Georgia's Freedom Loving President

There has been a great deal of discussion about the motives behind Russia's dastardly invasion of Georgia, the message it sends about Russia's return as a world power, the implicit message to other former satellites of the Soviet Union, and its drive to corner the oil and gas supplies on which Europe is especially dependent.

Receiving little notice is the extraordinary leader of Georgia, President Mikheil Saakashvili. American educated, he is in the mold of the leader America longs for, Ronald Reagan. And the Georgian President's accomplishments are no less impressive. He transformed a corrupt and impoverished nation by getting government out of the way, protecting individual freedom, and creating an environment that rewards initiative and investment. I wish we had someone of his caliber running for the presidency of this country. The following interview with Glenn Beck provides a good introduction and makes clear what is at stake in this conflict.

Russia, Georgia, and the Western Alliance

Unconfirmed estimates suggest between 40,000 and
50,000 of South Ossetia's 70,000 inhabitants have fled.

From The Brussels Journal

By Joshua Trevino

The Russian war aim in Georgia, inasmuch as it may be discerned after a bare 48 hours of full combat, appears to be what I said it likely is: “the Russians [will] fully occupy South Ossetia, along with the other secessionist region of Georgia, Abkhazia; declare them both independent or somehow annexed; and thoroughly punish the Georgians with a countrywide air campaign targeting what meager infrastructure there is.” As if to swiftly confirm the hypothesis, we see today that the Abkhazians have joined the war, thus opening a second front against the Georgians. Quite nearly everything that can go wrong for the Caucasian republic has: Georgian forces have been fully ejected from South Ossetia; Russian troops are landing on the Abkhaz coast (it’s unclear whether at Sukhumi or Ochamchira); Russian air power is hitting strategic targets throughout Georgia; and at this writing — just after dawn in the Caucasus — a general Russian offensive may be underway.

Mikheil Saakashvili’s government may have declared war and sued for peace in the space of a day, but events are in motion that render its wishes, contradictory as they are, wholly irrelevant.

Georgia’s American-trained armed forces may make it a fight, but there are only two things that will save the little republic now: it’s enemies’ forbearance, or America (and by extention, NATO) itself. It’s the latter that Saakashvili and the Georgians are appealing to now: the latter march in the Tbilisi streets to demand Western intervention; and the Georgian president somewhat histrionically declares, “If the whole world does not stop Russia today, then Russian tanks will be able to reach any other European capital.” Herein lies the tragedy of this war, not just for Georgia, but for the United States and the West in general. Help for Georgia is not on the way, and it will not be. The NATO countries are bound to inaction by their existing commitments and the logic of their own actions — in Serbia.

The Russian assault upon Georgia is justified — inasmuch as it is justifiable — on the same grounds as the 1999 NATO assault upon Serbia. A national minority desired secession, pursued that end with violent means, and called in a foreign protector when its struggle went bad. That foreign protector had its own agenda, of course: naivete, ignorance and self-regard fueled the Western intervention in Kosovo; and Machiavellian revisionism fuels the Russian intervention in Georgia. It must be remembered that the former led directly to the latter. In this space several months back, I warned that Kosovar independence would provide “a pretext for Russian action against American allies,” specifically in the Caucasus. And so it did, with Vladimir Putin retaliating for Kosovar independence by setting in motion the events that led to the present war. The Clinton Administration architects of the original Kosovo policy in 1999, and the Bush Administration architects who acquiesced to its logical end in 2008, bear a heavy responsibility for the blood shed in Georgia now.

Still, the ultimate responsibility is Russia’s, which is now a plainly and violently revisionist power. No amount of Western naivete, ignorance and self-regard, nor Georgian blundering, could create this war without Russia’s will to strife. That will springs from multiple causes, some rooted in the nature of autocracy, and some rooted in the nature of the Russian national character; and it is directed toward the overturning of what is, for Russia, the central strategic outcome of the Cold War’s end. The late Alexander Solzhenitsyn, quoted in Wayne Allensworth’s The Russian Question, expresses the Russian sense of that outcome clearly:

The trouble is not that the USSR broke up — that was inevitable. The real trouble, and a tangle for a long time to come, is that the breakup occurred mechanically along false Leninist borders, usurping from us entire Russian provinces. In several days, we lost 25 million ethnic Russians — 18 percent of our entire nation — and the government could not scrape up the courage even to take note of this dreadful event, a colossal historic defeat for Russia, and to declare its political disagreement with it.

Here, then, the source of the popular resonance of Moscow’s claims that it attacks Georgia to protect its own, with the concurrent surge of Cossack and faux-Cossack volunteers into Ossetia.

As Russian revisionism’s armed expression slowly crushes Georgia, the states with the most historical reason to fear Russia look on with mounting alarm. This extraordinary communique from the Presidents of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, prompted by the Georgian war, denounces Russia’s “imperialist and revisionist policy in the East of Europe” with startlingly undiplomatic language. These nations are members of NATO and the European Union, and they look to their putative allies now to provide them with the protection and assurance that they expect. Thus we see the war in the Caucasus evolve into a litmus test for the basic institutions of the West itself. If those institutions fail, especially in the eyes of its most vulnerable members, then the suffering in Georgia will, in the long run, be mere prelude.

War in Georgia: It’s the 3 a.m. Call in the White House

A warplane drops bombs near the Georgian city of Gori
on Friday as Russian and Georgian forces battle.

From The Brussels Journal

By Martin Helme

Russians are just superb at timing: whenever they do something dastardly, they time it to Friday afternoon when politicians, diplomats and journalists head to the weekend. The attack on Georgia also came at the time, when all the worlds’ attention is on Beijing. Everyone who has paid close attention, however, to the events in Georgia, is shocked, but not surprised.

South-Ossetia is an ancient Georgian territory, which has seen in the last about 100-150 years immigration from neighboring North-Ossetia. The latter has always been part of Russia. It is possible to draw parallels to the Kosovo region in Serbia. During the Soviet Union, Moscow gave South-Ossetia autonomous status under Georgian administration as a reward for Georgia’s loyalty to Moscow. Tbilisi is offering precisely that same status to them now. In the beginning of 1990s, after the collapse of Soviet Union, several regions of Georgia declared independence. A civil war followed where Moscow systematically and openly supported the separatist. Without the military, economical and political support of Russia, the breakaway republics would have soon put under Tbilisi’s control. Some, by the way, where successfully brought back under Tbilisi control.

For the past 12 or so years, there has been a status quo: Abkhasia and South-Ossetia are nominally under Tbilisi’s rule, practically under Moscow’s rule. The status quo is no longer satisfying Russians, who have in the last years become more and more bellicose and revanchist in their attempt to collect the old empire together again. In the past months the South-Ossetian government has abandoned its quest for independence and started to pursue a policy of officially becoming part of Russia. Tbilisi has repeatedly warned that it would be crossing a red line. In the past few days, South-Ossetian paramilitary units attacked Georgian villages, thereby provoking Georgian response.

What the Georgians only now realize, is that they where playing by the Russian scenario. Russia almost immediately crossed the Georgian border, sent in massive amounts of tanks, artillery and armored carriers and started to attack Georgian targets, including targets around Tbilisi. It is possible to send in planes this fast, but to mount a massive army operation with such a scale is simply impossible without a previous operational plan and months of preparations.

This attack is not some faraway tribes shelling each other nor an “internal matter” like Chechnya. Georgia is a NATO aspirant, a democratic country in otherwise totalitarian region. It is directly attacked by Russia. This is the first Russian invasion of a neighboring country since its invasion of Afghanistan. It is impossible for the world to turn a blind eye. And although we can be certain that Western governments will do their best to pressure Georgia into retreat and capitulation in order to avoid the West having to demand that the Russians behave themselves, it will be impossible for Georgia to back down. The survival of the country is at stake.

Remember the Clinton campaign ad in US Democratic primary about the 3 a.m. call in the White House. What an irony that the Russian attack on Georgia came almost at about that time. Clinton is no longer in the race but an international crisis has erupted that will have far reaching consequences and that will not subside quietly and on its own. What is at stake here is a post cold war world order. At stake is the credibility of NATO as a military alliance, the U.S. as a credible ally and, for better or for worse, the EU’s survival. One has to understand, that most people from Eastern and Central Europe joined the EU not so much because of economic reasons – many of the countries had much freer and open economies then we have now under Brussels – but because it was hoped that the EU offers security against Russia. If NATO, America and the EU can/will not pressure Russia into ending its aggression against Georgia, the EU will lose its ultimate value in the eyes of Eastern Europeans. It will have proved that EU’s major countries are so spineless, willfulness and badly dependant of Russian gas and oil that they will allow Russia impunity against all atrocities and all aggressions. If the West allows Russia to have its way with Georgia, next in line will be Ukraine and third in line will be the Baltic countries. We are once again on the firing line with backstabbers behind us. Allowing Russia to continue will invite untold mayhem into international security and global economy.

As for the US presidential elections, the closer you get to November, the clearer it is, that the “citizen of the world” Obama is incapable of answering seriously to any call about international affairs, no matter what time it is. War in Georgia will help McCain. As an Estonian, I hope that the old school cold war politician McCain will help the Georgians, once in office.