with this unpleasant reality can be postponed only for so long, and Medvedev's smart tactics of advancing a limited "liberalization" at home and demonstrating toughness abroad cannot be sustained throughout the second year of his accidental presidency.
The Ukrainian-Russian Cultural Conflict
Discussions over the many conflicts between Ukraine and Russia have focused on the more well known: the status of the Russian language, unpaid energy bills and gas pipelines, withdrawal of the Black Sea Fleet, Russia's invasion of Georgia, support for Crimean separatism, and future NATO membership. What is less widely known is the undeclared Ukrainian-Russian cultural war that is as bitter as any other aspect of the poor state of the bilateral relationship between Ukraine and Russia.
The Ukrainian-Russian cultural war has significant ramifications in Ukraine and Russia's domestic politics, national identities and geopolitical orientations. It has long been established that the language spoken by Ukrainians (Ukrainian or Russian) and their attitudes towards Russia shaped by their stance on culture and history, in turn influences the voting patterns of Ukrainians -into pro-Western and pro-Russian orientations. These orientations then influence attitudes towards their support for Ukraine's integration into the CIS, NATO and the EU.
Unlike in the 1990's, Russia under Vladimir Putin has gone on the offensive in seeking to counter what it sees as the "Ukrainian nationalist" view of Ukrainian history and culture which has been propagated by President Viktor Yushchenko since his election in January 2005. Yushchenko's active and personal involvement in reviving the Ukrainian national memory has added to the deep-seated antagonism that Russia's leaders hold towards him.
The Ukrainian-Russian cultural war has become acute as a consequence of the release in April of a new Russian film about Nikolai Gogol's fictitious Cossack leader Taras Bulba. The film was sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Culture at a cost of $20 million and took three years to produce.
The new Taras Bulba film has obvious ideological and geopolitical ramifications. Bulba is portrayed as fighting "Western enemies" and dies for "the Orthodox Russian land." The film's director Vladimir Bortko openly admitted that his aim was to increase "pro-Russian" sympathies within Ukraine and to propagate the myth that Ukrainians and Russians belong to one narod. The film unashamedly propagates a pan-Slavic line that has won praise from Russian nationalist politicians such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Taras Bulba opened on April 3 in Moscow's Kinoteatr Oktyabr to thunderous applause at Bulba's "Russian soul" speech and scenes where Cossacks expel Poles from Ukraine. The film has aroused widespread public interest and criticism and has already grossed $14 million in Russia and Ukraine (Kyiv Post, April 22). The film has attracted both older viewers, nostalgic for the USSR, and younger people because of its abundance of gratuitous violence (www.life.pravda.com.ua, April 3).
It was released for the 200th anniversary of Gogol's birth who, although born in Ukraine, wrote in the Russian language and has traditionally been viewed as a "Russian" writer. The Ukrainian-Russian cultural war has therefore descended into an historical dispute over Gogol.
On April 1 President Yushchenko visited Gogol's museum in his native Poltava region (www.president.gov.ua, April 1). At a concert in Gogol's honor, Yushchenko said, "Gogol wrote in Russian, was a Ukrainian, and thought and felt himself to be a Ukrainian. I believe it is ridiculous, and to a certain extent the conflicts surrounding which country he belongs to are demeaning" (www.president.gov.ua, April 1). On the same day, Vladimir Putin hailed Gogol as an "outstanding Russian writer."
The Ukrainian-Russian cultural war had earlier become contested over Yushchenko's propagation of the 1933 famine as directed against Ukrainians and as genocide. Russia has gone on the offensive against both of these Ukrainian claims.
On February 25, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a DVD which will be followed later this year by 3 volumes of 6,000 historical documents to counter the Ukrainian claims. The Head of Russia's Federal Archives Agency Vladimir Kozlov, introduced the DVD at a Moscow press conference, with the claim that the famine was "the result of [Stalin's] criminal policy" against the peasantry, rather than against any specific ethnic group (www.rian.ru, February 25).
Ukraine's debunking of Stalinism and its publicizing of the famine, has forced Russia under Putin to digress from its full-blown rehabilitation of Stalinism. While rejecting Ukrainian claims of an ethnic genocide-famine, Kozlov was forced to admit that a crime (famine) had indeed taken place against the peasantry, as a result of Stalin's collectivization policies. Russia's rehabilitation of Stalinism has propagated the myth that it was the elites who had suffered the most from Stalin's purges (www.gulag.ipvnews.org, September 16, 2006).
The Ukrainian-Russian cultural war and differences over national identity has become acutely important in Ukraine's presidential elections, which are invariably perceived as deciding the country's geopolitical future as either lying with Russia and the CIS or with the West. This was the case in the 1994, 1999 and especially in the 2004 presidential elections, when Russia heavily intervened to halt the "nationalist" candidate (Yushchenko) and lost. Putin has since taken this as a personal defeat that requires some form of pay back.
With six months remaining until the elections, Yushchenko has described himself as a person who does, "not belong to those people who waver in their patriotism. I am not a little Russian, I am not a khokhol (derogatory term for little Russians). I am a Ukrainian" (Eko Moskvy, April 3). Yushchenko continued, ‘I am a Ukrainian president, I know that this country requires an ideal president' (www.president.gov.ua, April 3).
Ukrainian opinion polls suggest the "pro-Russian" Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych and the "treasonous" Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko are the two leading presidential candidates, neither of whom therefore match Yushchenko's requirements for a "patriotic" president. On April 24 Ukrayinska Pravda and four days later the pro-Yushchenko Ukrayina Moloda both ran leading articles on negotiations already underway for a new "pro-Russian" coalition between the Party of Regions and the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT), facilitated by Vladyslav Surkov, first deputy head of the Russian presidential administration.
The Ukrainian-Russian cultural war is part of a wider on-going undeclared conflict between both countries over their evolving national identities. Ukraine's "quadruple transition" has focused on nation and state building, as well as democratic and market economic transition. Russia, which did not declare independence in August 1991, became a reluctant independent state and under Boris Yeltsin it never settled on what nation and state it was building. Under Putin, the emerging Russian national identity is unwilling to accept a Ukraine in any guise except one populated by "little Russians."
--Taras Kuzio
Turkey Prioritizing its Relations with Azerbaijan
The recent uncertainty surrounding Turkish-Azeri relations is giving way to a new period of optimism, ahead of high level diplomatic contacts. Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet Azeri officials in a bid to reassure Baku of Ankara's intention to protect Azerbaijan's interests during the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process.
Turkey's policy of conducting diplomacy within the South Caucasus in coordination with Azerbaijan, came under strain when it attempted to accelerate normalizing its relations with Armenia. Baku expressed its reservations over the rapid increase in diplomatic activity between Ankara -Yerevan which it perceived as "developing at the expense of Azerbaijan." Azerbaijani officials tried to understand the content of the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement and how this might affect Turkish-Azeri relations (EDM, April 29, May 4). At the height of the discussions on President Obama's April 24 address, the possibility that Ankara might ignore Baku's sensitivities was often discussed within both countries. In addition to the reaction of Azerbaijani officials, such speculation added to public outrage toward the AKP government's policies, both within Turkey and Azerbaijan. While delegations of Azeri parliamentarians and civil society organizations visited Turkey to garner political support for their plight, their Turkish counterparts also traveled to Azerbaijan in order to express solidarity with their Azeri brethren. Azeri deputies frequently appeared on live discussion programs on Turkish TV, seeking to mobilize public opinion, exerting additional pressure on the AKP government.
Against this background, the Turkish government is now refocusing its attention on addressing those concerns. At the same time, the Turkish press reported that Baku has toned down its criticism of Ankara's policies toward Armenia. Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev wants to reinforce bilateral ties, ensuring that he is kept informed about the progress on Turkish-Armenian rapprochement and securing greater leverage over Ankara's policies toward Yerevan. Toward that end, Aliyev has decided to send a special envoy to Turkey (Referans, May 2).
Turkey's first attempts to reach out to Baku came on May 4 when Azerbaijan's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Araz Azimov, visited Ankara and held talks with Turkey's newly appointed Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Since it was Davutoglu's first meeting after assuming office two days earlier, it had a symbolic meaning -demonstrating the value that Davutoglu attaches to Turkish-Azeri ties. In addition to exploring ways of improving bilateral relations through more frequent and high profile meetings between the leaders of the two countries, they also exchanged opinions on regional issues (Cihan Haber Ajansi, May 4).
As a further boost to Ankara's policy to regain Baku's confidence, Erdogan will visit Baku on May 12-13, and then meet Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on May 16 (Anadolu Ajansi, May 4). While commenting on his forthcoming trip, Erdogan sought to deflect recent criticism from Baku and domestic opposition parties. He maintained that his government did not deserve such heavy criticism, which he characterized as an unnecessary reaction to Turkey's policy of rapprochement; especially concerning Ankara's intention to re-open its border with Armenia. Erdogan also emphasized that some Azeri officials' statements had hurt Ankara. He added that the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations will also serve Baku's interests and he will seek to remove any misunderstandings during his visit next week (ANKA, May 5).
Moreover, Erdogan's plan to meet Putin reflects Ankara's belief that Russia remains a significant stakeholder in the resolution of Turkish-Armenian-Azeri problems and must act in concert with Russia, in order to advance its interests within the South Caucasus. Russia is one of the co-chairs of the Minsk Group working to resolve the Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and has been mediating in talks between Baku and Yerevan.
President Gul is taking additional steps toward addressing concerns over Ankara's policies from Baku and domestic opposition parties. Gul met the leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party Deniz Baykal, who had lambasted the recent moves towards rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, arguing that Erdogan had betrayed Baku. Gul briefed Baykal about the developments within the South Caucasus in an attempt to influence Turkish public opinion (Cihan Haber Ajansi, May 5).
Gul also plans to hold two separate meetings with Aliyev and the Armenia's President Serzh Sarksyan during the Eastern Partnership and Southern Corridor meetings in Prague on May 7-8 under the sponsorship of the Czech Republic, which currently holds the EU presidency (Anadolu Ajansi, May 5). In addition to discussing issues including energy security, the Prague summit will provide an opportunity to consider the resolution of problems between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Baku and Yerevan frequently conduct part of their diplomatic negotiations on the sidelines of such multilateral forums. In preparation for the Prague summit the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, met the foreign ministers of both countries separately in Washington. Clinton expressed her support and encouragement for these bilateral talks ahead of the Prague summit (www.cnnturk.com, May 5).
The Gul-Aliyev meeting might equally hold symbolic meaning, marking an improvement of ties between Ankara and Baku, after their recent tension. Previously, Aliyev had declined to participate in multilateral meetings where he might meet Gul, spurning Gul's invitation to attend the Alliance of Civilizations platform in Istanbul (EDM, April 8) and later cancelling his participation in an energy summit in Sofia, attended by Gul (Takvim, April 23). The Turkish press speculated that Aliyev was deliberately avoiding these meetings to convey his discomfort over Ankara's failure to consult him on the Turkish-Armenian talks. Gul consistently denied any such row, and even claimed that he kept Aliyev informed about developments by telephone (www.ntvmsnbc.com, April 28). A face-to-face meeting between the two leaders might remove the basis for any future speculation, as well as mend strained Turkish-Azeri relations.
--Saban Kardas
