When I last discussed the new CAP report on Georgia, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia, I focused on Georgian government policy and whether reintegrating the separatist states was still possible. Equally significant obstacles for moving towards the resolution of the conflicts are current U.S. policy and the politics of debating policy toward Georgia and Russia. The report’s authors, Samuel Charap and Cory Welt, are focused entirely on problems of policy, which is understandable, but it’s worth thinking about whether even the modest, reasonable recommendations that Charap and Welt propose are likely to find a receptive audience in Congress or in the administration.

Charap and Welt criticize the American idea of “strategic patience” this way:

As far as Georgia’s internal conflicts are concerned, the Obama administration, like the Bush and Clinton administrations before it, counsels “strategic patience”—the notion that Georgia will entice Abkhazia and South Ossetia into closer association and eventually incorporation through comparatively attractive political, social, and economic development. As Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Phillip Gordon said in September 2009, “The best way forward would be one of strategic patience whereby Georgia shows itself to be an attractive place, a stronger, democratic [country].”

This is as close as the U.S. government comes to describing how the Georgia conflicts will be resolved. The United States invests senior-level time and international political capital in conflict resolution in other settings, such as the Middle East or Bosnia. For the Georgia conflicts, however, the expectation appears to be that a
process is unnecessary.

Strategic patience is conflict resolution by osmosis. Somehow the authorities in and residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia will miraculously come to the conclusion at some unspecified point in the future that they want to reintegrate with Georgia. The desire to partake of the latter’s success will be so overwhelming as to
make them forget their grievances, fears, and aspirations.

During Biden’s first visit to Tbilisi as Vice President, he made the “strategic patience” argument, and I found it as misguided then and Charap and Welt do now. For one thing, Georgians who want to reassert their government’s authority over these territories are not going to be satisfied by the idea that maybe some day after decades of waiting there will be some voluntary reunion.

As the authors correctly point out, the larger problem with “strategic patience” is that it is essentially a polic of waiting and hoping for the best, while simultaneously ignoring the agency and interests of any of the other parties. It is just a diplomatic way of saying the obvious to Georgia that a military solution is not possible, so Georgia should continue economic and internal reforms instead. To sweeten this unpleasant truth, the administration holds out the unlikely scenario of future reunion to make Tbilisi set aside its preoccupation with reintegration. Most important, “strategic patience” doesn’t take into account the current Russian role:

Strategic patience thus implies neither interethnic reconciliation nor a negotiated settlement resulting in the delegation of powers of self-government to Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Nor does it give any indication of a process that brings the people together, which makes the notion of “progress” toward resolution abstract if not nonsensical.

Moreover, strategic patience neglects Russia as an actor in the process. Prior to the war a reasonable case might have been made for such a posture. After all, Russia was formally fulfilling a peacekeeping function with the (begrudging) consent of the Georgian government. If Abkhazia and South Ossetia were so compelled by
Georgia’s attractiveness as to reach political settlements, Russian troops presumably would be told their services were no longer needed.

After the war, strategic patience—even combined with the Geneva discussions where Russia is present—does not adequately address Russia’s new role and what its officials often call the “new reality” on the ground. It simply assumes Russia will someday realize that its intervention in August 2008, recognition decision, and militarization of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were mistaken. Russia repents and withdraws in this scenario, cursing its prior policy errors and thanking the triumphant Georgians for having been right all along and having the courage of their convictions.

This scenario seems highly unlikely given the strong support for the war across Russia’s political spectrum. A July 2010 opinion poll showed that 54 percent of Russians support keeping troops in South Ossetia and only 26 percent support withdrawal. These numbers are statistically identical to those from the same survey the month after the war.

The one thing that I will say for the “strategic patience” position is that it is a fairly easy way for the U.S. to make Georgia a lower priority for U.S. foreign policy. The virtue of the position for the administration is that a decades-long project of building up Georgia so that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are clamoring to reconcile not only leaves everything up to the Georgians, which makes a certain amount of sense, but it also takes for granted that no significant progress on resolving these conflicts is possible in the foreseeable future. The main problem that I see with it is that “strategic patience” is obviously not going to get Georgia what it wants, so the Georgian government isn’t going to accept this as the best approach. Instead of being a well-developed policy, it is more of a placeholder. However, a placeholder isn’t good enough as long as Washington remains rhetorically and politically committed to backing Georgia. If the U.S. weren’t acting as Georgia’s patron, it would be a different story, but the U.S. continues to be stuck with this client state because of the consensus in Washington in support of Georgia.

That consensus may be the biggest obstacle to changing U.S. policy constructively. The authors note that one of their objections to the American response to these conflicts is the language U.S. officials use:

Currently, however, the language used by U.S. officials often suggests irreconcilable differences between the parties that would rule out any progress, leading to a Cyprus-style, long-term stalemate.

U.S. officials describe the differences this way because anything less than this will be seized on by members of Congress and the media as proof that the administration has “abandoned” or “sold out” Georgia. If there is to be a sustainable effort on the part of the U.S. in helping to resolve these conflicts, there will need to be fairly broad consensus that normalizing relations among the parties is the top priority. Right now, the consensus is much more narrowly focused on denouncing Russian “occupation” and urging arms sales to Georgia. There is a significant bloc of hawks in Congress that will insist on unwavering support for whatever Georgia wants, which makes pushing for conflict resolution in Georgia politically risky without the prospect of much reward or success. Given the political obstacles any administration would have to face in modifying its policy on these conflicts, the current administration may not see much point in making the effort. As long as Republicans are more or less unified in Bush-era support for Georgia, there is not much reason to expect that a serious conflict resolution policy would last beyond the end of the Obama administration.