15 September 2008: Middle East Times
By Claude Salhani
GENEVA -- When is a cold war a cold war? Tensions between the United States and Russia find themselves at an all-time high since the end of the Cold War with U.S. and Russian fleets chasing each other around the Black Sea in maneuvers reminiscent of the coldest days of the Cold War.
Experts in Russian affairs, however, are adamant: it is not a cold war.
"What we have today has nothing to do with the Cold War," said Oksana Antonenko, a senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The latest conflict in the Caucasus came about when Georgian armed forces intervened in Abkhazia and South Ossetia to try and quell separatist movements.
Russian leaders say that the delay shown by the West in its political intervention did not help. And neither did the failures by Western intelligence services to have predicted that aggression. "This is a crisis that should have been on the radar screens of Western intelligence services," said Antonenko.
"The escalation of the conflict was entirely predictable," she added. The crisis broke out on the morning of Aug. 7, one day before the start of the Summer Olympic Games opened in Beijing.
Some analysts believe the date and the time chosen by the Georgian president to launch the offensive is no coincidence. Indeed, Georgia selected the date carefully, wrongly, yet carefully nevertheless. The start of the Games would ensure that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was out of the country. This is a small detail but one that would give the Georgians a few hours more to complete their objectives.
According to Antonenko, "There is no doubt that the current crisis began on Aug. 7, when Georgia attacked South Ossetia, it was 11 p.m. Beijing time. Putin had joined other world leaders in the Chinese capital for the opening ceremonies."
The international response, however, did not come for several hours.
Putin later told Antonenko when she met him last week about a conversation he had with U.S. President George W. Bush, who was also attending the opening session of the Summer Games. The conversation took place shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in the Caucasus.
Putin related the string of events.
By 10 o'clock in the morning, several hours into the Georgian offensive, Putin telephoned President Bush to convey what was transpiring on the ground and asking for the United States to become more proactive. According to Putin, Bush replied that "nobody wants war." But when the two leaders met nine hours later, Putin asked Bush what he had done. The answer was, "nothing."
Putin said he was "shocked."
While the West delayed, Georgians meanwhile used overwhelming force against the breakaway republic.
And just as predictable was Russia's heavy-handed reply when it sent its far more superior military into the breakaway republics. The Russians did not stop at the Georgian border, but kept pushing on into Georgian territory, proper.
Russia, however, had a much wider agenda in its intervention, says Antonenko. Moscow clearly wanted to send a message not only to other republics, who may have similar intention, but also to Washington, whom the Russians saw gradually infringing on their former domains. Obviously, there are a number of issues that riled Moscow, such as Washington installing missiles in the Czech Republic and a radar system in Poland; NATO's expansion into former Warsaw Pact countries and plans to include Georgia and the Ukraine. Georgians went too far. But then again, so did the Russians. The victims of the war were high even though the actual combat operations did not last very long.
"Casualties have been very significant," said Antonenko. About 115,000 people were displaced by the violence. In South Ossetia 30,000 people fled. In Georgia 120,000 were displaced; 60,000 are still refugees.
And it's not only militarily that Russia committed errors. Analysts believe Moscow also made some very big mistakes politically. In recognizing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Russians, said Antonenko, "made the most strategic mistake."
Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of Munich Security Conference, agrees that the crisis in the Caucasus has cost Russia to lose some of its international moral ground.
But, he said, the Russian are simply exercising their own version of the Monroe Doctrine.
Ambassador Ischinger also believes that what is happening between Russia and the United State is "certainly no Cold War."
However, a U.S. government official who asked not to be mentioned by name told this correspondent: "If it smells like a cold war and it looks like a cold war…"
What else do you call it when you have Russians and American warships looking at each other down the barrels of their 16-inch guns?
I would call it a "frigid war." The cold war comes later.
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