by Gordon Hahn
Western governments and mainstream media have taken a one-sided view of the Russo-Georgian war in South Ossetia. In the media, the Georgian side’s reports are taken at face value, while Russian sources are ignored; suddenly the U.S. media is parroting instead of disputing the Bush administration.
Articles and talking heads abound discussing Russian imperialism and authoritarianism and praising Georgia’s less than sterling democracy. Important issues have been forgotten. It was Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, who refused to sign an agreement rejecting the use of force to resolve the ‘frozen conflict’ proposed by Russia and the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It was Saakashvili who took the decision to break the uneasy situation by employing mass violence against small residential Tskhinvali, killing civilians and Russian peacekeepers. And it was the U.S. that trained, equipped, and conducted joint maneuvers with the Georgians as they built up their forces on Tskhinvali’s outskirts.
Omitted in reference to ‘Georgian democracy,’ are Saakashvili’s banning of opposition demonstrations, the OSCE’s critical reports of presidential and parliamentary elections in 2007 and 2008, of his presidential power to appoint the capitol’s mayor and regional governors much as the much condemned Russian presidents Putin and now Medvedev have, his closing down of an opposition television station, and the mysterious death of its owner and leading opposition figure Badri Patsarkhashishvili, among others.
Moscow is not innocent in the making of this war, but neither is the West, Georgia, or South Ossetia. Indeed, the history of this ‘frozen conflict’ – the prehistory of the present war – is much more complicated than the party line of ‘Russian aggression’ against Georgia.
History and Background
South Ossetia, like much of the Caucasus, is mountainous with a population of some 60,000. The majority of the population are ethnic Ossetians, who speak a Farsi-related language and are overwhelming Orthodox Christians, as are Russians and Georgians. About a quarter of the population is ethnic Georgian, and about 10 percent are Russian. South Ossetia lies across the Russian border from North Ossetia. Some Ossetians in both republics support an independent united Ossetia. Others support a united Ossetia that is a constituent member of the Russian Federation. Very few support South Ossetia’s return to Georgian rule. It cannot be ruled out that a South Ossetia reintegrated with Georgia and increasingly populated by ethnic Georgians would begin to encourage North Ossetia’s separation from Russia.
Nationalism swept Georgia as it did much of the USSR in the late 1980s under Mihkail Gorbachev’s ‘perestroika’ reforms. At that time, Georgia declared its independence and elected an ultra nationalist, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, as president. One of his first acts was repeal North Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s status as ‘autonomous republics.’ Ethnic violence by Georgians, encouraged by Gamsakhurdia, ensued against Ossetians, forcing Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to deploy Soviet troops to the region to stop the bloodletting. Ethnic violence continued, however, and by 1991 South Ossetia’s leaders announced their plan to secede from Georgia and become like Georgia, a Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) in Gorbachev‘s revamped Union of SSRs, perhaps united with the Russian republic’s North Ossetia. In response, Gamsakhurdia sent police units into Tskhinvali, and they ransacked the city. Ossetians responded by firing on Georgian villages, and Osettians in other Georgian cities were driven out of their homes either in panic or because of intimidation by Georgian militia. South Ossetia’s demand for independence became non-negotiable.
With the collapse of the USSR, Russia, Georgia, and the Ossetians established a joint peacekeeping force under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Independent States. South Ossetia, like Abkhazia, remained a de facto independent but internationally unrecognized state. The conflict between Tbilisi, on the one hand, and Tskhinvali and Sukhumi, on the other, remained frozen, as negotiations repeatedly failed. Occasional sniper, machine gun and artillery exchanges have occurred on and off for over a decade.
They became more frequent after the 2004 ’rose revolution’ brought Saakashvili to power and the new president vowed to reintegrate the republics with Georgia by any means. However, Saakashvili’s often heated rhetoric and failure to reject the use of force, as well as repeated provocations by Ossetians and Russians raised tensions precipitously. In 2006, North Ossetia and Abkhazia signed a mutual defense agreement in the event of a Georgian military demarche, Moscow issued Russian passports to the breakaway republics’ residents, and South Ossetians voted in a referendum to secede from Georgia.
For the last year tensions have been high with repeated violations of the ceasefire agreement by all sides: the Russians declared special relations with both breakaway republics and sent troops into Abkhazia without notice to Tbilisi to repair the Abkhaz railroad; the Georgians moved troops and equipment into both conflict zones; both sides’ forces occasionally opened fire on the other sides’ villages; etc.
The Geostrategic Context
The geostrategic context in which all of this took place was not the kind that contributes to stability and negotiations. Ethnic and sovereignty conflicts are more likely to explode into violence when imbedded in a larger international contest between great powers that intervene in the dispute and adopt the opposing local parties as proxies, making them pawns in their larger game. This was true on both sides on the Georgian-Ossetian conflict with the West backing Georgia and Russia supporting the Ossetians and Abkhaz.
Aside from the insult and humiliation of having Western powers ignore Russia’s preferences on NATO expansion, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, missile defense, nuclear arms control, Jackson-Vanik, and much else, such Western actions were having a negative impact on Russia’s national security situation. The West’s move to offer Georgia and Ukraine NATO membership brought the geopolitical contest to a boiling point for Russia. Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership meant significantly weakening Russia’s defense capabilities and would require building a new base for its Black Sea Fleet based in Ukraine’s Sevastopol. Georgia’s and Ukraine’s membership together would reduce Russia’s prospects of defending itself against the alliance. To this one can add the U.S. bases in Central Asia and the planned placement of a U.S. anti-missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland, which rejected meaningful Russian participation in or monitoring of the installations, further aggravating Moscow’s sense of betrayal, isolation, and vulnerability. Finally, Moscow regards Western support for Kosovo’s secession from Serbia declared last spring and its rejection of separatist aspirations for Georgia’s Abkhaz and Russia’s traditional ally in the Caucasus, the Ossetians as an intolerable double standard.
All this, but especially Georgia’s potential entry into NATO, gave Russia a stake in the continuation of Georgia’s ethno-territorial disputes, especially because NATO rules require that incoming members not be plagued by border disputes or secessionist issues. Thus, Russia worked at times to keep the fires of secessionism stoked in both of Georgia’s breakaway republics as a way of blocking Tbilisi’s entry into NATO. Plus the prospect of NATO military installments in Georgia at some point in the future, the West’s willingness to arm and verbally support the intentions to reintegrate South Ossetia and Abkhazia of a Saakashvili who refused to reject the use of force, and these regions’ proximity to Russia’s still jihad-plagued North Caucasus represented a catastrophic security scenario from Moscow’s point of view. A Georgian dagger now appeared to be pressing in on cornered Russia. Moscow drew a red line at Tskhinvali when U.S.-backed Georgian troops attacked on August 7.
The ball is now in the West’s court. Does the West want to have a new enemy? Does it wish to persist in the folly of NATO expansion and ignoring Russia’s very real security issues – and other issues in which Russia has interests that differ from the West? Or does it want a Russia integrated into the West, able to amicably negotiate differences – and on the West’s side in the war against jihadism, the struggle against non-proliferation, and Iran’s efforts to obtain nuclear weapons?
Dr. Gordon M. Hahn – Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch; Senior Researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program and Visiting Assistant Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California; and Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group. Dr Hahn is author of two well-received books, Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007) and Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002), and numerous articles on Russian politics.
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