Scott: the article below from today's european WSJ is proof of neo-con insanity. The concept that we can dictate to the Russians over their 'near abroad' is simply absurd. It is also a waste of effort. A Russia so weak that we can dictate over Moldova or the Caucasus is a bigger problem to the world than a Russia that persues its own interests in its own backyard [as the US does in the Carib or the French in Francophone Africa]. It is one thing to try at the margins to ease the situation. It is another to try to do to the Russians in the near abroad what the Soviets pulled on us in Nicaragua, Grenada and Cuba. This sort of meglomaniac Wilsonian insanity will breed the anti-US alliance of Paris's dreams. So let the EU be the voice of fatuous human rights. The US should concentrate on reason of state. Interference in situations beyond our power to control or need to try can kill us.
Double-Cross on the Road to Maastricht
By VLADIMIR SOCOR
With ten days remaining until the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe convenes its year-end meeting at Maastricht, Soviet ghosts have stolen a march on the OSCE, severely embarrassing its Dutch chairmanship, the U.S. State Department and the European Union in the process. On Nov. 17, the KGB alumnus in the Kremlin and his Moldovan Communist vassal-in-waiting -- presidents Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Voronin -- announced that they have made a deal, behind the West's collective back, to turn Moldova into an outright Russian bridgehead in Europe, complete with Russian troops and political oversight.
With this, Russia has preempted the resolution of the two issues that the OSCE had earlier this year placed at the very top of its agenda: conflict settlement in Moldova, and moving closer to ratification of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE), ratification of which is linked in turn to the withdrawal of Russian troops from Moldova and Georgia.
Because they matter so much, the issues of Moldova and of CFE remained in suspense during the recent preparation of the final document for Maastricht. Even a few days ago, when bargaining with Russia inside the OSCE was moving into endgame, the platitude-filled draft final document for Maastricht contained only two conspicuous empty spaces: those reserved for the issues of Moldova and of CFE.
The OSCE's Dutch chairmanship had earlier this year singled out the conflict in Moldova -- from among all the unresolved conflicts in the OSCE area -- as the most amenable to a resolution, which would also help keep the OSCE in business. Accordingly, the chairmanship embraced -- hoping for approval at Maastricht -- a preexisting plan to gerrymander Moldova's territory into something called "federation" under predominantly Russian oversight (though at least diluting Russia's military presence, and with an indirect role for the West via the OSCE.)
The U.S. State Department, conceding Russia's primacy in Moldova, was energetically promoting this plan in Moldova through the American-led OSCE mission there, and working closely with Russia on technical details.
The Dutch chairmanship erred in climbing on that wagon; but it partially redeemed that error by proposing to the EU that it undertake -- still in coordination with Russia -- a peace-consolidation operation in Moldova. The EU's Political and Security Committee has in recent months examined this possibility in some detail. High Representative Javier Solana supports the idea. In sum, the major Western players were actively involved in working out a solution with Russia in Moldova, largely though not entirely to Russia's satisfaction -- going for the "soft," rather than the "hard" sphere-of-influence model -- and with some possibility of a Western comeback later on through the EU.
Thus, all felt stunned on Nov. 17, when Mr. Putin's first deputy chief of staff, Dmitry Kozak, announced that he had worked out a different deal behind everybody else's back, directly with Moldova's president and with Russia's proxies (the ultimate Soviet ghosts) in Moldova's secessionist Trans-Dniester region. Mr. Kozak wears a second hat as Russia's presidential plenipotentiary for negotiations on Moldova/Trans-Dniester. The next day, Mr. Putin himself went on television to bless the agreement; and, adding public insult to injury, he tasked Mr. Kozak with informing the OSCE about the Russian-made done deal.
OSCE diplomats -- American, Dutch and others -- are livid. Fixated as they often are on "process" first, and substance only second, they feel that they have been double-crossed. We don't know yet what they think about the substance of Messrs. Putin's and Kozak's dispensation for Moldova. But they have every right to be outraged about the procedure. Mr. Kozak short-circuited the forums and processes, in which OSCE, American and other diplomats were negotiating with Russia about the strategically located Moldova. While Russian diplomats continued sitting and talking at those negotiating tables, Mr. Kozak was secretly at work on his separate deal with the Moldovan and the Trans-Dniester leaderships: one is communist, the other predominantly consisting of Russian personnel.
Procedure aside, the substance of this Russian deal is no longer the "soft," but rather the "hard" sphere-of-influence model. The Kozak Memorandum, laying down the principles of "federalizing" Moldova, no longer provides the figleaf of Russia-OSCE "guarantees" (in which the OSCE would in any case have played third fiddle because of Russia's veto power within the OSCE itself). By now, it seems all-too-clear who the "guarantor" de facto is. Under the Memorandum, Moscow's proxies in Trans-Dniester receive a grotesquely high overrepresentation, along with blocking powers, in the "federation's" central governing and legislative bodies.
Trans-Dniester's authorities -- steadfast advocates of a Russian orientation for Moldova, indeed advocates of a Greater Russia -- now receive the power to stop Moldova's executive authorities from entering into international agreements. This power they would without doubt use in order to block Moldova's desired rapprochement and association with the EU. The Russian language becomes official language, on a par with the Moldovan/Romanian language, on the "federation's" entire territory.
Anyone familiar with Moldova knows that such equality of status means that Russian will take over. Inasmuch as Russians form barely 12% of the population, compared to 65% Moldovans and 23% others, having two official languages means falling back on the Soviet-era policies of russification of Moldovan and other ethnic groups (a policy that has continued all along in Trans-Dniester).
In a follow-up statement on Nov. 19, Mr. Kozak reaffirmed what other Russian officials had been saying in the runup to Maastricht: The Russian troops will stay in Moldova as long as Russia deems necessary. The obligation to withdraw, which Russia had undertaken at the OSCE's 1999 Istanbul summit, and unfulfilled since then, was severely weakened by the OSCE itself at its Porto 2002 year-end meeting. By now, the Kremlin no longer even acknowledges that obligation. While the Kozak Memorandum stipulates that Moldova shall be "neutral and demilitarized," Russian troops stay on, because they are more equal than others.
In sum, Moscow -- now with the help of Moldovan communists -- is poised to turn Moldova into a quasi-state or non-state, an undefined and dysfunctional entity, under Russian political, economic and military influence, in a 400 kilometer-long territory along NATO's and the EU's new borders. This location, more than anything else, explains Mr. Putin's close personal attention to "resolving" Moldova on these terms.
Georgia is in the same boat with Moldova regarding the CFE Treaty. Russia wants that treaty ratified, not least in order to extend its applicability to the Baltic states. Western countries have said all along that ratification depends on the withdrawal of Russian forces from Moldova, Georgia and other southern flank places, in accordance with Russia's 1999 obligations. That linkage remains official U.S. policy, and NATO policy as well. By now, however, certain governments of West European NATO countries are set to begin the CFE ratification procedures, irrespective of Russian compliance with the obligations in Moldova, Georgia and elsewhere on the southern flank. Thus, Russia would have its cake on the southern flank and eat it in the northwestern sector as well.
At Maastricht, the OSCE faces two options: seek survival by defending its own principles and earlier resolutions, or close its eyes and allow itself to sink, gently.
Mr. Socor is a senior fellow of the Washington-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Policy Studies.
Updated November 21, 2003
posted by scott 8:25 AM