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THE GEORGIAN TIMES: INTERVIEW WITH ARIEL COHEN
The US-Georgia Charter is not a Mutual Defence Pact. But It Draws Red Line for Russia
As 44th US President Barack Obama prepares for his historic inauguration there is some level of anticipation in Tbilisi about what to expect from Washington under the new administration.
In a Q & A with The Georgian Times, Senior Research Fellow at Heritage Foundation Dr. Ariel Cohen provides a short insight into possible White House policies towards Georgia and addresses other topical questions.
As the Heritage Foundation itself says Ariel Cohen’s analysis is often incisive. He brings first hand knowledge of the former Soviet Union and the Middle East acquired through a wide range of studies, covering issues such as economic development and political reform, U.S. energy security, the global War on Terrorism and the continuing conflict in the Middle East.
Q: In your article published on August 15, 2008 you noted that the Georgia-Russia war had implications for the Middle East and that Israel should have been on high alert as the balance of power in Eurasia and the Middle East was changing. What are yours view of the Middle East crisis, and your follow-up recommendations, now there is all-out war in Gaza?
A: To understand the Gaza war, one needs to examine the five concentric "rings of fire" Gaza presents: intra-Palestinian; Israeli-Palestinian; the Arab world; Iran; and the West, including the U.S. One also needs to keep in mind that - with the exception of Iran, jihadists, international organizations and some leftist NGOs - no one wants a Hamas victory.
Osama bin Laden, the UN, and a slew of international organizations and NGOs, [are] arguing the case for Hamas. These are strange bedfellows. They only trumpet the suffering of the Palestinian civilians, forgetting that it was Hamas who condemned these civilians to suffer.
All the rest of the world should work for the demise of Hamas. But Hamas would suffer no demise under the precipitously cooked up French-Egyptian plan. The solution to the Hamas threat to Gaza residents and the elusive hope of peace lie elsewhere. In the 1982 Lebanon war Israel kicked Yasser Arafat's PLO out of Beirut. Terrorists were evacuated on ships to Tunis, Yemen and Iraq. Their threat subsided for years. Hamas should be today's candidate for relocation - to Syria, Libya or Iran. The UN could provide the evacuation corridor and ships.
Israel could also consider retaking the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza's Egyptian border, where Hamas and other terrorists smuggle weapons and contraband. After all the tunnels are destroyed, the Israelis may be replaced by international peacekeepers with enough engineering equipment to prevent yet another undermining of the dream of peace.
Finally, Egypt needs to commit to work with friendly intelligence services to interdict Iranian weapons smuggling via Somalia, Sudan and the Nile Valley. The U.S. and Israel are close to signing a memorandum on intelligence cooperation in this area. Only if all these steps are taken will there be hope that the Hamas threat can be removed.
Q: All eyes are on the US as President-elect Barack Obama is about to take over the Oval Office. What do you expect personally from his administration in relation to Russia? Shall we see any immediate steps as a sign that as power has changed in Washington US policies toward Russia are going to change?
A: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are to nominate Undersecretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Deputy Assistant Secretaries and other officials who will be dealing with Russia. I think that a lot of decision-making is going to take place in the White House and the Security Council, and the big challenge will be the coordination of Russian policy between the State Department, Defence Department and other departments, as well as the intelligence community, which will provide major input. When the people are in place, there may be a formal assessment of US-Russia relations, and there will be some policy recommendations drawn from this assessment.
Q: But analysts note that Hillary Clinton will be mostly in charge of US foreign policy. Can we not make some initial assessments now?
A: First of all, constitutionally the President is in charge of foreign policy. The Secretary of State will implement the policy that the President tells her to, essentially. Secondly, there will be a lot of continuity between Bush and Obama. For example, the Defence Secretary Robert Gates is staying. All the professional civil service remains in place. These are people with combined millennia of experience.
In that continuity the US relations with Georgia, Ukraine and other states of the former Soviet Union will play an important role. At the same time we will be engaged in arms control negotiations, we will probably still be discussing the missile defence in Europe with the Russians. There will be a large agenda that the US will have to clear alone and we will also have to try to get Russia on the same page. Whether we will succeed at that... I doubt, frankly. [But] the Obama administration will apparently try to renew dialogue with Russia.
Q: As we are talking about the US, it's logical to ask about Georgia-US relations. Georgia signed a Strategic Partnership Charter with the US last week. Do you think this provides any effective security and defence tools for Georgia, or is it more a diplomatic gesture?
A: With the Security Charter, it's clear that the US takes a great interest in the military and economic development of Georgia and the South Caucasus, and that the US supports the eventual integration of Georgia - and the whole region - into Europe. This is an important start on a rather long road.
But this is not a mutual defence pact, and should not be read as such. It draws a red line for Russia and we hope that people in Moscow will understand that this red line is important: the US cares about the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia. The US does not and will not accept the Russian recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Connections, including in the military sphere, will improve but it will be largely up to the Obama administration to fill the Charter with serious content.
Q: Europe is suffering a lot from the bitter Russia-Ukraine gas dispute. But the question is whether Russia's move to cut gas is a warning message for Ukraine or for the whole of Europe. It is also interesting to know whether the crisis will forge some new pipeline projects, like Nabucco, which may traverse Georgia. What do you think?
A: When Russia and Ukraine, the principal transit country, clashed over the price of natural gas, the initial reduction affected six countries. But the crisis has now extended beyond these initial victims to 13 countries from the Balkans to the Baltics. The Kremlin uses this dependence as a foreign policy tool to apply pressure against states that would adopt policies that go against Russia's national interests. Moscow has threatened or cut off supplies to a number of countries over the last seven years.
Russia is losing its reputation as a reliable supplier of gas, making Europeans hopping mad. But Moscow is also sending a signal to the Ukrainian people, Europe and the U.S. that Ukraine should remain within the Russian sphere of influence. NATO is a no-no.
With Ukrainian Presidential elections due in 2010, Russia is escalating the gas crisis in order to prove to the Ukrainian people that President Victor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko are discredited. The Russian leadership wants Ukraine to lose its leverage over Gazprom as a transit country and make Ukraine appear an unreliable partner to the Europeans, thereby justifying expensive Russian-proposed gas pipe lines to Europe which would bypass Ukraine.
However, I think that while this is primarily a European crisis, the United States can do a lot to address it. Washington can support Europe's diversification of pipeline routes in Eurasia, specifically, the construction of the Nabucco pipeline from the Caspian via Turkey. The U.S. should also encourage EU members to coordinate policy dealings with Moscow on energy.
Ketevan KHACHIDZE
“The Georgian Times”, January 19, 2009
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