As President Dmitri Medvedev formally recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in a televised announcement, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn must have been rolling over in his grave and thinking, “I told you so.” Solzhenitsyn, who passed away earlier this year, had always argued that Russia had a strong soul that needed to be tamed or it would cause trouble.

The Kremlin seems to have decided to go with trouble, at least for the moment. The recognition decision comes a day after U.S. President George Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel explicitly warned Russia not to extend formal recognition to the republics, according to Stratfor, a U.S. company offering on-line intelligence. Furthermore, the Kremlin is hammering home the point - to Western governments - that it disdains their condemnations as insignificant. Meanwhile Russia is consolidating its footholds in Georgia and conceivably its spheres of influence in its “near-abroad” of countries formerly in Moscow’s orbit.

The west promptly denounced the Russian decision. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the decision “totally unacceptable” and UK foreign minister David Milliband stated that “Georgia’s independence and territorial integrity cannot be changed by decree from Moscow.” In this situation, such strong rhetoric will need to be backed up by effective support for Georgia as well as with a new stance toward Moscow. Otherwise western bravado can backfire in the face of determined Russian action.

Russia will continue to use parallels to the Kosovo ‘precedent’ to contradict immediate or delayed reactions from Western leaders. The West will continue to say Kosovo was a ‘unique’ case and all other avenues had been exhausted. The rest of the states in the Caucasus will be watching closely-in the next few weeks for further developments in this conflict. Russia has made an audacious move, and the west is on the defensive. But Moscow must be wary of unleashing a backlash with secessionist regions, such as Chechnya, already on edge.

Georgia will desperately need the help of its Western allies if it is to assert its independence, but it may find the pressure from a muscle-flexing Russia and an indecisive West so unbearable that the nation loses its viability. In the longer run, Russia may have gone too far by using its military force when the lack of real dialogue frustrated Moscow. The danger is less that the attack will goad the west into countervailing action and more that the Russians may have edged themselves closer toward one of their chronic weaknesses: isolation.

The Russian Duma’s resolution calling for recognition of the Georgian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is non-binding, so President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have the option of ignoring it. Indeed, they may not wish to stop short of a step liable to stir up secessionist fever in Chechnya and other restive regions within Russia’s own borders.

But Russia will certainly play the “recognition card” in negotiations about the outcome and future shape of Georgia. For one thing, Russia wants to pay back the West in its own coin for recognizing Kosovo’s independence in defiance of Moscow.

Each of the two regions has also expressed the wish to join Russia officially if they gain independence. This would expand Russian territory deep into Georgia. In practice, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are already independent, but Georgia depends on each region for key transportation infrastructure — such as the port of Sukhumi in Abkhazia for imports.

Europe is highly concerned that Russia could recognize secessionist regions in Georgia and in other nearby countries, according to Stratfor, a U.S. company offering on-line intelligence analysis. When Europe recognized Kosovo, it had control of the security situation there. In contrast, “there are countless other secessionist regions - Transdniestria in Moldova, for example - that were already stirring because of Kosovo’s independence and could really light up if they see Russia as a new guarantor of independence,” Stratfor reported.

In Russia itself, formal recognition of the breakaway republics on the ground of self-determination could create a dangerous domino effect within Russian borders. Russia has more than a dozen secessionist regions, many of which are powerful and organized. Moreover, some of these regions could attract strong foreign support - a situation the West could use to destabilize Russia or get Moscow involved in another set of wars within its own territory.

The Kremlin has worked very hard in the past few years to clamp down on the most volatile places, like Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, but there is always the possibility that these regions could flare up again very quickly.

In Georgia, reports indicate that organized cyber-warfare attacks continue against key government websites - attacks that appear to be coming from organized groups in Russia.

Suspicions that these attacks - like an even larger cyber-assault last year on Estonia - are offensive tactics orchestrated and used by the Russian government and have triggered fresh thinking in the U.S. and European capitals about what strategy might help deter such cyber-aggression in the future.

“Cyber-attack by a nation is very different from cyber-attack by a hacker,” says Admiral Bill Owens, a specialist about the threat. He told the Financial Times that the risks for major nations are rising to the point where it may be time to consider a defensive doctrine similar to “mutually assured destruction.” That was the name for a balance of nuclear weapons between the superpowers during the cold war that convinced both sides that it would be self-destructive to launch a nuclear attack.

Similarly, Owens said, diplomats might take another page from cold war arms-control and urge countries to pledge “no first use” of cyber-war - along the lines of the “no first use” pledges about nuclear weapons.

Although Georgia does not have enough web infrastructures to be very vulnerable in this area, the organized hacking it sustained comes against a background of reported attacks on government facilities in the U.S., France, Britain and Germany that were apparently probes of Western defenses or espionage to glean secret information. Both Russia and China have specialized military units that specialize in cyber-warfare, according to Western specialists. NATO is developing similar expertise.

Evoking the possibility of Western retaliation against attacks masterminded by another government, Owens said “I think that the U.S. and China have an ability to shut down each other’s societies on the internet today.”

This latest cyber-attack has spurred Europe and the U.S. to seek policy clarifications, new technical ripostes and closer cooperation, including via NATO. Michael Chertoff, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary, outlining plans for a “Manhattan project” for IT-security, warned recently that “a big and successful attack would have cascading effects across the country and across the world”.

Though there are similarities in both attacks there are also key differences between Estonia and Georgia specialists say. This time the hackers are targeting specific government websites such as the president’s, the parliament’s and the foreign ministry’s. In fact, web traffic is being redirected to sites in Russia and Turkey that could be the first step towards controlling Georgia’s incoming and outgoing high-level communications. That is the kind of control Russia would need to help oust President Mikheil Saakasvili.

The difficulties of maintaining a common transatlantic front against Iran were on display last week when European officials suddenly voiced concern about Barack Obama’s public pledge to open talks with Tehran. A U.S. initiative of this sort, the officials said, could undercut the work they have done to make the Iranians suspend nuclear enrichment as a precondition for a full dialogue.

In the past, the so-called “EU-3″ - Britain, France and Germany - had chafed at the Bush administration’s refusal to envision direct talks with Tehran, complaining that Washington needed to be more directly involved in supporting the EU trio in trying to negotiate with Tehran. Last year, a common front emerged behind a Western demand that Tehran suspend nuclear enrichment as a precondition for the EU to move forward with its “carrots” and for Washington to lay down its “stick” to the degree of exploring direct high-level contacts with Tehran.

Now European governments worry that the position taken by Obama in the presidential primary campaign - in which he advocated sitting down with adversaries without preconditions - goes far past the negotiating position that Europe has been taking in tandem with Washington.

The transatlantic split came to light in an article by Glenn Kessler that appeared in the Washington Post on June 22 reporting the unease felt by Europeans in regard to Obama’s promise to open diplomatic talks with Iran without any preconditions. François Heisbourg, a Paris-based strategic analyst, was quoted saying: “Dropping a unanimous Security Council condition would simply be interpreted by Iran and America’s allies as unconditional surrender, and America’s friends would view this as confirmation of America’s basic unreliability.”

The EU has adopted a dual approach - a carrot-and-stick policy, if you will - for dealing with Iran. On the “carrot” side, they recently joined Russia, China, and the US in offering Iran an incentive package that included the promise of diplomatic talks, trade agreements and aid in developing a civilian nuclear program in exchange for the suspension of its uranium enrichment. However, after Tehran failed to give an answer on the incentive offer, the European states came together and issued a set of new sanctions on Monday, June 23.

Based on measures previously agreed upon by the U.N. Security Council, the sanctions target businesses and individuals believed to be connected to Iran’s nuclear programs. Iranian senior experts and officials such as Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar and Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, will be denied visas to the EU and the assets of Iran’s largest bank - Bank Melli, which has branches in Paris, Hamburg and London - will be frozen. The US imposed similar sanctions on Bank Melli’s activity in America last year.

Despite the EU’s hard line, officials maintain that the incentive package is still on the table if Iran agrees to halt its enrichment.

Iran has repeatedly refused to suspend its uranium enrichment, arguing that it is intended for civilian uses such as electricity generation. Western capitals suspect that Iran’s nuclear-energy program is merely a cover for making nuclear weapons.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini condemned the new EU sanctions as “illegal” and warned that they could hurt future diplomatic efforts. It remains to be seen whether these latest sanctions will affect Iran enough to push them to halt the enrichment. Past sanctions by the U.N. Security Council and the United States have failed to do so thus far, and skyrocketing oil prices may cushion the economic impact of the latest sanctions in Iran, the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter. Some also predict that the sanctions will merely continue to push Iran’s focus away from the West and closer to China and other areas of Asia. After the EU announced the new economic sanctions, Iran’s new parliamentary speaker - Ali Larijani, the former Iranian nuclear negotiator, who seems to be a political moderate — warned that the sanctions could push Iran away from diplomacy.

Updates:

“US considers sending envoys to Iran,” Financial Times, 25 June 2008

“The Europeans Step Up,” New York Times, 28 June 2008

“New US Nuclear Sanctions on Iran,” BBC News, 8 July 2008

Seven NATO members signed a pact in late May formally establishing an alliance-wide “center of excellence” in Estonia to combat the growing threat of cyber-terrorism.  Officially called the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, the center will be operational later this year and officially open its doors in early 2009.  It will have an initial staff of 30 experts, half of whom will come from the seven founding countries.  The U.S. will participate as an observer alongside the seven: Germany, Italy, Spain, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Estonia. Other alliance states are expected to join the project as it moves forward.

The centre’s purpose is to improve preparedness and inter-operability within NATO on cyber-defense, officials said, adding that allied experts also want to draw up an alliance-wide cyber-defence doctrine, including legal mechanisms. The center will also provide training, assess threats and steer research projects.

The choice of Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, as the site for the center is significant and appropriate.  Just more than a year ago, Estonia - which has a high degree of computer infrastructure - became the first victim of an all-out cyber assault on the nation’s on-line electronic services in a string of network attacks that apparently originated in Moscow.  The Estonian government had moved a bronze statue of a Soviet soldier-a reminder of the USSR’s former dominance of the country-from a prominent spot in central Tallinn to a military cemetery. 

The current issue of European Affairs carries a comprehensive and insightful analysis of the “cyber war” on Estonia a year ago. Kertu Ruus, an Estonian journalist (who is a member of our quartely’s editorial board) tracks exactly how Estonian government and private networks were attacked by massive “botnets,” which are huge networks of so-called “zombie” computers that are hacked into and made to access targeted networks.  Ruus’s article also details the NATO allies’ response to the attacks, and the call by some to invoke Article 5’s rule that an attack on one ally is an attack on all.

The U.S., for its part, has also stepped up its efforts to defend against cyber crime.  As noted here last month, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff has compared the risks presented by cyber terror to the impact of 9/11.  Addressing a group of IT professionals in Silicon Valley last month, he implored the industry to “send some of your brightest and best to do service in the government.

Meanwhile the European Observer  says that EU has launched a public consultation on how to combat high-tech crime and warfare, but predicts that Brussels will move  cautiously on the possible legislative remedies and instead stress strengthened cooperation between EU states.

Another coordinated cyber attack - this time on the websites operated by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) - was launched over the weekend that marked the one-year anniversary of the “cyber war” offensive against Estonia. That three-week internet barrage on Estonia’s civil electronic portals occurred amid ire in Moscow about Estonia’s decision to move a Soviet war memorial out of the city center in the Estonian capital, Tallinn. Labeled the world’s first “cyber war” by some observers, the episode is recounted and analyzed in depth in Kertu Ruus’s article in the newest issue of European Affairs.

This time, the principal targets were RFE/RL’s sites in Belarus, which were put out of action for several days until the attacks were publicly reported - and then abruptly ceased. April 26, the day the attacks began, was the 22nd anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, and RFE/RL had been planning live internet coverage of a large rally that day protesting the plight of uncompensated Chernobyl victims - many of whom lived in Belarus and were in the zone of heavy radioactive fallout from the reactor that suffered a meltdown in neighboring Ukraine. At the time, in 1986, both those countries were part of the Soviet Union and ruled from Moscow.

The recent cyber attacks came just days after the so-called “Hackers Panel” convened in London at the annual InfoSecurity Europe conference. The panel includes “white hat” hackers, who help companies tighten up their digital security by searching for flaws in their defenses. This year the hackers, who for the first time broke their usual custom of anonymity, warned that major nationwide British shopping chains were likely prime targets for future cyber attacks. “If someone wants to have a pop at the UK, they are unlikely to go for the government web servers,” said Steve Armstrong, an expert in hacking and a member of the panel. “They will go for the lower hanging fruit - companies which are seen as good representatives of the country.”

Related Post:
Lessons from Estonia: Homeland Security Chief Says Cyber Threat “on par with 9/11″, 18 April 2008

See Also:
RFE/RL Websites Hit By Mass Cyberattack, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 28 April 2008
Radio Free Europe says it’s under cyber attack, Associated Press, 28 April 2008
Hackers warn High Street chains, BBC News, 25 April 2008

Michael Chertoff, the U.S. homeland security head, warned recently that the potential harm of a cyber-warfare attack was “on a par” with what the United States sustained in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. He issued the warning this month at a public meeting of information-technology specialists in California.

This threat is treated in depth in the current issue of European Affairs, due out this week in the article entitled “Cyber War I” about the massive attack last year on Estonia’s civilian infrastructure of communications, finance and public service. Western defenses are still in their infancy, and Chertoff’s comments were partly aimed at getting the tech community to overcome their inhibitions about helping national security in this realm. As described in this reconstruction of the episode in Estonia, the tide was turned in Cyber War I partly thanks to a helping hand from some top global geeks. Written by Kertu Ruus, U.S. bureau chief of the leading Estonian business daily Aripaev, the article talks about the status of Western readiness against computer warfare, including the creation in Estonia of a NATO center to work on this specialized form of war.

At last week’s IT conference in Silicon Valley, Chertoff’s overtures to technology’s private sector were clear: “Please send some of your brightest and best to do service in the government,” he asked the audience. He acknowledged that the Federal government is unable to compete with private industry in terms of money, but hoped that some of the U.S.’s top IT professionals would be drawn to DHS out of a desire to serve their country.

Read Kertu Ruus’s account of Cyber War I in the upcoming issue of European Affairs.

See Also: Cyber risk ‘equals 9/11 impact’, BBC News, 8 April 2008

President Bush’s plan to build a missile-defense shield in Europe won approval from NATO at yesterday’s Bucharest summit meetings, marking an important victory for the U.S. agenda and for American hopes of getting Moscow to ease its opposition. But the summit balked at U.S. pressure to start an admission process for Ukraine and Georgia as premature and liable to raise tensions with Russia.

The planned ballistic missile-defense system involves 10 interceptor missiles based in Poland and a tracking radar site in the Czech Republic. Poland and the Czech Republic are pleased to announce the completion of negotiations on a missile defense agreement,” says a joint statement by the two countries, issued on the fringes of the NATO summit in Bucharest (3 April).

In endorsing the project, a statement by the 26 nations alliance said that the system “will be linked to other US missile defense facilities in Europe and the US.” In addition according to NATO’s Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the alliance will “develop options for a comprehensive missile defense architecture to extend coverage to all ally territory and population not otherwise covered by the US system.” These areas – including Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania – would not be protected by the missile shield as currently planned. In addition, plans are under discussion about how a NATO-focused network of defenses against short-and-medium-range missiles could be “bolted onto” the planned U.S. shield supposed to operate against long-range attacks.

The U.S. was less successful in its bid to gain NATO admission for the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine. The alliance moved to admit Croatia and Albania, but Germany and France led opposition to Bush’s push to expand the alliance into Georgia and Ukraine with a “membership action plan (MAP),” arguing that such a move would unduly provoke Russia, which has vehemently opposed the idea. Most NATO governments also take the view that both these countries have internal troubles – separatism in Georgia, a deep split about Russia in Ukraine – that could become problematical if they were put officially on track to NATO membership. (more…)

Airbus has followed up its whopping U.S. deal of in-flight refueling tankers with a second, slightly smaller sale of similar aircraft to Britain. The British deal, confirmed by EADS chief Louis Gallois in an interview with a French newspaper, will be worth approximately $26 billion (£13 billion) over 27 years. The RAF will take 14 of the tankers from AirTanker, a European consortium led by EADS, the defense subsidiary of Airbus, using the airframe of the A330 civilian airliner. Their date for entering service is 2011. The contract reportedly will create 600 new jobs and safeguard another 3,000 in Britain, where the wings are built for the Airbus airframe.

The UK sale marks the second big defeat for a major military sale in less than a month for EADS’s chief rival in the United States, Boeing. The U.S. contract, initially worth $35 billion, is being formally challenged by Boeing, which is confident of being able to mobilize strong support in Congress to make the Air Force re-examine the decision to award the contract to a European consortium. If there is an all-out showdown with the Pentagon, Congress could refuse to fund the program, making the Air Force modernize its existing fleet of Boeing-made tankers.

Boeing has filed an official complaint about flaws in the procurement process that it lost last month, and “it is a list of specifics that look too serious to just be brushed aside,” according to John Pike, who heads GlobalSecurity.org, an on-line service of strategic analysis based in Washington..

The complaint must be reviewed by the Government Accounting Office (GAO), so, Pike said, “it is too soon for EADS to start counting any chickens” in this deal.

Related Post:

Pentagon Contract a “Massive Breakthrough” for European Companies, 6 March 2008

See Also:
KC-X Boeing Protest, GlobalSecurity.org

EADS wins £13bn RAF tanker deal, BBC News, 27 March 2008

EADS: Unveiling $26 Billion Deal With United Kingdom, Stratfor Strategic Forecasting, 27 March 2008

Airbus parent EADS wins British tanker refueling deal, International Herald Tribune, 27 March 2008

Air tanker deal set to be sealed, Financial Times, 27 March 2008

Canadian policymakers are confident that other allied nations will come up with reinforcements and greater operational mobility in Afghanistan, thus meeting the terms set by Canada for keeping its crucial combat role in embattled Kandahar province, the main front with Taliban insurgents.

Most of the additional forces – around 1,000 men – are expected to come from France, where President Nicolas Sarkozy has made it clear that he intends to follow through on his pledges to bring France closer to NATO. The French troops may be deployed in Kandahar or in eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan, another key front. The arrival of French forces will enable the United States, if necessary, to redeploy American units there to fight directly alongside the Canadians in Kandahar.

Canada has also insisted on more operational mobility that would come from more helicopters and drones, and Washington is expected to provide some of what is needed in both categories.

“I am very comfortable that the conditions we stipulated are going to be met,” David Wright told European Affairs. A former Canadian ambassador to NATO, he is currently a professor at Victoria College, University of Toronto.  Ambassador Wright has written for European Affairs on Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan.

Details about exact numbers and timetables are expected to emerge at the NATO summit meeting in Bucharest next week.

“This outcome means that the alliance will have solved the immediate short-run challenge in Afghanistan, so now we need to turn to a longer-term discussion about exactly how we plan to enable the Afghans to move ahead in taking over their own security,” Wright said.

That debate is likely to start in earnest at the NATO summit meeting, which will also be attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The Canadian parliament voted early this year to keep Canada’s current force of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan until 2011 – on condition that allied nations provided the reinforcements in manpower and mobility in the nation’s most dangerous regions.

Related Posts:
France Will Add Combat Troops in Afghanistan to Bolster NATO Mission, 29 February 2008
Faraway Afghanistan Brings Home Up-Close NATO Tensions, 29 February 2008
In Afghanistan, NATO Caveats Can Be Made to Work Better, 8 February 2008