Between Washington And Moscow

The United States is taking its diplomatic turn in the Georgian crisis. Condoleezza Rice, the American Secretary of State, will meet with Nicolas Sarkozy this Thursday at Bregancon Fort, before flying to Thilissi. The tone between Washington and Moscow has cranked up another notch. Paris and the E.U. find themselves caught in the crossfire. In this context, the ceasefire is fragile.

Between Moscow and Washington, nothing is going well any more. The Georgian crisis has revived the old antagonism and made room for a verbal escalation between the two great powers. On the American side, there is a clear display of support for Georgia against Russian aggression. As proof, George W. Bush decided to send his Secretary of State to Thilissi this Thursday. And this, according to Bush, in order to demonstrate our solidarity with the Georgian people. On her way to Thilissi, Condoleezza Rice will make a stop at Bregancon Fort to meet with Nicolas Sarkozy.

In a televised address, the American President didn’t hide his impatience with Russia’s attitude. He vigorously denounced the repeated violations of the ceasefire. On Wednesday, the Russian army entered Gori, a city situated on the strategic East-West axis between South Ossetia and Thilissi. A presence which goes against the peace plan proposed by Nicolas Sarkozy in the name of the European Union and accepted by Russia and Georgia on Tuesday. This plan, in fact, envisioned the retreat of the Russian and Georgian armies to their positions from before the conflict. However, on Thursday, the Kremlin announced that its troops would stay for another two days in the city of Gori. Russian soldiers would also occupy the Port of Poti.

This Is Not 1968

On Wednesday, George W. Bush demanded that Russia cease all military action on its neighbor’s territory and withdraw its troops. To begin to repair the damage to its relations with the United States, Europe, and other nations, and to begin restoring its place in the world, Russia must keep its word and act to end this crisis, he affirmed, promising to rally the free world in the defense of a free Georgia. Condoleezza Rice;’s statements have the same ring. “I have heard the Russian president say that his military operations are over. I am saying it is time for the Russian president to be true to his word,” she declared. The tone of the Secretary of State was harsher, in fact. “This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed,” she reminded her audience.

Moscow didn’t keep people waiting for its response. The Russian Vice-Prime Minister, Serguei Ivanov, declared that the intervention in Georgia was comparable to the American response to the attacks of September 11. Questioned by the BBC, the minister even expressed his surprise at the international condemnation of the Russian operation. Since the beginning of the crisis, Moscow has claimed that it has only reacted in legitimate self-defense, its soldiers in the international peace force deployed in South Ossetia were attacked and to protect its people, in the name of this very international mandate. “We just reacted because we didn’t have any other option. Any civilized country would act same way,” Serguei Ivanov declared. Tuesday, alongside Nicolas Sarkozy in Moscow, President Dmitri Medvedev made the same argument, claiming that his country was forced to react. Further, the Russian minister exhorted Washington to choose between “a virtual project”– Georgia–and “a true partnership” with Russia.

Paris Hopes for a Resolution

Between Washington and Moscow, France is a bit stuck. And with her, all of the European Union. People around the French president believe that the United States must remain on the bench, not participants in international mediation efforts, because it would be too partial to Georgia. Nevertheless, Paris hopes to have its peace plan approved by the United Nations Security Council by the end of the week, because only UN approval can make the plan binding upon the conflicting parties.

The only problem: to induce Thilissi to accept his plan even though it doesn’t include a recognition of Georgia’s territorial sovereignty, Nicolas Sarkozy would have promised his Georgian counterpart, Mikhaïl Saakachvili, that the UN resolution would evoke this question, in addition to Russia’s obligation not to have recourse to force. But this revised version would have caused Russians, who have a veto right in the United Nations, to grimace. In this conflict, Paris is undertaking a difficult balancing act. Up until now, the French presidency had been effective in the region, and Moscow showed that it would accept the role of the E.U. in the resolution of the conflict. But Condoleezza Rice’s visit to France could compel Nicolas Sarkozy to make decisions threatening to this fragile equilibrium.