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  • A New Precedent Set

    A NEW PRECEDENT SET

    Russia Profile
    August 14, 2008
    Russia

    The South Ossetian War Turns a New Page in post-Soviet History

    In the wake of the compelling events in the South Ossetian War,
    advocates of both sides of the conflict have been eager to label each
    other with accusations largely based on well-worn truisms. Such a
    heated display of political convictions requires a revised observation
    of the Caucasus question, by taking into account the circumstances in
    the Caucasus' recent historical past. What emerges is the understanding
    that the August conflict has created a new standard in post-Soviet
    hostilities, where old saws have lost their value.

    The tragic events of August 2008 in South Ossetia have once again
    agitated the already restless regions of the Caucasus. But this
    time, it's not just another disturbance of the status quo--even up
    until this August, the ethno-political situation in the Southern
    Caucasus was far from peaceful and stable. Beginning in 2004,
    attempts to resume military action have been made in South Ossetia,
    while for four years, skirmishes and artillery fire have become a
    part of everyday reality. Having brought military equipment into
    the upper part of the Kodori Gorge in 2006, Georgia thus in many
    respects provoked the current escalation of the conflict in this
    "hot spot." Yet in the history of Eurasian conflicts, August of 2008
    has become a turning point.

    >From this time onwards, the old rules of the game, formulated following
    the disintegration of the Soviet Union, no longer apply in the Caucasus
    (and who knows, possibly in the Black Sea region or even in the CIS
    as a whole). To use computer programming jargon, we can say that in
    August, 2008, a total "reboot" of the conflicts on Eurasian territory
    took place. An extremely significant precedent has been created,
    where legal and political agreements that have ensured stability and
    the status quo are no longer valid. Georgia ceases to adhere to them,
    after fully refusing to implement the Dagomys and Moscow treaties on
    Abkhazia and Southern Russia respectively. But neither does Russia,
    whose leadership has broadened its understanding of the peacekeeping
    operation.

    In 2008, the conflicts in the CIS have reached a qualitatively
    new level. If, at the beginning of the 1990s, they were spurred
    directly by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, then today they
    are no longer defined by the inertia of the past, but by the current
    dynamics of formation and development of new nation-states. If the
    conflicts of the beginning of the 1990s were delayed payments on
    the "Evil Empire's" accounts, then the conflicts of today are an
    introduction of new payment requirements. There are no longer any
    "frozen conflicts"--they are an anachronism of the 1990s, that
    has departed along with Boris Yeltsin's "generation." Contemporary
    conflicts are planned and resolved by the post-Soviet generation of
    politicians. But this generation makes up new rules for the game as
    it goes along. What arrangement we will have in the end we shall see
    in the near future.

    Today, it has become fashionable in the Russian mass media to
    see a "Western hand" in everything. Let's leave this task to the
    propagandists. Meanwhile, it is evident that this concept largely
    relieves the Georgian establishment (what has it got to do with
    anything while it is the West which is at fault? Mikheil Saakashvili
    is just a puppet), as well as the Georgian society (as always,
    people aren't responsible for the actions of the politicians)
    of responsibility. Such an approach distances us from making a key
    diagnosis of the epidemic - small nationalism, no less (if not more)
    dangerous than large nationalism. Georgian society as a whole bears
    direct responsibility for the tragedy in Tskhinvali. It was the society
    (in the face of its outstanding intellectuals and public activists)
    that shaped the demand for a person like Saakashvili. I don't mean the
    specific politician and individual Mikheil Nikolaevich Saakashvili,
    born in 1967. I speak of the type of "statist" who is willing to
    make any kind of sacrifice for a strong Georgia (understood as
    an antipode to Eduard Shevarnadze's Georgia and as "territorially
    wholesome"). While debate in Russia still continues to touch upon the
    "cost" of having incorporated Chechnya, in Georgia state leaders are
    being criticized for anything that goes (corruption, authoritarianism,
    lack of professionalism) but not for the wars in South Ossetia and
    Abkhazia.

    Let us recall that at the beginning of the 1990s, the Georgian people
    (with no help from the Americans and the British) willingly gave
    their votes to a person who spoke of Ossetians as "trash that needs
    to be swept through the Roki Tunnel). This person, Zvias Gamsahurdia,
    has been politically rehabilitated by the current president, who
    in August of 2008 went from words to action. Back in 1991, Georgian
    intellectuals in their masses did not support the sentiment of their
    great fellow countryman Merab Mamardashvili, who said that "if my
    people elect Gamsahurdia, I will be against my people." Sadly, since
    then, nobody in Georgia chose Mamardashvili's path.

    The role of the West is too oblique in this situation. Firstly,
    the United States to a greater degree and the EU to a lesser degree
    could not overcome their own propagandist labels. Among them is the
    perception of the break-up of the Soviet Union solely as a victory
    of democracy, the identification of anti-communist nationalism
    (even in its most extreme states) with a movement for freedom,
    and an acceptance of the fact that small nationalism, compared with
    Russian imperialism and a possible rebirth of the Soviet Union, is
    the lesser of two evils. This is the second lesson of the Ossetian
    tragedy. For the sake of countering "the imperial onslaught," both
    Ossetians and Abkhazians have been sacrificed (nobody wants to hear
    them, they don't fit within the framework of a struggle between a
    "small democratic republic" and a "large aggressor"). Meanwhile,
    far from everything that worked against the Soviet Union had to do
    with freedom and democracy.

    The August tragedy has been a failed attempt to repeat the Serbian
    Krajina precedent. This time there is an experience of a successful
    military-political revenge in the Balkans. While in Russia (and in
    the CIS in general), where only the laziest did not write about the
    "Kosovo casus," there was little talk of copying Croatia's experience
    of destroying the infrastructure of the unrecognized state of the
    Republic of Serbian Krajina. Let us remember that at the beginning of
    the 1990s, Croatia had initially lost a large part of its territory,
    but then in 1995, with support from the United States and Germany,
    restored the entirety of its state within the borders of the socialist
    republic of Tito's Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, this scenario was widely
    discussed in Tbilisi and in Baku. And it wasn't just discussed as a
    theoretical problem. Beginning in 2004, military action of a different
    level of intensity was carried out in South Ossetia.

    "The Krajina example can become a more influential model than
    Kosovo...There may come a time when the political elites of Baku
    and Tbilisi will consider a successful and speedy war to reintegrate
    Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorny-Karabakh will get the green light
    on behalf of the United States, which made the Croatian offensive
    against Krajina easier." This was written in an American magazine in
    May of this year by Charles King, an authoritative American scientist
    from Georgetown University. However, King also no less justly noted
    that the "Krajina precedent" can be successful only in the form of
    blitzkrieg warfare. "Georgian and Azerbaijani forces are likely to
    win within the first weeks of such a war, but they are most likely
    to lose when the weeks that follow arrive." Russia interrupted
    Georgia's "Krajina flight" in just days, not weeks. Tbilisi begun
    destroying the infrastructure of the de facto state (accompanied by
    an expulsion of an unnecessary ethnic element), but did not conclude
    what "democratic Croatia" did by cleansing its territory of Serbs,
    thus fully resolving the issue of ethnic separatism. Accordingly,
    it should not be ruled out that the number of "Krajina precedent"
    followers in Eurasia has significantly shrunk.

    For the first time in many years Russia has taken military action
    beyond the borders of its own territory. Following the break-up of
    the Soviet Union, Russian servicemen and border guards took part in
    localizing two civil wars in Tadzhikistan (1992-1997) and in Georgia
    (1993). But after that, the Russian army only participated in military
    action within its own territory. In 2008 the format of the Russian
    army's involvement beyond the country's borders was drastically
    different from the historical experience of both the tsarist and the
    Soviet periods. Russian troops did not try to resolve ideological
    problems (as was the case with suppressing the Hungarian uprising of
    1894, or during the events in Budapest in 1956 or in Czechoslovakia
    in 1968). The goal of the Russian forces was not to increase its
    territory, although with this Tbilisi has been the most consistent in
    denouncing Moscow. The goal of the "peace enforcement" operation was
    primarily to ensure the security of the Northern Caucasus. If Russia
    had remained quiet in the South Ossetian case, different forces would
    emerge in the Northern Caucasus willing to replay the conflict in the
    Prigorodny district (the Georgian-Ossetian and the Ossetian-Ingush
    conflicts are closely tied to each other). The inability of the
    Kremlin to articulate this national interest (for fear of Russia
    being seen as a weak and vulnerable nation) is a different issue. In
    any case, Russia has defined its particular role in the "near abroad"
    (similar to the role of the United States in Latin America, Israel's
    in the Middle East, Australia's in Oceania and France's in the former
    colonies of Sub-Saharan Africa). This is a qualitatively new definition
    of one's vital and legitimate interests.

    Those who expected Georgia (or any other CIS country) to become the
    starting point of a new "Cold War" between the West and Russia were let
    down. Within the West itself (those in political, expert analysis and
    media circles) there was disagreement on approaching this particular
    conflict and on the "cost" of aggravating relations with Moscow. In
    this regard, the reaction of some officious journalists and experts
    regarding the West's "inadequate response" is perplexing. So what is
    it that we actually wanted? The president of the United States to
    personally acknowledge his previous life as a tragic mistake? When
    comparing the U.S. and the EU's reaction to Russia's actions in
    South Ossetia with the attitude toward Russian policy in Chechnya,
    one must admit that there was much less criticism.

    For the sake of being objective, it should note that the level of state
    propaganda was much higher. There were no disgraceful persecutions
    of Georgians as in 2006 (conversely, the minister of the interior was
    ordered to prevent any excesses of this kind); there have been attempts
    made to differentiate the Georgian people from the Georgian regime. And
    most importantly, the "peace enforcement" operation was performed as a
    "humanitarian intervention." Russia has begun speaking a language that
    the West can understand. In a rare occurrence, protecting human rights
    was at the head of a military-political operation, not the defense of
    communism or of a monarch, but the defense of our soldiers, fellow
    countrymen, and the rights of an ethnic minority. Of course, there
    were a lot of failures here (the information supply to the Western mass
    media and human rights groups regarding the situation in South Ossetia
    was poor). But the overall propagandist trend was on the right track.

    Today, Russia has three main problems. The first one is not allowing
    the involvement of new players in the conflict, especially within
    the CIS. Ukraine's stance also creates lots of problems not just for
    itself. The second problem is winning the informational war. Today,
    Russia has accumulated plenty of material that demonstrates all the
    dangers of "small nationalism" in retrospective (beginning in the
    1990s). This material can be used in the struggle for the minds of
    intellectuals and human rights advocates in the West. This resource
    should not be underestimated. And finally, the third problem is
    the search for a dignified way out of the situation--a departure
    maximally beneficial for Russia's national interests (among which,
    ensuring security in the Northern Caucasus is a priority). Hopes
    for a regime change are unlikely to be realized. Those who have seen
    the Georgian opposition in action can not hope for their increased
    tolerance toward Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And thus, new rules of
    the game have to be created today, in order to stop the qualitatively
    new turn of destabilization. Following the "Tskhinvali blitzkrieg,"
    the chances of Georgia achieving territorial integrity are practically
    impossible. Neither can the status quo be re-established, because
    following the Georgian military's action and the Russian military
    operation it will still be a different status. Not a good nor bad one,
    but different.
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