August is the traditional month for invasions. Foreign politicians are on holiday, much of the harvest has finished and there’s time to consolidate before winter sets in. So this time it was Georgia.

None of us who were around at the time will forget the August day in 1968 when Soviet bloc troops invaded Czechoslovakia to scupper the Prague Spring. On that very evening Mstislav Rostropovich and the USSR Symphony Orchestra gave a deeply moving performance of Dvorak’s cello concerto at a London Promenade Concert – a very poignant memory.

So has nothing changed? Russian troops moved into Georgia on August 8 2008, 40 years almost to a day later. But it’s not at all clear whether this was the launch of a more aggressive Russian foreign policy and reversion to an earlier model, or a justifiable response to Georgian military action in South Ossetia, an echo of the NATO campaign in Kosovo with different characters, as the Russians would claim. Truth is always the victim in these circumstances.

The OSCE seems to have serious reservations about Georgia’s role in the whole affair and there are even suggestions that the conflict was provoked by Vice President Dick Cheney in order to boost McCain’s cause in the US elections.

Rash initiatives by the Georgian government in South Ossetia were almost certainly the trigger for the Russian action, but a trigger which Moscow had long been anticipating. Its campaign was surely a far-reaching and thoroughly planned operation to damage the regime of President Mikhail Saakashvili, to assert Russia’s right to dictate political developments in its near abroad and to block NATO expansion in Ukraine and the Caucasus.

The tensions had been building for some months, apparently including a mounting level of cyber attacks on Georgian official websites similar to those previously experienced by Estonia, followed by reprisals against Russian sites by other so-called “hacktivists” who specialise in DDOS – Distributed Denial of Service, where websites are sabotaged by swamping.

It is the scale of Russian actions which may prove deeply counter-productive for Moscow. It seems likely to strengthen the US presence in the region and will raise the level of scepticism about Russia’s good faith in its international dealings. It will no doubt give quite a boost for those who wish to build new oil and gas pipelines which bypass Russia. Much will depend on how quickly the Russians withdraw from occupied Georgian territory and engage with OSCE and EU. However on NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia the Russians may well have made their point. To offer NATO protection for these two countries under Article 5 would be to play for very high stakes.

The European Union has acted quickly with its ceasefire proposals, some strong words and convening of a special summit in Brussels, where deep divisions of opinion were papered over and a united Franco-German position carried the day.

Europe is at pains to stress that the EU makes common cause with the Americans, but its rhetoric has been much more cautious. Sanctions have been rejected and dialogue sustained. If President Sarkozy and his colleagues can make real progress in their talks with the Russian leadership, especially to the extent of launching a programme to resolve the “frozen conflicts” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, then that would be a very considerable achievement

Russia needs the EU quite as much as the EU needs Russia, if only to counterbalance and moderate American policies in the region. While keeping the pinch of salt to hand it’s interesting to see what President Medvedev had to say to Euronews in defending the Russian position and describing Russia’s relationship with the EU.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 15:02 and is filed under Energy, Finance, Russia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.