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Charles King: broader perspective on Russian-Georgian relations
I enter this ‘discussion’ of Charles King’s article with some hesitation, since the preceding comments resemble more the shouting of a barroom brawl than a scholarly debate.
The issue as usual is how you frame the question for investigation. Like the EU report he is analyzing, King goes no further than the immediate protagonists in the Caucasus war of 2008. And he is justified insofar as the conflict was over real passions and opposing interests of neighbors with respect to security and political structures, ultimately sovereign rights in the given territory of South Ossetia. However, it is also true that a major contributing factor, greatly raising the heat of the confrontation between Russia and Georgia comes from outside the region, namely from the United States and its policies towards the post-Soviet space beginning in the 1990s.
The American policy on Georgia has real institutional continuity to it and comes from the whole foreign policy establishment, both right and left sides of the aisles. It is, alongside the issue of Ukraine in NATO and the US military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia generally, part and parcel of the program of proactively "building pluralism" in post-Soviet space that was formulated most succinctly by Zbigniew Brzezinski in the mid-90s, translated into policy with the help of Madeleine Albright and her team, including Richard Holbrooke and Richard Morningstar and Stephen Sestanovich, and set out for public consumption in B's best-selling book Grand Chessboard.
Geography dictated that Georgia play a key role of transit nexus in the performance of the geopolitical gambit for control of South Caucasus (Azerbaijan) and Central Asian energy resources according to the American script. This is a script which the US continues to foist on Western Europe, by its taking in hand the Nabucco project together with the trans-Caspian gas transmission project(s), notwithstanding the fact that alternative, market-driven (as opposed to politically driven) ways of bringing those resources to the world now exist aplenty (China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey are all interested actors for their specific, national reasons).
The plan for resetting relations with Russia continues to bump up against this very same wall of US-inspired trouble-making which has no economic interest behind it but very transparent and misplaced geopolitical considerations: aiming at cutting Russia down to size and punishing the only power that publicly and loudly criticized the American unipolar Weltanschauung. How small is just right for Russia? In Mr. B's 2004 opus The Choice he let the cat out of the bag: down to a medium-sized European nation-state.
George W. Bush exacerbated the situation further by making Georgia's NATO accession over the repeated and vociferous opposition of Russia one of the key foreign policy objectives of his second term.
So long as the US holds to this policy of refusing to accept Russia's reality as a major Eurasian power and legitimate, integral member of the world presidium, as the world's largest producer and exporter of energy and energy-generating technologies, that is how long Georgia will be pushed forward as America's favored client state and conflict between Russia and Georgia remains inevitable.
The question of the day is when will the Obama foreign policy team decisively align its priorities among the mutually contradictory positions it is now pursuing with respect to Russia.
G. Doctorow
WAIS
Paata G (is that an alter-ego
Paata G (is that an alter-ego of Paata Z, by chance?
It's really quite amusing, how Kremlin's 5th column in Georgia and beyond, after failing to remove Saakashvili first by means of so called 'opposition" riots, then by openly supporting russian invasion and then by reviving "opposition" riots again (which gloriously failed) , tries now to portrait Saakashvili as an "anti-western democracy-opposing -balance guy":))))
Maybe you guys should just pile up a bunch of petitions and , like you always do: send it both ways:
1) To Kremlin: "Oh, brother russians, we love ya so much, we want to be able to travel to Moscow for 37 rubles again, bribe and be bribed, steal big time and get away with it, rule Georgia like a small mafia haven! Come , ye Colonel Putin and liberate us from the soulless westerner freaks!"
2) To the WH: "Oh ye, great knights of progress and democracy! Can't you see this awful Saakashvili guy here hates everything western, especially the western democracy and is all for the BALANCE! Whatever he does do defend his country and its citizens, when they're shot at, their houses destroyed and their villages burned down by invaders and plain russian- passport-holding terrorists, he does it solely for purpose of not entering NATO! Please, make him disappear and you'll see the Renaissance of democracy a la Russ - which you, oh knights of democracy and progress, seem to kinda like! "
So it's Saakashvili that goes "balancing" around and does everything to avoid NATO, although we all watched for almost a decade NATO doing nothing but wiggling it's tail to Russia, and finally denying to Georgia even the MAP, for one and only reason - not to upset Mr. Putin and his pipes.
I guess the Germans, Italians and French invading Afghanistan and fighting against people who never have attacked their respective countries is OK and by no standards is it a violation of any international law.
On the other hand, defending one's fellow citizens on one's own, internationally recognized territory, torn apart by the foreign aggressor and its terrorist puppets can be a huge "violation of the international law".
Why? Because experts like Mr King and "commissioners" like Ms. Tagliavini believe - or are asked to believe) that that's how it should be.
There must be more solid reason why such ‘commissioners” decided to accuse Saakashvili of “violating the international law” instead of sending Mr. Putin straight to The Hague.
It must be the financial crisis. Locking up the 40 billion dollar guy in a standard cell would be très mauvais ton, especially if the “guards” are those who actually work for him - like Mr Schroeder -, or allegedly will work for him - like Mr. Steinmeier.
Without even blinking, Europe encouraged Hitler in Munich 1938.
Without even blushing, EU and the USA bow to Putin and his endless and despicable crimes committed not only in the sovereign Georgia, but in Russia itself, including war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Chechnya, mass-infanticide in Beslan, mass-murder of residents of the blown-up buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk, murder of journalists and dissidents both in Russia and abroad.
And after all this “no blinking no blushing”, these “experts” and “commissioners” have the nerve to lecture, direct and even judge anybody else in the world.
By the way, did they evaluate the “reward for the truth” one of the "commissioners", namely Herr Otto Luchterhandt received from Gazprom on his account in Bonn already?
The de-facto status of
The de-facto status of Abkhazeti (aka Abkhazia) and Shida Kartli (baptized by Russian Bolshevik occupants as "Sout Ossetia" in 1922) is the occupied Georgian territory .
Anybody denying this pretty obvious fact s either an ignorant wannabe "prominent expert" or a Gazprom/FSB-paid provocateur.
I believe Mr. King belongs to the former category. Such is my impression after reading his completely amateurish efforts like "Ghost of freedom" . So his "expertise" doesn't matter actually, just like the rest of his numerous "revelations" should not matter to anybody, who really understands the situation besides having at least a remote idea of the right and wrong even from the prospective of the so called 'realpolitics"
Mr. King, before straining yourself with the problems of "clarity" in Caucasus -the subject you don' seem to have a clue about neither on its historical nor contemporary political aspects - no matter how many of your nonsenses are published by Oxford University Press ( which has as much scientific credibility nowadays as the Nobel Peace Prize given to Mr. Obama) , - try to clarify your stand with such simple things like truth and ability to digest it even if it doesn't fit into your completely biased mindset.
Why no question about Saakashvili motives for this hopeless mili
The Tagliavini report, as well as Mr. Charles King, acknowledges that Saakasvili irresponsibly and in breach of the international law triggered the military action known as August War. However, what was the real reason of this provocation, which played in the Russia’s hands? Even Saakashvili acknowledges (when he wants to say that he didn’t start the war) that the military conflict could not be won with Russia. Nevertheless, Mr. King assumes that Saakasvily wanted to regain Ossetia militarily. What is this, unwillingness to draw logical conclusions because of its surprising nature? But if the experts, as Mr. King is, will not dare to tell simple truth, how politicians can do it?
The Simple truth is that Saakashvili provoked the Russian invasion because he wanted to do namely this. To blame everything simply on Saakashvili recklessness is too irresponsible way of judgment.
Why he wanted to provoke Russians? In an attempt o avoid an answer to this question Mr. King assumes the Saakasvili objective of regaining Ossetia. Really the answer is too embarrassing to Americans.
The answer is that Saakashvili plays the old balancing game (established by Shevardnadze) between the US and Russia. If he didn’t begin the war and empowered Russian’s through this, the NATO could open its doors for Georgia. In this case Saakashvili has two ways: to enter NATO and the balancing game is over or to say he doesn’t want to enter the NATO and the balancing game is also over. In both cases the ruling elite would disclose its real nature in the eyes of highly pro-western Georgia’s population – it didn't not want Georgia to adjoin the western bloc and build democracy. But it couldn't maintain its status quo unless Georgians thought there is a transition process from Russia to the Western bloc.
They simply want to make this transition process permanent.
Will this be allowed by the western democracies? This is much dependent on such prominent experts as Mr. King is.