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Recent conflict in Georgia left much space for evaluation and analysis. These events turned out to be absolutely unexpected for western leaders. Russia’s step - invading into sovereign country, occupying parts of its territory and declaring there independence was something that western leaders thought could have happened in 19-20th centuries, but deemed unacceptable for world of 21st century. Most probably West considered such a scenario having the same chance as an gigantic asteroid falling on the planet earth and probably that was why it took west so long to respond to this challenge. Besides the nature of this response left an impression that it was made without any clear strategy or plan. Initially EU leaders talked about imposition of economic sanctions, exclusion of Russia from G8 and preventing it from WTO membership. However later on they found these proposals to be unfeasible and eventually EU just expressed “concerns” several dozen times and “deep concerns” a bit fewer times that seems quite weak measure in the given circumstances.

Actually why this crisis was allowed to happen was improper signaling. It is important to understand that Russia is not a typical European country sharing values of liberal politics. Russia is a country with difficult background, present and maybe even future. Geopolitical location and cold climate has always been natural defensive fortress for Russia, therefore an empire that emerged in 15-16 centuries had tremendous potential. It gradually expanded its territories for the last three centuries reaching the peak during Soviet times. However after the collapse of Soviet Union Russia lost direct control over surrounding states (countries of Former Soviet Union), but for last 17 years still retained indict control over them.

It is worth illustrating how this indirect control was imposed. Russia created so called ”managed chaos” in these states through provoking ethnic tensions, such as Transnistria in Moldova, Abkhazia and so called South Ossetia in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh between Azerbaijan and Armenia. It is worth noting here that in Karabakh case these problems were beneficial for Armenia as well. But this really does change anything: Russia gained control over both Armenia and Azerbaijan. The formula is quite simple: Armenia can only survive with Russia, since is surrounded by enemy states and in case it deviates from its influence, the results will be fatal. On the other hand, Azerbaijan is also under the control. If Azerbaijan makes step towards EU or NATO, Russia can support Armenia and even provoke a new war. This creates a vicious circle, where Russia ”divides and rules”. As a result even after the collapse of Soviet Union population of surrounding territories stayed integrated into Russian culture: they watched Russian TV channels, read Russian newspapers, watched Russian translated films. Russian language dominated at all levels of social, cultural, economic and political life. This type of control turned out to be much stronger than actual military presence in these countries. Taking into consideration this in some sense Kremlin rightfully considers this region to be under it’s dominance and this is where the Georgian tragedy begins.

Russia’s Interests

There are at least four good reasons why Georgia is so special for Russian state. First of all Georgia is pioneer among surrounding states making the real attempts to overthrow Russian influence and making choice towards EU and NATO. If Georgia succeeds, this may ‘’spoil” other surrounding states and they may start questioning Russia’s dominance over this region. Therefore problem is not in Georgia only, but also in other surrounding states. If Russia loses Georgia, it may also lose it’s influence over all surrounding states.

The second reason is control over energy routes. Georgia holds key location on the energy route that can connect middle Asian and Azeri oil and gas suppliers to European oil and gas receivers. This route leaves aside Russia and is considered to serve as an alternative source of fuel to the Russian one. If Russia controls Georgia, it also controls all the routes supplying oil and natural gas to the Europe and therefore can retain monopolistic position over fuel supply to Europe. Georgia is a real threat to the Russian energy empire.

The third reason lies in differences between Georgian and Russian political and economic models. Georgia moves towards building free society, democratic political system and free market economy, while Russia made a choice towards totalitarism, control and nationalization of economic assets. If Georgia succeeds on its way, this will clearly show that ”Georgian way” is more efficient and successful and this will be an additional reason why other surrounding states may ”’spoil”.

The fourth reason originates from intra-Russian ethnic tensions. Russia is ethnically quite unstable country composed of many small or large ethnic groups that are prone to separatist inspirations. From this point of view North Caucasus has historically proved to be ”cradle of separatism”. Chechnya is a good example of this. To justify its presence in Caucasus Russia has long been developing the stereotypes that Caucasus region does not have enough resources to leave without Russia, that Russia brought wealth and prosperity in this region, when it occupied this region in 19th century and the most important: “Russia is guarantor of peace in Caucasus.” These words became like a slogan for Russia’s actions. It is not in the best interests of Russian state to have on southern border a neighbor that is politically and economically developed, its citizens live much better than those people living over the boarder and they managed to achieve piece in their country without Russian “help”. This is extremely dangerous for the internal stability of Russia.

To summarize these basic reasons Russia needs Georgia to declare neutrality, not join any political or economic bloc, other than those dominated by Russia, refuse to build gas and oil pipelines on its soil, other than those initiated by Russia. It is in Russia’s best interests to have weak, unstable and failed Georgia as a southern neighbor. In essence this was the situation in Georgia from 1992 to 2003 (during Shevardnadze times).

Prewar Situation

The situation in the world was quite interesting before the conflict. Key players of EU (Germany, France and Italy) except UK had quite warm relations with Russia. First of all Russia is a large supplier of oil and gas to EU and second a large market with 150 million consumers. Western leaders were interested in integrating Russia into world economic system like it happened with Germany after WWII. However how Russia perceived the situation was diametrically different. The ultimate aim of Putin regime was to restore ”past glory of Russian empire” and warm relations with the west were merely part of preparatory measures for it. Russian authorities were sure that they ”bought out” key western leaders offering their countries and them personally wide range of benefits. Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroder got ”warm place” at Gazprom (Russian State-owned gas monopoly). Italian officials also benefited from “Russian friendship”. These single cases gave Russian authorities belief that they have western politicians ”in their pocket like nickels and dimes”. In addition, rising oil and gas prices gave them impression that old strength and power came back and and Russia is a country that can dictate it’s will to the world.

In the prewar period Russia received full set of wrong signals from the west that eventually resulted in the invasion in the sovereign state and occupation of its lands. First of all west made little or no reactions on several Russian provocations in Georgia, such as shooting administrative buildings from helicopters in Upper Abkhazia, dropping anti-radar missle in village Tsitelubani and also ignoring frequent shooting of Georgian villages in South Ossetia. By these Russia obviously tested western reaction that turned out to be minimal for that moment.

Second important signal was refusal to grant Georgia and Ukraine NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) in April 2008 at Bucharest summit. Germany and France under the influence of Russia blocked the decision at the summit. At that point Russian authorities derived 2 main conclusions: first of all that they have power to influence decisions of NATO and the second that western leaders were ready to “sacrifice” Georgia and Ukraine and therefore all surrounding states to Russia in exchange for stable gas steam to European households.

The third signal was visit of German minister for external affairs Walter Steinmeier to Georgia. An official reason for his arrival was facilitating negotiations between Georgian, Abkhazian and South Ossetian sides. He met Georgian authorities, Abkhazian and Ossetian separatist leaders and finally Russian minister for external affairs Mr. Lavrov. After these meetings Georgian side made a statement that they were supporting the plan with few amendments. Abkhaz and Ossetian separatist leaders unconditionally rejected this plan and so did Russian authorities.

The conclusion that Mr. Steinmeier made was that the positions of conflicting parties are so distant that a great deal of efforts are needed to made them closer. In fact what EU through Germany and Mr. Steinmeier did was that they just showed that they “fulfilled their duties”. European leaders demonstrated that “although they are eager to resolve these conflicts and they make actual step towards this, they are unable to help since conflicting sides have very different undertanding of the issue”. In fact this was one more reason for Russia to think that west abandons these states and Russia is allowed to “act”.

The wrong signalling game ended dramatically for Georgia. The war resulted in ethnic cleasing and massive killings of ethnic Georgian population, tens of thousands of citizens lost their homes and villages in so-called South Ossetia that were populated by ethnic Georgian population was removed from the face of earth.