Britain asserts the need to defend the ‘New Map’ of Europe

After five days of Russia’s war against Georgia, the dust may now be starting to settle. At this point in time, it is now clear that Georgia’s military operation in its renegade province of South Ossetia has not been successful. It now looks as if the Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili, was reckless in challenging the Russian garrison stationed in the province. His forces were either unable, or made a tactical error by failing to launch airstrikes against the critical Roki tunnel linking South Ossetia to Russia on the night of 8th August. Its destruction would have prevented Russian armour and reinforcements from rolling through the following morning, providing more time for Georgian forces to dig-in defensively.

Initial hopes that the conflict would remain within Georgia’s northern province were also mistaken: Russia seized the opportunity to, in Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev’s words, ‘punish’ the Georgians for their behaviour. This resulted in Russian naval operations off the Georgian coast, and a series of vicious bombing raids against cities deep within Georgia itself. It seems that civilians were also deliberately targeted by the Russians: one housing estate was pulverised, even though it was over three kilometres from any conceivable military target. The Europeans and Americans, unable to challenge the Kremlin directly—Russia being a nuclear power—could only sit and wait, piling on the diplomatic pressure as and when they could.

It is very clear that Russia won the battle, in what is emerging as a new Cold War. Georgia has been crushed, and Georgian democracy, a product of the ‘Rose Revolution’ in 2003, looks more precarious than ever before. Mikhail Saakashvili, staunchly pro-European, pro-American, and pro-Atlanticist, is hanging on by a thread, reeling from the Russian offensive. He must redouble his efforts if he is to survive politically. And Russian military forces have consolidated their country’s grip over the Caucasus, as well as having frightened several other countries on Russia’s borders. The authoritarian Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, has not only sustained his reputation as a hardman, but also his authority as the real leader of the Russian Federation.

But has Russia won the war? This depends on the actions of Europeans and Americans over the next few days. The French President, and current President-in-Office of the European Council, Nicolas Sarkozy, yesterday convinced both Moscow and Tbilisi to accept his European Union-backed peace treaty. The Foreign Ministers of the European Union today held an extraordinary meeting to discuss the war against Georgia in greater detail, confirming their support for President Sarkozy’s agenda. And the President of the United States, using a term few have used since the Cold War, came out with some of his toughest rhetoric yet, declaring that Russia’s actions were a threat to the ‘Free World’. In a master stroke, Mr. Bush also offered to provide Georgia with humanitarian assistance—and this is the crucial bit—to be delivered by the United States military. With American hardware being sent to the South Caucasus, the Americans have effectively imposed the European-backed peace deal, sending a strong message to Moscow that the Atlantic Alliance will not be intimidated by Russian aggression. As American forces move in, they must remain there as a deterrent towards any further games Russia’s leaders feel that they should involve themselves in.

David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, also made some firm remarks on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about what he called Moscow’s ‘blatant aggression’. Asked whether he was ‘worried and fearful about Russia’s intentions’, he responded:

We’ve been warning for some time, not least in light of our own experience of the Litvinenko affair...We’ve been warning about the way in which Russia was addressing itself in key aspects of international relations...In its international relations Russia has not been fulfilling in its responsibilities in a way that we think is appropriate. That’s why we’ve been pushing this agenda for quite a long time. Obviously, the fact of Russian aggression in Georgia raises this to a new level.

This ‘new level’, he suggested, means that Europeans and Americans would have to review Russia’s participation in the Group of Eight leading industrial countries. He said that the former Group of Seven had been communicating over the Russian belligerence in recent days, with the purposeful decision to exclude Moscow. That such exclusions were required, the British Foreign Secretary went on, is because:

The sight of Russian tanks rolling into part of a sovereign country on its neighbouring borders will have brought a chill to the spine of many people, rightly, because that is a reversion to—it’s not just Cold War politics, it’s a nineteenth Century way of doing politics. That is simply not the way international relations can be run in the twenty-first Century.

He declared:

The Russians want to assert this concept, I think, of ‘ex-Soviet space’, somehow denying that these are independent countries with territorial integrity of their own. I think that is unacceptable. It is not ‘ex-Soviet space’ in Georgia and Ukraine and other countries. These are independent, sovereign countries, with territorial integrity of their own. And I think this is really important: It’s not good for Russia to continue to believe that it is suffering a hangover from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union does not exist anymore. There’s no such thing as ex-Soviet space.

There is a “New Map” of Eastern Europe and the border areas of Russia and that map needs to be defended in the interests of security and stability. And I believe it is in Russia’s interests to come to terms with that. It’s not in Russia’s interests to continue to hanker for a Soviet past because frankly, it’s gone and it’s good that it’s gone.

When Mr. Miliband says the ‘New Map of Eastern Europe’, he uses it as a metaphor to state that we have established a legitimate European hegemony over almost all of the areas once ruled by the Tsars or Soviets—a position which we must sustain. He is right. The collapse of the Soviet Union allowed a new generation of countries to decide their own futures. It allowed them to join the dynamic, prosperous and free community of democracies that straddles the North Atlantic basin—the core of civilisation. It allowed them to re-assert their identity as Europeans, and rejoin their European partners—escaping generations of repressive Russian and Soviet rule. Bringing Europe back together again, working for a stronger Europe, whole and free, is precisely in all Europeans’ geopolitical and strategic interests. Keeping the Russian bear caged in the zoo, and out of our garden, is essential in achieving that. And European Union peacekeepers have here a role in upholding law and order in unstable places in the European Neighbourhood.

A depiction of the ‘New Map’ of Europe



Those European Union Member States—like Germany and Italy—whose strategies towards Moscow have increasingly rested on forms of appeasement, need to now take heed. Good relations with the Kremlin are of lesser importance than the internal cohesion of the European Union itself, and they are also not as important as extending democratic government in the European Neighbourhood—synonymous with Mr. Miliband’s ‘New Map’. Russian aggression also provides yet another rationale for increased European military integration: only a strong Europe will be able to stand up to the new autocrats in the Kremlin. Let us hope that, by invading Georgia, Mr. Putin and his gang may have inadvertently awoken a sleeping giant.

[Update: 19th August 2008]
Supplementary articles:

• Mart Laar, ‘Stop that bear’, International Herald Tribune, 18th August 2008.
• Denis MacShane, ‘Shoulder to shoulder against Russia’, The Guardian, 18th August 2008.
• Nicholas Sarkozy, ‘Europe gets started quelling a crisis’ (Français), Le Figaro, 18th August 2008.
• David Miliband, ‘Russia will not benefit from its aggression’, The Times, 19th August 2008.