Left Flank

I wouldn't have thought former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger would say it, and another former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, agreed, that it is possible for the US and Russia «...to go back to Cold War period and treat each other as adversaries...» It's like listening to arthritis inflame a nonagenarian's knee joints. Or, reading about «escalation dominance».

The long-term response, as CFR's Stephen Sestanovich argues, is to restore the credibility of a united American and European diplomatic strategy, as, in the immediate term, the US reads the riot act. Zbigniew Brzezinski, in The Grand Chessboard, argues that Russia has three bad choices in the post-Cold War period, and one good one. The Bush administration pushed Russia into one of the bad choices, recreating its near-abroad Soviet empire, as a result of American support for Georgia and Ukraine. The good choice is Russia's integration within Europe. Economic integration, not military confrontation, must be the long-term message.

Two talented commentators highlight the substance of this two-pronged strategy. Firstly, not only was Georgia's leadership suckered into attacking Russian troops for territory, but it lost the battle for cyberspace. As John Robb argues, Georgia should adopt a poison pill strategy.

Georgia's mistake, and it is a common one, is that it thought that connectivity to the global system (as well as the US) was a viable defense against a hostile Russian takeover. As a result, it became a vital cog in the BTC and a willing participant in the US adventure in Iraq. That defense proved mostly hollow. In short, the only real defense against hostile takeovers by aggressive corporate states is to make the cost of the acquisition too expensive for the acquirer. The way to do this is through the development of a poison pill: the intentional disruption of Russian energy pipelines...Global guerrilla methods, particularly cyber/physical disruption, compliment interconnection as part of a Micropower defense strategy.

Secondly, Western Europe needs to remind Russia of its problems, and offer assistance. «With the exception of oil prices, Russia has nothing to offer the world※it doesn’t make anything, it can’t produce much of value, its population is growing progressively older and sicker at an increasingly rate, and its political system is really collapsing if Putin can contract it in so short a time. Russia is a dying power, and like most dying powers it is lashing out in fury at its loss of prestige and power.»

Russia's lure was a cheap «Grozny-like» way to give Putin and Medvedev a full term of office without domestic political opposition and a chance to reform the Russian political arena permanently. It's predicated on the assurance that Russia's economy is sound. Now, Georgia and other EU states need to remind Moscow of the two-way street between consumers and producers. Bluster will only provoke retrenchment behind fortress walls. Moscow must understand its best destiny lies with Europe, not its own stars.