The Five-Day War

In his article describing the August, 2008, Russia-Georgia war, Mr. King discussed others’ historic comparisons of that war to Brezhnev’s crushing of the Prague Spring and Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland and presented his own comparison to the Crimean War of 1853-56. In fact, the closest parallels are revealed in a comparison of the Russia-Georgia war to the Israel-Lebanon war of the summer of 2006.

In both cases, a smaller power provoked a larger power through a military confrontation; Hezbollah, operating from southern Lebanon, kidnapped two Israeli soldiers; Georgia attacked South Ossetia, killing Russian soldiers. In both cases, the large powers retaliated with major force. Israel bombed southern Lebanon, diminishing Hezbollah’s ability to launch rockets. Russia invaded South Ossetia and successfully pushed out the Georgian forces. At that point the Israeli and Russian responses were legitimate and understandable. However, neither power stopped there; both pushed on and attacked civilian areas to inflict widespread death and suffering in an attempt to force the respective governments to alter their policies – morally indefensible conduct.

Israel bombed bridges, roads, seaports and airports and attacked cities in the north of Lebanon. “Senior Israeli officials said that the military had been unleashed to cut off Lebanon. . . Israel’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, warned that ‘nothing is safe’ in Lebanon.” (The New York Times, July 14, 2006) “‘We have decided to impose a closure on Lebanon in the air, in the sea and on the ground,’ Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, head of Israel's northern command, said at a news conference. He said the Israeli military was attempting to force the government ‘to deploy its army in south Lebanon, take responsibility for the kidnapped’.” (Washington Post Foreign Service, Friday, July 14, 2006) The resulting havoc produced hundreds of civilian casualties and mass evacuations of foreigners. Calls for a cease-fire were ignored.

Russia’s push into Georgia, beyond the South Ossetia border, was clearly done for political purposes, not self defense. As reported in The New York Times of August 10, 2008: "'They [the Russians] seem to have gone beyond the logical stopping point,' one senior Western diplomat said, speaking anonymously under normal diplomatic protocol. . . The military action, which has involved air, naval and missile attacks, is the largest engagement by Russian forces outside its borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union. . . Western diplomats and military officials said they worried that Russia’s decision to extend the fighting . . . indicated that it had sought to use a relatively low-level conflict in a conflict-prone part of the Caucasus region to extend its influence over a much broader area. . . In a heated exchange with his Russian counterpart at the United Nations, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad of the United States accused the Kremlin of seeking to oust President Saakashvili. He charged that Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, had said as much Sunday morning in a telephone conversation with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, telling her 'that the democratically elected president of Georgia "must go," ' Mr. Khalilzad said." A Georgian call for a cease-fire was also ignored.

I’ll close with a July 25, 2006 AP report about then President Putin’s opinion of Israeli conduct during the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006. AP reported that Putin “and other Russian officials have also sharply accused Israel of using disproportionate force in its offensive in Lebanon,” an ironic comment to say the least in light of Russia’s war with Georgia.