Georgia should not be forced to accept Russian suzerainty

BCS

Woodrow Wilson blogs for Coffeehouse! This seems a little idealistic for me.

Georgia has traditionally been part of Russia's sphere of influence; that sphere of influence has now been invaded by the United States (with the connivance of the pro-American Georgian government). When these facts and the context of the Orange Revolution, the missile shield and Russia's humiliation during the Yeltsin years is taken into consideration, surely Russia's conduct is understandable?

Carl

1. Georgia overplayed its hand. Saakhashvili foolishly believed the US/NATO was willing and able to stand up to Russia militarily in the Caucasus, an area Russia rightly considers its near abroad. Furthermore, the US is already stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq and the other NATO members do not have the stones to take on Russia.

2. Russia has every right to be alarmed at US/NATO actions in Georgia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, just as the US would be concerned if Russia had bases in Mexico and Canada {btw, due to the latest gaffes by Bush and his neocon cronies, the Russians will have new bases in Cuba and Venezuela soon} as revenge for the NATO missile shield proposed by the Bush administration. Russia is justifiably angered that NATO would even consider countries that border Russia as NATO members. As much as NATO claims they are not trying to antagonize Russia, their actions betray their false statements of peace. Russia feels threatened and thus lashes out and rightly so.

3. The Russia of 2008 and not the same humiliated Russia of 1993. They are even more battle-hardened, well-armed and now very motivated. Russia still manufactures some of the best and most sophisticated armaments ever made and they now have the chance to test them out and show the world they mean business. Their army, despite it lingering problems, is leaner, meaner, and relatively well-trained.

4. Russia is the source for the majority of the EU's oil supply. The Europeans and others do not want to jeopardize their relations with Russia in the long-term and in the short term for that matter. Russia has more oil than the Saudis, the Kazakhs, and the Iranians put together from their resources in Siberia alone.

5. The BTC pipeline exports only 1% of the world oil needs to the market. It is strictly a political pipeline and used to further infuriate Russia. G*d willing, the Russians might decide to destroy it during their assault. This would not surprise me. After the Kurdish assault on the pipeline and the current war in Georgia, the pipeline is starting to appear as a geo-political failure.

6. No, the Russians are not "commies", they are not the big, bad Soviet Union. They are capitalists and doing a pretty good job of it even if the economy is very dependent on the strength of the oil commodity. Russia is a huge market and though still a country mired in poverty, there is a growing middle and wealthy class, job creation, modernization, and economic integration with the west.

7. If the Georgians want so bad to integrate the Ossetians and Abkhazia into Georgia, then why did the Georgians indiscriminately fire missiles directly at the civilian population in Ossetia and kill over 1,000 in two nights? Is that any way to treat people who you claim are you citizens? It reminds me of all the Azeri rhetoric towards the Armenians in Artsakh. Ossetia and Abhazia are lost forever to Georgia. The Ossettes and Abkhazians neither want to be part of Georgia, they do not speak Georgians, and they long to be part of Russia. Georgia would be wise to avoid a future catastrophe and sent them free. Since day 1 of Georgian independence, the Abkahz and Ossettes had decided not to be part of Georgia. The same goes Artsakh in relation to Azerbaijan. Once you begin to mistreat and attack a group of people, you have no right to claim governance over them.

8. If Georgia let Abkhazia and Ossetia years ago, they would not be in this mess and relations with their powerful northern neighbor might be cordial.

9. It is entirely hypocritical for the US/NATO/UN to grant independence to Kosovo, East Timor, Montenegro, Eritrea while at the same time denying it to Nagorno-Karabakh, Ossetia, Abkhazia, Kurdistan, etc.
It is so transparently hypocritical because it shows that the US/NATO is looking out only for its economic, political, and military interests and not the interests of the people being victimized. If the US was willing to bomb the Serbs in 1999 and violate Yugoslavia territorial integrity to break Kosovo away from it, they have no right to criticize Russia. The head of NATO made a statement today that Russia must ceasefire and relinquish control of Abkhazia and Ossetia to Georgia...is he kidding?

10. The US needs to learn that Russia, Iran, France, etc have their own interests and that was is best for the US is not always best for others. Just as the US will pursue its own interests, so will other nations and furthermore, the US interests are not always right and beneficial to world peace and stability.

11. I've heard a lot of criticism for Russia's action in Chechnya. Russia was indeed heavy-handed and committed atrocities but let's not forget that the Chechens themselves were equally brutal. The Chechens essentially won their freedom from Russia after the 1994-1996 war and were given the chance to have a referendum where they could vote to be free. This was orchestrated by the late General Lebed of the Russian forces. Everyone agreed and the war ended.

Yet some Chechens, namely Shamil Basayev {DEAD!} and his militia were not satisfied. In the name of "Jihad" they attacked Daghestan and slaughtered innocents in Beslan and elsewhere, thus provoking Russia. Now Chechnya is really no more, more aptly, Russia is back in control and their is only sporadic fighting on occasion. Most of the male population of Chechnya is gone.

12. The US could have be partners with Russia in fighting global jihad as Russia faces the same pressures but of course the US blew this opportunity.

Austin Barry

James, with all due respect, you may be bonkers. Had Georgia joined NATO we'd now be at war with Russia given Article 5. Or is it your contention, which I don't share, that were Georgia a member of NATO Russia would not be attacking it?

Anthony

"It would be an error both strategically and morally to accept that Russia is entitled to exercise this kind of suzerainty over its neighbours."

How do we express this lack of acceptance?

"The disputes over South Ossetia and Abkhazia needs to be settled by internationally monitored referendums. These would allow the people in these regions to make their own choice about whether they want re-integration into Georgia, greater autonomy or to leave the country altogether. However, the West must be clear that it believes that the principle of self-determination also applies to Georgia. If Georgia wishes to become more Western-oriented then the West should stand with it."

This is very sensible in the abstract, but there's a problem with it. Earlier this year, the Russians were prepared to strike a bargain with the USA, whereby they would recognise Kosovo's independence and would let Georgia align Westward if the USA was prepared to back internationally monitored independence referenda in S. Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Americans refused. So this has in large part already been put on the table. Months ago. By the Russians. And we said "No, we'd rather have our cake and eat it, thanks".

"With the protection inherent in Article Five, Georgia would not have to fear Russian bullying."

Unless, of course, the Russians decide to call our bluff, calculating, almost certainly correctly, that when push comes to shove, short of an outright invasion and military occupation we aren't going to be willing to go to war with the second largest nuclear power on Earth over low level push and shove in Georgia. Which is quite possibly what would already have happened if we'd let Georgia in earlier this year. At which point we could either have gone to war with Russia or had Article 5 held up to be an empty husk. We would, naturally, have chosen the latter.

If we wanted to go down this route, we should have been prepared to strike a Grand Bargain far, far earlier and we probably should have looked into the possibility of going down the EU membership track, rather than starting off with NATO.

Wilfred

BCS:

Russia's feelings maybe understandable, but her actions are not.

Why do you consider it necessary to attribute Georgian desire for self-determination to being 'invaded by the United States'? And what exactly do you mean by 'invaded'?

Get a grip. I'm sure we're all disappointed by the dashing of our hopes for a new Russia, in the post USSR era, but we can hardly afford to ignore the unpleasant truth - that Putin's Russia is an aggressive bully emboldened by oil money, and it was only the lack of money that brought the old tyranny down.

Cassandra

This is the mirror image of Kosovo. The West was warned about this but chose to interpret Albanian irredentism as a Lockean revolution. The suggestion for referendums invites the creation of demographic 'facts' on the ground. Whatever happened to national sovereignty and territorial integrity? Axed by the tranzies?

William Lambton

Before a solitary dinner of pig's trotters in a Puskin Square restaurant, Moscow, in 2002, I asked the very pretty, peasant-garbed waitress which wine she would recommend, her immediate answer 'Georgian' - and very delicious it was too. Stalin was born in Georgia. Yet, Russia's love of Georgian wine, and her continuing love-affair with Stalin, do not excuse the old bear's centuries-old obsession with her 'near abroad', this being akin to England's still attempting to maintain her grip on Ireland to prevent the French using it as a launch-pad for invasion. We should be wary of Putin's Russia starting to throw its weight around, largely just for the sake of it. But now Mother Russia has returned to her Orthodoxy, we should not be unduly alarmed. She is not exporting an ideal.

David Lindsay

Mocked as a throwback to Holy Russia, we should have listened to Solzhenitsyn, not least when he opposed the break-up of what had been the Soviet Union.

As in Yugoslavia, and as putatively in Belgium (or Spain, or the United Kingdom), we are now seeing that, once begun, such a process need never end, with talk today of an enclave of ethnic Georgians inside Abkhazia declaring independence.

The pseudo-Left is fond of a wildly decontextualised quotation from George Galloway (not without his faults), in which he describes the end of the Soviet Union as the greatest tragedy of his life.

But he meant, not the end of Stalinism, but this. Solzhenitsyn was of the same mind. And they are both being proved right.

Whether in Yugoslavia or in the former Soviet Union, the monarchy should have been restored in the early 1990s. Both in Serbia and in Russia, it very well will be in the twenty-teens.

Meanwhile, God Save (as He very well might) The King of the Belgians. God Save The King of Spain. And God Save The Queen.

Tom Cobley

Understandable perhaps, but is it forgivable?

This is surely an intervention into the internal affairs of another sovereign nation, which as I understand it both Russia and China are exceedingly keen to see excoriated on the world stage. If we judge Russia by its own standards, then this is surely an act of the highest impropriety. Of course, in the lights of American and British actions in Iraq, by our lights this is presumably a potentially justifiable intervention.

Seems to me, that for the West to object, they have to show that this was an excessive or unjustifiable intervention. OTOH it would seem that any kind of intervention is a hypocritical act on the part of Russia.

Frank Pulley

Georgia has flashed her gash; Putin has a hard on; who is going to stop him? The US is on the short strokes of an imminent election climax; the pusillanimous British PM (with no mandate) is on the ropes; the UN is a joke; NATO is a mess. I repeat who is prepared to take on the Russian bear? Berlusconi? Sarkozy? Merkel? Get real, James. There will be lots of jaw-jaw, but Russia’s puppet President won’t rein in Putin who has decided it’s war-war and, frankly, seems already to have won it. Moreover the other side started it. Georgia’s President seems a little diffy in the straws-in-the-wind department, if he thought that by starting a punch-up with a Nuclear State, the West would immediately embrace Georgia, whatever the rights and wrongs of their border disputes and regional autonomy claims.

You post cites woulds and shoulds. Putin’s script is all can and will. The lexicons of Western governments are replete with can’t and won't at this point in history. I would have thought that the pusillanimous display of kow-towing in Peking this weekend by heads of Western Governments is an indication of the state of Western resolve in taking on totalitarian tyrants.

I read a piece in the Moscow Times today: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1016/42/369709.htm

Here is an extract:

The immediate goal of the West now should be to find a way to stop Russia's bombing campaign over Georgia right away. There is, however, no easy way to achieve this goal, particularly as quickly as is needed. Strongly worded statements from Western leaders are necessary but far from sufficient. But doing something more than this is a daunting task for the United States and others who would like to help Georgia. The Georgian government has made a strong appeal to Washington to intervene and support Georgia, urging the United States to stand up for its ideals and its friends. Although U.S. President George W. Bush would like to help Georgia in its moment of need, the United States is bound by several realities, including being overcommitted militarily in other parts of the globe and the dubious wisdom risking a broader U.S. conflict with Russia. Other options include NATO planes protecting Georgian airspace, but this also involves a risk of a broader conflict between NATO and Russia.

A military response is not the only option facing the United States and Europe, but it seems to be the one its Georgian allies would most like to see. Nonetheless, in the next days, the West must find a way to stop Russia from routing Georgia. If this attack continues for even a few more days, Georgian civilian casualties will mount, infrastructure will be destroyed, and the government will be destabilized. All of this will be disastrous for Georgia, and the future of that country will become uncertain. Even if Russia stops this aggression reasonably soon, the West will have to determine how best to both help rebuild Georgia, politically and physically as well as to how to address the tensions between Georgia and Russia, which will only become stronger after these events.

It’s worth reading it all. No solutions, though, just tooth sucking, which no doubt will continue. And (of course) a suggestion that we will have to help foot the bill for the damage. Ha!

jose Garcia

this is proof of the double standards of the left.

russia has just invaded a sovereing country, but it is ok, is "justified" and "understandable".

wasnt iraq also part of the "sphere of influence" of the US, in the years before the war?

what we have is a russian massacre and since the west needs her gas nothing will be done but talk....

Ray

"If Georgia is prepared to accept a peaceful, democratic solution with regards to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, NATO should fast-track Georgia’s membership request. With the protection inherent in Article Five, Georgia would not have to fear Russian bullying."

Nice sentiment, James. But I rather fear that any NATO guarantee to Georgia will probably be about as much practical use as was Neville Chamberlain's guarantee to Poland in 1939.

Sadly, all that George W Bush's rhetoric about 'freedom' has done is to stoke up expectations in far corners of the world that - especially after the mauling it has received in Iraq - the United States has little prospect of assuaging.

To paraphrase de Gaulle, is a United States president (or at least one in his right mind!) really going to sacrifice Dallas to save Tbilisi?

Old Hack

there will be more of this sort of adventurism unless something concrete is done to spell out to the Russians that they cannot act with impunity in their sphere. Be it the arctic, the Ukraine, or elsewhere, Georgiia sets a precedent that dare not be left umchallenged.

cuffleyburgers

It strikes me that Georgia's action was to say the least ill advised, and it was entirely predictable that the Russian response would be disproportionate. Whilst I thought carl's putinesque rant was rather longwinded there was a good point in there, and we can be sure that this marks yet another failure of the shockingly incompetent Bush administration's state department.

Which leaves us with a problem, and most assuredly leaves the Georgians with an even bigger problem. There is no way the west will intervene militarily therefore they will be left hung out to dry, and be forced to accept whatever settlement the russians choose to give them, doubtless in exchange for various pipeline concessions etc etc.

Truly ugly situation.

And by the way I cannot agree with all the posters here going about why russia is right to be alarmed by US adventurism by encouraging Georgia etc to align itself with the west. Chaps, you are being disingenous or dishonest. Russia has nothing to fear from the Georgian people deciding they would prefer to be part of an international community based on the rule law and the freedom of trade and expression rather than part of a medieval orthocracy based on savagery (pace Chechnya) lies and corruption. To invoke their so-called right to hegemony in their own backyard - that's talking the language of the late unlamented USSR.

When a powerful aggresive state with chips on both shoulders, a large nuclear arsenal and foreign and domestic policy unconstrained by law or ethics starts throwing its weight around then it's time to be seriously alarmed.

I say above that it is unlikely that the west will intervene - that is because it is unlikely. That doens't mean to say that wouldn't be the right thing to do. My view is that this is potentially a very significant moment, and a failure of nerve and firmness now will likely come back to haunt us for decades. Unfortunately, looking at the international scene I make the same calculation as the Russians do, and I see a lame duck US president bogged down in two wars and without the intellectual capital to risk embarking on a third for reasons of strategy. I see an EU happy to talk the eu military cooperation talk but most unwilling to walk the actual force projection walk ,

China? forget it
and Great Britain, Australia and Canada, without a lead from Washington of course won't do anything.

Great timing from the Kremlin chess players.

William Norton

I'm wondering when we'll get "internationally monitored referendums" for Scotland and Wales. It can't be long now - after all, we do know that there's oil in Scotland.

cuffleyburgers

William - perhaps when scotlan invades Berwick on tweed and we respond by bombing Edinburgh and Glasgow... except that with Labour in charge they would probbly miss Glasgow East ha ha ha

Martin Alexander

Carl....Very good post. I have one question for you..The pipeline..were does it take oil from?

Ted Tedford

Carl: Some good points. Here's a long and boring reply:

1. Yes, Georgia overplayed her hand. But Russia was caught off-balance, and it's a shame Georgia doesn't have the forces that would have allowed her to exploit Russia's initial shock. Russia could have done with a bloody nose from a satellite, because it's long overdue.

2. There's a moral difference between coercion and persuasion. The fact that the democratically-accountable Georgia and the Ukraine choose to align with the US might be unpleasant to Russia. It does not give her the right to intimidate them until they do her will. Nato expansion is not equivalent to Warsaw Pact expansion. If Mexico and Canada invited Moscow to stage forces there, the US would be “justifiably” angry. Would it invade either? Doubt it.

3. The Russian army is not more battle-hardened that in 1993, or even than in the 2nd Chechen War. Few of the front-line infantry with experience are serving - their national service ended years ago. Russia lacks even the limited institutional memory of western armies' 'lessons learned' staff - and we keep repeating and misapplying lessons (see Iraq). Their performance so far has been pretty poor: incoherent air strikes without proper suppression of Georgian air defences; a remarkable reluctance to join a close battle - it's not exactly Tukhachevskii. But so what? You don't need a particularly good army when you are justifiably convinced that your main strategic opponents - Nato – lack the gumption to use theirs.

6. Ask BP’s opinion of the virtues of Russian capitalism.

7. I would not be too confident in the Russia/Ossetian figures. Even if they are not deliberately distorting, such estimates are usually wrong. And Georgia has already offered S Ossetia substantial autonomy – at Moscow’s behest, they rejected it.

8. If Georgia had not been given a thorough kicking by Russia in 1991-93, there would be more Georgians in Abkhazia and S Ossetia, and a far less clear case for their independence.

9 (a). For all the vaunted parallels, Kosovo is not S Ossetia. However naïve or dangerous the precedent, there was a sincere attempt to avoid repeating the failures of Bosnia, and appeasing militant nationalism. Georgia is not Serbia: Serbia offered autonomy to Kosovo only once it was clear that it the only alternative was its independence. Russia has already achieved its main strategic aims – Georgia won’t be joining Nato, and the Ukraine is thinking twice – but it is now exacting punitive damage upon Georgia’s infrastructure to know military purpose, just to weaken it further. Nato did not do that.

9 (b). And Russia should cede Chechnya…

By all means talk up parallels with Kosovo and highlight inconsistencies in western policy, but don't let Russian charges of moral equivalence blind you to the real nature of Putin's regime.

BCS

Wilfred:

''Russia's feelings maybe understandable, but her actions are not.''

Russia is, and has been for some centuries now, a great power. In ordeer to maintain this position it has to protect its vital interests within its traditional sphere of influence. By intervening in Georgia to a) protect the South Ossetian separatists of whom it is the patron and b) reassert its authority as the dominant great power in Georgia, it has been doing just this. Its actions are perfectly acceptable, and until the intrusion of liberal values into international affairs that accompanied the entry of the United States onto the world stage, they would have been considered unremarkable.

''Why do you consider it necessary to attribute Georgian desire for self-determination to being 'invaded by the United States'? And what exactly do you mean by 'invaded'?''

Georgia's pro-American outlook may well be spontaneous (though it is probably influenced by its desire to solicit American diplomatic support for its nationalist aims in the disputed regions and for its attempts to stand up to Russia). But the fact remains that the U.S. has suggested that Georgia, part of Russia's sphere of influence, should join NATO - i.e. become part of the American sphere. The US has behaved in the same way with regard to another country within the Russian sphere, the Ukraine. On top of all this America has humiliated (however understandably) a Russian client state, Serbia, over Kosovo. Thus Russia's traditional sphere is everywhere being encroached upon by America. Whether this is unwitting, and inspired by a naive liberal idealism, or more cynical, is open to question, but the Russians' right to respond is not.

William Lambton

None of the writers above, including Mr Forsyth, has observed that the Russian Federation is the West's ally. She ceased to be our enemy when the red flag dropped. How quickly history is forgotten! Our, and its, enemy is the menace of Islamic militant fundamentalism.

Does it actually matter to us what happens to Georgia? My guess is that Russia will make a big noise in the region, cause a small amount of damage, kill, but not enough to anger, then pull back behind this mysterious umbilical cord which links North and South Ossetia and watch.

We should not forget the USSR's humiliation in Afghanistan, how that war was hated by Russians. As I understand it, most of Georgia does not want to be part of Russia. I cannot believe that Putin and Co. would be so stupid as to attempt to occupy a country in which a Western-funded resistance movement would at once sprout, this thus tying down its conscript army.

The talk above of even the theoretical possibility of Nato declaring war on the Russian Federation does demonstrate how little we these days, in the West, know about war. The Russian news service on Sky is heading its current coverage with these words: "THE WAR". Possibly, we are overdue a proper war on this planet, not least because the globe is severely over-populated (this the actual cause of the atmospheric pollution we are so worried about), and we haven't yet the means to find another planet. Nature may take its course. However, that war will not be started between kindred souls in Georgia, whether over South Ossetia, Abkhazia, a pipeline or, for that matter, Georgian wine.