by Gordon Hahn
Contrary to view of Western governments and mainstream media, the Russians are far from the only party responsible for the outbreak of war in South Ossetia. In fact, Georgia and its president Mikhail Saakashvili are at least as responsible for the bloodshed as Moscow, Washington, and the two breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. As usual, Western mainstream media focus exclusively on the Russian side’s missteps and oversteps. For them, the Russians are solely to blame.
Georgians like the Ossetians, and Russians repeatedly violated the letter and spirit of the Dargomys ceasefire agreement in the months leading up to the war. Each side to one extent or another was doing its best to bait the other side into flagrantly breaking the ceasefire by way of a major incursion. In other words, it is unclear who entrapped whom, contrary to the new version put forward by some that the Russians drew the Georgians into the war by activating the Ossetians to undertake increasingly provocative violations of the ceasefire.
Like all sides, Tbilisi appears to have been itching for a fight. Like the Baltic republics, Poland, and increasingly Ukraine, Georgia has been rabidly nationalistic in its relations with Russia (and its breakaway republics), seeking at every turn to exact revenge for real, perceived and more recently entirely invented Russian wrongs of the past. Most importantly, it was Saakashvili, under the false impression fostered by the U.S. that it was fully behind him, who pushed the conflict over the threshold of mass armed violence by attempting to cease South Ossetia‘s capitol. It can be safely assumed -- and Moscow certainly would have been negligent if it did not assume -- that after reconsolidating its hold on Tskhinvali, Tbilisi would have moved on to the rest of the republic and then against Abkhazia.
The West, in particular the U.S. and NATO are responsible as well. They not only trained but also equipped the Georgian army with tanks, armored personnel carriers, unmanned reconnaissance drones and other military materiel’. The U.S. Defense Department and NATO had some 130 military advisors working for the Georgian Defense Ministry, and there were even more civilian advisors working for Tbilisi. All this, as Saakashvili was refusing to sign an agreement with Tskhinvali on the rejection of the use of force.
The West also seemed oddly aloof, even complicit in Georgia’s actions, during the run-up to the war from August 1-7, as Georgian forces escalated violence against South Ossetia, killing Russian peacekeepers in the process. Just one day before the Georgian assault US and Georgian forces were conducting military maneuvers that were observed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Before and during these maneuvers Georgian moved forces into position and began and escalated operations in North Ossetia beginning with sniper attacks and ending with artillery barrages. Days after Rice departed from Georgia, Tbilisi’s artillery pounded Tskhinvali indiscriminately in the kind of assault Western governments and NGOs criticized Russia for in its Chechnya wars. In this period, no Western leader urged Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to cease and desist. Instead, there came weak statements that both sides should cease fire and when Russia asked for a UN Security Council resolution calling on all sides to cease fire, the US, Britain and France balked.
Moreover, just as Moscow could see Georgia’s preparations for war likely for weeks from its space-based satellites, so too could the U.S. Yet there was no sense of urgency over South Ossetia manifested by any Western power (Germany was involved in shuttle diplomacy on a peace plan for Abkhazia at the time), despite Moscow’s many statements that Saakashvili was preparing to attack.
To be sure, Russia has violated Georgia’s territorial integrity and state sovereignty by backing Ossetian and Abkhaz separatists, handing them Russian passports, invading Georgian territory, and moving far beyond the two conflict zones. Moreover, the movement of forces into Abkhazia and the Abkhaz forces’ stake of a claim on territory in Georgia proper was a dangerous escalation of the conflict. Russia’s claims of Georgian genocide against Ossetians are not credible and remind one of the West’s overblown claims of genocide in Kosovo and Chechnya.
The US was blindly seeking to protect an overstated Georgian democracy and continue its blind expansion of NATO along Russia’s borders. The Bush administration appears to be learning the wrong lesson from the crisis, yelling even more loudly about Georgian democracy, ignoring Georgian nationalism, and threatening to further isolate Moscow rather than trying to parlay the crisis into a broader discussion on the unresolved issues of the post-Soviet era.
Russia was clearly looking for a way to complicate and even block NATO expansion and defend its positions in the volatile Caucasus where North Caucasus jihadists continue their attacks on Russian siloviki on a daily basis and are extending their influence into Azerbaijan. Georgia has at times provided safe haven to the jihadists, and its allies in some Western countries support Chechen separatism in one way or another. Russia may also have misconceived its response to the Georgian incursion as a way of parlaying the crisis into negotiations with the West on the broad European security agreement proposed by President Dmitrii Medvedev in July. Recall Soviet chairman Nikita Khrushchev’s attempt to use the placement of missiles in Cuba as a way of moving the West toward a grand bargain on Berlin and U.S. missiles in Turkey.
Georgia rather cleverly has attempted to tie the West to its goals of preserving its territorial integrity and exacting revenge against Russia by appealing for entry into NATO. By escalating tensions in the weeks leading up to and during the joint military exercises with U.S. forces, Georgia appeared to by trying to highlight ‘Russian aggression” to his newfound allies. The signals he received from Secretary of State Rice and other Western leaders then and in previous months prompted him to throw all caution to the wind in response to the Ossetians’ tit-for-tat violence and go for broke. By fomenting a full-blown crisis with Moscow in the region, he would expose Russian imperialism and force the West to come to his aide in one way or another. A best case scenario would have seen Georgian forces retake the breakaway republics, as the fear of intervention by, or deterioration of relations with the West restrained the Kremlin.
There is no doubt that South Ossetia and Abkhazia have played a similar game with Russia in order to protect themselves from Georgia and perhaps achieve independence. An example of this and of the Russians’ eagerness to comply was the report by Tskhinvali officials within hours of the Georgian invasion that 2,000 Ossetians had been killed. President Putin immediately reiterated the charge without evidence and started talking of Georgian genocide against the Ossetian people; something that was unlikely to be a part of Saakashvili’s plans
The Implications for Russia-West Relations
A tentative ceasefire between Georgia and the breakaway republics complicating Russian-Georgian relations has become a tentative Russian-Georgian ceasefire complicating relations between Moscow and the West. Unless Russia and the U.S. can come to some accommodation about their respective mistakes in the post-Cold War period, the Georgia-Russian war will have the following implications:
(1) Further deterioration of Russia-West relations and perhaps their complete breakdown - the last stage before turning Russia into an enemy of the West. Russian-American relations, more than Russian-European relations, are at the breaking point.
(2) The breakdown of the regime on conventional arms in Europe and perhaps on strategic and medium-range nuclear arms.
(3) Depending on how Europe’s mediation of the conflict proceeds and to the extent Washington insists on a ceasefire agreement and settlement that favors Georgia more than do the Europeans, the conflict could aggravate the split within in NATO and the EU over expanding NATO to Ukraine and Georgia and confronting Russia on such issues as energy security. The Polish, Ukrainian, and Baltic states’ unqualified support for Georgia and growing disdain for Moscow could complicate European unity and perhaps fully undo Russia-West relations.
(4) Greater Russian reliance on alliances and relations with China, other Asian states not in the Western camp, and the Muslim world.
(5) Less cooperation from Russia in the war against jihadism and in non-proliferation efforts, especially regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Increasing divisions within and weakening of the West writ large (the northern hemisphere minus China) will compromise its various power centers in their fight against global jihadism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In particular, the West’s ability to stand united against Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons will be gravely undermined. This will strengthen Iran’s hand, which could lead to global jihadists in one or more region acquiring radiological or nuclear weapons to be used against the West and/or Russia.
(6) A stronger bargaining position in Russian and Western countries for those who argue the other side is the enemy and that all means should be used to weaken it, including supporting some nationalist and jihadist movements against them.
(7) Further polarization in former Soviet space between pro-Western and pro-Russian states.
Comments