Strained Russian-Georgian relations dramatically worsened yesterday with reports that Russian authorities have ordered Moscow schools to identify children with Georgian surnames, possibly as a prelude to deporting them and their families. ~The Globe and Mail

The Russian government has been acting deplorably towards the Georgians in Russia.  Regardless of how obnoxiously or provocatively the Georgian government has acted recently, Putin has clearly gone overboard even by his rather flexible standards of what constitutes heavy-handed and arbitrary government.  The Russian Dilettante sums it up nicely: the Kremlin has gone mad.  I typically lay off the Putin-bashing because, when done by Americans, it is normally just a cover for some rather dubious scheme of NATO encirclement or an expression of latent Russophobia, but this is an unacceptable way to treat Georgians and, I presume, also Russian citizens who are of Georgian origin who will likely come under this ridiculous name list.  It would be as if we wanted to go about removing illegal Mexican immigrants from the schools by finding out how many Martinezes there are in a given school system.  This is indeed a naked expression of a secular version of what the Church calls phyletism when it relates to ecclesiastical matters, which She condemns absolutely in the life of the Church.  It makes a mockery of the shared Orthodox Faith of these two nations when such ethnic prejudice against other Orthodox Christians is carried into relations in the world.  I am the last one to begrudge anyone a strong attachment and loyalty to his ethnic identity and his nation, but the Faith transcends even these things and creates an even more enduring and essential identity for the nations that embrace it.  It would not be acceptable if the people being hounded by the government were not fellow Orthodox Christians, but the fact that many probably are, if only nominally in some cases, makes it that much worse.  So Moscow has done nothing to bring credit on itself in this episode.  I would hope that our Orthodox brethren in Russia do what they can to intercede on behalf of the Georgians being thus persecuted, as these people will be the innocent victims of the injustice of Putin and the idiocy of Saakashvili.  

Obviously, I do not lay all of this at Moscow’s door.  The Georgian government must rank as one of the most foolish and irresponsible in the world for having provoked this retribution with its arrest of the Russian military officers in the first place.  There are diplomatic ways to remove people from your country whom you consider undesirable when they are suspected of espionage: such a one is declared persona non grata and he is withdrawn.  These methods exist to avoid explosive and dangerous situations just like the one we are seeing now.  Arresting another nation’s military officers, no matter whether the charges are true, is to ask for a world of trouble.  The more hot-headed would interpret it as an act of war, which is precisely why it is unwise in the extreme to do even when justified (and I trust the claims of Saakashvili and his government in this matter as far as I can throw a Mack truck).  Arresting the officers of the major military power in your region is to risk terrible retribution.  For the government of Georgia to pick a fight with Russia shows the kind of boldness that prevails only in the very stupid.  Mikhail Saakashvili has shown since taking office that he is just such a kind of man with his constant posturing over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and in his blustery, deliberately provocative nationalism and dreary admiration of Stalin he has shown himself to be precisely the kind of reckless Caucasian leader who will only bring sorrow to his suffering country. 

If the American government had any credibility left, it might intercede and use its good offices to help calm the situation before the conflict did irremediable damage to the region.  Unfortunately, since Saakashvili is and is seen to be our stooge, anything Washington has to say on this conflict will be worse than useless.