U.S. ROLE IN GEORGIA CRISIS
Stephen Zunes
Foreign Policy In Focus
August 14, 2008
The international condemnation of Russian aggression against Georgia
– and the concomitant assaults by Abkhazians and South Ossetians
against ethnic Georgians within their territories – is in large part
appropriate. But the self-righteous posturing coming out of Washington
should be tempered by a sober recognition of the ways in which the
United States has contributed to the crisis.
It has been nearly impossible to even broach this subject of the
U.S. role. Much of the mainstream media coverage and statements
by American political leaders of both major parties has in many
respects resembled the anti-Russian hysterics of the Cold War. It
is striking how quickly forgotten is the fact that the U.S.-backed
Georgian military started the war when it brutally assaulted the South
Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali in an attempt to regain direct control
of the autonomous region. This attack prompted the disproportionate
and illegitimate Russian military response, which soon went beyond
simply ousting invading Georgian forces from South Ossetia to invading
and occupying large segments of Georgia itself.
The South Ossetians themselves did much to provoke Georgia as
well by shelling villages populated by ethnic Georgians earlier
this month. However, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili ruled
out signing a non-aggression pact and repeatedly refused to rejoin
talks of the Joint Control Commission to prevent an escalation of
the violence. Furthermore, according to Reuters, a draft UN Security
Council statement calling for an immediate cease fire was blocked
when the United States objected to "a phrase in the three-sentence
draft statement that would have required both sides ‘to renounce the
use of force.’"
Borders and Boundaries In the Caucuses and Central Asia, the
Russian empire and its Soviet successors, like the Western European
colonialists in Africa, often drew state boundaries arbitrarily
and, in some cases, not so arbitrarily as part of a divide-and-rule
strategy. The small and ethnically distinct regions of South Ossetia,
Abkhazia, and Ajaria were incorporated into the Georgian Soviet
Socialist Republic and – on the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 –
remained as autonomous regions within the state of Georgia. Not one
of the regions was ethnically pure. They all included sizable ethnic
Georgian minorities, among others. Despite cultural and linguistic
differences, there was not much in the way of ethnic tension during
most of the Soviet period and inter-marriage was not uncommon.
As the USSR fell apart in the late 1980s, however, nationalist
sentiments increased dramatically throughout the Caucuses region
in such ethnic enclaves as Chechnya in Russia, Nagorno-Karabakh in
Azerbaijan, as well as among those within Georgia. Compounding these
nationalist and ethnic tensions was the rise of the ultra-nationalist
Georgian president Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who assumed power when the
country declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. With the
possible exception of the Baltic states, Georgia had maintained the
strongest sense of nationalism of any of the former Soviet republics,
tracing its national identity as far back as the 4th century BC as
one of most advanced states of its time. This resurgent nationalism
led the newly re-emerged independent Georgia to attempt to assert
its sovereignty over its autonomous regions by force.
A series of civil conflicts raged in Georgia in subsequent years,
both between competing political factions within Georgia itself as
well as in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, resulting in widespread ethnic
cleansing. Backed by Russian forces, these two regions achieved de
facto independence while, within Georgia proper, former Soviet foreign
minister Eduard Shevardnadze emerged as president and brought some
semblance of stability to the country, despite a weak economy and
widespread corruption.
Russian troops, nominally in a peacekeeping role but clearly aligned
with nationalist elements within the two ethnic enclaves, effectively
prevented any subsequent exercise of Georgian government authority
over most of these territories. Meanwhile, the United States became
the biggest foreign backer of the Shevardnadze regime, pouring
in over $1 billion in aid during the decade of his corrupt and
semi-authoritarian rule.
The Rose Revolution Though strongly supported by Washington,
Shevardnadze was less well-respected at home. For example, The New
York Times reported how "Georgians have a different perspective"
than the generous pro-government view from Washington, citing the
observation in the Georgian daily newspaper The Messenger that,
"Despite the fact that he is adored in the West as an ‘architect of
democracy’ and credited with ending the Cold War, Georgians cannot
bear their president." Though critical of the rampant corruption
and rigged elections, the Bush administration stood by the Georgian
regime, as they had the post-Communist dictatorships in Azerbaijan,
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and most of the other former Soviet republics.
Georgia enjoyed relatively more political freedom and civil society
institutions than most other post-Soviet states. Nevertheless,
high unemployment, a breakdown in the allocation of energy for
heating and other needs, a deteriorating infrastructure, widespread
corruption, and inept governance led to growing dissatisfaction with
the government. By 2003, Shevardnadze had lost support from virtually
every social class, ethnic group, and geographical region of the
country. Heavy losses by his supporters in parliamentary elections
early that November were widely anticipated. Still, Shevardnadze
continued to receive the strong support of President George W. Bush due
to his close personal relationship with high-ranking administration
officials. Contributing to this relationship were his pro-Western
policies, such as embarking upon ambitious free market reforms under
the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund, agreeing to deploy
300 Georgian troops to Iraq following the U.S. invasion, and sending
Georgian troops trained by U.S. Special Forces to the Pankisi Gorge
on the border of Chechnya to fight Chechen rebels. Opposition leaders
Zurab Zhvania and Mikheil Saakashvilli strongly criticized the United
States for its continued support of the Georgian president.
In addition to the electoral opposition, a decentralized student-led
grass roots movement known as Kmara emerged, calling for an end to
corruption and more democratic and accountable government as well as
free and fair elections. Though not directly supported by the Bush
administration, a number of Western NGOs, including the Open Society
Institute (backed by Hungarian-American financier George Soros)
and the National Democratic Institute (supported, ironically, by
U.S. congressional funding) provided funding for election-monitoring
and helped facilitate workshops for both the young Kmara activists
and mainstream opposition leaders. This led to some serious tension
between these non-governmental organizations and the U.S. embassy in
Georgian capital. For example, when the U.S. ambassador to Georgia
learned that some leaders from the successful student-led nonviolent
civil insurrection in Serbia three years earlier were in Tbilisi to
give trainings to Kmara activists there, he told them to "Get out of
Georgia! We don’t want trouble here. Shevardnadze is our friend." (The
young Serbs ignored him, and the scheduled trainings in strategic
nonviolent action went forward anyway.)
The parliamentary elections that November were marred by a series of
irregularities. These included widespread ballot-stuffing, multiple
voting by government supporters, late poll openings, missing ballots,
and missing voter lists in opposition strongholds. These attempts to
steal the election elicited little more than finger-wagging from the
Bush administration.
The Georgians themselves did not take the situation so lightly,
however. They launched general strikes and massive street protests
against what they saw as illegitimate government authority. This
effort was soon dubbed the "Rose Revolution." Gaining support from
the United States only after the success of the nonviolent civil
insurrection appeared inevitable, this popular uprising forced
Shevardnadze to resign.
Presidential elections, certified as free and fair by international
observers, were held two months later, in which opposition leader
Mikheil Saakashvili emerged victorious. Four months later, the
authoritarian ruler of the autonomous region of Ajaria, a Shevardnadze
ally, was ousted in a similar nonviolent civil insurrection.
Though not responsible for the change of government itself, the Bush
administration soon moved to take advantage of the change the Georgian
people brought about after the fact.
U.S. Embrace of Saakashvili Despite its longstanding support for
Shevardnadze, the Bush administration quickly embraced Georgia’s new
president. Taking advantage of Georgia’s desperate economic situation,
the United States successfully lobbied for a series of additional free
market reforms and other neoliberal economic measures on the country,
including a flat tax of 14%. Though official corruption declined, tax
collection rates improved, and the rate of economic growth increased,
high unemployment remained and social inequality grew.
With strong encouragement from Washington, Saakashvili’s government
reduced domestic spending but dramatically increased military spending,
with the armed forces expanding to more than 45,000 personnel over
the next four years, more than 12,000 of whom were trained by the
United States. Congress approved hundreds of millions of dollars of
military assistance to Georgia, a small country of less than five
million people. In addition, the United States successfully encouraged
Israel to send advisors and trainers to support the rapidly-expanding
Georgian armed forces.
Although facing growing security concerns at home, the Bush
administration also successfully pushed Saakashvili to send an
additional 1,700 troops to Iraq. Thus, Georgia increased its troop
strength in Iraq by more than 500% even as other countries in the
U.S.-led multinational force were pulling out.
Though Georgia is located in a region well within Russia’s historic
sphere of influence and is more than 3,000 miles from the Atlantic
Ocean, Bush nevertheless launched an ambitious campaign to bring
Georgia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The
Russians, who had already seen previous U.S. assurances to Gorbachev
that NATO would not extend eastward ignored, found the prospects of
NATO expansion to the strategically important and volatile Caucasus
region particularly provocative. This inflamed Russian nationalists
and Russian military leaders and no doubt strengthened their resolve
to maintain their military presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Washington’s embrace of Saakashvili, like its earlier embrace of
Shevardnadze, appears to have been based in large part on oil. The
United States has helped establish Georgia as a major energy transit
corridor, building an oil pipeline from the Caspian region known as
the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceylan) and a parallel natural gas pipeline,
both designed to avoid the more logical geographical routes through
Russia or Iran. The Russians, meanwhile, in an effort to maintain as
much control over the westbound oil from the region, have responded by
pressuring the governments of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan
to sign exclusive export agreements and to construct natural gas
pipelines through Russia. (See Michael Klare’s Russia and Georgia:
All About Oil.)
Amid accusations of widespread corruption and not adequately addressing
the country’s growing poverty, Saakashvili himself faced widespread
protests in November 2007, to which he responded with severe
repression, shutting down independent media, detaining opposition
leaders, and sending his security forces to assault largely nonviolent
demonstrators with tear gas, truncheons, rubber bullets, water cannons,
and sonic equipment. Human Rights Watch criticized the government for
using "excessive" force against protesters and the International Crisis
Group warned of growing authoritarianism in the country. Despite this,
Saakashvili continued to receive strong support from Washington and
still appeared to have majority support within Georgia, winning a
snap election in January by a solid majority which – despite some
irregularities – was generally thought to be free and fair.
Lead-up to the Current Crisis A number of misguided U.S. policies
appear to have played an important role in encouraging Georgia to
launch its August 6 assault on South Ossetia.
The first had to do with the U.S.-led militarization of Georgia, which
likely emboldened Saakashvili to try to resolve the conflict over South
Ossetia by military means. Just last month, the United States held
a military exercise in Georgia with more than 1,000 American troops
while the Bush administration, according to The New York Times, was
"loudly proclaiming its support for Georgia’s territorial integrity
in the battle with Russia over Georgia’s separatist enclaves." As
the situation was deteriorating last month, U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice made a high-profile visit to Saakashvili in Tbilisi,
where she reiterated the strong strategic relationship between the
two countries.
Radio Liberty speculates that Saakashvili "may have felt that
his military, after several years of U.S.-sponsored training and
rearmament, was now capable of routing the Ossetian separatists
("bandits," in the official parlance) and neutralizing the Russian
peacekeepers." Furthermore, Saakashvili apparently hoped that
the anticipated Russian reaction would "immediately transform the
conflict into a direct confrontation between a democratic David and
an autocratic Goliath, making sure the sympathy of the Western world
would be mobilized for Georgia."
According to Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations,
the United States may have caused Saakashvili to "miscalculate" and
"overreach" by making him feel that "at the end of the day that the
West would come to his assistance if he got into trouble."
Another factor undoubtedly involved the U.S. push for Georgia to
join NATO. The efforts by some prominent Kremlin lawmakers for formal
recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia coincided with the escalated
efforts for NATO’s inclusion of Georgia this spring, as well as an
awareness that any potential Russian military move against Georgia
would need to come sooner rather than later.
And, as a number of us predicted last March, Western support for the
unilateral declaration of independence by the autonomous Serbian
region of Kosovo emboldened nationalist leaders in the autonomous
Georgian regions, along with their Russian supporters, to press for
the independence of these nations as well. Despite the pro-American
sympathies of many in that country, Georgians were notably alarmed
by the quick and precedent-setting U.S. recognition of Kosovo.
No Standing to Challenge Russian Aggression Russia’s massive and
brutal military counter-offensive, while immediately provoked by
Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia, had clearly been planned well in
advance. It also went well beyond defending the enclave to illegally
sending forces deep into Georgia itself and inflicting widespread
civilian casualties. It has had nothing to do with solidarity with an
oppressed people struggling for self-determination and everything to do
with geopolitics and the assertion of militaristic Russian nationalism.
While the international community has solid grounds to challenge
Russian aggression, however, the United States has lost virtually
all moral standing to take a principled stance.
For example, the brutally punitive and disproportionate response by
the Russian armed forces pales in comparison to that of Israel’s
2006 attacks on Lebanon, which were strongly defended not only by
the Bush administration, but leading Democrats in Congress, including
presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
Russia’s use of large-scale militarily force to defend the autonomy of
South Ossetia by massively attacking Georgia has been significantly
less destructive than the U.S.-led NATO assault on Serbia to defend
Kosovo’s autonomy in 1999, an action that received broad bipartisan
American support.
And the Russian ground invasion of Georgia, while a clear violation
of international legal norms, is far less significant a breach of
international law as the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, authorized
by a large majority in Congress.
This doesn’t mean that the Russia’s military offensive should not be
rigorously opposed. However, the U.S. contribution to this unfolding
tragedy and the absence of any moral authority to challenge it must
not be ignored.
Stephen Zunes is a senior analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and
serves as a professor of politics and international studies at the
University of San Francisco.