There once was a strain of conservative thought on foreign policy which boiled down to “America is not a global police force.” Sadly, it’s gone out of favor and been replaced by macho bullshit about regime change and never appeasing anyone ever because Munich Munich Munich. It’s an unfortunate development because while there are all kinds of theoretical problems with using the US military as a global enforcement team there is an overwhelming practical concern as well. We just can’t do it; as a farce it works great but that’s about it.
You can see the pervasiveness of this lunatic mindset in the reactions to the war in Georgia. The United States of America, a country located primarily on the North American continent, doesn’t have much in the way of influence over what happens along Russia’s southern border in Asia. Yet this seemingly simple fact has come as a great shock to a lot of people over the last week and because it’s silly season we’ve even attempted to weave the brief war between Russia and Georgia into our presidential election. If you went solely by American press coverage, nicely epitomized by this ridiculous cover image from today’s The New York Times‘ Week in Review section, you could be forgiven for thinking that we’re back where we were, toe to toe with the Russian bear. The mundane reality is that the Red Army is not on its way to Warsaw and its little dalliance in Georgia has nothing to do with our election.
Liberals bashing Bush the Younger and company for their oblivious double standard when it comes to invading other countries and conservatives trumpeting this as the herald of a new Cold War are equal parts self serving and self delusional. It’s certainly entertaining to see Bush the Younger, Dick Cheney, and John McCain ranting against illegal invasions, but it’s not as though American circa 2000 could’ve stopped Russia from undertaking this exact same course of action. The current Administration has destroyed America’s reputation and credibility while stretching our military to the breaking point, no doubt about that, but even if they hadn’t stopping the Russians from screwing around in Georgia would still be impossible. Russia already had troops inside Georgia, in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia; plus Georgia borders Chechnya, one assumes there is a capable Russian military presence nearby.
You could make the case, complete with middle school history terms like “sphere of influence”, that the Russians are bullying their smaller neighbor. Of course you could also make the case that the Russians are just cleaning up a long festering mess along their border. The obvious and explicit parallel is Kosovo. NATO spent almost thee months bombing the shit out of Serbia in 1999 and while the Russians seem to prefer tanks over airplanes the underling motivation is the same. Big, powerful entities (EU/NATO, Russia) don’t like having nasty ethnic disputes turn violent along their borders and are willing to use force to put a stop to them. Right after the Serbs caved in ‘99 Russian troops moved into Kosovo (at Serbia’s request) and NATO’s reaction was something like, “What the hell are you guys doing here? This doesn’t concern you.” That’s how the Russians see this and it’s hard to fault them.
(On top of that the Russians were extremely pissed off at the Georgians in the nineties because the Georgians didn’t secure their border with Chechnya. Whether they were unwilling to do so or unable to do so is beside the point. The Russians see the Georgians as already having blood on their hands and not without reason.)
During negotiations before the Kosovo war in 1999 independence for Kosovo was explicitly off the table. Yet here we are almost a decade later and Kosovo’s independence creeps ever closer to widespread acceptance. The situation isn’t ideal but no one is getting killed anymore and if the people who actually live in Kosovo want to be their own country that’s all the justification required. Parts of Yugoslavia broke up cleanly, others didn’t; the same is true of the Soviet Union. Just off the top of my head the list of geographic oddities and unsettled borders includes the Kaliningrad Oblast, the Crimean Peninsula, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Transnistria and it feels like I’m forgetting a couple. Georgia versus Russia is not part of some grand global balancing act where the United States has a role to play; it’s leftovers from the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Whether the Georgians or the Russians provoked the fighting is irrelevant, the only thing that the war did was remove military action as an option for settling the final status of Abkhazia and Georgia. The situation on the ground hasn’t changed much at all, Russian troops are withdrawing from the rest of Georgia but will remain in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia remains nominally sovereign over them but will continue to have little to no real authority. Mikheil Saakashvili’s government in Tbilisi is safe and will not be removed by force. The Georgian military appears to have gotten badly beaten by the Russian one, but that hardly comes as a surprise. Georgia is small and poor; Russia is big and increasingly wealthy, plus their army has extensive experience fighting in nearby Chechnya. All the war did was prove that Georgia cannot retake South Ossetia and Abkhazia by force. Fustigations and fulminations from Washington and Brussels, to say nothing of visits from partisan American Senators, don’t change those facts.
The events of the last week will strengthen Georgia’s desire to join NATO, that’s a given. Heads have gone to pillows in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius a lot less troubled than otherwise thanks to Article V and some Georgian jealousy is natural. In the long term getting Georgia to the Atlantic table probably does makes sense, both for them and for the alliance. But rushing things is criminally stupid and antithetical to the way NATO operates.
Georgia and Ukraine were not about to be inducted into NATO a few months ago. They were in discussions to begin the process of gaining admission, that’s a far cry and years away from actual membership. Before they can be embraced by NATO all of their territorial disputes have to be settled. NATO doesn’t shrink from defending small nations from Russian aggression – that’s what NATO does, that’s why NATO exists – but it is primarily a defensive alliance. The current members have neither motivation nor desire to take on new members with outstanding territorial disputes, especially if those territorial disputes involve Russia.
Should Abkhazia and South Ossetia be their own countries? It seems like a bad place in the world to be a tiny little nation, but who knows? Should they become part of Russia? If the news reports are to be believed most of the people there already hold Russian passports so maybe they’d prefer that. The only difference between today and two weeks ago is that force is no longer an option for Tbilisi. Georgia cannot conquer Abkhazia and South Ossetia anymore than Serbia could conquer Kosovo, and it’s distinctly possible that the Georgians are going to have to bite the bullet and just like the Serbs did. For all kinds of cultural and historical reasons, to say nothing of simple pride, that’s a lot to ask, but the Georgians might not have a choice.
The brief war last week was not the herald of some new Cold War it’s just one more festering mess left over from the original Cold War. Cleaning it up is going to take a long time and disappoint a lot of people, but there’s nothing substantive that America, NATO, the EU or anyone else can do about it.
