From: "Katia M. Peltekian" <[email protected]>
Subject: Economist: A scripted war; Russia and Georgia
The Economist
August 16, 2008
U.S. Edition
A scripted war; Russia and Georgia
Gori, Moscow and Tbilisi
Both sides are to blame for the Russian-Georgian war, but it ran
according to a Russian plan
GORI was Stalin?s birthplace. Did his statue in Stalin Square smile
approvingly on Vladimir Putin as Russian tanks rolled past and the few
residents left wandered around the bombed ghost town, without purpose?
In 1921 the Bolsheviks occupied Georgia. Now Russia, for the first
time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, had invaded a sovereign
country.
Georgia was once the jewel of its empire, and Russia has never
psychologically accepted it as a sovereign state. Nostalgia for the
Soviet empire has long been the leitmotif of Russia?s ideology. This
month it re-enacted its fantasy with aircraft and ground troops. It
occupied Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two separatist regions of
Georgia, blockaded the vital port of Poti, sank Georgian vessels,
destroyed some infrastructure, blocked the main east-west highway and
bombed and partially occupied towns in Georgia, including Gori.
Western diplomats and politicians rushed to Moscow and to Georgia?s
capital, Tbilisi, trying to broker a ceasefire. The lobby of Tbilisi?s
main hotel resembled a United Nations conference. On August 12th
Russia, having pulverised the small Georgian army, decided it was time
to stop. A few hours before France?s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was
due in Moscow, Russia?s president, Dmitry Medvedev, announced an end
to Russia?s "peace enforcement operation". The aggressor, he said "is
punished and its military forces are unravelled". He then signed the
ceasefire plan that Mr Sarkozy brought to Moscow.
That same day, hundreds of thousands of Georgians flooded Rustaveli
Avenue, Tbilisi?s main street. They read poetry and sang
songs. Georgia, a small, dignified, theatrical nation, had held
together. In the evening they lit candles and waved flags: Georgian,
Ukrainian, Armenian. On the same spot almost 20 years ago Soviet
troops had brutally disbanded a demonstration which had declared
Georgia?s independence.
Yet it was not until America?s George Bush delivered a stark warning
to Russia late on August 13th that Russia began to pull back all its
forces. Mr Bush sent his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, to
Georgia and told his defence secretary, Robert Gates, to organise a
humanitarian-aid operation. The first American aircraft landed at
Tbilisi airport soon afterwards.
So what was all this about? Clearly, more than the two separatist
regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as Russia claimed. It was also
about more than simply punishing Georgia for its aspirations to join
NATO, or even trying to displace Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia?s
hot-headed president, who has irritated Russia ever since he came to
power in the "rose revolution" in 2003. It is about Russia, resurgent
and nationalistic, pushing its way back into the Caucasus and chasing
others out, and reversing the losses Russia feels it has suffered
since the end of the cold war.
The fact that Georgia is backed by the West made it a particularly
appealing target. In fighting Georgia, Russia fought a proxy war with
the Westâ??especially with America (which had upgraded the
Georgian army). All this was a payback for the humiliation that Russia
suffered in the 1990s, and its answer to NATO?s bombing of Belgrade in
1999 and to America?s invasion of Iraq. "If you can do it, so can we,"
was the logic.
Russia was also drawing a thick red line on the map of Europe which
the West and NATO should not cross. And, as in any war, there were
powerful subjective reasons in play. Mr Putin?s personal hatred of Mr
Saakashvili, and his ability to deploy the entire Russian army to
fulfil his vendetta, made war all but inevitable.
With the smoke of battle still in the air, it is impossible to say who
actually started it. But, given the scale and promptness of Russia?s
response, the script must have been written in Moscow.
The rattling of sabres has been heard in both capitals for months, if
not years. Russia imposed sanctions on Georgia and rounded up
Georgians in Moscow. In revenge for the recognition of Kosovo?s
independence earlier this year, Mr Putin established legal ties with
the governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. When Mr Saakashvili
called Mr Putin to complain and point out that the West supported
Georgian integrity, Mr Putin, who favours earthy language, is said to
have told him to stick Western statements up his backside.
In the late spring, Russia and Georgia came close to a clash over
Abkhazia but diplomats pulled the two sides apart. A war in Georgia
became a favourite subject in Moscow?s rumour mill. There were bomb
explosions in Abkhazia and the nearby Russian town of Sochi, the venue
of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Suddenly, the action switched to South Ossetia, a much smaller
rebellious region divided from Russia by the Caucasus mountains. In
early July Russia staged a massive military exercise on the border
with South Ossetia. At the same time Russian jets flew over the region
"to establish the situation" and "cool down Georgia?s hot-heads",
according to the Russians.
The change of scene should not, in retrospect, be surprising. Unlike
Abkhazia, which is separated from the rest of Georgia by a buffer
zone, South Ossetia is a tiny patchwork of
villagesâ??Georgian and South Ossetianâ??which was
much easier to drag into a war. It is headed by a thuggish former
Soviet official, Eduard Kokoity, and run by the Russian security
services. It lives off smuggling and Russian money. As Yulia Latynina,
a Russian journalist, puts it, "South Ossetia is a joint venture
between KGB generals and an Ossetian gangster, who jointly utilise the
money disbursed by Moscow for fighting with Georgia."
In early August Georgian and South Ossetian separatists exchanged fire
and explosive attacks. South Ossetia blew up a truck carrying Georgian
policemen and attacked Georgian villages; Georgia fired back at the
capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali. On August 7th Georgian and South
Ossetian officials were due to have direct talks facilitated by a
Russian diplomat. But according to Temur Iakobashvili, a Georgian
minister, the Russian diplomat never turned up.
What happened next is less clear. Russia claims that Mr Saakashvili
treacherously broke a unilateral ceasefire he had just announced,
ordering a massive offensive on Tskhinvali, ethnically cleansing South
Ossetian villages and killing as many as 2,000 people. According to
the Georgians, the ceasefire was broken from the South Ossetian
side. However, what triggered the Georgian response, says Mr
Saakashvili, was the movement of Russian troops through the Roki
tunnel that connects South Ossetia to Russia. Matthew Bryza, an
official at the State Department, says he was woken at 2am on August
7th to be told that the Georgians were lifting the ceasefire. "I tried
to persuade them not to do it," he says.
That same night, Georgia started to shell and invade Tskhinvali. Then
the Russian army moved inâ??the same troops that had taken
part in the military exercise a month earlier. The picture Russia
presented to the world seemed clear: Georgia was a reckless and
dangerous aggressor and Russia had an obligation, as a peacekeeper in
the region, to protect the victims.
Russia?s response was predictable. One thing which almost all
observers agree on is that Mr Saakashvili made a catastrophic mistake
by walking into the Russian trap. As Carl Bildt, Sweden?s foreign
minister, puts it: "When you have a choice between doing nothing and
doing a stupid thing, it is better to do nothing." But Mr Saakashvili,
a compulsive risk-taker, did the second. Even now he is defiant: if
the clock were turned back, he says his response would be the
same. "Any Georgian government that would have done differently would
have fallen immediately," he says.
Mr Saakashvili bears responsibility for mismanaging disputes between
Georgia and the enclaves, pushing them firmly into Russian hands. Yet
his mistakes and follies notwithstanding, Russia?s claim that it was
"enforcing peace" is preposterous. Despite the terrible atrocities
which both South Ossetia and Abkhazia suffered in the early 1990s from
the brutal and nationalist government of the Georgian president, Zviad
Gamsakhurdia, South Ossetians got on with the Georgians much better
than the Abkhaz did. They traded heavily in a smugglers? market (which
Mr Saakashvili shut down in 2004) and lived alongside each other
peaceably.
"Georgians always helped me and I don?t feel any pressure now," says a
South Ossetian woman who got trapped in Gori after the Russian
attack. This is not a comment frequently heard in Abkhazia. Mr
Saakashvili?s nationalistic approach to separatist conflicts certainly
did not help, but had it not been for Russia supporting South
Ossetia?s corrupt regime, the two sides would not have gone to
war. And instead of containing the conflict Russia deliberately spread
it to Abkhazia.
Russia was prepared for the war not only militarily, but also
ideologically. Its campaign was crude but effective. While its forces
were dropping bombs on Georgia, the Kremlin bombarded its own
population with an astonishing, even by Soviet standards, propaganda
campaign. One Russian deputy reflected the mood: "Today, it is quite
obvious who the parties in the conflict are. They are the US, UK,
Israel who participated in training the Georgian army, Ukraine who
supplied it with weapons. We are facing a situation where there is a
NATO aggression against us."
In blue jeans and a sports jacket, Mr Putin, cast as the hero of the
war, flew to the Russian side of the Caucasus mountain range to hear,
first-hand, hair-raising stories from refugees that ranged from
burning young girls alive to stabbing babies and running tanks over
old women and children. These stories were whipped up into
anti-Georgian and anti-Western hysteria. Russian politicians compared
Mr Saakashvili to Saddam Hussein and Hitler and demanded that he face
an international tribunal. What Russia was doing, it seemed, was no
different from what the West had done in its "humanitarian"
interventions.
There was one difference, however. Russia was dealing with a crisis
that it had deliberately created. Its biggest justification for
military intervention was that it was formally protecting its own
citizens. Soon after Mr Putin?s arrival in the Kremlin in 2000, Russia
started to hand out passports to Abkhaz and South Ossetians, while
also claiming the role of a neutral peacekeeper in the region. When
the fighting broke out between Georgia and South Ossetia, Russia,
which had killed tens of thousands of its own citizens in Chechnya,
argued that it had to defend its nationals.
But as Mr Bildt argues, "we have reason to remember how Hitler used
this very doctrine little more than half a century ago to undermine
and attack substantial parts of central Europe." In the process of
portraying Georgia as a fascist-led country, Russia was displaying the
syndrome it was condemning. And it did not seem to mind when, as Human
Rights Watch (HRW) reports, ethnic Georgian villages were looted and
set on fire by South Ossetian militia. "The remaining residents of
these villages are facing desperate conditions, with no means of
survival, no help, no protection, and nowhere to go," says Tanya
Lokshina of HRW.
The biggest victims of this war are civilians in South Ossetia and
Georgia. Militarily, Mr Putin has won, hardly surprisingly. But all
Russia has got from its victory so far is a ruined reputation, broken
ties with Georgia, control over separatist enclaves (which it had
anyway) and fear from other former Soviet republics. Mr Saakashvili,
who promised to reintegrate the country when he was elected president,
has made this prospect all but unattainable.
The six-point peace plan negotiated by Mr Sarkozy recognises Georgian
sovereignty but not its integrity. In practice, this means that Russia
will not allow Georgia back into Abkhazia and South Ossetia. According
to the same plan, Russia should withdraw its troops to where they were
before the war broke out.
The ceasefire is signed, but it still needs to be implemented. The
early signs were not good with looting, killing and rapes in villages
in both Georgia and South Ossetia. On August 13th the Americans
announced that they would send military aircraft and naval forces to
deliver humanitarian aid to the Georgians. This seemed to make more
impression on the Russians, who soon began to withdraw, than the
agreement in principle by the European Union to send monitors to
supervise the ceasefire. A NATO meeting has also been called to
reassess relations with Russia.
Much will now depend on how far Russia wants to go and whether it
wants Mr Saakashvili?s head on a plate or not. In a confidential
conversation with Condoleezza Rice, America?s secretary of state,
Sergei Lavrov, Russia?s foreign minister, declared that Mr Saakashvili
should go. The conversation was made public at the UN Security
Council, infuriating the Russians. Regime change is a Western
invention, Russia retorted; Russia will not try to overthrow Mr
Saakashvili, but will simply refuse to deal with him.
Other former Soviet republics, including Azerbaijan, Armenia, and
Ukraine, have been dealt a lesson, about both Russia?s capacity to
exert its influence and the weakness of Western commitments. America?s
inability to stop or deter Russia from attacking its smaller
neighbours has been devastatingly obvious in Georgia over the past
week.
Yet the people who are likely in the end to pay the biggest price for
the attack on Georgia are the Russians. This price will go well beyond
any sanctions America or the European Union could impose. Like any
foreign aggression, it will lead to further stifling of civil freedoms
in Russia.
The war in Georgia has demonstrated convincingly who is in charge in
Russia. Just as the war in Chechnya helped Mr Putin?s rise to power in
1999, the war in Georgia may now keep him in power for years to
come. As Lilia Shevtsova of the Carnegie Moscow Centre argues, if Mr
Medvedev still had a chance to preside over a period of liberalisation
of Russia, this opportunity is now gone. The war in Georgia will make
Russia more isolated. Worst of all, it will further corrode the
already weak moral fabric of Russian society, making it more
aggressive and nationalistic. The country has been heading in the
direction of an authoritarian, nationalistic, corporatist state for
some time. The war with Georgia could tip it over the edge.