BACKGROUND: Shevarnadze was clearly a pro-Western figure but his hands were tied by his own internal misrule, Georgia’s weakness, and thus its vulnerability to Russian pressure. Countless statements attest to his desire to join NATO or at least have it protect Georgian energy pipelines. The new regime is even more forthright about its intention to integrate with the West and restore Georgia\'s integrity. This Westernizing proclivity and Georgia’s refusal to allow Russian forces into Georgia’s borders with Chechnya infuriated Moscow and hardened its resolve to prevent the stabilization of Georgia as a pro-Western state. Hence the refusal to vacate the bases or relax its hold on Georgia. Before the elections, notwithstanding the hatred for Shevardnadze, Moscow came to feel that the best outcome in Georgia would be a permanently weak, divided, and unstable Georgia that it could control along with the rebellious proto-states which it could use as leverage against Shevardnadze and by which it could perpetually humiliate him. Therefore Putin initially supported him in the crisis over a visibly corrupted election and vote count. It also is highly probable that Moscow supported Shevardnadze’s efforts to bring to bear the Ajarian regime led by Aslan Abashidze and even possibly Russian military forces or the threat of it in the post-election crisis. Some analysts have also suggested that Moscow entertained the hope of having Abashidze succeed Shevardnadze in mid-term or when he would have left office in 2005 or even of engineering such a succession as a condition of its support for Shevardnadze. Yet this gambit failed and Igor Ivanov ended up negotiating Shevardnadze’s resignation in favor of the opposition. The new Georgian government is clearly coalescing around three post-Western leaders, Mikhail Saakashvili, Nino Burjanadze, and Zurab Zhvania. The IMF and the U.S. government are rushing support to the provisional government which will preside until the January 4 elections in order to rescue it from the economic disaster that Georgia now faces. At the same time it is also clear that the new regime aims to restore Georgia’s unity though hopefully on the basis of a more democratic and inclusive basis than in the early 1990s. Undoubtedly it will also turn to the West for support and maybe protection, perhaps leading to an increase in the U.S. military support program there and to greater efforts to join NATO and overcome Georgia’s internal debilities. While the challenges of internal misrule, economic catastrophe, and ethnic secessionism abetted by foreign intervention are daunting, the new regime clearly aims to prevent foreign governments like Russia from exploiting internal weaknesses. And it is this defeat that explains Moscow’s sour grapes and ungenerous attitude toward the new Georgian leaders. Nobody can deny that Russia has a vital interest in Georgia\'s stability or that the massive outflow of refugees should Georgia collapse would be a problem. Neither would new ethnic wars between Tbilisi and its rebellious provinces of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Ajaria be in Russia\'s interests even if it was not the main foreign support for those rebellious satrapies.

IMPLICATIONS: Moscow clearly has a strange way of showing its solicitude for Georgian stability. And what is more relevant to all the other Central Asian, South Caucasian and other CIS states is what this episode reveals to us about Russia’s policy and goals for the region. First of all, it is clear that Moscow will staunchly support repressive and corrupt dictatorships throughout the area because their misrule allows Russia to achieve commanding strategic economic and political positions from which it cannot be dislodged. Weak regimes in the successor states generally breed polarizing political factions contending for power one of whom generally looks to Moscow for support and believes its future is best served by a Russian orientation. This tendency perpetuates the longstanding imperial tradition of Russian statecraft. Russia will try to make itself the indispensable support to those governments even against their aroused masses. As Putin has stated, Russia will not “export democracy”. But it will (as we now see in Lithuania and Turkmenistan for example) export criminality, support for coups, and assistance for weakened dictators who lead their countries to a dead end. Moscow will also exploit not just misrule but also ethnic and other cleavages or the threat of terrorism to obtain permanent military bases from which it will not leave and from which it can exercise decisive military influence just as its proconsuls did in eighteenth century Poland and more broadly throughout the Tsarist empire. In short, Russia still seeks a neo-colonialist status quo in the CIS and will employ whatever instruments of power that are available to it, even if they are limited, in support of those goals. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that such a policy of perpetuating misrule and backwardness is a recipe for more violence, repression, and ultimately explosions. In Georgia we were lucky that violence did not break out although the situation came close to it and violence could yet start again. But we cannot be certain that similar luck will be found when the next such crisis arises. And the advent of another crisis, given the pervasive misrule throughout the former Soviet Union is inevitable. Russia’s support for the conditions that will make an explosion or multiple explosions in the CIS inevitable is inexplicable other than with reference to its short-sighted quest for consolidation of its own authoritarian and corrupt police capitalism at home and empire abroad. Unfortunately this policy is neither sustainable nor able to provide security either for Russia, Georgia, or anyone else in the CIS, including the dictators it is supposed to help.

CONCLUSIONS: Russia\'s obsession with empire and with great power rivalry strongly shows us that the surest guarantee of security for the new states is the peaceful democratization of their polities and societies. While the United States and its institutions played a major role in helping to facilitate this victory, Russia contributed only by helping to avert violence that was potentially dangerous to itself. But it clearly has defined its security interests as being in opposition to the reform of these troubled societies. Thus Russian policy inevitably must lead to a criminal neglect and suppression of the forces that would sustain societal security throughout the CIS. As this support for the policies that would sustain backwardness and insecurity is contraindicated to the needs of the Russian people and Russia as a whole, viewed in the light of contemporary strategic realities, Russian policy, for all of its vaunted Realpolitik, is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

AUTHOR BIO: Professor Stephen Blank, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013. The views expressed here do not in any way represent those of the U.S. Army, Defense Department or the U.S. Government.