Below The Beltway

There’s an excellent article over at Stratfor about what the mini-war between Russia and Georgia really means:

The Russian invasion of Georgia has not changed the balance of power in Eurasia. It simply announced that the balance of power had already shifted. The United States has been absorbed in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as potential conflict with Iran and a destabilizing situation in Pakistan. It has no strategic ground forces in reserve and is in no position to intervene on the Russian periphery. This, as we have argued, has opened a window of opportunity for the Russians to reassert their influence in the former Soviet sphere. Moscow did not have to concern itself with the potential response of the United States or Europe; hence, the invasion did not shift the balance of power. The balance of power had already shifted, and it was up to the Russians when to make this public. They did that Aug. 8.

Moreoever, as the author goes on to argue, Russia’s actions this week were aimed not so much at the United States as they were at Russia’s neighbors:

Putin did not want to re-establish the Soviet Union, but he did want to re-establish the Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union region. To accomplish that, he had to do two things. First, he had to re-establish the credibility of the Russian army as a fighting force, at least in the context of its region. Second, he had to establish that Western guarantees, including NATO membership, meant nothing in the face of Russian power. He did not want to confront NATO directly, but he did want to confront and defeat a power that was closely aligned with the United States, had U.S. support, aid and advisers and was widely seen as being under American protection. Georgia was the perfect choice.

And when Georgia, inexplicabily blundered itself into invading South Ossetia last Thursday, Putin had the excuse that he needed to act.

The Stratfor report also goes a long way toward answering the four questions asked by James Joyner which I mentioned earlier today:

The war in Georgia, therefore, is Russia’s public return to great power status. This is not something that just happened — it has been unfolding ever since Putin took power, and with growing intensity in the past five years. Part of it has to do with the increase of Russian power, but a great deal of it has to do with the fact that the Middle Eastern wars have left the United States off-balance and short on resources. As we have written, this conflict created a window of opportunity. The Russian goal is to use that window to assert a new reality throughout the region while the Americans are tied down elsewhere and dependent on the Russians. The war was far from a surprise; it has been building for months. But the geopolitical foundations of the war have been building since 1992. Russia has been an empire for centuries. The last 15 years or so were not the new reality, but simply an aberration that would be rectified. And now it is being rectified.

This doesn’t mean that war, or even emnity, between the United States and Russia is inevitable. There are as many areas where our interests coincide, if not more, than there are differences between us. What it does mean, though, is those such as Senator McCain who seem intent on analyzing the events of this week through a Cold War prisim are missing the boat entirely.

This isn’t a resurgance of an ideological and expansionist Soviet Union. It’s the return of Mother (Czarist) Russia to a role it played for centuries prior to 1917. Back then, even the British Empire recognized the advantages of recognizing the Russian sphere of influence. In an age of nuclear weapons, we would do well to consider doing the same.