An all-out war has begun between Georgia and Russia.
This is a brief video I found that gives some of the background on the disagreement, but I’m admittedly ignorant of the nuances and biases inherent to the situation. Discussion welcome.
Rob has an analysis of the details so far, and Duck of Minerva provides an interpretation of some of the faulty claims coming from local press.
Other news? Thoughts?
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We might all be a little more informed today had cnn focused on this instead of telling us who Edwards was sleeping with.
Actually, it isn’t an “all-out war” at this point. Both Russia and Georgia are limiting the fighting to within the disputed region of South Ossetia.
Russia hasn’t taken the war to Georgia’s capitol or tried to occupy the entire country, because it knows that this would force an international response beyond finger-waving. Georgia hasn’t sent any forces / warplanes across the Russian border, because this would give the Russians (who have overwhelming military superiority) an excuse to widen the war.
I’m a bit stunned by the way the media is spinning this: “democratic” Georgia versus the revived Soviet state. Please. Saakashvili may have gone to an Ivy-league school, and he speaks the English real good, but he’s about as democratic as, well, Vladimir Putin. He’s thrown his lot in with the West, but his own people increasingly despise him — it seems pretty clear that Georgia is the antagonist in this drama, not that it takes much to antagonize the Russians in this part of the world.
The Nation has the fairest piece I’ve seen: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080818/ames
Slate.com had a series on it a while back, but I can’t seem to find it at the moment.
According to the BBC News web site at 2:49 a.m. EDT, Georgia has withdrawn its troops from South Ossetia or is in the process of withdrawing its troops. Details are in the BBC article.
I don’t know much about the historical context or the details.
I don’t think the US government has much room to influence things, or project any credibility. We invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq.
The most confusing detail is the one where Georgian forces apparently attacked a Russian military base (not very effectively). It’s hard to see that move, if correctly reported, as anything but suicidally idiotic. I wouldn’t go so far as to side with the conspiracy theorists that think Russia orchestrated all of this as part of a territory grab, but only because I know bureaucracy really CAN be (and has been) suicidally idiotic to an unbelievable extent.
Former Feministe guest blogger Natalia Antonova has a good op-ed up @ Global Comment:
Quick backgrounder on the conflict from Deutsche Welle; more detailed backgrounder from Der Spiegel.
Driedel–
It might not be an all-out war, but fighting is decidedly NOT limited to South Ossetia. They have landed ground troops in Abkhazia, and are bombing the interior of the country, including bombing runs targeting Tblisi’s airport.
Just watch or read AlJazeera. http://english.aljazeera.net/ . seriously, everyone I know is asking “what the hell is going on?” “why did this start?” etc., but I and everyone I know who has been following aljazeera has seen this coming for weeks. I think it has something to do with the fact that they’re not obsessed with sensationalist news.
also, here’s there youtube channel where the post almost everything they show on air: http://www.youtube.com/user/aljazeeraenglish?ob=4
Saakashvili may not be perfectly democratic, but he is fulfilling one of his duties as the leader of Georgia to maintain his country’s territorial integrity, especially when the separatist movements are financed and supported by the Russian government.
Though Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union have held Georgia for a far longer period, some of Russia’s tactics of providing support for the separatists and sending in “Peacekeepers” is eerily similar to ones the Japanese Imperial Army used to provoke conflict with the Nationalist Chinese state in 1931 where the Japanese army bombed their own rail network in order to blame Chinese troops to justify annexing Manchuria* and 1937 when a missing Japanese soldier who was later found was used as one of the manufactured pretexts for the Japanese army’s invading the rest of China and thus, starting the Second Sino-Japanese war.**
Moreover, I am stunned that Hugo is acting in ways no different from some Pro-Imperial Japan Americans*** who lauded Japan’s imperial advances while condemning Chinese resistance against them as “provocations”.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukden_Incident
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo_Bridge_incident
*** One of the famous Americans of this ilk was the famed W.E.B. Dubois who bought into Japan’s propaganda of creating an anti-Colonialist Pan-Asian Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere when Japan was really no different in its imperial colonialist ambitions than its Western imperialist counterparts.
If the South Ossetians were fighting to get out from the Kremlin’s sphere of influence, CNN & BBC would call them brave freedom fighters.
People love to hate on the Russian government, and most of the time I don’t blame them, but it’s kinda hilarious to watch some writers use the exact opposite arguments than they would normally use in this instance.
And thanks for the love, Matt.
Exholt, I’ve been called many things but possibly never an apologist for Imperial Japan or its modern inheritors.
I’m not pro-Russian, I’m just disturbed by the reflexively anti-Russian coverage we’re seeing in the media, and the refusal to look closely at Saakashvili, who seems to be playing the media well.
And for heaven’s sakes — the west backed Kosovo, which was a separatist territory within a sovereign nation. Why isn’t Saakashvili seen as more like Milosevic, and the South Ossetians as more like the Kosovars? Situation seems fairly analagous to me.
The comparison with Slobodan Milosevic and Saakashvili falls apart on a couple of critical factors.
1. Milosevic presided over a united Yugoslavia before its dissolution due to his increasingly fanning Serbian nationalist sentiments. If you want the closest imperfect comparison, Milosevic would be more like Putin as Putin was part of the Soviet Union’s government apparatus before its collapse in 1991. Unless my reading of current events over the last decade and a half is off, Georgia was not the dominant core of an empire known as the Soviet Union…but historically annexed region which broke away like Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, or Kosovo from the former Yugoslavia.
2. As such, Milosevic had a greater array of military and financial resources at his disposal to fight the dissolution of Yugoslavia much like the Russians have in the aiding of the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia against Georgia’s pittance of a military force. Russia’s numbers of personnel and military machines far exceeds those of Georgia…along with the fact they are in the top two nations club regarding nuclear capabilities in the world.* In many ways, the separatists are quite similar to the way puppet collaborationist regimes were set up in Manchuria and other parts of China by the Japanese government in order to further their imperial ambitions in China. Considering Russia’s history, what I see is Russia’s use of these separatist movements in order to undermine the independence of Georgia and other former components of the Soviet Union in order to rehash old dreams of Soviet/Imperial Russian empire.
* Russia’s Air Force is the second or third largest in the world currently whereas Georgia’s Air Force only has a few dozens of combat aircraft at best. I’m betting the similar disparity in military capabilities exist in their naval and ground forces as well.
I take your first point,but not the second–Ossetian grievances against Georgia go back a long way, certainly before the break-up of the Soviet Union. The Wikipedia article on South Ossetia talks about brutal repression on the part of the Georgians after the demise of the USSR, in 1991. The Russians might be fomenting grievances, but the grievances seem rooted in a long legacy of oppression at the hands of ethnic Georgians.
Some of that “oppression” were responses to South Ossetian and Abkhazian attempts to prevent Georgia from declaring independence in 1991 because the majority of both regions wanted to remain in the very empire of the Soviet Union the Georgians were trying to leave. Similar behavior among Korean and Chinese who collaborated with Japan during its colonial heyday is one reason why they and to some extent, their descendants are still regarded with virulent disgust and hatred by many Koreans and Chinese of my generation and younger.
The very fact the Russian government is moving outside of the separatist regions into indisputably Georgian territory in the West strengthens my impression that Russia is really using these separatist movements as pawns in its efforts to punish Georgia for asserting its sovereign right as an independent nation-state to determine its own policies and to opt out of the Russian sphere of influence….and possibly to restart Russian dreams of empire. It is incorrect to say that the Russian government MIGHT be formenting grievances…..they ARE fomenting grievances for their own possible imperial agenda….which may or may not include the actual interests of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
I also take it you’re going to ignore the vast military and political power disparities between the Russians/separatists and the Georgians. Similar ignoring of the actual power disparities/dynamics that Americans such as W.E.B. Dubois did when they harshly criticized the Chinese for trying to defend their country from being annexed piecemeal and then openly invaded by Imperial Japan.
Wow, people fully diatribe here. I guess I’ll join in your rhetoric. Many news agencies and political/military analysts agree that, though Georgian forces attacked first, the attacks were prompted by severe Russian antagonism and constant small outbreaks of skirmish warfare.
Regardless of who struck first, who did what, this war is serious. I say “War” because many innocents have been killed, heavy ordinance has been used and a full blockade of Georgia’s ports is in place. To call this anything other than a war is a serious mistake.
Basically, this could easily be the start of world war III if the russians do not stop pounding Georgia. There is a shit-ton of oil at stake between the two, parts of the pipeline are in both countries, and the russians have made clear that nuclear proliferation will be eminent if the US or other European forces intervene. That is a bad thing obviously.
Remove your arguments about democracy, autocracy, and the like, you don’t talk about things like that in war. If this thing gets more serious than it already is, we might be going to war.
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