Gerri Peev: Flawed British responses to flare-up in Georgia

Published on Tuesday 19 August 2008 22:15

Labour is paralysed, Tories are sabre-rattling. Neither is helping to reduce Russia's risky isolation

Hypocrisy underpins the bellicose tone taken against Russia's disproportionate action

PERHAPS Gordon Brown's decision to dispatch David Miliband to the Caucasus was an act of revenge, to teach the young upstart a lesson by casting him as Britain's human shield to face down Russian tanks. Indeed, it is difficult to see what the Foreign Secretary's visit, several days after David Cameron's holiday stopover in Tbilisi, can achieve.

The Labour government has already been accused of a slow and anaemic reaction to the tensions, which are about so much more than sovereignty or secession, in contrast to the Tory leader's strident tones.

But that analysis ignores the fact that the reactions from both parties, so far, have been flawed. Tinderbox tourism is tasteless.

One party is guilty of paralysis, the other of sabre-rattling in the name of soundbites.

Certainly the image-conscious Tory leader should take care who is he befriending. Not since the last term of Saddam Hussein did a government get elected on 96 per cent of the vote, which is what President Mikheil Saakashvili miraculously achieved.

Had relations with Russia been better, a more pragmatic and fruitful contribution to ending the crisis by Miliband or Brown would have been to send an envoy to Moscow. Unfortunately, that relationship has broken down since the Alexander Litvinenko affair, when Russia refused to extradite one of its own citizens, in line with its own constitution, to the UK.

The present crisis has highlighted the UK's impotence and, according to European diplomats, has divided the EU even more than the Iraq war.

Yesterday, outside the foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels, the Foreign Secretary glibly said that Russia must not be isolated. If anything, Moscow feels surrounded.

From Kosovo to Poland to Turkey to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Nato military alliance has encircled Russia, offering the West an easy strike should the Kremlin get out of line. Just like Israel, whose muscular ripostes are excused in the name of pacifying its unruly enemies, Russia, too, is fearful of its neighbours. But unlike its counterpart in the Middle East, it has pariah status conferred upon it by the West.

Agreements for missile defence shields struck by the US in Poland and the Czech Republic are a dangerous development.

The author F William Engdahl, who has researched geopolitics and oil for 30 years, points out that it is impossible to verify that the ten US- controlled interceptor missiles in Poland are not ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to Russia within minutes.

He warns that if there is only one country possessing anti-missile capability, it would achieve the 1950s Pentagon dream of American nuclear primacy. Having no counterpoint to military supremacy, regardless of how benign one side can seem in contrast to the objectionable other, is unhealthy for the world and makes peace less, rather than more, likely. This is not an attempt to justify the thuggery of some of Russian's actions, but an exercise in trying to try to understand what lies behind the sentiment.

It is depressing that in the 21st century one even has to use the polarising concepts of West and East.

Unfortunately, the largely myopic and simplistic narrative espoused by champions of democracy such as Dick Cheney and inexplicably parroted by the mainstream press, is difficult to shake.

Meanwhile, Roman Abramovich must be quaking in his hand-tooled designer leather boots after Cameron's threat to stop the Muscovites from stampeding to the Selfridges sale.

The Tory leader's audacious and headline grabbing call for restrictions on visas to the UK for Russian citizens, may play well to a domestic audience.

It will also please his Republican counterpart across the pond. John McCain could still, after all, be the next president of the United States, and Mr Cameron's outbursts on "bully" Russia echo the Republican candidate's.

The Tory leader is going to sincere and great lengths to prove he is not just a PR machine. He has principles and policies (even if the latter is a work in progress).

But in his clamour to underpin his quest for moral authority, to assert, as he puts it, that there is such a concept as right and wrong, he has left out the various shades of grey that inconveniently make up the palette of global politics and human nature. It is all very well to threaten to stop wealthy Russians from shopping at exclusive department stores in London. (As though somehow the oligarchs can't get luxury goods at home – after all, Moscow is now the most expensive city in the world for expats to live).

But where is the logical conclusion of such policies? Banning Russian companies from being FTSE-listed? How would that go down with the City and de facto, Tory bankrollers?

Russia, an energy powerhouse, which provides up a quarter of Europe's oil and as much as 40 per cent of its gas, also enjoys the fourth largest foreign exchange reserves in the world. Idle talk of punishing it economically is incendiary.

Hypocrisy underpins the bellicose tone taken against Russia's disproportionate reaction to Georgia's incursions in South Ossetia. The US ambassador to the UN has argued that Russia had intended "regime change" in Georgia. The Russian ambassador, with some justification, retorted that this was an American concept.

In the meantime, the Georgians could be forgiven for trying to blame their miscalculation on their American mentor, who has pulled the puppet strings but let them down by failing to stand "shoulder to shoulder" in their bluff.