Russia And Georgia Revisited
Posted on October 25th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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This may be a redundant thing to say, but Cathy Young is wrong in her attack on Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald replies here and makes most of the necessary points, but I would add a couple observations. No one who followed the domestic political scene in August and afterwards could have missed that McCain took great satisfaction in laying the blame for the entire conflict at Moscow’s door. “We are all Georgians now,” he insisted, because he took it as a given that Georgia was entirely innocent and played the role of hapless victim. The Russian response to Georgian provocation, which even I said at the time was excessive, was entirely predictable ever since the recognition of Kosovo independence and the promise of NATO membership to Georgia earlier this year, which are the issues that have so far gone unmentioned in this latest argument*. No doubt Young’s abiding concern for international law and state sovereignty inspired her to make impassioned complaints about the illegal partition of Serbia, right? Oh, right, I forgot, these things only matter when they are being undermined by non-allied foreign governments. Of course, it is directly because of a lack of Western respect for international norms and the sovereignty of other states (some of which also just happen to be aligned with Russia) that Georgia has suffered Russian incursions. First occupying and then recognizing Kosovo provided the pretext and precedent for Moscow’s response to Georgian provocation. The Russians at least went through the legal formality of granting passports to the Ossetian and Abkhaz population; our government slices and dices other countries while using far more abstract and incredible justifications. It is impossible to separate the promise of NATO membership from what Saakashvili did. Even if Washington warned him against provocative action, the promise of NATO membership encouraged reckless action on the assumption that the West would come to Georgia’s aid if necessary, and the perceived threat of NATO expansion inevitably made Georgia the target of Russian ire.
Obama’s initial suggestion that both sides should show restraint and that both sides shared responsibility was ridiculed on the right and continues to be used in the election campaign that Obama was “wrong about Russia” because he did not immediately begin spouting Georgian government press releases. In McCain’s hard-line, pro-Georgian interpretation there was nothing dangerous or provocative about what the Georgian government had been doing before August or in what it did in early August, because he accepts Saakashvili’s irredentist program of restoring Georgian control over the separatist regions. In the debates he complained that people in Tskhinvali thought of Putin as their President in 2006, as if that political reality were somehow irrelevant to the final settlement of the separatist disputes! Unfortunately, Obama early on felt some compulsion to move closer and closer to McCain’s interpretation of what happened in August, and this was presumably so he would not appear “weak” on Russia and provide McCain with a line of attack. Obama’s shift from his relatively sensible immediate response to the standard party line reminds us that there is an obvious party line to which most politicians feel obliged to subscribe, and according to the most melodramatic version of that line Georgia is playing the of the heroic democracy a la Czechoslovakia, c. 1938 being gutted by an expansionist power. As for Palin, she asserted that the Russians had acted without being provoked because that was what the McCain campaign told her to say about the conflict and because this is entirely consistent with the foreign policy biases of McCain’s advisors.
Russophobes never seem to understand that Westerners who object to their distortions and misrepresentations are not apologizing for the Russian government, nor do they approve of Russia’s internal or external policies, but they do object to having our policy debate defined by propaganda and simplistic morality plays about ”democratically-elected governments” being set upon by ”revanchist” Russians. As Greenwald says:
Every time the major party candidates now mention Russia/Georgia — including in the debates — there is full, unequivocal agreement on everything, all premised on the comic-book, Good v. Evil narrative that Georgia is our stalwart democratic ally which, through no fault of their own, was victimized by an expansionist, war-seeking Russia, and we owe them our full protection and unwavering support. There is never a word of criticism toward Georgia or an acknowledgment of the role it played in provoking the conflict, in starting the war. That is the truth that cannot be spoken.
On those rare occasions when it is ever spoken, it has to be hedged about with so many caveats about Moscow’s general perfidy that it loses all of its rhetorical and political force, and if it does not have all those caveats it is denounced as nothing more than an apology for Putin. This obviously undermines the quality of foreign policy debate in this country, as even those who know better avoid speaking out against the absurd establishment policies (in this case, reflexive support for Georgia and its entry into NATO) so that they avoid being ostracized as defenders of foreign authoritarian governments. In the end, that is the purpose of the near-universal condemnation of “Russian aggression” by our political class–to force objections to the dangerous and misguided policies that helped to bring about the war in Georgia to the margins of the debate and to make open criticism of an irrationally close attachment to a north Caucasus state much more politically perilous for anyone in the government.
*For the record, I think the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is a blunder by Moscow and very undesirable for the same reasons that I thought recognition of Kosovo was terrible. No final settlement can be reached over these areas if Georgia has not negotiated the terms of their autonomy or independence, just as the situation in Kosovo will never be stable unless Serbia was involved in negotiations to settle its status. Let this be a reminder to those who think that our government can abuse and partition small countries on the other side of the world without consequences: other powers will presume to be able to do the same thing to their neighbors and will from time to time act just as our government has acted.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
13 Responses to “Russia And Georgia Revisited”
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“Who started it?” is a legitimate question because the anti-Russian forces in this country persist in rationalizing their Russophobic response by pretending the Russian incursion was entirely unprovoked. The Russians may have been ready to act, but the Georgians fired the first shot. The Tweety Bird challenged the Bear.
More important from a US perspective, however, are the discrepancies between rhetoric on the one hand and capacity and interest on the other.
It’s no good to offer Georgia NATO membership and pledge undying commitment to its self-proclaimed democracy while our military is otherwise occupied, the supply lines impossibly attenuated, and our exchequer composed entirely of IOUs. Even a rabid interventionist should regard such chest-beating as sheer folly.
Moreover, our national interest was hardly at stake in the dispute. Yes, there are the matters of the trans-Georgia pipeline, and the loss of prestige that vain chest-beating brought. If we’d kept quiet and respected Russia’s interest in her near abroad, the pipeline would have remained viable and the hollowness of our GSUD (Global Struggle for Universal Democracy) nattering would not have been exposed on this occasion.
Instead we looked like idiots and the Russian fleet is playing games with Hugo Chávez.
TR’s slogan has morphed into “Scream like a banshee and carry a twig.”
Let us not forget Randy Scheunemann’s ties to Georgia. Once this disaster of a campaign is over, where do you think he’ll be looking for his bread to be buttered?
All this fiasco did is remind us how John McCain is completely deaf to the proper function of diplomacy, and has no respect for soft power. War, War, War - dollars, dollars, dollars going down the drain. Military action is his response to every offense. Even when our military has become debilitated and overextended.
Conservative or not, that is the #1 reason to not vote for John McCain. He will bankrupt us with all his wars.
GOM -
In fairness to the neocons, the original program was slightly more realistic “scream like a banshee while ostentatiously waving a sword in all directions”; ture, the fact that the genuinely lethal sword is now stuck in the branch a hornet’s nest hangs from does not seem to have affected their Pavlovian reactions.
I particularly like your use of “scream like a banshee” rather than some other phrase since the bean sí is usually an omen of death.
I don’t quite know how “”unfortunately” morped into “ture”; check twice, post once. Sorry about that.
Conservative or not, that is the #1 reason to not vote for John McCain. He will bankrupt us with all his wars.
But I am not sure that Obama won’t do the same. Darfur is calling, after all.
At least BHO is phlegmatic and takes counsel. A slim reed, I’ll grant you.
McCain’s too tightly wound to be C-in-C. Manic tergiversation? I’ll pass, thank you.
By firing the initial shots in South Ossetia, Georgia walked into Russia’s trap; Russia, I believe, is comstamtly maneuvering to regain control of as mucj of the former SSR territories as possible, and Georgia has legitimate reasons to fear and complain, but the worst possible action was to start a military conflict when the massed Russian troops were there for all to see. Georgia, in effect provided the excuse for a Russina invasion that the Russians were itching to have.
The ‘we are all Georgians’ crowd have made two strategic errors. First, while we provided Georgia with arms and military training, Russia provides tangible benefits in the form of pensions, hospitals and housing.to those in the autonomous regions opposed to Georgian sovereignty. It’s akin to Iran building schools and hospitals in Columbia, btw, and it’s a lesson in strategic foreign relations the USA never seems to learn.
Second, I suspect that unquestioned rhetorical support of Georgia and other allies gives rise to the false expectation that the USA would rush in with full military force to support,no matter what the circumstaces might be. We did that when we encouraged an uprising in Iraq after the Gulf War and keep on doing it in many of the hot spots around the globe.
That this topic can’t be honestly and openly debated in the US is not a surprise, as very little is debated on a more intellectual level than surface sloganeering The presidential debates were largely confined to excerpts from stump speeches. If Obama had fully laid out his position on thiis subject of Georgia, he would have forfeited the election then and there.
What our prolonged election season has demonstrated is that we elect our leaders and make policy choices on the basis of ignorance and gut feelings, not reason or knowledge. In fact, there is a distinct anti-intellectual,political drift that is truly frighteneing.
You’ve long demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the Georgia-South Ossetia conflict. It’s not clear, however, whether you misconstrue Georgia’s position as irredentist, don’t know what “irredentist” means, or subtly acknowledge Russia’s prior de facto annexation of South Ossetia.
Irredentism concerns the recovery of territory culturally or historically related to one’s nation but now subject to foreign rule. If Georgia were seeking to annex Tao-Klarjeti (in Turkey) or Saingilo (in Azerbaijan)–both populated by Georgian speakers and once part of Georgian kingdoms–that would be irredentist. But it isn’t. South Ossetia was a separatist region of the modern state of Georgia, occupied by Russia. Unless you regarded that occupation as a formal annexation, it wasn’t irredentism.
I use the past tense because, at the time of the conflict, Russia still maintained the fiction that it respected the territorial integrity of Georgia; now, only Russia and Nicaragua recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Darfur may be calling, but it’s not calling for a full-scale invasion. Or did you miss what he said about it in Debate 2?
Georgia’s has had virtually no control of these separatist regions since its independence. Georgian nationalists regard those regions as rightfully part of Georgia, and consider them to be their land under foreign control. Irredentism entails reclaiming “unredeemed” peoples and lands from the control of other nations. The regions are certainly under foreign control and effectively ceased being part of Georgia over a decade ago, and Saakashvili pledged to reunite those regions with the rest of Georgia in recognition of the reality that they were not under Tbilisi’s control. That is the very definition of an irredentist position.
Territory sought by irredentists does not have to be occupied by people from the same ethnic group, but can be sought for any number of historical reasons. That was certainly the case with much of the history of the Megali Idea, and it is true with other irredentist nationalist movements as well.
When did I deny de facto Russian annexation? I took it as a given that the separatist governments were Russian puppets and that Moscow was in charge.
No, it is not the very definition of irredentism, when the territories in question are universally acknowledged (even hypocritically) as belonging to the the metropole. Anti-secessionism is not irredentism.
The separatist regions broke away quite some time ago. Georgia’s original efforts at anti-secessionism manifestly failed, and the Russian military presence drove home the extent of its failure. Recent efforts have been aimed at trying to get back what they have, in fact, lost. If the Serbs were to attempt to retake Kosovo today over ten years after losing control of the province, that would be a case of irredentism after the original anti-secessionism had failed. Suppose that Washington had lost control of the CSA after the war for more than a decade, and the CSA had established de facto independence, even if it received no recognition from most other governments, and the U.S. then launched an effort to retake the territories lost to the original secessionist effort. Would that not be a fairly clear-cut case of irredentism?
Arguably Georgian efforts to keep Abkhazia and South Ossetia as part of the republic in 1990-91 were simply anti-secessionist. After those efforts failed, every attempt since then has pretty clearly been irredentist in nature. I’m not sure why we are arguing about this. If I had simply called the effort to retake S. Ossetia nationalist, there would be no reason to complain because it is a straightforward nationalist policy to reunite the separatist regions to Georgia. If you want to quibble about what this policy of reunification should be called, that’s your business, but it changes nothing about the substance of the policy.
You have to have an exceedingly narrow definition of irredentism to say that what Georgia tried to do in S. Ossetia was not irredentism.
Why all this nonsense about “apologizing” for Putin. In Russia, we don’t apologize for him…we admire him, adore him even - at least, we are deeply grateful! When he came to power, Russia was on her kness - poor, hungry, a bit of a bad joke of a country - like Ireland, in the bad old days. Whatever mistakes have been made (and there was no roadmap) this is simply no longer the case. Russia is full-fledged regional power, prosperous and increasingly middle-class. Our press is no less manipulated than yours - though perhaps our propaganda is a bit less professionally done. Yes, our well-wishers in the West may tut-tut all they like, but there is no nostalgia on the street for the catastrophic, Western-inspired government of Boris Yeltsin. The Americans led Georgia into an insane adventure? Well, let them pick up the pieces! No apologies on that score, either.