A Doctrine for Strategic Distancing of Georgia from Russia

http://www.apsny.ge/analytics/12738597482.php

May 14, 2010

By: Gagi Otiashvili

There have been resounding calls for the West to make concessions to Russia and we should not pout at the Kremlin over it. Those who talk about it forget the main thing: what is permitted to a large and powerful state may be impermissible for a small country. No matter whether Old Europe is making contact with the Russians or the US strikes certain deals with Russia, we should, nevertheless, dissociate ourselves from Russia.

While large and powerful states can afford getting close to a great danger, Putin’s Russia, since they can protect themselves from it, we had better eschew the giant longing to destroy us. It is so clear to everyone that Russia never observes treaties and resorts to diplomacy in dealing with us only to establish subversion planning centers.

That is why having direct diplomatic relations with Russia poses much greater danger to Georgia than abstaining from such relations. Because of this unfortunate reality, the principal issue critical to our country’s security would be our distancing from Russia, which may be referred to as a tactics of strategic distancing. The Georgian state security has ample grounds to declare the factors that caused its strategic distancing from Russia. A general formulation of these factors is needed to adopt a doctrine of strategic distancing in the future.

My formulation will hopefully facilitate the development of this doctrine in the foreseeable future. An institute for interstate differentiation and international mediation becomes necessitated when:

(1) having direct relations between the states is fraught with more danger to any of them than suspending such relations;

(2) the incompatibility of the interstate public views, mutually exclusive directions of foreign policies and strategic courses are so manifest that it becomes impossible to ignore them; the contrariety of such mutually exclusive directions brings about a confrontation transformable into a conflict and war between the states.

(3) in the event of an interstate conflict, aggravation could be avoided by temporarily distancing the confrontationally oriented states, using powerful international mediation institutions.

There is a need to develop a “Doctrine for Strategic Distancing of Georgia from Russia”.

As of now, we have somehow managed to strategically distance ourselves with the help of European Union observers and our allies, as well as by breaking off diplomatic relations with Russia, and will, hopefully, be able to continue henceforth.

We should take care of our country’s development and we need to distance ourselves from the Russians to save own people, life and state. Let French President Nicolas Sarkozy keep sacrificing small members of NATO by selling the Mistral to Russia. Let Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel bring Old Europe to its knees for Russian gas. Russia does not menace Germany and France with “de-sovereignization”. Russia threatens us – the Georgian state – with “de-sovereignization”. 

As to what “de-sovereignization” means  –  to me it means declaring the Georgian people illegitimate and converting parts of Georgia into dwarf satellite states, which the Russian imperialists want to achieve by declaring everything “Georgian” to be a far-fetched and racist notion and proclaiming the tribes living in different parts of Georgia “independent micro-nations”. Having planned for the future, the Russian imperialists determined to prohibit any unifying relations between parts of Georgia, calling this the “avoiding the Horizontal relations”. In their strategic plan, dubbed the “Russian Barbarossa Plan” and entitled “The Neo-Eurasian Geopolitical Project and the Caucasus”, the Kremlin strategists quite clearly write the following:

“Severing of all horizontal ties is a basic requirement during the vertical division of the areas. For instance, those between the Chechens and Dagestan or between Chechnya and Ingushetia. After the route to the Caspian Sea is securely closed for the Chechens, they can make use of the vertical alliance” (from the Kremlin official strategic plan “The Neo-Eurasian Geopolitical Project and the Caucasus”). According to the Euro-Asian super state oriented pro-Kremlin politics - Neo-Eurasianists, “if Chechnya is left with only Georgia located south of it, it will become geopolitically manageable from all sides and Orthodox Georgia might be employed to exert control over it.”

Dagestan and Ingushetia have to be partially tied to Georgia. This will lead to the creation of the North Caucasian area, which though being economically well developed, strategically will be under complete control of Moscow. At the same time, the same area will become same area will become a Euro-Asian super state oriented. Neo-Eurasianism presupposes the abandonment of the “nation-state” model of the national formations existing in the Caucasus to this day, along with a strictly delimited administrative formation with permanent boundaries and government structures.

The “New Geopolitical Order for the Caucasus”(acc.Kremlin politics), to the Neo-Euroasianistic understanding, implies switching from the existing model of a complete union of political realities to a center-periphery system with the proviso that the peripheral structure be determined not politically but ethno-culturally. This plan can be implemented by creating a “Caucasian Federation” that would include both the formations existing in the South Caucasus and the inner Russian autonomous union.

The entire North Caucasus and all that lies south of it should submit only to the meridian orientation. The strategic centers of the “Khazar Triangle” (the Kremlin official strategic plan “The Neo-Eurasian Geopolitical Project and the Caucasus”)will locate their independent chains strictly to the south According to Kremlin plans, any cooperation activities between neighboring districts are strictly prohibited by the military block-posts of the federal army.  Present time Chechnya and Dagestan, or between Chechnya and Ingushetia any administrative and economical and cultural relation will be strictly prohibited by supporting the federal army. After the route to the Caspian Sea is securely closed for the Chechens, they can make use of the vertical alliance.” (Quotation from the Kremlin official strategic plan “The Neo-Eurasian Geopolitical Project and the Caucasus”).

Until August 2008, many sites had carried this strategic plan, dubbed the “Russian Barbarossa”, under the title “The Neo-Eurasian Geopolitical Project and the Caucasus”,

http://www.i-u.ru/biblio/archive/dugin_osnovi/05.aspx

http://www.e-reading.org.ua/chapter.php/20827/33/Dugin_-_Osnovy_geopolitiki.html

http://www.erjournal.ru/journals_n/1321629368.pdf”

After the Russians failed to seize Georgia using the blitzkrieg tactics, the Putinoids removed the plan from the Russian sites. However, some sites can still be found to carry the currently classified  

as a  “Neo-Eurasian Geopolitical Project and the Caucasus”.

Dear Friends,

The tactics for Georgia to distance itself from the Kremlin Russia is a strategy necessitated by our self-survival and not by a manifestation of our “arrogance”, which we are currently accused of by the Kremlin odewriters.

Dissociating ourselves from Russia that is longing to destroy us is the only way to save our people, nationality, and our tiny state. This kind of tactics has always been used before, and now we must do the same thing – no one forced the Georgian kings to go to Agha Muhammad Khan or Jalal-ed-din, Georgia’s devastators, to seek conciliation. Neither does anybody, in general, attempt to approach, at the time of wrath, the enemy longing to destroy him. All relations with the Russians have now to be conducted only out of necessity and those through multinational international observers and, simultaneously, with the help of mediators from our partner countries.

And then we ask the older generation, still nostalgia-stricken for the hammer and sickle or greed: do not drag us with the already torn-bodied Georgian state to the Georgian blood-thirsty beast. Let us avoid the northern aggressor until its rage passes and it recognizes the right of Georgians to exist as a nation and not as “rats that must be exterminated”. We urge you, older generation, to stop hanging around in the Kremlin on our behalf and keep shunning Russia until it recognizes our right to statehood. Can’t you, older generation, realize that you are unable and in no position to govern the Georgian state without orders from Moscow and robbery? You, older generation, are far from freedom and, the more so, from public thinking, aren’t you?

The main request to the older generation and will of the people that have overcome so many hardships, that is, the Georgian people, are as follows: the Georgian citizens should not be deprived of the right to have a state named Georgia.

Let us maintain relations with the Old Europe that, unlike from Russia, is not destroying us and has not declared our picturesque settlements with a population of 30 to 40 thousand “independent”. There is no need to compare with large states and it is not worthwhile to turn nobility into a cause for ruining own country.

Everyone understands that by encouraging separatism in Georgia, Russia has legitimized foreign military aid to separatists and ethnic cleansings using material and substantive assistance from another state, and having achieved demographic and ethnic changes by committing crimes against humanity, illegally conducted the so-called recognition of independence.

Having its own separatist issues and strained relations with all its border states, the Russian Federation can exist as a state only in a constant combat situation. A constant battle mode drains a state and, as is known, in a similar constant confrontation the state cannot maintain own stability for long; hence, it cannot preserve the state!

The Kremlin itself has provided the legitimate basis for Russian separatism, and it is constantly employed by Russian separatist groupings. However, because of its pro-separatist aggression committed against Georgia, Russia lost the basis for the international legal support. Under these constantly confrontational conditions, Russia’s constant battle mode will ultimately result in the destruction of its state.

Most of all Russia wishes to somehow wiggle out of this situation. Meanwhile, acting in such a manner, we are pushing Russia with its “independent villages” into stagnation, to be followed by a drop in its prestige and eventual breakup. The Russians do not wish to stumble upon exactly the same Berlin Wall, which they had been faced with before and are now unwittingly building up… in order not to show the world those military crimes, vileness and devastated territories they are so assiduously trying to hide. The Russian ruling group cannot get over the fact that instead of 2,500 Tskhinvalians declared killed only 76-80 were found.  Russia does not want to acknowledge it bombed Tskhinvali, destroyed Kodori and devastated Gali but this will remain impracticable without a new Berlin wall.

P.S.

The only hope to crawl out from under the legitimate inferiority of Russia is in the hands of Georgians again – if we show the world that we have reconciled to the Russian unbridled aggression, then the world, too, will no longer consider inconvenient to have equal relations with it. To persuade Georgia to restore diplomatic relations – that is how Russia can escape punishment for the crimes it has deserved for those killings and destruction inflicted on Georgia. If Russia persuades Georgia to restore diplomatic relations, it will try to make up a false picture of interstate dispute settlement. Russian PR technologists can arrange it in no time but we must not allow it to happen!

It is true for us, and we will win.