The driest of tinder

August 9, 2008 9:47 AM

Required reading: James Traub of the New York Times explains, in detail the "almost absurdly over-determined" situation in Georgia and how it came to this.
posted by bicyclefish (6 comments total)

probably belongs in the existing thread about the situation, but good link.
posted by briank at 10:05 AM on August 9, 2008

from the link: The situation in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia took yet another turn down the spiral of confrontation in July, when mysterious acts of violence plagued both regions. There were bombings in Abkhazia. There were shootings in South Ossetia. Who was behind the string of attacks? Criminal gangs? Provocateurs? Georgian secret agents? No one knew, but that didn’t stop the accusations from flying.

One (remote? real?) possibility is that these provocations last month were covertly sponsored by the US military, which might help explain both the rather ominous title ("Immediate Response 2008") of the US-sponsored military exercises held in Georgia last month, and also Saakashvili's apparent conviction that the US and the EU are going to come to Georgia's rescue.

Without someone in the West pushing Georgia into NATO, that recent possibility (of Georgia entering NATO, which Traub's article points out was TOTALLY unacceptable to Moscow), would not get very far. Saakashvili seems to have been caught off guard, and he wants the world to see Georgia as victim to Moscow. But the US must have known Georgia, whose troops are now on their way back from Iraq into the Georgian war zone, were not going to be welcomed into NATO by Moscow. So why push that button?

Of course it's also totally unsurprising, as Traub points out, that the "de facto" (re: Moscow-run, semi-autonomous) "states" of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, were not going to exist in political limbo forever. Eventually Russia and Georgia were going to tussle over them. What's happening is ripples that began when the USSR collapsed. Naturally, pathetically, predictably, the actual people of these two regions are now just pawns in a game between Moscow and Tblisi.

And then there's this (from the Traub piece):

Marshall Goldman, a leading Russia scholar, argues in a recent book that Mr. Putin has established a “petrostate,” in which oil and gas are strategically deployed as punishments, rewards and threats. The author details the lengths to which Mr. Putin has gone to retain control over the delivery of natural gas from Central Asia to the West. A proposed alternative pipeline would skirt Russia and run through Georgia, as an oil pipeline now does. “If Georgia collapses in turmoil,” Mr. Goldman notes, “investors will not put up the money for a bypass pipeline.” And so, he concludes, Mr. Putin has done his best to destabilize the Saakashvili regime.

But when the US began whispering in Saakashvili's ear about NATO, they also partly helped to destabilize the region: since that was something Russia was NEVER going to allow.
posted by ornate insect at 10:31 AM on August 9, 2008

Of course, what was Georgia promised by the US in return for helping "Operation Iraqi Freedom"? The answer to that question might shed real light here.
posted by ornate insect at 10:37 AM on August 9, 2008

Fascinating.

I found two parts particularly interesting. One was regarding the Georgians, the other the Russians. On the Georgians:

It’s a pretty safe bet that Georgia and Abkhazia will not resolve their conflict on their own. […] When I asked Temuri Yacobashvili, a cultivated man who is one of the country’s leading art patrons, why Georgia couldn’t focus on the threat from Russia and let the Abkhaz have their de facto state, he said, “These are not two different things, because it’s not amputating hand, it’s amputating head, or heart. No Georgian president could survive if he gave up on Abkhazia.”

That seems as though it will be their undoing; by refusing to let go of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, they're inviting — apparently quite knowingly — a war that they cannot possibly win. They have an opportunity to walk away from the table, so to speak, but instead they're going to go all in with Russia holding all the good cards. If ever anyone needs an example of nations acting irrationally, here is one.

On the Russians and Kissinger:

In a recent essay, the archrealist Henry Kissinger argued that Putin-era policy had been driven not by dreams of restored glory, but by “a quest for a reliable strategic partner, with America being the preferred choice.” Some Russia experts on the left, like Stephen Cohen of Princeton, have taken a similar view. But Russia’s bellicose behavior, and now the hostilities along its border, make it increasingly difficult to act on such a premise without seeming naïve.

I'm not so sure that Kissinger's stance should be written off so casually. I think it's entirely possible that Russia does want a strategic partner in the U.S., particularly since (as is pointed out earlier in the article) they've never had good relationships with nations they border with directly, and having the U.S. as a strategic ally would be a good counterweight to China. However much they might want that partnership, though, they're not going to debase themselves to get it — and the U.S. hasn't exactly been making it easy for them to do anything else.

It may be too late now, but I can't help thinking that if the U.S. had taken a more conciliatory, partnership-of-equals approach with Russia a few years ago (holding our nose at Putin's odiousness, if necessary), not tweaked their nose with Kosovo, and worked more closely with them on Iran and the missile shield, this all might have been avoidable. It seems a bit late for that now, though. But at any rate, I don't think that makes Kissinger wrong or naïve, it's just that the moment has passed.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:37 AM on August 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

...and the fact that Russia views NATO’s eastward expansion as a threat to its security is a vivid sign of the deep-rooted cold war mentality of Mr. Putin and his circle.

Ah, NYT's Russia desk, like a parody wrapped in a mockery of objective journalism.
posted by atrazine at 11:05 AM on August 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Ah, NYT's Russia desk, like a parody wrapped in a mockery of objective journalism.

I am just wondering if you can clarify what exactly you object to with regards to the NYT's comment on Cold War mentality? I am really an uneducated observer, but it strikes me that Russia does very much have a cold war mentality using its control over natural gas and other energy sources in a very aggressive manner towards former client states as well as western Europe?
posted by JPD at 11:25 AM on August 9, 2008