Georgia - Now What? - Charles Crawford

Analysis/comment on Georgia/Russia gushes out. EU leaders meet tomorrow.

Hence we have the latest UK positions as described by Foreign Secretary David Miliband and (today) Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

These senior British statements are both alas inelegantly drafted. Who is preparing these texts for our leaders – and are they themselves reading them before signing them off?

Take the Prime Minister’s opening paragraph:

Twenty years ago, as the Berlin Wall fell, people assumed the end of hostility between East and West, and a new world order founded on common values. As part of this, 10 Eastern European states joined Nato and intensified co-operation with Europe and more wanted to follow. But Russia’s hostile action towards Georgia suggests that they are unreconciled to this new reality.

Huh? Who is the ‘they’ in that last sentence:

Or David Miliband’s weird opening words:

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has seemed that new rules were being established for the conduct of international relations in central and eastern Europe and central Asia. The watchwords were independence and interdependence; sovereignty and mutual responsibility; cooperation and common interests. They are good words that need to be defended.

Don’t they teach grammar in the FCO ("it has seemed that new rules were being established…")? Why do ‘good words’ need defending? A fun new lexicographic role for NATO here?

These infelicities aside, what exactly do we think that the UK plus its allies and partners should do about Georgia and the wider questions the Russian intervention raises? According to these statements the menu is something like this:

consider meeting more frequently as G7 (ie put the G8 grouping including Russia into deep freeze – a good idea as far as it goes)
help Georgia with humanitarian assistance (the UK’s two million pounds package looks a bit feeble here?)
deploy peace monitors to better judge violations of the ceasefire, appoint a senior figure to drive the humanitarian and political effort, and support the Nato Georgia Commission, with a Nato team sent to Georgia (modest ‘do something’ bits and bobs)
demand the withdrawal of Russian troops to their August 7 positions (notable absence of any insistence that Russia reverse its recognition of S Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states: maybe wise, as Russia won’t do it? But how does the ‘West’ plan to deal with these territories now?)
review relations with Russia ‘root and branch’ (these meetings will be fascinating officials, but with a view to achieving what?)
press European leaders to increase funding for a project to allow us to source energy from the Caspian Sea, reducing our dependence on Russia (do we really think that this is going to work?)
Miliband: "re-balance the energy relationship with Russia. Europe needs to invest in storing gas to deal with interruptions. More interconnections between countries and properly functioning internal markets will increase resilience. It needs diverse, secure and resilient gas supplies" (fine in theory, but no serious impact likely for many years to come)
Brown: "add urgency to the work on Europe’s energy agenda. We must more rapidly build relationships with other producers of oil and gas. Our response must include a redoubling of our efforts to complete a single market in gas and electricity, a collective defence to secure our energy supplies" (ditto)
support Ukraine’s EU membership aspirations (good – but will the EU do it?)
Brown: We now know how much more we have to do to create an effective system of international rules. We must strengthen the system of global governance to meet the challenges of our interdependent world. We must reshape our global architecture to meet the new challenges: climate change, energy security, poverty, migration. (This incantation is getting wearisome. There are international rules aplenty at the moment – the problem comes when they are broken)