Embarrassing situation for US

After two weeks of tense fighting between Russia and Georgia, a new picture has emerged in Caucasia with world-wide implications. For the first time in almost 30 years -since the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 - Moscow seems to be willing to use brutal force to bring a rebellious neighbour to its knees.

The United States, which, according to Western sources, encouraged Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to defy Moscow, did not give him any real support. Former Soviet republics and satellites will now think twice before confronting Russia, or seeking to join Nato or any other form of Western security arrangements. They must have realised by now that Moscow is no longer in a position to tolerate provocations and infringements on its political and security interests. Reliance on US support has also proved to be an illusion.

For the US, the whole situation must have been embarrassing, standing idle unable to assist an ally under attack. So, what went wrong? Was that a miscalculation on the part of the Bush administration and its Georgian ally? Did Washington underestimate the will and the ability of the Russians to react the way they did? The answer may be both.

Over the past few years, Western analysts have been trying to bring attention to the growing power of the Russian bear. US political circles, by contrast, were not particularly concerned about Russia's endeavour to re-establish itself as a superpower, describing academic warnings as media frenzy.

Complete anarchy

In the early 1990s, following the fall of Communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia descended gradually into complete anarchy. It was a society in ruins going through disastrous times. However, when Vladimir Putin took over in 2000, things started to change drastically. And for the past five years, the Russian leader has been working quietly to bolster his country's international standing and reinvigorate its capabilities. His counter-attack became public only when he felt that he has become strong enough to break the silence and express his dissatisfaction with Western policies.

Moscow seems today better equipped to challenge the US and its allies, who have been meddling in Russia's strategic sphere and ignoring its national interests for the past decade. In fact, Russia's rising power is making itself felt on most of the world's problems today and it seems to have recovered from the trauma of losing the Cold War. Yet, until recently Russian policy remained largely defensive; confined to hindering US policies in different parts of the world. It stood, for example, in the US way to issue a new UN Security Council resolution to tighten sanctions on Iran for seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

Moscow also received Hamas leaders when the rest of the world were treating the Palestinian movement as a pariah. Concerning its strategic belt, Russia adopted a benign policy, particularly towards unfriendly Ukraine and Georgia. It tried to reassert its control of central Asia not by force but by signing new energy deals with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. These deals may have allowed Russia to punish its pro-Western neighbours; such as Moldova and Georgia, but did not mark a geo-strategic shift in the region.

Early this month, however, all this seemed to have changed. The swift attack in Georgia made Russia's new assertiveness all too clear. Gone are the days when Russia would bow to US dictates and beg for loans from the Western governments. All this could not have happened at a worst timing for the Bush administration, which might want to prevent this but has very limited means to do it.

This is what Anthony Cordesman; a prominent US security expert has to say about the recent confrontation in Caucasia: "We [US] pushed too far on the periphery of a re-emergent Russia, and we pushed at least a country, not just a bridge too far. In the process, we almost certainly played an inadvertent role in convincing a 'rabbit' that it could provoke a 'bear'. If anything, we are lucky that the 'bear' did not eat the 'rabbit'."

Dr Marwan Kabalan is a lecturer in media and international relations, Faculty of Political Science and Media, Damascus University, Syria.