[Tamsyn Hyatt]
The shockingly biased portrayal of the recent Russo-Georgian conflict has exposed the Cold War mentality that persists in the West’s view of Russia. Georgia is not a casualty of wanton Russian aggression; nor is Russia the static monolith of the USSR. This is not 1946, and the Iron Curtain has not descended across post-war Europe. Despite the Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili’s posturing before the Western media, Georgian actions were not those of a plucky Eastern nation battling against its evil Soviet oppressor.
Russia is indisputably a military Goliath when compared to Georgia. Yet Georgia, whose president has spent some seventy percent of his budget on the military, has that same advantage over the much smaller regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Saakashvili’s ambitions are summed up by the images of NATO-trained Georgian troops marching down George W. Bush Avenue, the road which leads to Tbilisi airport.
Lest we forget, the initial hostile action came from Georgian soil, against regions containing only a minority of Georgian residents and operating under de facto independence since the referendum of 2006. Furthermore, Saakashvili’s action was deliberately timed to coincide with the 2008 Olympic Games, when the international community would be distracted.
An inherited ethnic complexity has left a legacy of civil instability in Georgia; indeed, it has been described as a “microcosm” of the former USSR. From the expansionism of the Tsars to the satellite nations of Stalin, Russia has a history of avidly protecting its border areas, so it was inevitable that letting an already-unstable Georgia into a US-led NATO would provoke some form of response from the Kremlin. Had France and Germany not acted as a brake on Washington’s enthusiasm, August 2008 could have witnessed the birth of a Third World War.
The US also set an unfortunate precedent with its unqualified recognition of Kosovo’s independence earlier this year, heedless of the national damage to Serbian cultural and religious status – and, indirectly, damaging the Kremlin’s international standing.
Despite an EU pledge that this recognition was a unique response to a unique situation, Kosovo has been cited by both Vladimir Putin and the Basque separatist movement, ETA. Montenegro, whose independence from Serbia was recognized internationally in 2006, is heralded as its precursor.
From a Russian perspective, then, President Dmitry Medvedev is merely continuing an existing trend. This trend, however, has not been upheld by NATO, particularly with regard to Eastern Europe. By failing to protect the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, NATO effectively bowed to American policy concerns. In so doing, it has let Russia deploy a so-called “peacekeeping” force to occupy territory in Georgia proper. The result? The continued capricious division of Europe, and an offputting message to any other ex-satellite nations tempted to waltz through NATO’s “open door”.
The time for Russian, if not pan-European, alliance was 1991. Glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union hinted at the ghost of a future unity. Instead, the South Ossetia conflict has revealed that Europe today, while able to develop economic and semi-political ties, remains militarily impotent.
This is nowhere more evident than in the American missiles soon to be stationed in Poland and the Czech Republic. Not only are these weapons independent from the framework of NATO, they are also a direct provocation to Russia. If Washington is concerned solely with an Iranian threat, we might ask, why not station missiles in Iraq or maintain Israel’s instead? And if America would not tolerate Russian missiles as close as Cuba, why should the Kremlin accept the converse? Polish missiles are of little viable strategic value. All they can achieve is the continued alienation of Russia from the West and, more significantly, the continued dependence of smaller European nations on a security guarantee that is American rather than collective.
Russo-Georgian conflict has shown that a Europe driven by a Cold War mentality will not work; a Europe determined by an American military presence, and by American aims, will not work. The time for Washington’s “gentlemanly persuasion” is over. Instead we should look to the East, openly, consistently and inclusively. We should not aggravate a justifiably sensitive Russia. Instead – as Victor Hugo recognized over 150 years ago – we should seek to create a permanent European alliance, that operates on economic, political and military terms.
