BETWEEN BRUSSELS AND CARACAS

The heads of NATO member states postponed granting Georgia and Ukraine a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP), which is a key phase in the process towards fully-fledged accession to the organization, at the alliance summit held from 2nd-4th April 2008. It was decided to discuss this issue again during the meeting of NATO foreign ministers held in Brussels from 2nd -3rd December.

Long-term NATO "engine"

However, much water flowed under the bridge between the two events - the "five-day war" between Russia and Georgia, increasing political instability in Ukraine, new tensions in relations between the opposition and the government in Georgia and, lastly, the worldwide financial crisis. You do not have to be a specialist to understand that neither Kiev nor Tbilisi meet NATO standards at present, despite all their efforts and assistance from the US. For example, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said quite openly in an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper, which was published on the eve of the Brussels meeting, that Ukraine and Georgia were still not ready to join the North Atlantic alliance.

And they did not. It was reaffirmed at the NATO ministerial that Georgia and Ukraine will become NATO members. The alliance's Secretary General,  Jaap de Hoop Scheffer ,said during a press conference in Brussels that the North Atlantic alliance will provide "maximum support" to Ukraine and Georgia in their preparation for accession. The Secretary General was certain that the "train has departed from the Bucharest station, it keeps moving and will not stop."  But he did not specify the exact time of arrival of the "NATO locomotive."

In the mean time, the Brussels meeting reached an agreement on the intensification of work in the Ukraine-NATO and Georgia-NATO commissions. Annual action plans (AAP) will be developed for Kiev and Tbilisi, which will help them carry out the required reforms in the fields of democratic development, freedom of speech, independence of the judiciary and free and fair elections, as well as in continuing military reforms. So it seems that Ukraine and Georgia still have much work to do on the reforms necessary to join the alliance. At the same time, Scheffer stressed specifically that the MAP still remains a mandatory phase for these countries in the process of full accession to the organization.

Some observers voice the opinion that the AAPs for Ukraine and Georgia can be seen as an alternative way of joining NATO, which, as the Western media reported, was what US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in European capitals when she had to admit that MAPs could not be granted to Tbilisi and Kiev now.

Indeed, the messages emerging a few days before the Brussels meeting were mixed. "There was no MAP procedure before 1999. A number of countries, including the Czech Republic and Poland, joined NATO without a MAP. However, precisely on the basis of the experience of their accession, the Membership Action Plan was introduced," explained NATO spokesmen James Apaturay at length. It was also pointed out that an "alternative pathway" will be adapted for intensification of the NATO-Ukraine and NATO-Georgia commissions' activities.

It is worth noting that several European countries which raised objections to an acceleration of the two countries' accession - Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg and the Netherlands - agreed on the new interim option for Georgia and Ukraine, on condition that the AAP will not be seen as a full replacement of the MAP. They argue that gradually escalating political crises are under way in Ukraine and Georgia and this makes their partnership unreliable. At the same time, a number of European capitals are cautious of completely spoiling relations with Moscow.

So the only thing that is clear is that even the recognition of the "alternative pathway" changes nothing: Ukraine's and Georgia's plans to join the alliance in the near future have been thwarted once and for all. However, not everyone thinks so. Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tqeshelashvili has already said that the NATO-Georgia Commission is the central organization which will, in the near future, become the central body to lead the country into the alliance. For his part, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko expressed confidence that Ukraine has effectively received an MAP from NATO. He added that 95% of the Ukraine-NATO target action plan for 2009 was the same as the text of the MAP.

The AAP is indeed seen as a way out of the situation that has arisen. The NATO leadership realizes that if it flatly rejected Georgia's and Ukraine's applications, it would be seen as succumbing to Russian pressure, which, of course, neither Brussels nor Washington can afford to do, especially after the August events. But on the other hand, if NATO openly gives Kiev and Tbilisi a green light, this might have unpredictable consequences.

Another important issue discussed in early December in Brussels was whether or not the Russia-NATO council will resume the work suspended in August after the war in Georgia. It was decided to resume cooperation, but only at an informal level. "There can be no business as usual, but this does not mean that we agree with Russia on the disproportional use of force, the illegal recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia or the keeping of its troops where they do not belong," Jaap de Hoop Scheffer explained. An informal meeting of the Russia-NATO council at ambassadorial level was scheduled to take place in the near future. The issues on which Russia and the North Atlantic alliance differ will be discussed in detail at the meeting.

And they differ first and foremost on the issue of NATO's eastward expansion. Moscow, which was reassured after the reunification of Germany that the organization would not expand, is now trying its best to prevent further infiltration of the alliance into the sphere of Russia's strategic interests. Many people openly or indirectly concluded that this was precisely the ulterior motive behind Moscow's and Tbilisi's war in August. If they are right, it means that Russia will stop at nothing to protect its interests. At the same time, NATO is not going to fall back either, and we should bear in mind that the alliance's charter includes the principle of mutual military assistance. For now, the militarist sentiment, both in the United States and Russia, has been cooled by the world financial and economic crisis, but nothing can be ruled out. The Western media, for example, carried various gloomy forecasts before the Brussels meeting. It was pointed out, for example, that US President George Bush issued a directive to insure all merchant ships sailing under the US flag against military risks in the Black Sea by March 2009. The White House admitted that the directive was a consequence of the developments in Georgia, to which the US merchant fleet delivers weapons and military hardware. The Ukrainian defence minister announced a movement of troops from the western borders closer to the border with Russia.

It was hypothesized in view of these developments that the Americans were getting ready for a new war in the Caucasus, which would give them an excuse to demand Georgia's and Ukraine's accession to NATO. There are claims that in the winter, the Russian tanks might get stuck in the mountains, whereas the Georgian troops would be helped by the US Navy ships whose air defence systems monitor Georgian airspace.

VENRUS-2008

Incidentally, let us talk about events which at first sight seem unrelated. The active phase of the VENRUS-2008 Russian-Venezuelan navy exercises ended in the South Caribbean on the day the NATO ministerial summit opened in Brussels. A detachment of the Russian Federation Northern Fleet, which included the heavy missile-carrying cruiser Petr Velikiy, the large antisubmarine warfare ship Admiral Chabanenko and two support vessels, took part in the exercises. A total of about 1,600 Russian seamen and 700 Venezuelans participated. Helicopters from the detachment of the Northern Fleet warships and Venezuelan Air Force aircraft also took part. It was the first long cruise of the Russian Navy since the end of the Cold War. During the exercises, the Russian and Venezuelan military coordinated deployment in the southern portion of the Caribbean Sea, joint tactical manoeuvring in lines of battle, the search, detection, pursuit, detention and searching of vessels, the reception and transfer of cargoes on the move, and fuelling on the move.

The Russian fleet's cruise to Venezuelan shores reminded many people of the very peak of the Cold War, when Latin America was often used as an arena for confrontation between the USSR and the USA. Analysts point out that it was Moscow's reaction to US interference in the affairs of Russia's "near abroad," (especially Georgia and Ukraine) which until just recently was under its control. And after watching news bulletins about the Russian warships in the Caribbean Sea, one could not help thinking about other news reports which, after the "five-day" war, described the arrival of US warships in the Black Sea.

The point is that, to the United States, the Latin American countries are in a sense the same kind of "near abroad" as Georgia and Ukraine are to Russia. For example, Latin America is often called the "backyard" or the "soft underbelly" of the United States. In the mean time, the openly anti-American sentiment in Cuba and Venezuela, and the fact that a number of countries in the region are ruled by left-centrist governments, which are unwilling to spoil their relations with Washington but are not particularly keen on close friendship with it either, give Russia a chance to "recoup," albeit on a small scale, in the game of "geopolitical poker." This conclusion also suggests itself because Russia is clearly trying to use the Latin America factor as an additional opportunity to prevent the deployment of components of the US missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Moscow views Washington's plans as a threat to its national security. In light of this, the rumours about the possible return of Russian military facilities to Cuba sound very plausible, especially the speculation about rebuilding the Russian Federation Defence Ministry radar surveillance centre in Lurdes.  On 17 October 2001, a meeting behind closed doors decided to close it, although the centre enabled Moscow to intercept data from US telecom satellites, communications cables, and reports from the NASA centre in Florida.

Tour of convenience

Incidentally, yet another coincidence took place: Between the 22nd and 27th November, Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev toured Latin American countries - Peru, Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba. The Russian media baptized "Russia's return to Latin America" a "historic" event. Moscow was first and foremost interested in the energy sector (Venezuela is one of the largest oil producers, and Brazil has unexplored reserves of oil) and in cooperation in the military and military-technical spheres. For example, Russia is now trying to win the trust of Cuba, a country from which it withdrew, in the 1990s, its traditional economic and political support. In Peru, the United Russian Industrial Corporation, Oboronprom, signed an agreement with the Peruvian Defence Ministry on the building of a technical maintenance service depot for Mi-8, Mi-17 and Mi-26T helicopters. Medvedev stayed in Brazil for three days and signed a number of agreements in the field of energy, oil extraction, agriculture, military sector and tourism. However, Russia has closest relations with Venezuela - the countries cooperate on energy projects and in the military-technical field. Caracas is the largest buyer of Russian military hardware.

In addition, when in Venezuela, Dmitriy Medvedev attended a summit of the ALBA organization (Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America), which was created in late 2004 on the initiative of Cuba and Venezuela as a counterbalance to the failed US initiative to create a free trade zone in the Americas. The organization also includes Bolivia, Honduras, Dominica and Nicaragua. Haiti, Iran, Uruguay, Ecuador and other countries have observer status. Medvedev did not rule out the possibility of Russia taking part in the organization's work, possibly as an associate member.

Interestingly, Medvedev was trying, at least in public, not to stress anything that might be indicative of an anti-American slant to his tour, and the Russian media, too, tried their best not to attach political importance to VENRUS-2008.

Russia joins another game

It seems, however, that the West did not attach much importance to Russia's efforts in Latin America. Many people there see Moscow's cooperation with Caracas as purely symbolic and devoid of any practical meaning, and the arrival of the Russian warships in the Caribbean Sea is described as a mere excursion. Analysts point out that in a military sense, an alliance of Russia and Venezuela is hardly likely to be successful, so the only point of VENRUS-2008 is a desire to anger the United States. The "return" of Russia to Latin American does not seem all that "historic".

The price of oil is falling, a financial crisis is raging in the world and the development of new hydrocarbon deposits requires large investment. In addition, political risks in Latin America, including in Venezuela, are high. The distance factor is also important.

And, in general, Russia's "game" in Latin America, a region which seeks independence, can hardly be a decisive factor. The Latin American countries are playing their own hand, in which more or less manifest anti-American sentiment and struggle against "American hegemony" are just one ploy, and by no means the main one.

The region including Latin America and the Caribbean Basin contains 33 countries with a total population of 550 million. The total GDP of the region is $3 trillion, which is 2.5 times higher than that of the ASEAN countries. And it is increasingly noticeable that the Latin American countries are beginning to consider an EU-type integration - at any rate, general agreement on the introduction of a single regional currency and the introduction of common passports has already been achieved. These were the main provisions of the final statement by participants in a recent summit of the Sistema de la Integracion Centroamericana (SICA) in Honduras. In addition, the participants in the meeting agreed to "standardize" laws in the fields of education, security and labour immigration to "increase the level of integration in Central America.

And Russia, which is aware of all this, is probably simply trying to "build itself into" this geopolitical game in a manner most advantageous for its interests. "And if we simultaneously manage to irritate the United States somehow, so much the better." This is precisely what the Kremlin thinks, and there is no denying that there is some logic behind this attitude.

This is why Russia's efforts in Latin America and NATO's eastward expansion should not be seen as connected developments, but they should certainly be considered parts of the same process. The financial crisis has triggered a thorough revision of geopolitical ties. Until the crisis begins to subside, until energy market prices stabilize and the losses of every player in the international market are tallied, any talk of striking a balance on the "great chessboard" would be premature.

In addition, a new president will move into the White House on 20 January 2009, which will also influence many international processes. And the decisions reached at the summit of the NATO foreign ministers in Brussels testify to that.  NATO has "slowed down" for now.