Weeke nd Edition
August 9 / 10, 2008
The West Would Be Wise to Stay Out
Plucky Little Georgia?
By MARK ALMOND
For many people the sight of Russian tanks streaming across a border in
August has uncanny echoes of Prague 1968. That cold war reflex is natural
enough, but after two decades of Russian retreat from those bastions it is
misleading. Not every development in the former Soviet Union is a replay of
Soviet history.
The clash between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia, which escalated
dramatically yesterday, in truth has more in common with the Falklands war
of 1982 than it does with a cold war crisis. When the Argentine junta was
basking in public approval for its bloodless recovery of Las Malvinas, Henry
Kissinger anticipated Britain’s widely unexpected military response with the
comment: "No great power retreats for ever." Maybe today Russia has stopped
the long retreat to Moscow which started under Gorbachev.
Back in the late 1980s, as the USSR waned, the red army withdrew from
countries in eastern Europe which plainly resented its presence as the
guarantor of unpopular communist regimes. That theme continued throughout
the new republics of the deceased Soviet Union, and on into the premiership
of Putin, under whom Russian forces were evacuated even from the country’s
bases in Georgia.
To many Russians this vast geopolitical retreat from places which were part
of Russia long before the dawn of communist rule brought no bonus in
relations with the west. The more Russia drew in its horns, the more
Washington and its allies denounced the Kremlin for its imperial ambitions.
Unlike in eastern Europe, for instance, today in breakaway states such as
South Ossetia or Abkhazia, Russian troops are popular. Vladimir Putin’s
picture is more widely displayed than that of the South Ossetian president,
the former Soviet wrestling champion Eduard Kokoity. The Russians are seen
as protectors against a repeat of ethnic cleansing by Georgians.
In 1992, the west backed Eduard Shevardnadze’s attempts to reassert
Georgia’s control over these regions. The then Georgian president’s war was
a disaster for his nation. It left 300,000 or more refugees "cleansed" by
the rebel regions, but for Ossetians and Abkhazians the brutal plundering of
the Georgian troops is the most indelible memory.
Georgians have nursed their humiliation ever since. Although Mikheil
Saakashvili has done little for the refugees since he came to power early in
2004 – apart from move them out of their hostels in central Tbilisi to make
way for property development – he has spent 70% of the Georgian budget on
his military. At the start of the week he decided to flex his muscles.
Devoted to achieving Nato entry for Georgia, Saakashvili has sent troops to
Iraq and Afghanistan – and so clearly felt he had American backing. The
streets of the Georgian capital are plastered with posters of George W Bush
alongside his Georgian protege. George W Bush avenue leads to Tbilisi
airport. But he has ignored Kissinger’s dictum: "Great powers don’t commit
suicide for their allies." Perhaps his neoconservative allies in Washington
have forgotten it, too. Let’s hope not.
Like Galtieri in 1982, Saakashvili faces a domestic economic crisis and
public disillusionment. In the years since the so-called Rose revolution,
the cronyism and poverty that characterised the Shevardnadze era have not
gone away. Allegations of corruption and favouritism towards his mother’s
clan, together with claims of election fraud, led to mass demonstrations
against Saakashvili last November. His ruthless security forces – trained,
equipped and subsidised by the west – thrashed the protesters. Lashing out
at the Georgians’ common enemy in South Ossetia would certainly rally them
around the president, at least in the short term.
Last September, President Saakashvili suddenly turned on his closest ally in
the Rose revolution, defence minister Irakli Okruashvili. Each man accused
his former blood brother of mafia links and profiting from contraband.
Whatever the truth, the fact that the men seen by the west as the heroes of
a post-Shevardnadze clean-up accused each other of vile crimes should warn
us against picking a local hero in Caucasian politics.
Western geopolitical commentators stick to cold war simplicities about
Russia bullying plucky little Georgia. However, anyone familiar with the
Caucasus knows that the state bleating about its victim status at the hands
of a bigger neighbour can be just as nasty to its smaller subjects. Small
nationalisms are rarely sweet-natured.
Worse still, western backing for "equip and train" programmes in Russia’s
backyard don’t contribute to peace and stability if bombastic local leaders
such as Saakashvili see them as a guarantee of support even in a crisis
provoked by his own actions. He seems to have thought that the valuable oil
pipeline passing through his territory, together with the Nato advisers
intermingled with his troops, would prevent Russia reacting militarily to an
incursion into South Ossetia. That calculation has proved disastrously
wrong.
The question now is whether the conflict can be contained, or whether the
west will be drawn in, raising the stakes to desperate levels. To date the
west has operated radically different approaches to secession in the
Balkans, where pro-western microstates get embassies, and the Caucasus,
where the Caucasian boundaries drawn up by Stalin, are deemed sacrosanct.
In the Balkans, the west promoted the disintegration of multiethnic
Yugoslavia, climaxing with their recognition of Kosovo’s independence in
February. If a mafia-dominated microstate like Montenegro can get western
recognition, why shouldn’t flawed, pro-Russian, unrecognised states aspire
to independence, too?
Given its extraordinary ethnic complexity, Georgia is a post-Soviet Union in
miniature. If westerners readily conceded non-Russian republics’ right to
secede from the USSR in 1991, what is the logic of insisting that
non-Georgians must remain inside a microempire which happens to be
pro-western?
Other people’s nationalisms are like other people’s love affairs, or,
indeed, like dog fights. These are things wise people don’t get involved in.
A war in the Caucasus is never a straightforward moral crusade – but then,
how many wars are?
Mark Almond is a history lecturer at Oriel College, Oxford.
This article originally appeared in the Guardian<;.