Where is the EU's soft power?The news from the Caucasus is becoming very serious and very muddled,

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9, 2008

Where is the EU's soft power?

http://brugesgroup.blogspot.com/

The news from the Caucasus is becoming very serious and very muddled, as such things always are. Some reports talk of 1,500 dead; others insist that the figures are lower than that.

To the usual fog of war there is the problem of conflicting political statements. Russia, who has sent a large contingent of troops to South Ossetia is talking angrily about Georgian misdemeanours and about the fact that Russian peacekeepers were fired at. The Russian troops, announced a tight-lipped President Medvedev, went in to support those peacekeepers.

This is an interesting twist on the usual tale, which is about Russian troops going in because they have been invited by the peace-loving people of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, fill in your own country.

According to the BBC Russian Service, President Medvedev has also announced that the Georgians will be forced to agree to a peace settlement. The South Ossetian government has announced that Georgian fire is preventing the transportation of wounded to hospitals.

The Russian operation, which involves contingents of the 58th Army, is conducted by General Vladimir Boldyrev, recently appointed to the overall command of the Russian land forces.

Also according to the BBC Russian Service, the Russian Ministry of Defence, has accused Ukraine in supporting Georgia in its ethnic cleansing of South Ossetia. At the moment, such accusations are to be taken very seriously.

One wonders whether this could have been avoided by a greater display of courage by certain West European countries, such as Germany, France, Spain and the Benelux, who made it clear at the last NATO Summit that they were prepared to act on Russian instructions if it meant "standing up to America" and, of course, ensuring no break in that energy supply.

Come to think of it, where is the soft power of the EU? This war is unfolding reasonably close, yet neither the EU nor its member states, whose leaders are, of course, on holiday or in Beijing, seem to have any ideas beyond wringing their hands and pleading with all sides to be good little children and play nicely with each other.

The UN, that supposed source of international law and good behaviour, is divided as Georgian and Russian representatives are trading insults. How familiar it all looks.
Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador, said Georgia was deliberately targeting Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia and accused Tbilisi of "ethnic cleansing".

"Tbilisi is using a tactic of scorched earth. A number of towns in South Ossetia have been fully destroyed according to some reports," he said.

"Georgian snipers are not letting through ambulances, not allowing the medical services to get on with saving people."

Irakli Alasania, Georgia's envoy to the UN, rejected Churkin's charges and accused the Moscow of aggression.

"Russia is openly challenging the international community and jeopardising established international order and stability," he said. "We demand the Russian Federation immediately terminate aerial bombardments, immediately pull out the occupying forces, and negotiate ceasefire," he said, adding that Saakashvili was ready for direct peace talks with the Russians.

Towards the end of the meeting, he turned directly to Churkin, and asked, "Are you ready to stop the fighter jets who are in the air who will soon be bombing my comrades in Georgia, and what will the security council do about this now? How are we going to address this?"

He received no reply.
Insults are also traded on the BBC Russian Service Forum though there is one interesting comment on it. If you want to know who really is the aggressor, says one contributor, look at the movement of the refugees. Which way are they running? This is an extremely important point. Back in the days of the war in Croatia (not much noted in Britain, where too many people think that the Yugoslav wars started in 1999 in Kosovo) Croat refugees ignored the age-old enmity between themselves and Hungarians as well as the supposed Slav brotherhood. They ran to Hungary away from the Serbs.

It looks like the South Ossetians are running to North Ossetia, which would make a good deal of sense - they are more or less the same people, though being a tribal nation, the Ossetians fight a good deal among themselves. However, Al-Jazeera adds an interesting and little-noted detail:
Moscow began to transport on Saturday South Ossetian refugees - whom it considers as its own citizens - into the neighbouring Russian province of North Ossetia.
So, are those refugees fleeing or are they being bundled into coaches and lorries and transported?
POSTED BY HELEN AT 11:18 AM 0 COMMENTS LINKS TO THIS POST
FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 2008

Another crisis for the EU's common foreign policy
While the media is oohing and aahing about the spectacle China has put together for the opening of the Olympic Games, a grimmer tale is unfolding to the north-west. Georgia and Russia are on the brink of a war in South Ossetia, nominally part of Georgia but de facto independent of that country and heavily dependent on Russia.

I shall try to do a longish posting on it later this evening or tomorrow to go through the saga as it has been unfolding. Suffice it to say that while the CFSP's Chief Panjandrum, Javier Solana, was sending good-will messages to Beijing, Georgia has decided to respond to the constant attacks from South Ossetia, inspired, the Georgian government says, by the Russian military peacekeepers by shelling the capital of the break-away region.

Earlier today it was announced that the Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian Prime Minister, has ordered his troops to stop fighting and suggested negotiations with Russia as guarantor of South Ossetia's autonomy, as long as the region stays within Georgia.

This does not seem to have worked and Russia has sent in heavy armoured vehicles and tanks to strengthen their troops peacekeepers.

The West in general, and the EU in particular, are, as usual, wringing their hands. NATO, which came up with a complicated solution at its summit to the problem of Georgia is worried:
"We are very closely following the situation, and the NATO Secretary General (Jaap de Hoop Scheffer) calls on all sides for an immediate end of the armed clashes and calls for direct talks between the parties," a NATO statement said.
The EU, the still-hopeful new soft power, is also worried:
A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the EU was very concerned by how the situation was evolving. "We repeat our message to all parties to immediately stop the violence," he said.
All parties, eh? That would be what? Invaders and defenders, attackers and counter-attackers? Well, it is a complicated situation but it is hardly an unexpected one as Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation makes clear. But, of course, the EU has no idea what to do or say about Russia or the Caucasus.

We have already seen the problem. Germany is terrified of nay-saying Russia because it is so heavily dependent on that country for its energy supplies. Of course, the chances of Russia not supplying Germany with gas and oil are very slim but that is not how the German government and Chancellor see the issue.

The new member states, particularly the Balts, on the other hand are more than a little worried. If Russia is starting proxy wars in former Soviet republics, being unable to exercise its supposed renewed power any other way, who is going to be next. Lithuania, for one, is not waiting for that famous CFSP to kick into action but has sent her own foreign minister on a fact-finding mission.