DIPLOMATIC RUBBLE
by Eric Walberg

The People’s Voice
/voices.php/2008/08/19/diplomatic_rubble
Aug 19 2008
TN

Russia’s firm response to the Georgian gamble in Ossetia is being
interpreted in various ways, but the reality is clear.

Analogies of the Ossetia fiasco and its fallout with past events are
coming thick and fast. Condoleezza Rice — bless her heart — says,
"This is no longer 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia." James
Townsend, a former Pentagon official now with the Atlantic Council,
compared the situation to Hungary in 1956. In both cases, the Russians
being, well, the Russians. Neocon Charles Krauthammer says Georgia
needs "the equivalent of the Berlin air lift." The Baltic statelets
and Poland go back further yet, arguing it is a replay of Hitler and
Stalin’s invasions of their territory, prompting Poland to quickly sign
on the dotted line for US missiles (against the Iranians, of course).

But the most telling analogy is with Iraq and its ill-fated invasion
of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait indeed had been a province administered
from Baghdad for millennia, so Saddam Hussein understandably coveted
it, as Saakashvili does Ossetia. Hussein was convinced that the US
had given him the green light after he had spent 10 years fighting
the US’s latest bete noire, Iran , just as Saakashvili was given a
similar ambivalent go-ahead to invade Ossetia . Even Townsend admits,
"I think they misunderstand our eagerness and enthusiasm and think we
are going to be behind them for anything." Russian Ambassador to the
UN Vitaly Churkin said it best: "It is hard to imagine that Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili embarked on this risky venture without
some sort of approval from the side of the United States."

Taking this line of argument to its logical conclusion, perhaps
the Americans encouraged the Georgian president in order to test
the Russian reaction and to observe the preparedness of the Russian
military. Yet another analogy with the present crisis is the 1930s
Japanese occupation of Manchukuo. They made an incursion at Nomonhan
to test the Russians. After General Zhukov destroyed their attacking
force, they decided to leave the Russians alone, despite subsequent
pleas by Hitler.

Saakashvili’s strategy is also reminiscent of the Israeli conquest
of 1948: by bombing the civilians he shows he wanted to have Ossetia
without its native Ossetians. To this end he bombarded the capital,
Tskhinvali, causing half the residents to crossed the mountains to the
Russian side. Fortunate for the Ossetians, and unlike the Palestinians,
they had a reliable patron.

Georgians are noted for their fiery nationalism, but it’s not clear
that this time they are lining up behind their rash president. Former
Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze has said that Georgia
made a "grave mistake" by advancing into South Ossetia. The witty
Shevardnadze, who is also a former Soviet foreign minister, said the
crisis would not cause a new Cold War, as "the new Cold War has long
since been instigated by the USA , through the Americans’ so-called
missile defence shield in the Czech Republic and Poland."

Referring to Russia ‘s incursion into Georgia , President George W
Bush said that invading a sovereign country that poses no threat is
"unacceptable in the 21st century." John McCain echoed this: "In
the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations," as if this
is all some ghastly 20th century mistake, and as if the last eight
years have witnessed a blossoming of world peace. In fact, the 21st
century has already involved lots of nations invading other nations,
though predominantly by the US and NATO. And given the anti-Russian
policies by the US and its new clients in the recent past, the likely
annexation of South Ossetia to the Russian Federation could well be
followed by Abkhazia and Sevastopol.

It is not inconceivable that Crimea, eastern and southern Ukraine —
all of which are predominantly Russian — could follow suit. None
of these potential annexations would require much force, nor would
they be surprising, and would certainly not be pretexts for the
US launching WWIII. In an interview with Forbes magazine in 1994,
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, eulogised by the West only a few weeks ago
for his fanatical anti-communism, called for "the union of the three
Slavic republics [ Russia , Ukraine , Belarus ] and Kazakhstan ." He
explained that Lenin had given up several Russian provinces to Ukraine
and in 1954, Khrushchev made a "gift" of the Crimea to Ukraine. "But
even he did not manage to make Ukraine a ‘gift’ of Sevastopol ,
which remained a separate city under the jurisdiction of the USSR
central government." Belarus and Kazakhstan are already so close to
Russia they could be considered part of the federation, but Ukraine is
playing Saakashvili’s odious game of cozying up to the US and NATO,
and is thereby creating an atmosphere where Russia will have to do
something to protect itself.

Solzhenitsyn’s prescription included withdrawing all Russians from
Central Asia and the Caucusus, and is impracticable. Despite Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin’s admiration for him, it is unlikely that
Russia will ever abandon the latter or repatriate millions of Russians
from the former. On the contrary, Russia has a residual "imperial"
duty: as the successor of the Soviet Union, it is duty-bound to protect
Russians living throughout the ex-Soviet Union. Nor can Russia allow
Saakashvili to ethnically cleanse the Ossetians, if only for practical
reasons: fifty thousand refugees from South Ossetia would destabilise
the northern Caucasus . But the essential point about the arbitrary
borders under socialism and the migration of nationalities to and fro
for many decades makes a mockery and potential tragedy of treating
the new "republics" in terms familiar to the West.

Ignoring this fundamental reality has caused inestimable suffering
already in the former Yugoslavia, as Solzhenitsyn predicted long
before Srebrenica, Kosovo and now Ossetia . Unfortunately, Bush et
al are operating on autopilot, as even reluctant German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, on her lightning visit to succour Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili, defiantly announced, "Georgia will become a
member of NATO if it wants to — and it does want to."

Employing its own perverse logic, Poland quickly finalised an agreement
to host the infamous US missile "defence" shield. The US administration
even dropped its supposed opposition to supplying short-range Patriot
missiles, which are highly mobile and can be redeployed easily to
counter, say, Russian missiles responding to a US strike, a point
which was not lost on Russia. So it should surprise no one that a
senior Russian general said that Poland had just made itself a target
of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

To add fuel to the nuclear meltdown, NATO wannabee Ukraine announced
on Saturday that the demise of a bilateral Russian-Ukrainian defence
agreement earlier this year "allows Ukraine to establish active
cooperation with European countries" in missile defence. Ukraine’s
Foreign Ministry said Kiev could invite European partners to integrate
their early warning systems against missile attacks. This is yet
another blatant provocation of Russia , which has no intention of
starting a war, but has a nuclear arsenal ready to reply to any first
strike, a policy which the current US administration embraces.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has also ordered commanders of
Russia ‘s Black Sea fleet, based in Sevastopol, to seek permission
before moving warships and aircraft. Moscow said its commanders
would disregard the order as its forces answer solely to the Russian
president.

The current upping-the-ante is both childish and dangerous. Russia is
not weak and in disarray any longer, and could very easily — and with
excellent historical justification — annex Sevastopol and even the
entire Crimean peninsula, where Russians and Tatars constitute 70 per
cent of the population and which was a part of Russia since the time
of Catherine the Great. At the same time, Russia is not belligerent or
warlike, unlike a certain other superpower, and foolish "presidents"
of "republics" would be wise to recognise they must live side-by-side
with this powerful nation, and make the best of it, not the worst. In
case this point is still not clear, if Ukraine stops its provocations,
it need have no worries of any loss of "sovereignty".

The duplicity of the West is everywhere in this current crisis. Even
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s cease-fire proposal signed by both
Georgian and Russian presidents was a ruse. Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov revealed that the document that Saakashvili approved
did not contain an introduction that had been endorsed by Russia,
South Ossetia and the other breakaway region, Abkhazia. Meanwhile,
US military planes are flying in "aid" and the US has announced it
will henceforth have a permanent presence in Georgia.

Because of the very real threat that Georgian troops, backed by their
American friends, could easily try again to destabilise things, the
Russians are understandably unwilling to abandon the western Georgian
city of Gori, which has a military base.

Tellingly, Bush referred Friday to efforts to resolve the conflict
not with the Group of 8 industrial nations, which includes Russia ,
but with the G-7, using the designation of the group before Russia
joined. Ousting Russia from the G-8 has been a keystone of McCain’s
foreign policy for years.

Bush et al don’t realise that apart from the Baltics, which had
two decades of independence before WWII, these ex-Soviet states are
not really states at all, but fiefdoms of the most odious part of
the former Soviet elite, now trying to play western-style electoral
politics, with disastrous consequences. By pretending otherwise and
threatening Russia for its understandable security interests, the US is
playing with fire. "What worries me about this episode is the United
States is jeopardising Russian cooperation on a number of issues
over a dispute that at most involves limited American interests,"
said Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute in Washington .

By opening NATO to bits and pieces of the SU and Yugoslavia, by
pushing Russophobic, vengeful Polish and Czech governments into
hosting missiles which can be easily aimed at Russia, the US should
be prepared for the possibility of a greater Russia, just as it should
be resigned to a greater Serbia, which would include Serbian enclaves
in Kosovo. This is what so far defines 21st century realpolitik.

Military defeat may actually be very good for the Georgians. The first
thing the Georgians did when they became independent after the 1917
Russian Revolution was to expel all Armenians and confiscate their
property. After WWII, Georgian Joseph Stalin expelled the Chechens from
the Caucusus and the Germans from Prussia. The Ossetians and Abhkaz
had good cause to distance themselves from Georgian chauvinism. We
can only hope that the fiasco in Ossetia will let the Georgians — and
the Ukrainians — rethink their attitude towards all their neighbours,
including the Russians.