'We Are All Georgians'? Not So Fast.
By Michael Dobbs
Wa****ngton Post
Sunday, August 17, 2008; B01
It didn't take long for the "Putin is Hitler" analogies to start
following the eruption of the ugly little war between Russia and
Georgia over the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia.
Neoconservative commentator Robert Kagan compared the Russian attack
on Georgia with the Nazi grab of the Sudetenland in 1938. President
Jimmy Carter's former national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
said that the Russian leader was following a course "horrifyingly
similar to that taken by Stalin and Hitler in the 1930s."
Others invoked the infamous Brezhnev doctrine, under which Soviet
leaders claimed the right to intervene militarily in Eastern Europe in
order to prop up their crumbling imperium. "We've seen this movie
before, in Prague and Budapest," said John McCain, referring to the
Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956.
According to the Republican presidential candidate,"today we are all
Georgians."
Actually, the events of the past week in Georgia have little in common
with either Hitler's dismemberment of Czechoslovakia on the eve of
World War II or Soviet policies in Eastern Europe. They are better
understood against the backdrop of the complica ted ethnic politics of
the Caucasus, a part of the world where historical grudges run deep
and oppressed can become oppressors in the bat of an eye.
Unlike most of the armchair generals now posing as experts on the
Caucasus, I have actually visited Tskhinvali, a sleepy provincial town
in the shadow of the mountains that rise along Russia's southern
border. I was there in March 1991, shortly after the city was occupied
by Georgian militia units loyal to Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the first
freely elected leader of Georgia in seven decades. One of
Gamsakhurdia's first acts as Georgian president was to cancel the
political autonomy that the Stalinist constitution had granted the
republic's 90,000-strong Ossetian minority.
After negotiating safe passage with Soviet interior ministry troops
who had stationed themselves between the Georgians and the Ossetians,
I discovered that the town had been ransacked by Gamsakhurdia's
militia. The Georgians had trashed the Ossetian national theater,
decapitated the statue of an Ossetian poet and pulled down monuments
to Ossetians who had fought with Soviet troops in World War II. The
Ossetians were responding in kind, firing on Georgian villages and
forcing Georgian residents of Tskhinvali to flee their homes.
It soon became clear to me that the Ossetians viewed Georgians in much
the same way that Georgians view Russians: as aggressive bullies bent
on taking away their independence. "We are much more worried by
Georgian imperialism than Russian imperialism," an Ossetian leader,
Gerasim Khugaev, told me then. "It is closer to us, and we feel its
pressure all the time."
When it comes to ap****tioning blame for the latest flare-up in the
Caucasus, there's plenty to go around. The Russians were clearly
itching for a fight, but the behavior of Georgian president Mikheil
Saakashvili has been erratic and provocative. The United States may
have stoked the conflict by encouraging Saakashvili to believe that he
enjoyed American protection, when the West's ability to impose its
will in this part of the world is actually quite limited.
Let us examine the role played by the three main parties.
Georgia. Saakashvili's image in the West, and particularly in the
United States, is that of the great "democrat," the leader of the
"Rose Revolution" who spearheaded a popular uprising against former
American favorite Eduard Shevardnadze in November 2003. It is true
that he has won two reasonably free elections, but he has also
displayed some autocratic tendencies: He sent riot police to crush an
opposition protest in Tbilisi last November and shuttered an
opposition television station.
While the United States views Saakashvili as a pro-Western modernizer,
a large part of his political appeal in Georgia has stemmed from his
promise to reunify Georgia by bringing the secessionist provinces of
South Ossetia and Abkhazia under central control. He has presented
himself as the successor to the medieval Georgian king David the
Builder and promised that the country will regain its lost territories
by the time he leaves office, by one means or another. American
commentators tend to overlook the fact that Georgian democracy is
inextricably intertwined with Georgian nationalism.
The restoration of Georgia's traditional borders is an understandable
goal for a Georgian leader, but it is a much lower priority for the
West, particularly if it involves armed conflict with Russia. Based on
their previous experience with Georgian rule, Ossetians and Abkhazians
have perfectly valid reasons to oppose reunification with Georgia,
even if it means throwing in their lot with the Russians.
It is unclear how the simmering tensions between Georgia and South
Ossetia came to the boil this month. The Georgians say that they were
provoked by the shelling of Georgian villages from Ossetian-controlled
territory. While this may well be the case, the Georgian response was
dispro****tionate. On the night of Aug. 7 and into Aug. 8, Saakashvili
ordered an artillery barrage against Tskhinvali and sent an armored
column to occupy the town. He apparently hoped that Western sup****t
would protect Georgia from major Russian retaliation, even though
Russian "peacekeepers" were almost certainly killed or wounded in the
Georgian assault.
It was a huge miscalculation. Russian Prime minister Vladimir Putin
(and let there be no doubt that he is calling the shots in Moscow
despite having handed over the presidency to his protege, Dmitri
Medvedev) now had the ideal pretext for settling scores with the
uppity Georgians. Rather than simply restoring the status quo ante,
Russian troops moved into Georgia proper, cutting the main east-west
highway at Gori and attacking various military bases.
Saakashvili's decision to gamble everything on a lightning grab for
Tskhinvali brings to mind the comment of the 19th-century French
statesman Talleyrand: "It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake."
Russia. Putin and Medvedev have defended their incursion into Georgia
as motivated by a desire to stop the "genocide" of Ossetians by
Georgians. It is difficult to take their moral outrage very seriously.
There is a striking contrast between Russian sup****t for the right of
Ossetian self-determination in Georgia and the brutal suppression of
Chechens who were trying to exercise that very same right within the
boundaries of Russia.
Playing one ethnic group against another in the Caucasus has been
standard Russian policy ever since czarist times. It is the ideal
wedge issue for the Kremlin, particularly in the case of a state such
as Georgia, which is made up of several different nationalities. It
would be virtually impossible for South Ossetia to survive as an
autonomous entity without Russian sup****t. Putin's government has
issued pass****ts to Ossetians and secured the appointment of Russians
to key positions in Tskhinvali.
The Russian incursion into Georgia proper has been even more
"dispro****tionate" -- in President Bush's phrase -- than the Georgian
assault on Tskhinvali. The Russians have made no secret of their wish
to replace Saakashvili with a more compliant leader. Russian military
targets included the Black Sea ****t of Poti -- more than 100 miles
from South Ossetia.
The real goal of Kremlin strategy is to reassert Russian influence in
a part of the world that has been regarded, by czars and commissars
alike, as Russia's backyard. Russian leaders bitterly resented the
eastward expansion of NATO to include Poland and the Baltic states --
with Ukraine and Georgia next on the list -- but were unable to do
very much about it as long as America was strong and Russia was weak.
Now the tables are turning for the first time since the collapse of
communism in 1991, and Putin is seizing the moment.
If Putin is smart, he will refrain from occupying Georgia proper, a
step that would further alarm the West and unite Georgians against
Russia. A better tactic would be to wait for Georgians themselves to
turn against Saakashvili. The precedent here is what happened to
Gamsakhurdia, who was overthrown in January 1992 by the same militia
forces he had sent into South Ossetia a year earlier.
The United States. The Bush administration has been sending mixed
messages to its Georgian friends. U.S. officials insist that they did
not give the green light to Saakashvili for his attack on South
Ossetia. At the same time, however, the United States has championed
NATO member****p for Georgia, sent military advisers to bolster the
Georgian army and demanded the restoration of Georgian territorial
integrity. American sup****t might well have emboldened Saakashvili as
he was considering how to respond to the "provocations" from South
Ossetia.
Now the United States has ended up in a situation in the Caucasus
where the Georgian tail is wagging the NATO dog. We were unable to
control Saakashvili or to lend him effective assistance when his
country was invaded. One lesson is that we need to be very careful in
extending NATO member****p, or even the promise of member****p, to
countries that we have neither the will nor the ability to defend.
In the meantime, American leaders have paid little attention to
Russian diplomatic concerns, both inside the former borders of the
Soviet Union and farther abroad. The Bush administration unilaterally
abrogated the 1972 anti-missile defense treaty and ignored Putin when
he objected to Kosovo independence on the grounds that it would set a
dangerous precedent. It is difficult to explain why Kosovo should have
the right to unilaterally declare its independence from Serbia, while
the same right should be denied to places such as South Ossetia and
Abkhazia.
The bottom line is that the United States is overextended militarily,
diplomatically and economically. Even hawks such as Vice President
Cheney, who have been vociferously denouncing Putin's actions in
Georgia, have no stomach for a military conflict with Moscow. The
United States is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and needs Russian
sup****t in the coming trial of strength with Iran over its nuclear
ambitions.
Instead of speaking softly and wielding a big stick, as Teddy
Roosevelt recommended, the American policeman has been loudly
lecturing the rest of the world while waving an increasingly
unimpressive baton. The events of the past few days serve as a
reminder that our ideological ambitions have greatly exceeded our
military reach, particularly in areas such as the Caucasus, which is
of only peripheral im****tance to the United States but of vital
interest to Russia.
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR2008081401360.html
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