There is an odd sense of deja vu about the Russia-Georgia War that takes us back not ten years to the obscure Balkan violence of Bosnia and Kosovo but twenty years to the Era of Big Statements, to Afghanistan, "Evil Empire," and "tearing down this wall." The phrase "Cold War" is on everyone's lips, and in the West the old rhetoric has been dutifully dusted off by sanctimonious warriors like John McCain, who declared, echoing the post-9/11 solidarity other nations expressed towards America, "We are all Georgians now." This is patently disingenuous, since McCain, Bush and the U.S. military have no intention and no way of defending Georgia with anything more than words.
Of course we should all be concerned about Russia, and no one likes Putin's authoritarian streak and the revival of Red Square parades. But this is not about Putin or Russia, who has been playing its hand in a familiar scenario on its borders for a long time now. The story is Saakashvili's gamble and the hapless role the United States played in this foreign policy trainwreck. The article below, by a Moscow-based correspondent for the Atlantic, lays it out with startling clarity:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200808u/georgia-russia-war
This war is, to boil it down to the very essentials, about a very old piece of shrewd realpolitik. Stalin's redrawing of boundaries to include disparate ethnic minorities (like importing Russians into Moldova and, in this case, separating Ossetia into two provinces, one inside Georgia and the other inside Russia) ensured that nationalist aspirations would always stumble on internal conflicts. The situation on the eve of this war-du-jour was like that in many other places: a tense stand-off between the Russophile Ossetes and Abkhaz and a brash, ambitious and Western-backed Georgian leader. This prophetic travel journal from a Slate correspondent only a few months ago gives an impression of what life was like before the tanks started rolling in:
http://www.slate.com/id/2197134/entry/2191589/
Saakashvili, whose human rights record has been unimpressive since the Rose Revolution swept him into power in 2003, ostensibly as a beacon of freedom in a lawless region, was emboldened by the Americans' rhetoric of promoting democracy etc. He gladly committed Georgian troops to assist in the invasion of Iraq (an irony that makes Russian propagandists salivate) and expected a commitment in return. Not McCain's vacuous pronouncements or humanitarian aid, but concrete help, a NATO bid and commitment from the West to keep the Russians at bay. When he finally moved for endgame and attacked, he was bitterly surprised to find that he had been let down and lashed out at his erstwhile American friends. Where were they now, when it counted, he wondered as his country burned.
I have a humble suggestion for Saakashvili and for others like him, trying to walk the tightrope of 21st-century geopolitics. They should watch a small film that came out of Romania in 2007 to win a prize at Cannes. California Dreamin' tells the story of a group of American soldiers on their way to Kosovo who are stopped in a small Romanian village in the middle of nowhere. At once the locals try to use the Americans to their benefit: the workers go on strike, the mayor wants to befriend them as leverage against a corrupt gangster, and everyone remembers how, for 50 years, the Americans were always going to "come and save us," from the Nazis, the Russians, and from themselves. Better late than never, right? But all the Americans are interested in is passing through, and they do so as soon as they can, leaving behind the villagers to tear each other apart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG21tT2eE2w
The lesson is not easy to follow, and Bush/McCain's assurances were all too tempting for Saakashvili. What we are left with is a ruined country, a bellicose and unstable Russia, thousands of deaths, and the same tired, hollow threats and promises.
8 years ago
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