Things we didn’t want to learn about
We haven’t to date learned much about the Black Sea, and nothing at all of the Montreux Convention or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but, sadly, that may be about to change. Stratfor has some details:
Vladimir Putin called attention to the Black Sea as a potential flash point in the confrontation between Russia and the West. He warned that there could be direct confrontations between Russian and NATO ships should NATO or its member nations increase their presence there. According to NATO there are currently four NATO ships in the Black Sea for a previously scheduled exercise called Active Endeavor. Putin explicitly warned, however, that there could be additional vessels belonging to NATO countries in the Black Sea that are not under NATO command.
It is hard to get ships into the Black Sea unnoticed. The ships have to pass through the Bosporus, a fairly narrow strait in Turkey, and it is possible to sit in cafes watching the ships sail by. Putting a task force into the Black Sea, even at night, would be noticed, and the Russians would certainly know the ships are there.
As a complicating factor, there is the Montreux Convention, a treaty that limits access to the Black Sea by warships. The deputy chief of the Russian general staff very carefully invoked the Montreux Convention, pointing out that Turkey, the controlling country, must be notified 15 days in advance of any transit of the Bosporus, that warships can’t remain in the Black Sea for more than 21 days and that only a limited number of warships were permitted there at any one time. The Russians have been reaching out in multiple diplomatic channels to the Turks to make sure that they are prepared to play their role in upholding the convention. The Turkish position on the current crisis is not clear, but becoming crucial; both the United States and Russia are working on Turkey, which is not a position Turkey cares to be in at the moment. Turkey wants this crisis to go away.
It is not going away. With the Russians holding position in Georgia, it is now clear that the West will not easily back down. The Russians certainly aren’t going to back down. The next move is NATO’s, but the alliance is incapable of moving, since there is no consensus. Therefore, the next move is for Washington to lead another coalition of the willing. It is coming down to a simple question. Does the United States have the appetite for another military confrontation (short of war, we would think) in which case it will use its remaining asset, the U.S. Navy, to sail into the Black Sea?
(The answer is no, in our opinion, unless the administration has lost its mind.) Meanwhile, the NYT reported on a Russian diplomatic “setback” related to its invasion of Georgia:
Russia suffered a significant setback here on Thursday, as members of a regional security group in which the Kremlin plays an important role offered little support for Moscow’s military action in Georgia…Although the Central Asia states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan all fall within what Moscow considers its sphere of influence, and all seem to accept Russian hegemony to a certain degree, they nevertheless strive to limit Moscow’s reach and preserve their own independence of action.
Let’s see just how long that “independence of action” lasts in this new world of Russia’s reasserting its imperial sphere of influence. As in 2001, the world seems to be changing in ways that almost no one predicted even a couple of months ago, with players and a vocabulary we have yet to learn enough about.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:59 am
As always, it seems, Stratfor’s evaluation of the situation is less impressive than they like to pretend. Certainly it’s true that ship movement into and out of the Black Sea is easily monitored from Turkey, but even if it weren’t the Russians have spy satellites and I’m sure that they routinely monitor the movements of all our big navy ship everywhere in the world. The only ships they couldn’t track would be submarines.
As to that treaty, the Russians are not really in a very good position to demand compliance with any international agreements right now, just having broken several themselves. And if someone does violate the Montreux Convention, what are they going to do about it?
Ignore it.
Scream about it.
Attack.
Those are their choices. They’ll pick #2, and if someone (NATO) is deliberately violating the Montreux Convention, they’ll go right on violating the Convention.