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This is a tale of US expansion not Russian aggression
War in the Caucasus is as much the product of an American imperial
drive as local conflicts. It's likely to be a taste of things to come
Seumas Milne
The Guardian
August 14, 2008
The outcome of six grim days of bloodshed in the Caucasus has
triggered an outpouring of the most nauseating hypocrisy from western
politicians and their captive media. As talking heads thundered
against Russian imperialism and brutal disproportionality, US
vice-president Dick Cheney, faithfully echoed by Gordon Brown and
David Miliband, declared that "Russian aggression must not go
unanswered". George Bush denounced Russia for having "invaded a
sovereign neighbouring state" and threatening "a democratic
government". Such an action, he insisted, "is unacceptable in the 21st
century".
Could these by any chance be the leaders of the same governments that
in 2003 invaded and occupied - along with Georgia, as luck would have
it - the sovereign state of Iraq on a false pretext at the cost of
hundreds of thousands of lives? Or even the two governments that
blocked a ceasefire in the summer of 2006 as Israel pulverised
Lebanon's infrastructure and killed more than a thousand civilians in
retaliation for the capture or killing of five soldiers?
You'd be hard put to recall after all the fury over Russian aggression
that it was actually Georgia that began the war last Thursday with an
all-out attack on South Ossetia to "restore constitutional order" - in
other words, rule over an area it has never controlled since the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Nor, amid the outrage at Russian
bombardments, have there been much more than the briefest references
to the atrocities committed by Georgian forces against citizens it
claims as its own in South Ossetia's capital Tskhinvali. Several
hundred civilians were killed there by Georgian troops last week,
along with Russian soldiers operating under a 1990s peace agreement:
"I saw a Georgian soldier throw a grenade into a basement full of
women and children," one Tskhinvali resident, Saramat Tskhovredov,
told reporters on Tuesday.
Might it be because Georgia is what Jim Murphy, Britain's minister for
Europe, called a "small beautiful democracy". Well it's certainly
small and beautiful, but both the current president, Mikheil
Saakashvili, and his predecessor came to power in western-backed
coups, the most recent prettified as a "Rose revolution". Saakashvili
was then initially rubber-stamped into office with 96% of the vote
before establishing what the International Crisis Group recently
described as an "increasingly authoritarian" government, violently
cracking down on opposition dissent and independent media last
November. "Democratic" simply seems to mean "pro-western" in these
cases.
The long-running dispute over South Ossetia - as well as Abkhazia, the
other contested region of Georgia - is the inevitable consequence of
the breakup of the Soviet Union. As in the case of Yugoslavia,
minorities who were happy enough to live on either side of an internal
boundary that made little difference to their lives feel quite
differently when they find themselves on the wrong side of an
international state border.
Such problems would be hard enough to settle through negotiation in
any circumstances. But add in the tireless US promotion of Georgia as
a pro-western, anti-Russian forward base in the region, its efforts to
bring Georgia into Nato, the routing of a key Caspian oil pipeline
through its territory aimed at weakening Russia's control of energy
supplies, and the US-sponsored recognition of the independence of
Kosovo - whose status Russia had explicitly linked to that of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia - and conflict was only a matter of time.
The CIA has in fact been closely involved in Georgia since the Soviet
collapse. But under the Bush administration, Georgia has become a
fully fledged US satellite. Georgia's forces are armed and trained by
the US and Israel. It has the third-largest military contingent in
Iraq - hence the US need to airlift 800 of them back to fight the
Russians at the weekend. Saakashvili's links with the neoconservatives
in Washington are particularly close: the lobbying firm headed by US
Republican candidate John McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy
Scheunemann, has been paid nearly $900,000 by the Georgian government
since 2004.
But underlying the conflict of the past week has also been the Bush
administration's wider, explicit determination to enforce US global
hegemony and prevent any regional challenge, particularly from a
resurgent Russia. That aim was first spelled out when Cheney was
defence secretary under Bush's father, but its full impact has only
been felt as Russia has begun to recover from the disintegration of
the 1990s.
Over the past decade, Nato's relentless eastward expansion has brought
the western military alliance hard up against Russia's borders and
deep into former Soviet territory. American military bases have spread
across eastern Europe and central Asia, as the US has helped install
one anti-Russian client government after another through a series of
colour-coded revolutions. Now the Bush administration is preparing to
site a missile defence system in eastern Europe transparently targeted
at Russia.
By any sensible reckoning, this is not a story of Russian aggression,
but of US imperial expansion and ever tighter encirclement of Russia
by a potentially hostile power. That a stronger Russia has now used
the South Ossetian imbroglio to put a check on that expansion should
hardly come as a surprise. What is harder to work out is why
Saakashvili launched last week's attack and whether he was given any
encouragement by his friends in Washington.
If so, it has spectacularly backfired, at savage human cost. And
despite Bush's attempts to talk tough yesterday, the war has also
exposed the limits of US power in the region. As long as Georgia
proper's independence is respected - best protected by opting for
neutrality - that should be no bad thing. Unipolar domination of the
world has squeezed the space for genuine self-determination and the
return of some counterweight has to be welcome. But the process of
adjustment also brings huge dangers. If Georgia had been a member of
Nato, this week's conflict would have risked a far sharper escalation.
That would be even more obvious in the case of Ukraine - which
yesterday gave a warning of the potential for future confrontation
when its pro-western president threatened to restrict the movement of
Russian ships in and out of their Crimean base in Sevastopol. As great
power conflict returns, South Ossetia is likely to be only a taste of
things to come.
[email protected]
Seumas Milne: This is a tale of US expansion not Russian aggression
This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday August 14 2008 on
p35 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:09 on
August 14 2008.
This is a tale of US expansion not Russian aggression
War in the Caucasus is as much the product of an American imperial
drive as local conflicts. It's likely to be a taste of things to come
Seumas Milne
The Guardian
August 14, 2008
The outcome of six grim days of bloodshed in the Caucasus has
triggered an outpouring of the most nauseating hypocrisy from western
politicians and their captive media. As talking heads thundered
against Russian imperialism and brutal disproportionality, US
vice-president Dick Cheney, faithfully echoed by Gordon Brown and
David Miliband, declared that "Russian aggression must not go
unanswered". George Bush denounced Russia for having "invaded a
sovereign neighbouring state" and threatening "a democratic
government". Such an action, he insisted, "is unacceptable in the 21st
century".
Could these by any chance be the leaders of the same governments that
in 2003 invaded and occupied - along with Georgia, as luck would have
it - the sovereign state of Iraq on a false pretext at the cost of
hundreds of thousands of lives? Or even the two governments that
blocked a ceasefire in the summer of 2006 as Israel pulverised
Lebanon's infrastructure and killed more than a thousand civilians in
retaliation for the capture or killing of five soldiers?
You'd be hard put to recall after all the fury over Russian aggression
that it was actually Georgia that began the war last Thursday with an
all-out attack on South Ossetia to "restore constitutional order" - in
other words, rule over an area it has never controlled since the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Nor, amid the outrage at Russian
bombardments, have there been much more than the briefest references
to the atrocities committed by Georgian forces against citizens it
claims as its own in South Ossetia's capital Tskhinvali. Several
hundred civilians were killed there by Georgian troops last week,
along with Russian soldiers operating under a 1990s peace agreement:
"I saw a Georgian soldier throw a grenade into a basement full of
women and children," one Tskhinvali resident, Saramat Tskhovredov,
told reporters on Tuesday.
Might it be because Georgia is what Jim Murphy, Britain's minister for
Europe, called a "small beautiful democracy". Well it's certainly
small and beautiful, but both the current president, Mikheil
Saakashvili, and his predecessor came to power in western-backed
coups, the most recent prettified as a "Rose revolution". Saakashvili
was then initially rubber-stamped into office with 96% of the vote
before establishing what the International Crisis Group recently
described as an "increasingly authoritarian" government, violently
cracking down on opposition dissent and independent media last
November. "Democratic" simply seems to mean "pro-western" in these
cases.
The long-running dispute over South Ossetia - as well as Abkhazia, the
other contested region of Georgia - is the inevitable consequence of
the breakup of the Soviet Union. As in the case of Yugoslavia,
minorities who were happy enough to live on either side of an internal
boundary that made little difference to their lives feel quite
differently when they find themselves on the wrong side of an
international state border.
Such problems would be hard enough to settle through negotiation in
any circumstances. But add in the tireless US promotion of Georgia as
a pro-western, anti-Russian forward base in the region, its efforts to
bring Georgia into Nato, the routing of a key Caspian oil pipeline
through its territory aimed at weakening Russia's control of energy
supplies, and the US-sponsored recognition of the independence of
Kosovo - whose status Russia had explicitly linked to that of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia - and conflict was only a matter of time.
The CIA has in fact been closely involved in Georgia since the Soviet
collapse. But under the Bush administration, Georgia has become a
fully fledged US satellite. Georgia's forces are armed and trained by
the US and Israel. It has the third-largest military contingent in
Iraq - hence the US need to airlift 800 of them back to fight the
Russians at the weekend. Saakashvili's links with the neoconservatives
in Washington are particularly close: the lobbying firm headed by US
Republican candidate John McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy
Scheunemann, has been paid nearly $900,000 by the Georgian government
since 2004.
But underlying the conflict of the past week has also been the Bush
administration's wider, explicit determination to enforce US global
hegemony and prevent any regional challenge, particularly from a
resurgent Russia. That aim was first spelled out when Cheney was
defence secretary under Bush's father, but its full impact has only
been felt as Russia has begun to recover from the disintegration of
the 1990s.
Over the past decade, Nato's relentless eastward expansion has brought
the western military alliance hard up against Russia's borders and
deep into former Soviet territory. American military bases have spread
across eastern Europe and central Asia, as the US has helped install
one anti-Russian client government after another through a series of
colour-coded revolutions. Now the Bush administration is preparing to
site a missile defence system in eastern Europe transparently targeted
at Russia.
By any sensible reckoning, this is not a story of Russian aggression,
but of US imperial expansion and ever tighter encirclement of Russia
by a potentially hostile power. That a stronger Russia has now used
the South Ossetian imbroglio to put a check on that expansion should
hardly come as a surprise. What is harder to work out is why
Saakashvili launched last week's attack and whether he was given any
encouragement by his friends in Washington.
If so, it has spectacularly backfired, at savage human cost. And
despite Bush's attempts to talk tough yesterday, the war has also
exposed the limits of US power in the region. As long as Georgia
proper's independence is respected - best protected by opting for
neutrality - that should be no bad thing. Unipolar domination of the
world has squeezed the space for genuine self-determination and the
return of some counterweight has to be welcome. But the process of
adjustment also brings huge dangers. If Georgia had been a member of
Nato, this week's conflict would have risked a far sharper escalation.
That would be even more obvious in the case of Ukraine - which
yesterday gave a warning of the potential for future confrontation
when its pro-western president threatened to restrict the movement of
Russian ships in and out of their Crimean base in Sevastopol. As great
power conflict returns, South Ossetia is likely to be only a taste of
things to come.
[email protected]
Seumas Milne: This is a tale of US expansion not Russian aggression
This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday August 14 2008 on
p35 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:09 on
August 14 2008.