Picture this. A powerful, tested military power invades a small, militarily weak country with strong diplomatic ties to the Western powers, including the United States, Britain and France. The invasion of this small country prompts an international outrage.
What’s next? For World War II purists, the stage has just been set for a massive international conflict. I know the Russians would revile at even considering a strategic likeness to the Great Dictator, but in essence, there is a parallel. And that parallel does not lead down the right path.
What is most ironic, of course, is that the Russians claim that the Georgians themselves have perpetrated acts of genocide against the South Ossetians. This claim has yet to be independently verified, but even if the Georgians don’t take kindly to the people of one of their two breakaway regions, most Georgians, no doubt, are completely ignorant of any sort of “ethnic cleansing” that occurs there. If any such atrocities are occurring, most Georgians are innocent of the matter.
Unfortunately, the PR war that Russia is waging has been lost. There is no way they can continue to hammer this poor country into submission without drawing criticism and, eventually, sanctions. What is doubly ironic is that their war is being criticized most strongly as an overextension of military force by the country who has most exercised its own military force in recent times–the United States. Not only that, but the country the United States has most recently beat down on–the country whose people did nothing wrong and whose leader could have been removed diplomatically through UN negotiations–and the country whose acts of genocide should have been punished when they occurred, in the early 90’s and not 12 years later–was, until recently, hosting 2,000 Georgian soldiers who were sent their to strengthen ties with the United States.
It seems that Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, had calculated everything. Which is why it is so strange that he would order a military deployment into South Ossetia, when he knew it would provoke Russian ire. But that’s a story for another day.
What is outrageous is the degree to which the Russians have been bombing–and invading–sovereign Georgian territory outside South Ossetia. Most recently, over 60 civilians were killed in Gori, and bombings have been reported outside Tbilisi and in the port cities as well. This is all part of Russia’s plan to weaken a military that could not be weakened any more. For a country that receives it oil, electricity and internet from Russia, it seems to be doing pretty well for itself considering.
Parallels have been drawn to the 2006 Israel war with Lebanon. But whereas the Israelis had declared war against a subnational terrorist group, Hezbollah, the Russians have clearly staked out to defeat the sovereign nation of Georgia. The Lebanese were right to be angry, however, and the anger in Georgians today toward the Russians is at par with the anger of these Lebanese two summers ago.
Such anger is not going to go away when the last bombs fall. On the contrary, it will brew, beneath the service, until open conflict erupts again. It was inevitable in the rise and fall of international politics, just like it was sixty years ago and thirty years before that. I just hope the United States intervenes before it’s too late for Georgia and its people.
