Georgia and Kosovo: A Single Intertwined Crisis

By George Friedman

The Russo-Georgian war was rooted in broad geopolitical processes. In large part it was simply the result of the cyclical reassertion of Russian power. The Russian empire — czarist and Soviet — expanded to its borders in the 17th and 19th centuries. It collapsed in 1992. The Western powers wanted to make the disintegration permanent. It was inevitable that Russia would, in due course, want to reassert its claims. That it happened in Georgia was simply the result of circumstance.

There is, however, another context within which to view this, the context of Russian perceptions of U.S. and European intentions and of U.S. and European perceptions of Russian capabilities. This context shaped the policies that led to the Russo-Georgian war. And those attitudes can only be understood if we trace the question of Kosovo, because the Russo-Georgian war was forged over the last decade over the Kosovo question.

Yugoslavia broke up into its component republics in the early 1990s. The borders of the republics did not cohere to the distribution of nationalities. Many — Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and so on — found themselves citizens of republics where the majorities were not of their ethnicities and disliked the minorities intensely for historical reasons. Wars were fought between Croatia and Serbia (still calling itself Yugoslavia because Montenegro was part of it), Bosnia and Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia. Other countries in the region became involved as well.

One conflict became particularly brutal. Bosnia had a large area dominated by Serbs. This region wanted to secede from Bosnia and rejoin Serbia. The Bosnians objected and an internal war in Bosnia took place, with the Serbian government involved. This war involved the single greatest bloodletting of the bloody Balkan wars, the mass murder by Serbs of Bosnians.

Here we must pause and define some terms that are very casually thrown around. Genocide is the crime of trying to annihilate an entire people. War crimes are actions that violate the rules of war. If a soldier shoots a prisoner, he has committed a war crime. Then there is a class called “crimes against humanity.” It is intended to denote those crimes that are too vast to be included in normal charges of murder or rape. They may not involve genocide, in that the annihilation of a race or nation is not at stake, but they may also go well beyond war crimes, which are much lesser offenses. The events in Bosnia were reasonably deemed crimes against humanity. They did not constitute genocide and they were more than war crimes.

At the time, the Americans and Europeans did nothing about these crimes, which became an internal political issue as the magnitude of the Serbian crimes became clear. In this context, the Clinton administration helped negotiate the Dayton Accords, which were intended to end the Balkan wars and indeed managed to go quite far in achieving this. The Dayton Accords were built around the principle that there could be no adjustment in the borders of the former Yugoslav republics. Ethnic Serbs would live under Bosnian rule. The principle that existing borders were sacrosanct was embedded in the Dayton Accords.

In the late 1990s, a crisis began to develop in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Over the years, Albanians had moved into the province in a broad migration. By 1997, the province was overwhelmingly Albanian, although it had not only been historically part of Serbia but also its historical foundation. Nevertheless, the Albanians showed significant intentions of moving toward either a separate state or unification with Albania. Serbia moved to resist this, increasing its military forces and indicating an intention to crush the Albanian resistance.

There were many claims that the Serbians were repeating the crimes against humanity that were committed in Bosnia. The Americans and Europeans, burned by Bosnia, were eager to demonstrate their will. Arguing that something between crimes against humanity and genocide was under way — and citing reports that between 10,000 and 100,000 Kosovo Albanians were missing or had been killed — NATO launched a campaign designed to stop the killings. In fact, while some killings had taken place, the claims by NATO of the number already killed were false. NATO might have prevented mass murder in Kosovo. That is not provable. They did not, however, find that mass murder on the order of the numbers claimed had taken place. The war could be defended as a preventive measure, but the atmosphere under which the war was carried out overstated what had happened.

The campaign was carried out without U.N. sanction because of Russian and Chinese opposition. The Russians were particularly opposed, arguing that major crimes were not being committed and that Serbia was an ally of Russia and that the air assault was not warranted by the evidence. The United States and other European powers disregarded the Russian position. Far more important, they established the precedent that U.N. sanction was not needed to launch a war (a precedent used by George W. Bush in Iraq). Rather — and this is the vital point — they argued that NATO support legitimized the war.

This transformed NATO from a military alliance into a quasi-United Nations. What happened in Kosovo was that NATO took on the role of peacemaker, empowered to determine if intervention was necessary, allowed to make the military intervention, and empowered to determine the outcome. Conceptually, NATO was transformed from a military force into a regional multinational grouping with responsibility for maintenance of regional order, even within the borders of states that are not members. If the United Nations wouldn’t support the action, the NATO Council was sufficient.

Since Russia was not a member of NATO, and since Russia denied the urgency of war, and since Russia was overruled, the bombing campaign against Kosovo created a crisis in relations with Russia. The Russians saw the attack as a unilateral attack by an anti-Russian alliance on a Russian ally, without sound justification. Then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin was not prepared to make this into a major confrontation, nor was he in a position to. The Russians did not so much acquiesce as concede they had no options.

The war did not go as well as history records. The bombing campaign did not force capitulation and NATO was not prepared to invade Kosovo. The air campaign continued inconclusively as the West turned to the Russians to negotiate an end. The Russians sent an envoy who negotiated an agreement consisting of three parts. First, the West would halt the bombing campaign. Second, Serbian army forces would withdraw and be replaced by a multinational force including Russian troops. Third, implicit in the agreement, the Russian troops would be there to guarantee Serbian interests and sovereignty.

As soon as the agreement was signed, the Russians rushed troops to the Pristina airport to take up their duties in the multinational force — as they had in the Bosnian peacekeeping force. In part because of deliberate maneuvers and in part because no one took the Russians seriously, the Russians never played the role they believed had been negotiated. They were never seen as part of the peacekeeping operation or as part of the decision-making system over Kosovo. The Russians felt doubly betrayed, first by the war itself, then by the peace arrangements.

The Kosovo war directly effected the fall of Yeltsin and the rise of Vladimir Putin. The faction around Putin saw Yeltsin as an incompetent bungler who allowed Russia to be doubly betrayed. The Russian perception of the war directly led to the massive reversal in Russian policy we see today. The installation of Putin and Russian nationalists from the former KGB had a number of roots. But fundamentally it was rooted in the events in Kosovo. Most of all it was driven by the perception that NATO had now shifted from being a military alliance to seeing itself as a substitute for the United Nations, arbitrating regional politics. Russia had no vote or say in NATO decisions, so NATO’s new role was seen as a direct challenge to Russian interests.

Thus, the ongoing expansion of NATO into the former Soviet Union and the promise to include Ukraine and Georgia into NATO were seen in terms of the Kosovo war. From the Russian point of view, NATO expansion meant a further exclusion of Russia from decision-making, and implied that NATO reserved the right to repeat Kosovo if it felt that human rights or political issues required it. The United Nations was no longer the prime multinational peacekeeping entity. NATO assumed that role in the region and now it was going to expand all around Russia.

Then came Kosovo’s independence. Yugoslavia broke apart into its constituent entities, but the borders of its nations didn’t change. Then, for the first time since World War II, the decision was made to change Serbia’s borders, in opposition to Serbian and Russian wishes, with the authorizing body, in effect, being NATO. It was a decision avidly supported by the Americans.

The initial attempt to resolve Kosovo’s status was the round of negotiations led by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari that officially began in February 2006 but had been in the works since 2005. This round of negotiations was actually started under U.S. urging and closely supervised from Washington. In charge of keeping Ahtisaari’s negotiations running smoothly was Frank G. Wisner, a diplomat during the Clinton administration. Also very important to the U.S. effort was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried, another leftover from the Clinton administration and a specialist in Soviet and Polish affairs.

In the summer of 2007, when it was obvious that the negotiations were going nowhere, the Bush administration decided the talks were over and that it was time for independence. On June 10, 2007, Bush said that the end result of negotiations must be “certain independence.” In July 2007, Daniel Fried said that independence was “inevitable” even if the talks failed. Finally, in September 2007, Condoleezza Rice put it succinctly: “There’s going to be an independent Kosovo. We’re dedicated to that.” Europeans took cues from this line.

How and when independence was brought about was really a European problem. The Americans set the debate and the Europeans implemented it. Among Europeans, the most enthusiastic about Kosovo independence were the British and the French. The British followed the American line while the French were led by their foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who had also served as the U.N. Kosovo administrator. The Germans were more cautiously supportive.

On Feb. 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence and was recognized rapidly by a small number of European states and countries allied with the United States. Even before the declaration, the Europeans had created an administrative body to administer Kosovo. The Europeans, through the European Union, micromanaged the date of the declaration.

On May 15, during a conference in Ekaterinburg, the foreign ministers of India, Russia and China made a joint statement regarding Kosovo. It was read by the Russian host minister, Sergei Lavrov, and it said: “In our statement, we recorded our fundamental position that the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo contradicts Resolution 1244. Russia, India and China encourage Belgrade and Pristina to resume talks within the framework of international law and hope they reach an agreement on all problems of that Serbian territory.”

The Europeans and Americans rejected this request as they had rejected all Russian arguments on Kosovo. The argument here was that the Kosovo situation was one of a kind because of atrocities that had been committed. The Russians argued that the level of atrocity was unclear and that, in any case, the government that committed them was long gone from Belgrade. More to the point, the Russians let it be clearly known that they would not accept the idea that Kosovo independence was a one-of-a-kind situation and that they would regard it, instead, as a new precedent for all to follow.

The problem was not that the Europeans and the Americans didn’t hear the Russians. The problem was that they simply didn’t believe them — they didn’t take the Russians seriously. They had heard the Russians say things for many years. They did not understand three things. First, that the Russians had reached the end of their rope. Second, that Russian military capability was not what it had been in 1999. Third, and most important, NATO, the Americans and the Europeans did not recognize that they were making political decisions that they could not support militarily.

For the Russians, the transformation of NATO from a military alliance into a regional United Nations was the problem. The West argued that NATO was no longer just a military alliance but a political arbitrator for the region. If NATO does not like Serbian policies in Kosovo, it can — at its option and in opposition to U.N. rulings — intervene. It could intervene in Serbia and it intended to expand deep into the former Soviet Union. NATO thought that because it was now a political arbiter encouraging regimes to reform and not just a war-fighting system, Russian fears would actually be assuaged. To the contrary, it was Russia’s worst nightmare. Compensating for all this was the fact that NATO had neglected its own military power. Now, Russia could do something about it.

At the beginning of this discourse, we explained that the underlying issues behind the Russo-Georgian war went deep into geopolitics and that it could not be understood without understanding Kosovo. It wasn’t everything, but it was the single most significant event behind all of this. The war of 1999 was the framework that created the war of 2008.

The problem for NATO was that it was expanding its political reach and claims while contracting its military muscle. The Russians were expanding their military capability (after 1999 they had no place to go but up) and the West didn’t notice. In 1999, the Americans and Europeans made political decisions backed by military force. In 2008, in Kosovo, they made political decisions without sufficient military force to stop a Russian response. Either they underestimated their adversary or — even more amazingly — they did not see the Russians as adversaries despite absolutely clear statements the Russians had made. No matter what warning the Russians gave, or what the history of the situation was, the West couldn’t take the Russians seriously.

It began in 1999 with war in Kosovo and it ended in 2008 with the independence of Kosovo. When we study the history of the coming period, the war in Kosovo will stand out as a turning point. Whatever the humanitarian justification and the apparent ease of victory, it set the stage for the rise of Putin and the current and future crises.

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The Threat Here - 2008: Setting the Scene

By Madeleine Gruen & Frank Hyland

This is the second article in the series by Madeleine Gruen and Frank Hyland, portraying the seriousness of the threat of homegrown terrorism in the United States for readers of The Counterterrorism Blog.

We hasten to say right off the bat that regular readers of CT Blog are already the recipients of a detailed and continuing supply of very useful information on the threat of terrorism here in the United States. We are grateful for our CT Blog colleagues Steven Emerson, Doug Farah, Jeff Imm, Mike Cutler, and on and on. Nothing in this series is intended to supplant their excellent work.

If anything, we hope to draw even more attention to their (and others’) fine efforts in the past and in the future. Our goal is to draw together in this one series the signs of the continuing, emerging threat here so that policy makers and citizens of Main Street US alike will be better able to assess the true threat. As we noted in the introductory article, individual attacks, plots, perpetrators, investigations tend to lose their impact as time passes; the geographic spread of such indicators and incidents also makes it difficult to visualize the progression of the threat of domestic terrorism.

Similarly, our professional lives in Counter Terrorism have shown us clearly that the phenomenon of terrorism knows no boundaries, respects no religion, and the perpetrators regard themselves as the only “innocents.” Terrorism targets everyone indiscriminately regardless of their church, temple, synagogue or mosque. No one religion has cornered the market on violence.
The highest calling within the CT Community is that of providing Timely Terrorist Threat Warning. In viewing the “landscape” of terrorism then, the many professionals who serve you by putting in long hours searching out threats do a good bit of “Threat Ranking.” An important criterion is whether the threatening group has the presence, the level of intention, and the capability to carry out its threat. Certainly a number of groups around the world have expressed great antipathy for the US. Those groups, however, lacking the infrastructure here in the US and the necessary skills, do not have as great an ability to perpetrate an attack here as does Al-Qa’ida (AQ), for example. The other groups, therefore, are on our list, but are ranked lower on our list in terms of the threat they represent to you. It is for that reason that there may seem at first to be a preponderance of groups whose expressed motivation is based in Islam. As we do in an office setting, we present to you the greatest threats, ranked from (in our professional belief) most likely to least likely. The sole basis for their placement on our list that follows is their ability and desire to carry out an attack.

The Groups:

1. Al-Qa’ida & Al-Qa’ida-Inspired Individuals or Groups:

Given the steady torrent of media coverage devoted to groups such as AQ, it may surprise some readers to see an unnamed group or individual at the top of this list. It is here simply because, as we noted above, we are calculating the odds. In that process, we estimate that in a nation of over 300,000,000 people, with continuing relatively unencumbered legal and illegal access to weapons and explosives, and with the demonstrated past actions both here and abroad, the odds are high that someone will see coverage of an incident abroad - Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel - and react. It is this category, by the way, that has caused us to state in the introductory article and repeat above the effect that dispersion in time and place has on the recognition of patterns in the threat. The perpetrators are not necessarily members of a network, often do not know each other, and therefore leave no “tracks” to follow from one to the other. Usama Bin-Laden’s goal in forming an organization known as “The Base” (Al-Qa’ida) has been achieved in large part; that is, that he would see his group metastasize around the globe in the form of groups, cells, and individuals all dedicated to his goals.

Any doubts that remained about the seriousness of AQ’s intentions after 9-11-2001 should have been erased forever by now. It is the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, however, that raised the initial alarms; but the professionals on the case who recognized the attack as part of something much bigger and more enduring were outnumbered by others who viewed the case as a unique matter that could be resolved by a traditional thorough investigation and solid arrests. The primary conspirator in the 1993 attack, Ramzi Yousef, arrived in New York to find an in-place network of like-minded individuals—devotees of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman—who welcomed him, housed him, supported him and carried out the attack on his behalf.

The subsequent investigation of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing introduced the American public to names of individuals who went on to become the highest-ranking AQ operatives. But, with the passing of time and with physical distance, many have forgotten the ideological and operational links within the US. Those same links exist here today.

Hardly a month goes by without reports - including official reports - telling all of us about the arrest of yet another Westerner who has been to an AQ training camp in Pakistan and/or Afghanistan. Added to those are the accounts of those in the UK, for example, of the AQ-inspired native-born men who carried out the attacks on London commuters in July 2005.

As part of this series we will also introduce US-based groups that have no clear-cut physical ties to AQ, but that abide by the same ideological doctrines as AQ and which are unabashed supporters of AQ, such as As-Sabiqun.

2. White Nationalist Groups:

They hate Jews, they believe that non-whites have no soul, and they anticipate with relish a violent revolution against the US Government, even if they have to start it. Many of the groups are armed to the teeth and have plenty of members with military backgrounds who have studied and practiced the intricacies of unconventional warfare. Members and supporters of white nationalism have committed murder and have pulled off major terrorist attacks, such as Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 and injured more than 800 others in Oklahoma City, and Eric Robert Rudolph, whose pipe bombs killed 2 and injured more than 100 others during a celebratory concert at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. White nationalist groups are on our list because of their intentions and potential capabilities; however, historically, their movement has been relatively disorganized, has lacked funding, and its adherents have not been as ideologically committed as they have been committed to a social network and cults of personality. This is an essential difference between the white nationalist movements and the militant Islamist groups. Nevertheless, given what we stated above about numbers of people, access to weapons and explosives and the likelihood of a triggering event, groups such as the National Socialist Movement, Stormfront, and the National Alliance must remain under a watchful eye.

3. Lebanese Hizballah:

A group must have the access to weapons and explosives. They must have the motivation and the requisite skills in order to carry out a successful attack here. Another very important prerequisite, and the one that places Lebanese Hizballah (LH) on the list on this high a rung, is that LH has undoubtedly carried out the pre-attack surveillance necessary not only to carry out at least one attack, but to do it in short order after receiving the “Go” from their masters in Tehran and Beirut. Members of the group have insinuated themselves into many of the major metropolitan areas of the US. Their criminal activities (Please see Doug Farah’s columns on, among other things, cigarette smuggling) provide them far more money than would be needed for an attack. We would be foolish to believe that LH has not already formulated the tactical plans for an eventual attack in the US. Their history in Buenos Aires, alone -- which we will recount - demonstrates conclusively that they belong on the list and on this rung.

4. Palestinian Islamic Jihad:

Originally an offshoot of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) merits a place on the list by virtue of the fact that its so-called Military Wing - the Al-Quds Brigades - has been responsible for countless attacks on Israel from its base in the Gaza Strip, both suicide bombings and the firing of rockets. “Al-Quds,” it should be mentioned, is the Arab alternative to “Jerusalem,” demonstrating the group’s hatred for the current arrangement. Against that backdrop of demonstrated capability and intent, you should be aware that PIJ has had an infrastructure in the US for decades. The quality and depth of that infrastructure was shown clearly following the assassination of PIJ leader Fathi Shqaqi in 1995, when University of South Florida Computer Engineering Professor Ramadan Shallah immediately left Florida, journeyed to the Middle East and assumed the chairmanship of PIJ. As is the case with other groups here in the US, including HAMAS, the Tamil Tigers, PIJ presently devotes the greatest share of its efforts to fund raising. We echo the words of others, though, in saying that the PIJ capability for carrying out attacks has been amply demonstrated.

5. HAMAS:

In the relatively short time span of just 21 years, the group formed by ranking members of the Gaza wing of the Muslim Brotherhood has gone from a pure terrorist organization to a much more highly effective Palestinian movement that is now the Majority Party in the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority. As contrasted with PIJ, which has remained smaller and concentrated virtually solely on armed action against Israel, HAMAS mutated into a political party, opened schools, dispensed funds, provided foodstuffs, operated clinics, and challenged (successfully) the existing powers of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. CT Blog has presented readers over the years with what is likely the single most comprehensive, in-depth coverage of HAMAS’ activities in the US. This is especially true of Steven Emerson’s reporting on the lengthy legal proceedings against the largest HAMAS fund-raising arm-- The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development-- at one time the leading Islamic charity in the US, extracting millions of dollars annually for its chosen “work” back home in Gaza and the West Bank. Even more strident than PIJ, HAMAS regularly and frequently trumpets its raining of rockets and the sending of suicide bombers to Israel. Notwithstanding its emphasis on fund raising here in the US, its diatribes signal its capabilities to carry out attacks here at a time of its choosing.

6. Hizb ut-Tahrir:

Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) is a transnational political Islamist organization that is present in approximately 45 countries, including the United States. In its more than 50 years of existence, HT has not been directly linked to a terrorist attack; its published ideological doctrine and strategy for development specifies non-violent means to reach its objectives, which are identical to AQ’s.

Although HT has not been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US government it is a group that merits a close watch due to its ability to radicalize and propel people along the spectrum of the acceptance of violent extremes. The group does not operate openly under the name Hizb ut-Tahrir in the United States, which makes even the matter of identification of its activities challenging. It is important to raise awareness of the indicators of HT’s presence in the United States so that the communities exposed to the group can make informed decisions about whether or not to open their doors to HT and its particular brand of Islamism. In arriving at that decision, previous HT involvement should raise serious concerns in readers’ minds. The quality and results of HT’s recruitment and indoctrination efforts are perhaps most visible in the number of HT students and members who went on to greater notoriety.

7. Muslim Brotherhood:

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is arguably the most influential of all Islamist groups, and perhaps the most controversial. Nearly every jihadist or political Islamist group that can be named is an offshoot of MB, or even an offshoot of an offshoot of MB. Many scholars have described the MB as a wily outfit that hides behind legitimizing fronts in the US and elsewhere. Although the MB has officially opposed violence as a means of achieving its objective of establishing an Islamic State ruled by Islamic law, its activities and statements have exposed its continued support for violent operations. While some scholars argue that the MB has reinvented itself and is a legitimate political actor that is sincere in its efforts to work cooperatively within democratic political systems to prevent future terrorist attacks, we and others in the CT Community will keep waiting and watching for MB’s actions to match its words.

8. USA General Store:

Finally, there are the terrorist groups that are not believed to have specific aspirations of committing a terrorist attack on US soil but that do exploit market systems, immigrant populations, and spotty national security systems to keep themselves in business, so to speak. Groups such as the Tamil Tigers have long used extortion tactics to extract funds from Tamil communities in the US. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) depends on its network of drug peddlers in the United States to fatten its billfold. It should be remembered that, in addition to attacks inside the US, the threat of attacks on US interests abroad deserve serious consideration because of the thousands of Americans worldwide who staff those facilities.

Foreign conflicts do have a tendency to spill over borders, and targets that are less secure because they are not in the obvious line of fire become more attractive. These groups have bases of support already in place, which makes it easier to conduct pre-operation surveillance, obtain explosives through means that would not necessarily draw the attention of law enforcement, and move operatives in and out of the US through legitimate-looking channels.

For more visit the link below

http://counterterrorismblog.org/mt/pings.cgi/5380

1998 Missile Strikes on Bin Laden May Have Backfired

Washington, DC, August 20, 2008 - On the tenth anniversary of U.S. cruise missile strikes against al-Qaeda in response to deadly terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, newly-declassified government documents posted today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org) suggest the strikes not only failed to hurt Osama bin Laden but ultimately may have brought al-Qaeda and the Taliban closer politically and ideologically.

A 400-page Sandia National Laboratories report on bin Ladin, compiled in 1999, includes a warning about political damage for the U.S. from bombing two impoverished states without regard for international agreement, since such action "mirror imag[ed] aspects of al-Qaeda's own attacks." A State Department cable argues that although the August missile strikes were designed to provide the Taliban with overwhelming reason to surrender bin Laden, the military action may have sharpened Afghan animosity towards Washington and even strengthened the Taliban-al-Qaeda alliance.

Following the August 20 U.S. air attacks, Taliban spokesman Wakil Ahmed told U.S. Department of State officials "If Kandahar could have retaliated with similar strikes against Washington, it would have." Such an attack, although unfeasible at the time, was at least in part actualized by al-Qaeda on 9/11.

Washington, DC, August 20, 2008 - On the tenth anniversary of U.S. cruise missile strikes against al-Qaeda in response to deadly terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, newly-declassified government documents posted today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org) suggest the strikes not only failed to hurt Osama bin Laden but ultimately may have brought al-Qaeda and the Taliban closer politically and ideologically.

A 400-page Sandia National Laboratories report on bin Ladin, compiled in 1999, includes a warning about political damage for the U.S. from bombing two impoverished states without regard for international agreement, since such action "mirror imag[ed] aspects of al-Qaeda's own attacks." A State Department cable argues that although the August missile strikes were designed to provide the Taliban with overwhelming reason to surrender bin Laden, the military action may have sharpened Afghan animosity towards Washington and even strengthened the Taliban-al-Qaeda alliance.

Following the August 20 U.S. air attacks, Taliban spokesman Wakil Ahmed told U.S. Department of State officials "If Kandahar could have retaliated with similar strikes against Washington, it would have." Such an attack, although unfeasible at the time, was at least in part actualized by al-Qaeda on 9/11.

Washington, DC, August 20, 2008 - On the tenth anniversary of U.S. cruise missile strikes against al-Qaeda in response to deadly terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, newly-declassified government documents posted today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org) suggest the strikes not only failed to hurt Osama bin Laden but ultimately may have brought al-Qaeda and the Taliban closer politically and ideologically.

A 400-page Sandia National Laboratories report on bin Ladin, compiled in 1999, includes a warning about political damage for the U.S. from bombing two impoverished states without regard for international agreement, since such action "mirror imag[ed] aspects of al-Qaeda's own attacks." A State Department cable argues that although the August missile strikes were designed to provide the Taliban with overwhelming reason to surrender bin Laden, the military action may have sharpened Afghan animosity towards Washington and even strengthened the Taliban-al-Qaeda alliance.

Following the August 20 U.S. air attacks, Taliban spokesman Wakil Ahmed told U.S. Department of State officials "If Kandahar could have retaliated with similar strikes against Washington, it would have." Such an attack, although unfeasible at the time, was at least in part actualized by al-Qaeda on 9/11.

Visit the Web site of the National Security Archive for more information about today's posting.

http://www.nsarchive.org

COUNTERTERROSM BLOG

The Real World Order

By George Friedman

On Sept. 11, 1990, U.S. President George H. W. Bush addressed Congress. He spoke in the wake of the end of Communism in Eastern Europe, the weakening of the Soviet Union, and the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. He argued that a New World Order was emerging: “A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor, and today that new world is struggling to be born. A world quite different from the one we’ve known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.”

After every major, systemic war, there is the hope that this will be the war to end all wars. The idea driving it is simple. Wars are usually won by grand coalitions. The idea is that the coalition that won the war by working together will continue to work together to make the peace. Indeed, the idea is that the defeated will join the coalition and work with them to ensure the peace. This was the dream behind the Congress of Vienna, the League of Nations, the United Nations and, after the Cold War, NATO. The idea was that there would be no major issues that couldn’t be handled by the victors, now joined with the defeated. That was the idea that drove George H. W. Bush as the Cold War was coming to its end.

Those with the dream are always disappointed. The victorious coalition breaks apart. The defeated refuse to play the role assigned to them. New powers emerge that were not part of the coalition. Anyone may have ideals and visions. The reality of the world order is that there are profound divergences of interest in a world where distrust is a natural and reasonable response to reality. In the end, ideals and visions vanish in a new round of geopolitical conflict.

The post-Cold War world, the New World Order, ended with authority on Aug. 8, 2008, when Russia and Georgia went to war. Certainly, this war was not in itself of major significance, and a very good case can be made that the New World Order actually started coming apart on Sept. 11, 2001. But it was on Aug. 8 that a nation-state, Russia, attacked another nation-state, Georgia, out of fear of the intentions of a third nation-state, the United States. This causes us to begin thinking about the Real World Order.

The global system is suffering from two imbalances. First, one nation-state, the United States, remains overwhelmingly powerful, and no combination of powers are in a position to control its behavior. We are aware of all the economic problems besetting the United States, but the reality is that the American economy is larger than the next three economies combined (Japan, Germany and China). The U.S. military controls all the world’s oceans and effectively dominates space. Because of these factors, the United States remains politically powerful — not liked and perhaps not admired, but enormously powerful.

The second imbalance is within the United States itself. Its ground forces and the bulk of its logistical capability are committed to the Middle East, particularly Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States also is threatening on occasion to go to war with Iran, which would tie down most of its air power, and it is facing a destabilizing Pakistan. Therefore, there is this paradox: The United States is so powerful that, in the long run, it has created an imbalance in the global system. In the short run, however, it is so off balance that it has few, if any, military resources to deal with challenges elsewhere. That means that the United States remains the dominant power in the long run but it cannot exercise that power in the short run. This creates a window of opportunity for other countries to act.

The outcome of the Iraq war can be seen emerging. The United States has succeeded in creating the foundations for a political settlement among the main Iraqi factions that will create a relatively stable government. In that sense, U.S. policy has succeeded. But the problem the United States has is the length of time it took to achieve this success. Had it occurred in 2003, the United States would not suffer its current imbalance. But this is 2008, more than five years after the invasion. The United States never expected a war of this duration, nor did it plan for it. In order to fight the war, it had to inject a major portion of its ground fighting capability into it. The length of the war was the problem. U.S. ground forces are either in Iraq, recovering from a tour or preparing for a deployment. What strategic reserves are available are tasked into Afghanistan. Little is left over.

As Iraq pulled in the bulk of available forces, the United States did not shift its foreign policy elsewhere. For example, it remained committed to the expansion of democracy in the former Soviet Union and the expansion of NATO, to include Ukraine and Georgia. From the fall of the former Soviet Union, the United States saw itself as having a dominant role in reshaping post-Soviet social and political orders, including influencing the emergence of democratic institutions and free markets. The United States saw this almost in the same light as it saw the democratization of Germany and Japan after World War II. Having defeated the Soviet Union, it now fell to the United States to reshape the societies of the successor states.

Through the 1990s, the successor states, particularly Russia, were inert. Undergoing painful internal upheaval — which foreigners saw as reform but which many Russians viewed as a foreign-inspired national catastrophe — Russia could not resist American and European involvement in regional and internal affairs. From the American point of view, the reshaping of the region — from the Kosovo war to the expansion of NATO to the deployment of U.S. Air Force bases to Central Asia — was simply a logical expansion of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a benign attempt to stabilize the region, enhance its prosperity and security and integrate it into the global system.

As Russia regained its balance from the chaos of the 1990s, it began to see the American and European presence in a less benign light. It was not clear to the Russians that the United States was trying to stabilize the region. Rather, it appeared to the Russians that the United States was trying to take advantage of Russian weakness to impose a new politico-military reality in which Russia was to be surrounded with nations controlled by the United States and its military system, NATO. In spite of the promise made by Bill Clinton that NATO would not expand into the former Soviet Union, the three Baltic states were admitted. The promise was not addressed. NATO was expanded because it could and Russia could do nothing about it.

From the Russian point of view, the strategic break point was Ukraine. When the Orange Revolution came to Ukraine, the American and European impression was that this was a spontaneous democratic rising. The Russian perception was that it was a well-financed CIA operation to foment an anti-Russian and pro-American uprising in Ukraine. When the United States quickly began discussing the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO, the Russians came to the conclusion that the United States intended to surround and crush the Russian Federation. In their view, if NATO expanded into Ukraine, the Western military alliance would place Russia in a strategically untenable position. Russia would be indefensible. The American response was that it had no intention of threatening Russia. The Russian question was returned: Then why are you trying to take control of Ukraine? What other purpose would you have? The United States dismissed these Russian concerns as absurd. The Russians, not regarding them as absurd at all, began planning on the assumption of a hostile United States.

If the United States had intended to break the Russian Federation once and for all, the time for that was in the 1990s, before Yeltsin was replaced by Putin and before 9/11. There was, however, no clear policy on this, because the United States felt it had all the time in the world. Superficially this was true, but only superficially. First, the United States did not understand that the Yeltsin years were a temporary aberration and that a new government intending to stabilize Russia was inevitable. If not Putin, it would have been someone else. Second, the United States did not appreciate that it did not control the international agenda. Sept. 11, 2001, took away American options in the former Soviet Union. No only did it need Russian help in Afghanistan, but it was going to spend the next decade tied up in the Middle East. The United States had lost its room for maneuver and therefore had run out of time.

And now we come to the key point. In spite of diminishing military options outside of the Middle East, the United States did not modify its policy in the former Soviet Union. It continued to aggressively attempt to influence countries in the region, and it became particularly committed to integrating Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, in spite of the fact that both were of overwhelming strategic interest to the Russians. Ukraine dominated Russia’s southwestern flank, without any natural boundaries protecting them. Georgia was seen as a constant irritant in Chechnya as well as a barrier to Russian interests in the Caucasus.

Moving rapidly to consolidate U.S. control over these and other countries in the former Soviet Union made strategic sense. Russia was weak, divided and poorly governed. It could make no response. Continuing this policy in the 2000s, when the Russians were getting stronger, more united and better governed and while U.S. forces were no longer available, made much less sense. The United States continued to irritate the Russians without having, in the short run, the forces needed to act decisively.

The American calculation was that the Russian government would not confront American interests in the region. The Russian calculation was that it could not wait to confront these interests because the United States was concluding the Iraq war and would return to its pre-eminent position in a few short years. Therefore, it made no sense for Russia to wait and it made every sense for Russia to act as quickly as possible.

The Russians were partly influenced in their timing by the success of the American surge in Iraq. If the United States continued its policy and had force to back it up, the Russians would lose their window of opportunity. Moreover, the Russians had an additional lever for use on the Americans: Iran.

The United States had been playing a complex game with Iran for years, threatening to attack while trying to negotiate. The Americans needed the Russians. Sanctions against Iran would have no meaning if the Russians did not participate, and the United States did not want Russia selling advance air defense systems to Iran. (Such systems, which American analysts had warned were quite capable, were not present in Syria on Sept. 6, 2007, when the Israelis struck a nuclear facility there.) As the United States re-evaluates the Russian military, it does not want to be surprised by Russian technology. Therefore, the more aggressive the United States becomes toward Russia, the greater the difficulties it will have in Iran. This further encouraged the Russians to act sooner rather than later.

The Russians have now proven two things. First, contrary to the reality of the 1990s, they can execute a competent military operation. Second, contrary to regional perception, the United States cannot intervene. The Russian message was directed against Ukraine most of all, but the Baltics, Central Asia and Belarus are all listening. The Russians will not act precipitously. They expect all of these countries to adjust their foreign policies away from the United States and toward Russia. They are looking to see if the lesson is absorbed. At first, there will be mighty speeches and resistance. But the reality on the ground is the reality on the ground.

We would expect the Russians to get traction. But if they don’t, the Russians are aware that they are, in the long run, much weaker than the Americans, and that they will retain their regional position of strength only while the United States is off balance in Iraq. If the lesson isn’t absorbed, the Russians are capable of more direct action, and they will not let this chance slip away. This is their chance to redefine their sphere of influence. They will not get another.

The other country that is watching and thinking is Iran. Iran had accepted the idea that it had lost the chance to dominate Iraq. It had also accepted the idea that it would have to bargain away its nuclear capability or lose it. The Iranians are now wondering if this is still true and are undoubtedly pinging the Russians about the situation. Meanwhile, the Russians are waiting for the Americans to calm down and get serious. If the Americans plan to take meaningful action against them, they will respond in Iran. But the Americans have no meaningful actions they can take; they need to get out of Iraq and they need help against Iran. The quid pro quo here is obvious. The United States acquiesces to Russian actions (which it can’t do anything about), while the Russians cooperate with the United States against Iran getting nuclear weapons (something Russia does not want to see).

One of the interesting concepts of the New World Order was that all serious countries would want to participate in it and that the only threat would come from rogue states and nonstate actors such as North Korea and al Qaeda. Serious analysts argued that conflict between nation-states would not be important in the 21st century. There will certainly be rogue states and nonstate actors, but the 21st century will be no different than any other century. On Aug. 8, the Russians invited us all to the Real World Order.

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