Wages Of Kosovo
Mart Laar works for the Georgian government, so naturally he takes the Saakashvili line on Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Mart Laar and the Georgian government were nowhere to be found when Western states recognised Kosovo, which set in motion the chain of events now leading to either the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as “independent” states (which will be as dependent on Russia as Kosovo will be dependent on the West) or to their annexation into Russia, so I have to say I am not that impressed by the Georgian government’s sudden concern for legality and international peace. At this point, annexation might be the best practical arrangement, only because the alternatives seem even worse: an attempt to reintegrate them into Georgia will mean a resumption of conflict, and the creation of two failed mini-states in the Caucasus would be a disaster. However, I don’t really think annexation is a good idea, because it would undermine state sovereignty and destabilise Georgia, which could easily see Ajaria slip free of Tbilisi’s control as well, and possibly worst of all for Russia’s relations with the West it would feed into McCain’s myth that Russia is some “revanchist” state in neo-imperialist mode that needs to be challenged and checked (by expanding NATO, among other stupid proposals). Georgian membership in NATO would actually make even less sense if Russia annexed Abkhazia and South Ossetia, since it all but guarantees that NATO would be drawn into an armed conflict between Georgia and these statelets, but it might become more politically feasible if it was seen as a way of “drawing a line in the sand” against supposed Russian expansion.
You have to enjoy Laar’s lame justification for his call to action towards the end:
The west must awake and unite, not to oppose Russia or support Georgia, but to stand up for its ideals.
How do our ideals involve getting into an international controversy over mini-states in the Caucasus? Oh, that’s right, they don’t. Obviously, Laar thinks that the West must “awake and unite” precisely to support Georgia and oppose Russia. That is what he has been advocating for the entire column. However, that might seem a bit too obvious and petty, and it might be that Westerners don’t want to go to bat for the heavy-handed dictator of Tbilisi. The partition of Serbia, unless it is reversed, will continue to provide the precedent and the pretext for this kind of destabilisation and political fragmentation in volatile parts of the world. What seems to be happening in the North Caucasus is just one example of how partioning Serbia will come back to haunt the West for years and decades to come.
These open-ended discsussions of justice and American values remind me of the open-ended statements of the Clintons, where everything from federal drinking water regulations to NEA grants to a war for Albanian nation supposedly reflected the values of America’s “working families.”
Our rhetoric is degraded because it is more than pandering; it is devoid of historical context. History is taught even in elite colleges as a series of moralistic symbols: the evil past, the evil Crusades, Washington had wooden teeth (and slaves), democracies failed at Munich, Americans were racist on Saipan, etc. Outside of a few popular issues, any policy vaguely agreeable to anyone is justified by an appeal to “America’s values” or “America’s mission” without explanation.
Pretty soon we’ll be drinking “Brawny” as in the the sad film, Idiocracy.
Sometimes de facto situations are best, as with Taiwan, Kurdistan.
If we shart messing with old lines, however arbitrary, as you have observed, even if there’s a logic to the adjustments, we are plunging into the proverbial sack of cats. Africa has wisely refrained from messing with arbitrary colonial boundaries, and the same approach probably makes sense in the FSU.
That approach does leave us with horrors like the Sudan. What was it Emerson said about a foolish consistency?
I believe that we already can drink it if we’re so inclined. And why not? Our historical understanding is on a level with the culture depicted in Idiocracy.
As they say, it’s got ‘lectrolytes.
I thought the election was about whether we were going to drink the red Koolaid or the blue.
[...] The conflict escalated right now because Saakashvili followed through on his promises to establish Tbilisi’s control over South Ossetia and found that (surprise!) a contingent of armed Russians was still there, just as they have been for over a decade. He had made feints towards South Ossetia in the past, but always drew back from the brink of sustained conflict, and believed that he had his chance while the world was preoccupied with the Beijing Games. This is not a mystery. The situation was made demonstrably worse earlier in the year with the recognition of independent Kosovo, which all but guaranteed that Russia would make a play to shore up the Ossetian and Abkhaz statelets. I wish my column and posts on Kosovo recognition had been entirely wrong, but at least concerning the Georgian situation I am sorry to say that they were not. The situation was further exacerbated by the promise of future NATO membership to Georgia, which probably encouraged Saakashvili to think that he had the West’s implicit backing for his agenda to assert control over the breakaway regions. [...]