Georgia On My Mind

What the hell is going on in the Caucases? Russian tanks are rolling into Georgia, South Ossetia is getting bombed into the ground, and journalists around the world are bumming that they don’t get to keep talking about the Edwards Affair. Oh, who am I kidding; they’ll keep talking about the Edwards Affair. Sex sells!

But they should be talking about Georgia, and I’ll do my damnedest to explain why.

Let’s begin with a history lesson. The year was 1989. Phil Collins had two songs on the Billboard Top 20. Batman was huge (even more so than today, if you can believe it.) And in a far away corner of the USSR, a little huddled mass called South Ossetia was yearning to breath free.

South Ossetia is a small territory in the middle of Georgia (the Soviet Georgia, not Hotlanta.) So, when they declared their independence, what ensued was a series of civil wars lasting well into 1992. When the Soviet Union finally fell, the former Soviet republic of Georgia became an autonomous and sovereign state, but inside the Georgian border little South Ossetia was not so fortunate. What they got instead was a three-party peacekeeping force made up of Russian, Georgian, and South Ossetian forces.

South Ossetia never let the dream of independence die. In 1993, they drafted their own constitution (hooray liberty!) In 1996, they elected their first president. All the while, Georgia refused to recognize them as a sovereign nation.

In December 2001, with the rest of the world’s attention occupied by Afghanistan, the good people of South Ossetia elected themselves a president who promised to break away from Georgia once and for all. His brilliant plan: to secede from Georgia…and join Russia. He figured trading the false independence of Georgian rule for the false independence of Russian rule was some kind of victory, or something. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but then again, neither do the last two American presidential elections.

The plan to join Russia never really got off the ground. The fires for the recent conflict really started burning in 2006, when South Ossetia held a public referendum on splitting from Georgia. The referendum passed overwhelmingly, and the response from the Georgian government was to call it a secret Russian campaign to provoke a war. What a crazy idea, that Russia would secretly stoke political discord in another country just to provoke a war it knows it can win. That kind of conspiracy theory is ridiculous; it’s not like Russia is run by a former KGB agent or anything….oh, wait.

In 2007, the Georgian parliament tried to create some kind of territorial government to control South Ossetia (presumably to usurp power from their pro-Russia president.) South Ossetia responded by claiming that Georgian forces were firing mortars into their capital, a claim that Georgia denied. Peace talks between South Ossetia and Georgia were attempted, but broke down in the fall of 2007.

In March of this year, after the US and other countries officially recognize Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, the government of South Ossetia started crying “me too!” Georgia was trying to get its NATO membership approved, and the Russian parliament started debating what to do about South Ossetia. Russia was worried that if Georgia got admitted to NATO, the pro-Russian South Ossetian government would disappear. The Russian parliament started urging the Kremlin to recognize South Ossetian independence.

In April, after Georgia’s bid to enter NATO was denied, the Georgian government decided to offer South Ossetia a power-sharing deal, apparently hoping that once this little issue was taken care of, Georgia would be a shoe-in for NATO. South Ossetia said no, claiming it wanted full independence and nothing else.

And that brings us to today. In the middle of ongoing negotiations between Georgia and South Ossetia, Georgia decided to launch a surprise attack. Their bid to retake South Ossetia militarily was met first by Russian scorn, and then by Russian tanks and bombers. South Ossetia has been leveled in the exchange, and 20,000 civilians have been forced to relocate. The Georgian army too was forced to beat a retreat after several days in conflict with the overwhelming force of the Russian army.

Georgia has since fully withdrawn from South Ossetia, and begged for a cease-fire. As of today, Russia has refused, claiming that the Georgian army has not retreated but merely regrouped. Russian attacks have been, by all accounts, wildly disproportionate to the Georgian threat. They have extended their bombing runs outside of South Ossetia, going as far as to bomb the main airport in Georgia’s capital of Tbilisi.

At first glance, it would seem that South Ossetia just wanted to be free, Georgia tried to prevent that freedom, and Russia has used the crisis as an excuse to flex its military muscle and maybe capture a little territory for itself. There don’t seem to be any good guys in this conflict, just two bad guys fighting over an innocent bystander.

The problem is, the American media is going to portray this as an attempt by Russia to take an Imperialist stance on the world stage, with no mention of how Georgia started it. Why would the media decide to pick sides in a battle between two wrongs? Maybe because Russia is easy to paint as a bad guy, given its history with the US, and therefore the media won’t have to explain anything or do any in-depth reporting. Maybe they’ll take Georgia’s side because Georgia is an American ally, whose president is American educated and speaks fluent English.

But what the media won’t talk about is what this war (and it will be a war, just watch) is really about: oil. The European Union gets most of its oil from the Caspian Sea. And all the oil pipelines that feed Caspian oil to Europe run through Russia--except for the pipelines that run through Georgia. So, it is in the West’s interest to keep Georgia free from Russian control. Likewise, it is in Russia’s interest to control all the oil flowing from the Caspian, to maximize their negotiating position with the west.
Georgia knows all this, of course, so they felt free to launch an unprovoked military strike to reclaim South Ossetia, knowing full well that the West would have to back them up. Russia has now used this attack as an excuse to invade and occupy Georgia, no doubt betting on the fact that NATO won’t want to take on Russia over a country that isn’t, technically, one of them.

What comes next is hard to say. The US is in no position militarily to do anything about Russia. If this is a signal of impending Russian aggression in the region, there is nothing the US can do about it. Thanks again, Mr. President, for tying our hands in Iraq.

The only solution (and it is a temporary one at best) is to remove the casus belli. If Russia is using South Ossetia as a pretext for occupying Georgia, then it is the responsibility of the Western powers to facilitate a negotiation between Georgia and South Ossetia that results in full South Ossetian independence and sovereignty. If South Ossetia has that, Russia will have no justification for a military presence in Georgia, and will have to withdraw. Then, the European powers will have to bust their asses to get Georgia admitted to NATO so that this doesn’t happen again.

This just wouldn’t be my blog if I didn’t include some kind of political pitch, so I’ll close by saying this: if we’re going to confront the resurgent threat of Russia, we’re going to need two things. First, we need a flexible military force, one that isn’t tied up trying to occupy one country and fight a war in another. Withdrawing from Iraq will give us the resources needed to confront new and unexpected challenges, like Russia. Second, we need a president who can unify and rally the support of European leaders and the European people, and convince them to present a united front for our cause. So, maybe having a president who is a “celebrity” in Europe and America wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Yeesh, how many more reasons to vote for Obama does America need?