The overwhelming reaction from America and Europe on the Russian riposte to Georgia’s attack on Russian “peacekeeping” forces in South Ossetia has been that Russia showed too much of its claws. It should now be ostracised or penalised for “overreaction” to an attack on its soldiers. This response evades acknowledgement that the real damage President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia has done has been to the United States and NATO, and to Georgia itself, which for the foreseeable future will be a nation of limited sovereignty, and an awkward embarrassment to its Western allies. Georgia will have Russian troops indefinitely stationed on its territory to protect South Ossetia and Abkhazia, henceforth self-declared independent entities under Russian protection or eventually annexed to Russia, at their own petition. The Russians, at this point, prefer a self-declaration of independence because, as they like to emphasise, it would follow the precedent of Kosovo’s self-proclamation of independence from Serbia in February of this year, under American sponsorship.
The crisis has been a turning point in international relations because it demonstrates that the United States will not defend Georgia, despite the impression that Washington, after having trained Georgia’s troops and displayed the Saakashvili government as its protégé, was in some way implicated in the Georgian attack on South Ossetia and on the Russian soldiers legally there as “peacekeepers”. Those Russian soldiers had been there for 16 years under an international agreement following a first Georgian attempt to “recover” the linguistically and historically distinct South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both of which have been autonomous Russian protectorates or regions since 1810.
Now, Vice President Dick Cheney is going to visit Georgia next week, after visits to Azerbaijan and the Ukraine, which no doubt are in need of some bucking up after this display of Russian fury and of American “diplomatic restraint” (meaning lack of rational alternative). American naval vessels are in the Black Sea, and one of them, a destroyer, has delivered some humanitarian supplies to a southern Georgian port. The Russians have darkly declared their suspicion that American vessels have been delivering arms to Georgia. Even though the Russians destroyed all that was left of the new American military equipment and installations recently given to Georgia, Saakashvili is unlikely to want to start up the war again, at least, just now, unless Cheney is going to bring the 82nd Airborne Division and the Sixth Fleet with him. That, of course, is what Saakashvili seemed to expect the night his invasion turned into a debacle. “Where is America?” he said, “Where is the Free World?” He has since received reassurances from the presidential candidate John McCain and Barack Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, both fans of the unsuccessful Georgian liberator.
This has been an inane and stupid affair, except for the unfortunates who got killed or maimed, lost their homes, or have been ethnically cleaned by one side during the past days and are now grieving refugees. The United States left Saakashvili and the Georgians twisting in the wind, after telling them they were going to belong to NATO and help spread freedom in the Caucasus. The Ukraine and the Baltic states have been given the lesson that great powers do not go to war against other heavily armed great powers just to settle ancient sectarian quarrels or linguistic rivalries in client countries, even if those are prospective NATO members. Poland and the Czech Republic had thought it prudent to humour the obsession of Washington and its arms manufacturers with building a missile-defence system against Iran’s committing suicide. Now, they find that Russia is furious about something they had taken on faith from the US, but turns out to have been, to Washington politicians, a voter-pleasing and money-making boondoggle.
Israel now finds Syria talking with Moscow arms suppliers. Russian cooperation with the US on various matters, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, counterterrorism, nuclear non-proliferation, and oil and gas supplies to Europe, is now expected to cease. Why? Because a certain number of policy types in the Clinton and Bush II administrations, and in the Pentagon, decided that it could be a cost-free demonstration of American power to expand NATO right up to Russia’s front door. They could even take over some of Russia’s historical dependencies and protectorates, just to show who’s Number One.
28 August 2008
William Pfaff
International Herald Tribune (Paris)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/28/opinion/edpfaff.php (in English)
Editor’s Note:
The neocons have truly and seriously screwed up on this one. They egged on a tinhorn Caucasian dictator, and they are left holding the (very messy) bag publicly. When I read David Frum’s rant in National Review (once a respectable publication under WFB, now, on a nosedive downward), I could only think of Alice… “Things are getting curiouser and curiouser”. Ariel Cohen’s detached rambling in Commentary was even worse. Of course, all the usual cast of suspects piped up, from William Kristol to Max Boot. The hysteria underneath it all was visible to the blind, and I have never seen such “sound and fury signifying nothing” in a very long time.
Whether one likes it or no, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic states, and the Caucasus are in the Russian sphere of influence, and have been there for centuries. They are going to be back there shortly. Much sentimental treacle has been written on the so-called Baltic states. They are recent constructs, they have had only two brief periods of independence, from 1920 to 1940, and from 1991 onward. They do not have a serious history of independence, as they were always a province in someone’s empire, be it the Teutonic Knights, the Polish Commonwealth, the Kingdom of Sweden, Imperial Russia, or the USSR. Their ineptitude at self-government is shown by their nasty treatment of the Russian minority, which, by the way, existed long before Soviet times (these statelets wish to forget that they were provinces of Russia for centuries and somebody else’s province before that).
The Ukraine is the biggest boondoggle. Firstly, the Ukraine is not a nation; it is a region of Great Russia, just as New England or the Pacific Northwest are regions of the USA. The Ukrainian “language” is actually a peasant dialect of Russian, and I might add that it is a dying tongue, as it lacks the facility and usefulness of Standard Russian in the modern world. The only sub-district where it holds any currency is in Galicia, where it is an odd mixture of Russian and Polish, with some German elements. Only 23 percent of the “Ukrainian” population speaks it as their mother tongue, with the proportion increasing the further west you go. In short, this is an unstable artifice waiting to collapse. Note well Yushchenko’s threats recently to “investigate” his entire government, up to Prime Minister Timoshenko, for “treason”. This is not a healthy entity, and one must note that there has never been a recognised “Ukrainian” state in history, except after 1991.
All of the borders that the neocons are screaming about are based on Soviet internal borders with no underpinning in formal international treaties. That is to say, there are NO internationally-recognised borders on the post-Soviet space. Therefore, all is open to revision. Washington has no power to intervene, and the EU has even less. Whatever noise is made of alternative energy sources, the EU shall be dependent on Russian oil and gas for the near and middle term. That is, Russia could collapse the economies of the EU by not pumping the oil and gas. It holds the whip hand. The USA can offer no alternative sources to them. Any alternative to the present arrangement shall require much time, and it is doubtful that the USA and EU shall devote the resources necessary, in any case. The USA would have to divert resources from the military to energy research, and that is not going to happen any time soon.
In short, Russia has returned to the stage. The Bear has not forgotten the 90s, when American carpetbaggers and their Russian oligarch scallywags raped the Russian economy and spat in Russia’s face. America shall pay for that, I fear, and the collapse of the neocon dream cannot come quickly enough. Do not forget, Russia is not Serbia, it is not Iran, and it is not Venezuela. Russia cannot be touched by the neocons because it is the only country capable of wrecking the continental USA. THAT is the true reason they hate it. It puts the lie to all of their pretences and notional vapourings.
America shall be put in its place, but, shall it leave Eastern Europe peacefully? God willing…
