Disarm: The lesson of the Georgia fiasco
George Bush, with the clock ticking down the last months of his presidency, nearly started yet another war that might have escalated in the manner of World War I: a diplomatic failure backed by arms that resulted in a superpower clash.
It is a wonder that the world has survived his “war on terror,” which turned out to be a war on American liberty and anyone in the world who got on his nerves. His confrontation with Russia in defense of a belligerent little client state of the US could have sealed his fate and ours too.
We need to examine Bush’s actions and see how the US nearly stumbled into a calamity. For in the last weeks, we have gained a picture of the future with this continued push for a secure American world empire with its endless webs of payments, relationships, jockeying for power and treasure, and a diplomatic corps honeycombed with belligerents and lobbyists for foreign governments. The peace, such as it is, can be shattered through small screwups that will end in massive death.
Make no mistake about it: the flare-up was caused entirely by US diplomatic failures. You wouldn’t know this, however, if all you did was watch television news. Fox and CNN have portrayed Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili as a benevolent leader of a “young democracy” struggling in the shadow of the mighty bear Russia.
In fact, Saakashvili was elected on a “National Movement” ticket with a centralizing, revanchist platform of retaking the autonomous provinces in the Caucasus, and he has ruled this country the size of South Carolina with an iron fist under a state of emergency for years. He had every intention of ruling these non-Georgian peoples who do not want to be ruled by him, as even the CIA admits. As for his domestic program, it has consisted mostly of cracking down on tax evasion and beefing up state coffers.
After smashing the province Ajaria in 2004 following his rigged election, and then crushing Kodori Gorge in Abhkazia (which even has a separate language) in 2006, he moved on to South Ossetia (which also has its own language) this year, where Ossetians and Russians live and Russian peacekeepers patrol.
A young democracy? Ossetians never voted for Saakashvili. But he insisted on ruling them anyway, moving militarily and bombing the capital in the middle of peace talks on the opening day of the Olympics.
Tin-pot, fascist mini-dictators like this are a dollar a dozen, and such territorial disputes will always be with us. The critical question is: what gave Saakashvili the confidence that he could pull this off? He believed that the United States would back him as a quid pro quo for his having sent troops to Iraq. The US responded to his cooperation in Iraq – sending Georgian citizens to kill and be killed – by sending him military training support and guns and bombs, and wining and dining him in Washington.
In all the confusion of the last days, there is no question, then, that Georgia was the aggressor in South Ossetia. Russia responded within its sphere of influence both against Georgia but mostly against an incredible show of arrogance by the Bush administration. According to the New York Times, which interviewed many officials who refused to be named, the Bush administration began backpedalling very quickly, claiming that they never gave permission to Georgia to crush any separatist movement.
But by that time, the politics began. In a very scary editorial and series of speeches, John McCain all but threatened nuclear war against Russia, failing to mention that his own foreign policy adviser was a paid lobbyist for Georgia. Had McCain had his way, the US very well might have a hot war going on right now on the Russian border, fighting for the privilege of a dictator to crush the rights of South Ossetians to their own self-determination.
No doubt that had the conflict continued – and it still might – we would have been told that we were fighting for the rights of the poor Georgian people against Russian imperialism. The American media, even before looking at the facts, had already decided who wore the halo and who wore the horns in this struggle, giving loving interviews to liars of all stripes, so long as they took the US line.
None of which is to say that Russia wears the halo and Georgia the horns. In war, blood ends up on the hands of everyone involved, and there is no shortage of evidence to prove the case against any and all governments involved.
What we need to fix on here are the first principles. It’s an upside-down world, not all that different from the one that existed at the start of World War One, another conflict which was said to be about fighting against aggression and fighting for democracy and self-determination. As Francis Neilson said in his 1915 classic How Diplomats Make War: “No country thinks of putting these principles into practice, but somehow they seem to be worth fighting for.”
If we are to follow Neilson further, we will see that in his lessons of the start of that war, he takes aim at a central pillar of diplomacy then and now, namely the claim that the proliferation of arms guarantees the peace. He quotes Richard Cobden: “the greatest evil connected with these rival armaments is that they destroy the strongest motives for peace.”
So it has been in these diplomatic games played by our rulers. They believe they are controlling the world, when suddenly they are controlled by events. Then they rope the rest of us into it, following the usual plan of war: forcing the rest of us to adopt the government’s view of who is wearing the halos and horns, regardless of the facts:
During a war it is no easy task to prevent your sympathy clouding your reason. The whole social system seems to be organized against any individual attempt to concentrate the attention dominantly upon the causes of the war. Governments, churches, theatres, the press, and local authorities, direct their efforts, in the main, warwards; the whole thought of society and commerce seems to be occupied with war; and all desire to question the reasons given by statesmen for participating in the war must be suppressed. It has been ruled already by certain ‘leaders of thought’ that it is unwise, unpatriotic, and un-English, to suspect the motives of Governments, or waver for a moment in swearing wholehearted allegiance to the authorities: you must think only of the war. If you dare ask for the truth, you are helping the enemy; if you suggest an early peace, you are hindering the militarists who desire no peace until their enemy is utterly crushed. Insidious, bewildering, and plausible, are the reasons given by statesmen and journalists for inflicting a humiliating defeat; without it, they tell us we must not hope for disarmament. No patriot is supposed to ask if disarmament is at all probable. No one must ask if a single statesman really believes such a blessing will follow if the enemy be annihilated.
Over just a few short days, we saw this whole process beginning to play itself out, in an ominous sign for the future. But it is a future that can change. As Neilson wrote, “Citizens who desire peace can indulge in no greater folly than that which is summed up in the phrase, ‘the best way to preserve peace is to prepare for war.’ … Governments have made the war; only the peoples can make an unarmed peace.”
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What a shame you were not a Georgian in the Abkazian reigion in 1992. Such a shame you were not among those men, women and children these “poor, pitiful Abkazians” (allies and brethren of the “poor pitiful” S. Ossetians who were also involved in these actions perpetrated by their northern brethren) herded into a football field. A shame you were not among those Georgians in the early 1990’s when the Abkazians, assisted and abetted by the Russians, ringed the field with machine guns and opened fire on them–taking 2 hours to complete the slaughter.
Such a shame these wonderful people who are so deserving of the worlds pity did not do to you what they did to the nuns in front of the priests…that you were not the pregnant Georgian mother who was repeatedly raped and then disemboweled or the priest who had an eyeball ripped from a fellow Georgians corpse rubbed all over his face and mouth by these gentle and pitiful Abkazians before being forced to watch women who had been stripped naked and trapped in a well scream and cry while Abkazians threw corpses and then a grenade down on their heads.
A shame that like the priest, they did not then kill you like the Abkazian woman who repeatedly sliced an elderly man tied to a tree and then tortured him by rubbing salt from a large tray into his wounds and continued to torture you like that for 4 hours before the gentle and delicate Abkazian woman finally killed you.
Yes, indeed…that “belligerent little client state” should not have responded militarily to the shelling that was coming from the S. Ossetian paramilitary into the town of Gori. God knows we in the US would just let it go. After all…every bit of this was provoked by George Bush and has nothing at all to do with the ethnic cleansing of the Georgians in the early 1990’s and the continuing, subsequent hostilities that endure to this day!
No…indulge your addled American vanity and attribute this to the influence of your government like the fool that you are. God knows the world only revolves around America!
And when you face such barbarism–how DARE you call on your allies from “belligerent little client states” to help you in your wars when you have NO INTENTIONS of reciprocating the loyalty!
No you SELFISHLY demand your allies run to your aid and then turn your backs on them.
And FYI…I AM AN AMERICAN from NE Alabama, but I give a damn about others in this world too because before I am ANYTHING I am a human being. My family has a strong military and political background.
I do not like George Bush or Dick Cheney and their cronies. I would like to see them tried for war crimes and domestic crimes. But I will be damned if I will sit back and judge Georgia as you have without first apprising myself of the history of the region.
What the S. Ossetians and Abkazians did to the people of Georgia is beyond barbaric. Their behaviour and brutality was inhuman…more like savage beasts! Why don’t you go back are read up on just how brutal it was. If you do not cry, then you are a heartless beast yourself. A 5 year old child being ripped apart bare handed in front of his mother…And we expect Georgians to respond to these people with DIPLOMACY? To put down their weapons and trust these ‘people’ will not rabildy attack them?
At first I wept for S. Ossetia AND Georgia. Then I studied the extended history of Georgia from before it was annexed by Alexander the great. Now my tears are for Georgia. How dare you call these people a “belligerent little client state”? You owe them a heartfelt apology and while you are at it how about you send them some food for their children?
And you think that Russia is operating within its legitimate sphere? I suppose Russia is also operating within its sphere when it is flying violating US airspace flying sorties over Alaska (long before this conflict with Georgia). Oh, excuse me… I just noticed your pretty pink thong that says ‘I <3 Putin’. Ah! Now I understand.
To Sarah Philips on August 23rd, 2008 9:23 pm
How about reading History of US from 1605-1900…
History is replete with instances of Human Brutality… just having faced it once does not give the right to any nation/race to give it back at a later point in history…
Diplomacy and Peace is the only way out…. in this case it is the Nation (Georgia) that started it is at fault …
I’ll have to do some research to get the facts but it is my understanding the Russians in S. Ossetia are transplants. They weren’t initial residents of the area but they were encouraged to move there from the mother country. A tactic commonly employed by one nation to establish a presence and then lay claim to it. If this is true it sounds hauntingly familiar, re: our own southwestern states.