The return of Putin and humiliation for the West

I have to declare a bias in the war raging between Russia and Georgia. I have not fallen for the charms of a black-eyed Georgian beauty, nor am I taking the Kremlin rouble. The truth is, I am an honorary member of the Ossetian nation, the people whose future sparked the conflict.

Whenever I meet Ossetians, I am treated like royalty and have to endure life-threatening bear-hugs - all because of my name. The Ossetians are descended from the Alans, a tribe who were big in the Dark Ages, so any foreigner who bears that name is greeted as an honorary Ossetian.

This unfortunate people's homeland straddles the Caucasus mountains, some living in the north, under Russian rule, and some in the south, under Georgia. After many bear-hugs, I devoutly wish the South Ossetians to live in peace.

That, unfortunately, is a long way off. After five days of fighting, the war is expanding, with the Russians taking control of half of Georgia. There are fears they are on the way to take the capital Tbilisi - an idea that only last week would have been unthinkable.

Visitors to Tbilisi might be excused for thinking that the Republic of Georgia is the 51st state of the USA. The city is plastered with posters of George W Bush embracing President Mikheil Saakashvili, a US-trained lawyer who has the smooth tongue and ample hair of an American politician.

Saakashvili himself behaves as if his country of 4.4 million had already become the 28th member of the European Union, whose blue and gold banner hangs all over the capital. He has taken to making his most solemn pronouncements standing in front of the EU flag, and the more desperate his situation, the more the flags multiply.

Alas for Georgia, it is not part of the US, the EU or even of Nato. It is not even formally on the path to Nato membership. All of which makes the flags and posters just a dream.

Just how insubstantial this dream was became clear to Saakashvili yesterday when his bodyguards panicked at the sight of a Russian fighter in the sky. They bundled him away and thrust him to the ground covering him with body armour, fearful that the Kremlin might effect "regime change" in its southern neighbour with a single rocket from the sky.

Instead of a Nato guarantee, all he had by way of protection was some sheets of Kevlar and a pack of jumpy guards.

"Nato and the Americans have been humiliated in Georgia," said Jonathan Eyal, of the Royal United Services Institute. "Their guarantees amounted to nothing more than statements and some futile discussions at the UN Security Council."

THERE are dreamers in Russia, too, but the man who leads that country, Vladimir Putin, is a realist, a calculating politician who plans years in advance. The terrible little war unfolding on the fringes of Europe is a story of the clash between Putin the ultra-realist and the dreamy Georgians, who have been exposed to Russia's vengeance thanks to some woolly thinking in the West.

A keen-eyed diplomat could have predicted last month - or precisely on 11 July - that war would break out in the Caucasus. Up to that date, many people believed that the newly-elected president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, would soften the harsh, anti-Western rhetoric of Putin, who had to resign in May after completing two terms, the maximum allowed.

Medvedev, a lawyer, promised to improve education, clean up corruption and make the courts operate more openly. Rather than wars, he declared that Russia needed a period of quiet to develop.

Admittedly he seemed an unlikely revolutionary: a loyal servant of Putin for 18 years and three inches shorter than Putin, Medvedev had always been Robin to his mentor's Batman.

This promised new era seemed to be dawning when the G8 leaders - including Bush, Gordon Brown and Medvedev - gathered in Japan on 8 July and issued a statement in support of sanctions against Robert Mugabe and his cronies in Zimbabwe. At last Russia was lining up beside the West.

But as soon as the Russian president had gone home, his predecessor - now in the lesser role as prime minister - was on the line, telling him he had spoken out of turn. Within a couple of days Russia had vetoed the Zimbabwe sanctions resolution at the UN Security Council.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, called the Russian U-turn "incomprehensible". The US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, said it "raises questions about Russia's reliability as a G8 partner".

Now the diplomatic world has all its questions answered. Putin is back in charge. The West should be grateful, at least, for knowing who it has to deal with.

But why does Russia, which is getting wealthier by the day thanks to high oil prices, want to "invade, occupy and annihilate" - as Saakashvili puts it - the republic of Georgia?

A Russian journalist who has to keep many of his thoughts to himself these days says flexing muscles abroad comes with growing wealth at home. "When a man has bought his first IKEA kitchen and his first German fridge, there is still something lacking in his life. He wants respect, and to see his government cracking a few heads abroad. Putin understands this."

It is often said that Russia is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma. But the story of Vladimir Putin is really quite simple. In 1997 he wrote a doctoral thesis on the need for greater state control over Russia's raw materials; his presidency ended with a campaign of harassment of the oil company BP, seemingly designed to force it to cede control of its Russian joint venture TNK-BP to Russian interests.

It is tempting to see the Russian actions in Georgia as a continuing campaign against BP. The oil company is 30 per cent owner of a pipeline that crosses Georgian territory on its way to Turkey and Western markets. But despite reports - not confirmed - of the Russian air force attacking the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, this is not an oil war.

"In Russia, politics still trumps economics. The Russians have accepted that the pipeline exists. This is more about punishing Georgia for daring to try to join Nato," says James Nixey, a Russian expert at Chatham House.

In April Nato gave Putin the opportunity he was looking for to exact punishment. Bush had been pressing for his friend Saakashvili to be given a timetable for joining the alliance, which would turn one of his dreams into reality.

But France and Germany were wary of extending the Nato guarantee to a small, poor country led by a man they considered to be a hot-head whose pledge to regain two separatist areas - South Ossetia and Abkhazia - could lead to war with Russia.

The result of the Nato summit in April was a fudge: Georgia got no timetable for joining, just a sort of diplomatic IOU that said: "You will join at some stage but don't ask us to say when."

Putin, a judo black belt who is used to exploiting his opponents' weaknesses, saw an opening. He all but annexed South Ossetia and Abkhazia, providing Russian passports, administrators and aid to the residents. He stepped up military provocations against the Georgian army, hoping to taunt it into an misjudged attempt at "liberating" the territories.

The plan succeeded. If the Georgian leader thought he could win by launching his assault on South Ossetia while Putin was watching the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, he is deluded indeed. Putin instantly denounced the Georgian assault as "genocide" and Russian troops started pouring in.

For once the Russians found themselves-on the moral high ground. Putin clearly could not allow the nominal president - a practitioner of yoga, not judo - to take charge.

Putin reappeared as Russia's leader.

Last night he was promising to pursue his country's mission "to its logical conclusion".

At a minimum this means paralysing Georgia - blockading its ports, cutting the country in half - until it recognises Russian suzerainty.

The maximum would be the overthrow of Saakashvili. After so many bloody and ill-prepared wars - Afghanistan and Chechnya come to mind - the Russian military has at last found an enemy it can beat, and a way to heap humiliation on the West.

But there is a danger that having won the battle, the Russians will lose the war.

Putin no doubt sees the humiliation of Georgia as payback time for Nato's pummelling of Russia's old ally, Serbia. In broader terms, he sees it as proof of the end of the US as the world's only "hyperpower", with the West doomed to decline while Russia, China and India rise.

Putin may be vindictive - a not uncommon quality in a politician - but I do not believe he is mad. There can be no new Cold War, and Putin knows that. Russia is a long way from being a superpower: the most it can hope for is to be arbiter of security in the Caucasus and central Asia.

His show of force has exposed years of woolly thinking in the West about Russia. Nato has sailed on blithely expanding to the east. That must now end. The issue of whether Ukraine - a far bigger prize than Georgia - joins the alliance is likely to be shelved while Nato decides whether it can guarantee its new members' security in the face of destabilisation by the Kremlin.

Putin is not going to go away. Indeed, he may run again for president. Unlike Tony Bair, he has no chance of any jobs on the international circuit, but at 56 is too young to retire.

The best hope is that Medvedev may moderate the resurgent war party in Moscow. Russia's economic reputation is already in tatters and continuing war will only strengthen autocracy at home and political isolation abroad.

If Medvedev fails to calm the hawks, Russia will, in the end, be the loser in this war.

Alan Philps is Associate Editor of The National, Abu Dhabi.