Russian aggression, again
There is an old saying that Russia feels secure only when expanding. After 1990, what was going around came around and the states forcibly included in the Soviet Union gained or regained independence. However, Russian government never lost the desire to mess with their affairs and, when possible, to swallow parts of them. The Russian invasion in Georgia after the attempt of Georgian authorities to regain control over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is just the latest example.
For the record, I believe in self-determination and think that if people (people, not the mafia) of the regions in question truly want to separate from Georgia and join Russia, this insane wish must be granted. I don't think sending Georgian troops there was a good idea. Pointing guns at people is unlikely to convince them that they are better off under your rule.
However, while agreeing with Russian President Medvedev that "Georgia must allow the provinces to decide whether they want to remain part of Georgia", I'd ask him, what about Chechnya? Why are other states oblived to give their breakaway regions self-determination but Russia may wage genocide until the last person wishing independence is dead?
And don't the above described developments remind anybody of Nazi Germany that went on a "peacekeeping" mission to defend the allegedly mistreated ethnic Germans in Sudetenland and quickly ended up occupying the entire Chechoslovakia?
I first wrote the above text on my blog in mid-August. I am afraid that nobody is thinking of Georgia anymore.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Comments (1)
Americans are so accustomed to viewing Russia as evil incarnate that we cannot grasp the idea that our ally, Georgia, could possibly be a threat to its restive ethnic populations. In classic US black-and-white thinking, we oversimplified the brief August war, dividing the parties in into our familiar categories of "good guys" and "bad guys".
It seems to me that instead of trying to decide whether American policy should be pro-Russia or pro-Georgian, the next US president needs to decide whether to be pro-self determination or not. If we are truly for the self-determination of all peoples, this means we must brace ourselves for nearly constant military intervention, in service as the world's policeman for the myriad smaller groups of people who cannot defend themselves. In doing so, we risk being the next occupiers, as we now witness in Iraq. If we do not actively support the self-determination of all peoples, then we must admit that our "universal" laws underlying our national philosophy and Constitution are actually impossible to achieve, a realization that undermines our very self-conceptualization.
We are unable to reconcile these two halves of the American psyche: the belief in freedom, and the necessity of being practical. So, we end up with an ad-hoc approach towards world events such as the August war and the war in Chechnya.
I couldn't agree more with your argument that it is hypocritical to support Georgia against Russia, but not Chechnya. Perhaps it boils down to who we like more: the Georgian president is US-educated, and speaks in our idioms. Chechans have no such bridge builder, so in their case, we seem to like Russia better. Clearly, our ambiguous policies in the region are only making the situation worse.
Posted by MHahn | October 14, 2008 1:24 PM