By Patricia H. Kushlis
Why is it that during cucumber season – as a former USIS public affairs officer sometimes called the month of August - when everyone should be out in the fields harvesting their vine ripe vegetables or lounging at their dachas that all hell breaks out? And why is it that the Russians always seem to wait until the world’s attention is elsewhere – like on China and the beginning of the Olympics or the 1979 winter holidays when they sent tanks and bombers south into Afghanistan - before they launch hostilities against their neighbors?
I have seen all too little, thoughtful reporting in the MSM thus far on the latest Russian dust up with Georgia, a small neighbor to the south which it decided to invade over the weekend just in time for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games. Sadly the paucity of contextual news reporting is par for the MSM’s course although The New York Times’ James Traub’s lengthy piece in Sunday's "Week In Review" is an exception. Otherwise, most of what we’re being treated to in the US emphasizes either who shot whom or contains sound-bite sized clips of interviews of those who have suddenly become homeless because of the fighting.
Neither picture is very pretty, but what we don’t seem to get much of is the background that puts the rapidly deteriorating situation into context to help explain why our less than illustrious leader is relying on diplomacy to diffuse the problem rather than sending in the heavy bombers to inflame it further.
Orthodox Christians versus Orthodox Christians
Let’s get several things straight: first, this conflagration has nothing to do with Islam - militant or not. This is not a clash of cultures or religions. All parties to the dispute are for the most part Orthodox Christians - but they do speak different languages and, over the centuries, have marched and continue to march to different drummers.
This war, then, represents a long standing feud over who controls which small piece of land in a mountainous – almost ungovernable – region in the southern Caucasus, a feud that originated in the expansion of the Russian Empire into the region in the early 19th century.
The dispute between Georgia and Russia over the territory now in dispute was exacerbated during the Soviet Union under Stalin - a Georgian whose birthplace, Gori, in Georgia and now a large Georgian military base - is now under Russian assault - when the small mini-states of Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia (which has two parts – north on the Russian side of the border and south – in Georgia) were made part of the Georgian Republic over the then inhabitants’ strong objections.
The Boundary Conundrum
When the Soviet Union flew apart in 1991, the international community recognized the existing internal republic boundaries as the boundaries for the new independent republics – whether they made historical or ethnic sense or not. This had its roots in the Soviet Constitution which on paper gave all republics, but not autonomous or other smaller legal entities, the right to secede.
In 1991, the international objection – including from the US at the time – was the inadvisability of recognizing as independent ever smaller geographic units or mini-states. When and where, it was asked, would it all end?
A major problem was, and is, especially in the Caucasus, the patchwork quilt nature of the region and the ways in which power constellations have occurred. Just as, for instance, the Armenians saw Russia as their protector against the Ottoman Empire and the Azerbaijanis, the Abkhazians and Ossetians would call upon Russia to protect them from the Georgians. The Russians, in their drive for warm water ports, encouraged the dependencies and allegiances of these tiny ethnic groups for the most part tucked away in the mountains or dotting the Black Sea through the divide and rule policy.
The cause of the hostilities that broke out last Friday stemmed from Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili’s earlier decision to centralize control over the strong objections of the largely autonomous regions of Ossetia and Abkhazia. This ill-advised power play that dates back to 2004 nevertheless represented the views of many Georgians including Georgian refugees from earlier fighting.
The current gross Russian overreaction finally came late last week but this tinder box was just waiting for the toss of a lighted match. In any event, the Russians, whose armed forces have been built up under Putin during the past seven years and paid for by rising oil and gas prices, have been spoiling for a fight and the Georgians were an easy target in a contested region. The Caucasus have been unsettled for years with the Russian Federation issuing passports and citizenship to indigenous Ossetians and Abkhazians – then claiming the right to protect their “Russian” citizens from Georgian attack. Yet a look at the pre-1991 demographics suggests few ethnic Russians actually ever lived there.
Unintended consequences?
Certainly, the Russian army can overtake tiny Georgia as it may be on the verge of doing and install its own puppet regime in Tbilisi. Just as certainly, the West is ill-positioned to forestall this, in my view, – short of risking nuclear war. Yet as we also well know, a short term military victory over a recalcitrant population does not necessarily mean a long term victory over the same - particularly in this day and age.
And such a short term military victory could also result in a greater determination for others in Russia’s near abroad – including and especially Ukraine - to reevaluate their relationships to the Russian Bear and that reevaluation may well not turn in Russia’s direction or favor.