Georgia
25 Aug 2008
The Time Was Right
Russia's move on Georgia is part of a well-timed strategy to reassert itself as the major power in the region, writes Terry Friel from Tbilisi
Russia's war on Georgia, its biggest military adventure since the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, is a definitive signal of its powerful resurgence. Just as importantly, it has demonstrated the limits to the American appetite for further foreign entanglements in the midst of the US's campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, during a period of growing economic difficulty at home.
This war is not primarily about the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia or Abkhazia, or even about Georgia itself — beyond Moscow's failed aim of ousting Tbilisi's strongly pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Rather it is about Russia sending a timely message to the rest of the world — especially to those neighbours who were once part of the Soviet Union — that it is again a power to be reckoned with and is prepared to take the military option in support of its strategic aims.
It is also showing these nations, who have in many instances become very friendly with the West, that having such relationships with NATO and the US doesn't guarantee those powers will go to war on their behalf.
"This has been a seismic event," says US academic, author and journalist Thomas Goltz who has covered the Caucasus since the fall of the Soviet Union, sitting at a Tbilisi cafe.
"This is, if you want to call it, the revival of the cold war, or whatever terms you want to use."
Russia knew the United States and the rest of the world would condemn its actions against Georgia. But the stronger the condemnation from Washington and other Western capitals, the more it highlights the difference between what they say and what they can actually deliver in terms of protection.
For almost two decades, Russia has felt humiliated by the US and the West, and the decision by Western powers to back Kosovo's independence over Moscow's clearly stated objections was the breaking point for a nation buoyed by high energy revenues and resurgent military capability under hardline president and now Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin.
It wanted to strike. It knew there was little the US or Europe could do, either militarily or diplomatically over Georgia — neither Putin nor his protégé, President Dmitry Medvedev — really care about being called nasty names by NATO or anyone else. Russia has veto rights in the UN Security Council, so it is safe there, too. And NATO is divided.
Georgia was an easy choice. It's small, its military had nine combat planes and 80 tanks compared with Russia's 1,500 planes and 8,000 tanks, US-educated and backed Saakashvili can be brash and imprudent, and Georgia is the main supply route for Caspian Sea oil and gas to reach Western markets directly rather than be piped through Russia.
And it had the unstable and disputed territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia on the Russian border, where violence has been simmering for some time. Despite the presence of about 130 US military advisers, the Georgian armed forces appear chaotic in the field. Troops moved into South Ossetia without rations and were easily routed by the Russian advance.
"South Ossetia is just an excuse — it's not even just an excuse," says Aleksander Rondeli, who heads the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS) in Tbilisi.
In the words of the International Crisis Group's Lawrence Streets, a 20-year veteran of the Caucasus, "Obviously, the main goal is to send the West a very strong message that Russia is a country to be reckoned with; that for the last 20 years 'we've been treated like crap; you ignored even considering our position on Kosovo; and now we are going to show you who's boss'."
Apart from the symbolic use of the US military to spearhead the delivery of foreign relief aid to tens of thousands of refugees, about the best the world community can do is issue statements, block Russia's entry to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) amid the latest stalled round of talks, and make vague threats about the fate of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, just north of Abkhazia.
That will not scare Putin or Medvedev.
And the US delivery of relief itself is concerning many aid workers. It's one thing to get supplies into the country. It's another to have a reliable logistical network to deliver them to those who need them.
Neither the US nor Georgian militaries can do that at the moment, especially in Ossetia, leaving it up to a mish-mash of local and foreign NGOs. The US Government's aid agency, USAID, is involved, but it doesn't have the capacity itself to deliver that aid. What was an organisation with 13,000 staff during the Vietnam War had been slashed to just 2300 people by 2001. When its budget was doubled to $14 billion after 9/11, it got just 100 more staff.
So it now does little more than oversee expensive for-profit contractors on lucrative deals where they have a guaranteed percentage margin on top of all costs, and which is grappling with accusations of waste, mismanagement and racism over its programs in Afghanistan.
It refuses to comment on those allegations.
Amid concerns over aid delivery, the United States chose to send a destroyer — a warship, not a transport ship — through the Bosphorous and into the shallow port of Batumi, instead of a more appropriate shallow draught vessel with a bigger cargo load capability. Once in port, it could not even dock and needed to transfer cargo from offshore. The urgent supplies waited five hours while the captain spoke to the media.
The shipment included bottled water, which was completely unnecessary. There is already a good supply of potable water, even in war zones such as the central Georgian city of Gori. In areas where there may not be, aid workers say cheap portable field purification units and chemicals are more efficient than shipping in thousands of tonnes of water in plastic bottles. Aid groups working with USAID are also still in the dark about how these supplies will be physically delivered.
Neither the Georgian nor the US military can do it, so it's up to a collection of uncoordinated NGOs. Access to the neediest zones is not guaranteed by either the Russians or the Georgians.
Some commentators have suggested Saakashvili, at once extremely intelligent, but inflammatory, impulsive and known for a fondness for rattling Russia's cage even before he came to power, was tricked into stepping up Georgia's offensive in ethnically mixed South Ossetia.
True or not, he had little choice. With Russian-backed Ossetian forces pounding mainly Georgian villages in Ossetia with artillery, the political risk to Saakashvili of losing those villages was as dangerous as the risk of Russian retaliation.
People close to Saakashvili say he was warned by Washington against going in.
How many people were killed or fled from their homes during both the Georgian and the Russian offensives will not be known for some time. Each side accuses the other of atrocities.
The irony is that in invading Georgia, Russia has, if anything, strengthened Saakashvili's position and undermined the divided and shambolic opposition, which has called a moratorium on debate or criticising the president. Georgians' intense and emotional nationalism means that even people on the streets who opposed Saakashvili before the fighting now stand united behind him.
On Tbilisi's broad Rustaveli Avenue of churches, opera halls, brand-name boutiques and street stalls leading past Parliament to Freedom Square, about the strongest criticism of the President now is that he may have miscalculated. But the feeling is that the Russian response was unacceptable and Georgians must stand together to save their nation. Especially since everyone here knows that getting rid of Saakashvili himself was a major Moscow aim.
"I don't think that he will be overthrown," says Rondeli. "We don't like overthrowing presidents. We are fed up with it. And I think that because of the character of Russian aggression and the way they behaved in Georgia, Saakashvili will be preserved by Georgians."
The war is already having an impact on Russia's nervous neighbours and has deepened divisions within NATO between countries such as the US — who wanted Ukraine and Georgia to be given NATO membership — and nations such as France and Germany that opposed their membership at NATO's Bucharest meeting in April and now consider themselves lucky to have dodged a bullet by not being dragged into the Russia-Georgia conflict.
Kazakhstan is now considering pumping its oil through Russia, instead of sending it by tanker across the Caspian to Azerbaijan, which then pipes it through Georgia. Such a move also threatens the fate of a planned undersea pipeline from Aktau in Kazakhstan through the Caspian to the Azeri capital of Baku. Azerbaijan itself is losing $50 million a day through cut-offs in three oil and gas pipelines from Baku through Tbilisi to the Georgian Black Sea coast or to Turkey. At least one disruption was blamed on an attack by Kurdish rebels on the Turkish side.
However, bomb craters from Russian air strikes mark the sides of the pipelines in Georgia and analysts say Moscow has sent a clear message it can sever them any time it likes.
According to US-based think-tank Stratfor.com, "now that Russia has established a firm military presence in Georgia, [it is] highly likely that all three lines will continue to operate, or not, at the pleasure of the Kremlin."
Ukraine is re-examining its defence strategy and force levels. Russia's only warm sea naval fleet is stationed in Sevastopol, in Ukraine's Crimea — a mainly ethnic Russian zone that Moscow wants back.
Meanwhile, Belarus' President Aleksander Lukashenko, who has been working on closer military cooperation with Moscow but at the same time trying to strengthen ties with the West, is now likely to move more into Russia's orbit.
In Azerbaijan, President Ilham Aliyev, who has been playing Russia off against the US, called an emergency meeting of his cabinet after the Georgian invasion and is now likely to shift towards Russia, if only out of concerns about oil and gas shipments. Azerbaijan has only just started making real money from its oil and gas fields. And its reserves will not last long. The country is poorly developed, poverty is rising and it simply cannot afford to lose that revenue, especially with a presidential election in October.
While Europe needs Russia for oil and gas, Washington needs it for Iran.
The US not only wants Moscow to back sanctions against Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program, but it's also keen to prevent Russia selling weapons to Tehran, especially the advanced S-300 air defence system.
At one level, Russia's war is also about fear. It fears military and democratic encirclement. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, St Petersburg was almost 2600 kilometres from the nearest NATO state. Now, it's less than 100 kilometres from NATO member Estonia. Georgia's much-lauded democracy, while questionable (with most independent observers believing there were serious irregularities in the emergency 2007 elections that gave Saakashvili a fresh five-year term from January) is also seen in Moscow as an encroaching Western threat to Russia itself.
But most of all, the war is about reasserting Russia's dominance and its traditional sense of empire.
As Stratfor says, "Russia has been an empire for centuries. The last 15 years or so were not the new reality, but simply an aberration that would be rectified."
"And now it is being rectified."
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Newsvine
Facebook
Kwoff
Discuss this article
To participate in the discussion Sign in or Register
In a ghastly enactment of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the single world power of the US has been chopped to pieces by Iraq and Afghanistan and the sub-prime mortgage saga, and it has been replaced by two contending world powers, China and Russia, each intent on preserving and/or reclaiming and/or extending its empire. Both will infer that they are continuing a sort of socialist agenda, thus winning over the half-wit Left: after all, there will be plenty of lick-spittles who will apologise for one or the other, or both, in its name. But both are clearly more nationalist than socialist, so let’s be fair to both of them: let’s call them national socialists. Perhaps imperialist socialists would be more accurate, overlooking, of course, the fact that neither are remotely socialist. But ‘national socialist’ would do, or Nazi, for short.
Meanwhile, democracy (ptuh! ptuh! that Western degeneration! as Hitler called it) is to be denied to all small populations. In Kosovo, for example, the wishes of 95 % mean nothing: will the Serbian fascists be upset by the expression of Kosovar democracy ? Yes ? Then, since the Serbian fascists are somehow socialists, the moron Left will support them against the lowly Kosovars - ignore the masses of people fleeing over snowy mountains pushing their mothers in wheelbarrows, forget the burning villages, forget the mass graves. So the opinions of the thirty thousand or so Serbs in the Mitrovica enclave are more important than those of the 1.8 million Kosovars. Anyway, the Kosovars are all peasants and they talk funny, and wear those funny bee-hive hats.
Then the Chinese pipe up that democracy in Kosova means interference in the internal affairs of another country, their mate Serbia. Remember that - interference in another country’s internal affairs ? Haven’t heard it lately, a propos Georgia. Will the Chinese ever use it again ? Perhaps yes, to protect one of THEIR fascist mates, like Burma. Perhaps no, when one of their mates wants to invade another country, using the Ossetian excuse.
What a despicable world we have to live in.
Joe
So much for the "End of History" thesis so popular after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia wasn’t a friend of the West before the Communists came to power, a fact forgotten by the triumphalist commentators of a decade ago. Without the dead hand of the Communist Party the country’s economy and military capacity will probably be far greater than during the Cold War.
Joe, I agree with you that Russia and China are more nationalist than socialist, and I agree that it’s a despicable world, but apart from that I’m afraid you can count me as one of the ‘half-wit Left’. The geopolitics of both this war and the war on Serbia could not be any more obvious if they punched one in the face, and they have nothing to do with atrocities, democracy vs fascism or self-determination.
philannetta.blogspot.com
The war on Serbia ? Do you mean the one in which Serbia tried to kepp a monopoly of power over each of the other republics, where it denied Kosovars public jobs and the right to study at the university -or the war which they launched against Bosnians and butchered tens of thousands ? That war ? Of the one where they toiok parts of eastern Croatia and destroyed its cities ? Or the war where they threatened even Slovenia and tried to send its tanks into the country to bully it back under Serbian domination ? That war ? Or the war against the poor defenceless Serbs who sent tens of thousands of Kosovars over the montains and burnt their villages behind them ?
Actually, there are four wars at least to choose from, but feel free.
On dual citizenship: if you think about it, unless there is an agreement between two countries, dual citizenship is probably not very common. And especially for country A to unilaterally offer citizenship to citizens of country B - that could be looked on as a hostile act, especially if the citizens of country B have never lived in country A.
Think about it: let’s put it into context, and I apologise to Indonesian friends beforehand, but I just want to use Indonesia as an example:
* Imagine: Indonesia offers citizens in northern Australia Indonesian citizenship.
* To sweeten the deal, it offers a five-thousand-dollar ‘resettlement fund’ to each person who accepts.
* It encourages its new citizens to defy local Australian law, to recognise only Indonesian law, particularly tax law.
* Australian officials try to enforce the law. The odd riot causes a few injuries. Indonesia promises to help defend its ‘citizens’ if they are unjustly harassed by foreign officials.
* Indonesia bars Australian ships from its waters.
* It sends in volunteers to support their brothers and sisters from the brutal Australian dictatorship across northern Australia.
* Eventually, exasperated, the Australian government sends in, first, police and then, troops to restore order across northern Australia. Indonesia sees this as an unwarranted provocation and rushes troops, ships and planes to protect its citizens. They occupy Australia from Cairns to Broome and down to Mt Isa and Tennant Creek. Chavez recognises Indonesian sovereignty immediately.
Is this too different from the Georgian situation ? OK - replace the names with US and Cuba. Would this be tolerable, if the US offered Cubans US citizenship, then moved troops in to protect its citizens ? Do you really think that the US hasn’t thought about doing just this ? Except that it is probably so illegal that even the US, in its most arrogant moments, knocked it back. But not Putin.
Can you see that offering citizenship to the citizens of another country, without consultation with the other country, can be seen as a hostile act ? Certainly, interfering in the internal affairs of another country ?
And, surely, this is probably the very reason why, as a condition of dual citizenship, there is an agreement that country A will not interfere if a citizen of both A and B is charged with committing an offence in country B ? NOT interfere ? And that anybody contemplating taking out dual citizenship is advised explicitly and very unambiguously what the implications might be ?
Joe
Serbia’s hands were not clean in the whole series of Balkans wars, Joe, but despite what we’ve been told, they were no dirtier than anyone else’s. The atrocity stories played well in the West, as they always do (Germans bayoneting Belgian babies anyone? Resurrected as Iraqis tearing Kuwaiti babies from incubators, as told to the US Congress by the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, who was in the US at the time, and as told to her by a major PR firm). Toward the end of the war when teams went in to find the mass graves, we were told to expect 500,000 bodies. Then 100,000. Well, maybe 10,000. Eventually the exhaustive search yielded - if memory serves - 167 bodies, bodies whose ethnicity couldn’t be reliably established anyway. Wonder how many more than that were killed by NATO. The whole war is a catalogue of NATO crimes with clearly false and often ridiculous justification. Who, as Wesley Clark asked, could have expected a civilian train to be on a rail bridge in the middle of the afternoon?
We also know that the KLA was leaving its protected camps, assaulting Serb positions and retreating back into the camps - classic guerrilla tactics, of course, and ones that were designed to provoke assaults on the camps, which they duly got. Now Kosovo is run by Islamists (but ones who like us, so that’s ok) and mafia. It’s a prime location for pipelines and it has two shiny new US bases, Bondsteel and Monteith, to project power - sorry, security - there as well. As John Pilger also pointed out, part of the terms of surrender was that the previously holdout Serbia would open its economy and public services to Western investment - classic vampire capitalism, and an added bonus of the continuing march east to break more post-Cold War agreements.
Your citizenship questions are interesting, and there’s no easy answer to them, but I don’t think they’re particularly representative of this situation. How about this instead: if Taiwan doesn’t have to be part of China, if Kosovo doesn’t have to be part of Serbia, and if Georgia doesn’t have to be part of Russia, then Abkhazia and South Ossetia don’t have to be part of Georgia. Where will it end? Good question, but what’s good for the goose etc.
philannetta.blogspot.com
In the matter of secession, size might kick in at some level: I’m not sure that it is useful to compare the ten million Taiwanese, the two million Kosovars, and the fifty thousand south Ossetians. What about Georgian enclaves in south Ossetia ? What is your demographic level of choice ? And, to use your analogy, IF south Ossetia (50,000) is entitled to secede, then why not Kosovo (2,000,000) ? Why not Taiwan and Turkestan and Tibet (say 10,000,000 each) ? You can’t have it both ways, Phil - to deny the right to self-determination to Kosovo (and Turkestan, Tibet, Taiwan), but wet yourself over south Ossetian self-determination.
So you support self-determination for Kosovo, Taiwan, Turkestan, Tibet ? Yes ? No ?
In terms of size, perhaps a useful criterion might be the size of the currently smallest population: in Europe, this might be Luxemburg or Andorra or Liechtenstein or San Marino ? How feudal do you want to go ?
Again, this issue of citizenship: even if, let’s suppose, Italy offered citizenship to Italian-Australians across, let’s say, the Riverina, it would not necessarily have any impact on the political status of the Riverina: Italian citizens who cause trouble, like the south Ossetians have caused for Georgia, would politley be asked to piss off back to Italy, and leave the Riverina where it is. Dual citizenship does not necessarily have implications for the territory that those dual citizens live on. If it did, I’m sure that every country in the world would refuse to recognise it. I guess that would have stuffed Putin, he would have had to find some other pretext to invade.
Cheers,
Joe
Who gets to decide when "size kicks in"? There are some 1.7m people in Northern Ireland, and we all know how that went.
When Slovenia, armed and backed by the West, rode roughshod over the constitution and declared unilateral independence (an act that is illegal in most countries), Yugoslavia - not Serbia - Yugoslavia resisted. Croatia followed, and by far the quantitatively and qualitatively largest atrocity in Croatia was "operation Storm" conducted against Croatian Serbs by the Croatian government, because the Croatian Serbs wanted to exercise their own right to self-determination. Villages were raised, thousands murdered, some 250,000 driven out over a period of only days with full NATO complicity. Most of the destruction in Croatia was in areas where Serbs were in the majority but are no longer.
And Serbs did not attack Bosnians, because Serbians are as Bosnian as Croatians or Bosnian Muslims are. "Bosnian" is - or rather was - not a nationality or ethnicity, it simply denoted a geographical area. Muslims, Sebs and Croats who lived in the geographical area called Bosnia were Bosnians.
Hi Ruddegar,
Can I please try to get this straight - Slovenia and Croatia and Bosnia did not have the right, as component republics in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to declare independence, even after an overwhelming vote (and voting is so bourgeois!) - but strips of Croatia and Bosnia containing Serbs are allowed to declare self-determination ? Is that it ? Have I got it right ?
And when did the Croats do these terrible things to innocent Serbs - in 1992, or in 1995, once NATO got its act together ? ’ … in areas where Serbs were in the majority but are no longer.’ Well, that’s what might happen when you play the expulsion game - it might blow back on you.
And yes, Bosnians are Bosnians, both Christians and Muslim. Croats are Croats, not Serbs: they use a Latin script, tend to be Catholic not Orthodox, and do not regard themselves as Serb, and probably never have. Slonenians speak a different language - so no wonder you didn’t declaim that they also were Serbs. Not even Montenegrins are all Serbs, or even mostly Serbs, and even there they voted for independence.
And of course the Kosovars also voted overwhelmingly (vote??? ptuh ! ptuh !) for independence, which might not have been legal but it was done, so suck it up. What 95 % wants, 95 % gets. Kosovo now has overwhelmingly majority rule, under a pro-American government, thanks mainly to Serb brutality.
And actually no, we don’t know yet how Northern Ireland is going to go - my hope is that it will be re-integrated back into Ireland, but that may be still in the distant future. Should Ireland invade it to forcibly integrate it ? No, I don’t think so. Should England go to war with Ireland to keep it subordinated to the English ? No, I don’t think so. Let the people decide - I know this is an unfamiliar principle for Serb-lovers, but eventually that is how things go. Of course, ‘eventually’ can be a long way off.
Let the people decide: even in south Ossetia, if many of the people there wanted to join Russia, then all they had to do was move to north Ossetia, over the mountains, where the ycame from. Let the people decide to move - no problem.
But I gather that the gist of your argument is that the people of Kosovo should not have self-determination, but that the people of south Ossetia should, is that it ?
Joe
No, Joe, that wasn’t the gist of my argument. What I tried, and failed, to infer, was that if we say that people have a right to self-determination, how that right is applied becomes a complex question. If what 95% of the people want, legal or illegal, is what they get, does that apply to all people?
Why should South Ossetians move to Russia if they don’t want to be part of Georgia? "Let the people decide to move - no problem" Yes, there is a problem, there is a problem when some people get to exercice rights to self-determination by forcibly cutting off chunks of land without guaranteeing minoring rights first, as with Slovenia and Croatia, while others, according to you, can exercise rights to self-determination by moving. If the South Ossetians have to move, let Kosovo Albanians move too, would be the logical conclusion to your argument. But no one should have to leave their home, Russian, Georgian, Albanian, Serbian, Croatian…you get the drift I’m sure.
And yes, Slovenia did not have the right to declare independence unilaterally, the Yugoslav constitution clearly necessitated agreement between the republics to dissolve. Just like states or republics in other nations do not have the legal right to simply declare independence. It’s not complicated. But if you say that Slovenia had the right to declare independence simply because they wanted to, then how can you deny that same right to any other group?
Your sarcastic comment regarding Croatia’s bloody expulsion of its Serbs, it’s caustic assertion that somehow the civilians who bore the brunt of this operation deserved it, is quite frankly disturbing. I suppose the 250,000 Croatian Serbs simply "decided to move". It’s funny how guns and bombs and knives can help you decide to relocate in a hurry.
I am uncertain as to why you attempted to explain to me that Croats are Croats and that they use latin script. But thanks. The Innuit, or Inuit, are an Eskimo people inhabiting the Arctic area between Alaska and Greenland, I believe. They, too, are not Serbs.
I believe all people should have self-determination. Not based on hatred and exclusion though. Hitler was voted in by his people; voting guarantees nothing, give me money and I’ll get elected too.
Not only that Ruddegar, but show me critical oil and gas pipelines and I will show you where the West will find its moral justification for the bombing of civilian populations and it’s outrage against Russia for simulating precisely those identical Nato actions and justifications in Georgia.
Ruddegar,
1. 95% support: we are not talking about justification for sdlavery or the eating of left-handed chiuldren here, but self-determination: qwhat percentage support would you suggest "
2. Well, yes, if south Ossetians have become Russian citizens, and they wish to be with Russia, then they go to Russia. They do not ‘take’ south Ossetia with them. Imangine, at a stretch, that Australia offered New Zealanders citizenship and in some region, say Hokainga and all points north, great numbers took up theoffer. I’m not sure how legal that would be, but just suppose. Wouldthat mean that Australia would be justified in occupying Hokianga and Northland ? Or would the NZ government be entitled to say, ‘well, if you want to be Australians, you are welcome to stay but also to go.’ The area would always remain part of New Zealand, until Australia actually invaded it. Oops, that’s what has happened in south Ossetia, is’t it ?
3. Croatians, Slovenians, Kosovars, Bosnians - they are living on territory which has historically been theirs for a very long time, thousands of years in the case of the Kosovars, and the self-determination that they have won refers to jurisdiction over that territory, on behalf of all people on their territory, and it seems to have been the Serbs in one case and now the south Ossetians who have expelled ‘others’ - in fact, the Serbian expulsion coined the term ‘ethnic cleansing’. Basically what these populations have done, Croatia, Slovenia, etc., is to relinquish they Yugoslav citizenship ratherthan take up another citizenship. A parallel situation to that in south Ossetia would have arisen if, say, Austria had offered Slovenes Austrian citizenship, or Albania had offered Kosovars Albanian citizenship - did this happen ? No. Here’s a question: what might happen if Hungary offered people in the Voivodina Hungarian citizenship ?
4. My underastanding about the events in 1995 between Croatia and Sebia is that, after the Serbs tried to extend their conquered bits of Croatia, thanks to NATO bombing, they were driven out not just from the bits that they had conquered but from the rest as well.
5. If Croats, S.lovenes, etc. are actually Sebs, does this mean that Serbs are Croats, Slovenes and Kosovars ? Try telling them that.
6. Slovenia had the right to secede, as an already well-defined political entity with its own recognised government, etc.
7. Croatians live in that part of the former Yugoslavia called Croatia, where tito came from, for example. They are mostly Catholics, not Orthodox, theyir history has been more with Austria and Italy than with Serbia or the Turkish empire. They use one script, the republic of Serbia uses another. They do not wish to be Serb, any more than Serbs wish to be Croat. End of story.
8. Voting does have some cachet, some value in a modern society, it beats brute force and imperialism, but if that’s your thing, go for it.
George,
Whaaaaaa ? So Russia good, US bad, is that it ? Be all and end all ? One do bad thing, another do same thing, so good thing ? Leave logic until you get to school, sonny.
Joe
Hi again Ruddegar,
Have I got this right ?
a. no matter what, south Ossetia has the right to be incorporated into the Russian empire;
b. no matter what, Kosova, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia have no right to self-determination.
Is that it ? Just trying to clear up the issue.
Cheers,
Joe
No, Joe, you haven’t got it right. At no point did I say anything to the effect of either a. or b., which therefore leads me to conclude that either I am woefully inept at conveying the simplest of points, or you are determined to argue against points I simply did not make. It could be either option, I’m not terribly fussed.
Your deliberate misrepresentation of my posts demands a lengthy response and a bemused observation that vehemence is not always a virtue.
To address your points:
1. I would not suggest a percentage.
2. There are, or were, internationally agreed laws regarding the right to self-determination. You can look them up, but neither Slovenia nor Croatia met the criteria when they declared independence. South Ossetia very well may, I don’t claim to be an expert, I merely observe that there are double standards at play. The Helsinki Accords should have guaranteed respect for Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity, but instead, the block of nations that call themselves the "international community" fell all over themselves to recognise Slovenia and Croatia ASAP. Respecting international law and pushing for a diplomatic agreement would have prevented war - but that was not the aim. Interesting, your point re: Aus and NZ, reminds me of something about the US offering Cubans refugee status no questions asked.
3. Yes, Croats, Slovenians, Kosovo Albanians, Bosnian Muslims, all had every right to live where they were. So did Serbs. Equally, nothing more. I’m surprised Hungary hasn’t offered citizenship to people of Hungarian descent in Vojvodina - I’m sure they’ll get around to it soon.
4. Serbs did not "conquer" Croatia, both lived there for centuries. They formed Yugoslavia, together, in order to be independent of larger nations’ dominance. Most of Yugoslavia was not ethnically homogenous, see above point.
5. Don’t know why you keep insisting that Croats and Slovenians are Serbs, I don’t really understand your point, sorry.
6. Being a defined political entity alone does not give a right to secede. Not my rule, international law. Int’l law is in tatters though; I believe the rule of thumb is that you can secede if you promise to put your industry and natural resources up for sale.
7. Yes, a proud history with Italy and Austria - and Germany, too, don’t forget.
The Croatian resistance fought valiantly against Italian, Austrian, German and Croatian government fascists during WWII, they fought to create Yugoslavia alongside Serbs, and Slovenians too, Joe. They may use different alphabets, but they speak the same language and will always, in spite of whatever banana republic government is in power in Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Macedonia or Montenegro, have infinitely more in common with each other than with Germans, Austrians or Italians, nations that only ever sought to subjugate the Balkan people politically and economically by dividing and conquering.
8. I’m all for democacy. Plutocracy is different though, my point was merely that money and media exposure can win elections.
I hope we can both amicably agree that there is little point in continuing this arguement.
Before you jump down my throat re: the "they speak the same language" line, I did not mean Slovenians, I meant Serbs and Croats. Slovenian is a different language….it too, however, is a lot closer to Serbo-Croat or Croato-Serbian, whatever you want to call it, than to Italian or Austrian. And Serbs use both Cyrillic and Latin scripts, fyi.
Inventing ancient languages may be a national pastime in the former Yugoslav states and there may be an unspoken agreement to not tell the rest of the world, but, like it or not, Croats, Serbs, Bosnian Muslims and Montenegrins all speak differently-accented versions of the same language. The accent that they all speak Croato-Serbian or Serbo-Croat in depends entirely on geographical location, not nationality.
Hi Ruddegar,
Yes, I’ll agree with you, there certainly are double standards at play: south Ossetia, with fifty thousand people, on Georgian territory, has, according to you, the right to self-determination. Kosovo, with two million, and a 95 % support for it, is still not entitled to have self-determination. Sounds like double standards to me, or else, of course another blow-job for Putin.
No, Hungary will not offer citizenship to Hungarians in the Voivodina because it would - quite rightly - be interpreted as a hostile act, even a prelude to an act of war.
And let’s not be too precious: citizenship status (Russia’s offer to south Ossetians)and refugee status (the US’s offer to Cubans) are two entirely different matters. Australia offers refugee status to people from many countries. And this als oavoids the much more contentious issue of offering citizenship to people who are not even in the country.
And no, I do not insist that Serbs are Croats, or vice versa. I thought that was your baby.
And I did not suggest that, until the 1990s, Serbia conquered Croatia - but the ycertainly tried to in the 1990s. Do you want to deny that reality ?
Yes, thyere was a Yugoslav Resistance against the Nazis, led by a Croat-Slovene, Tito, and with members from every part of Yugoslavia. Tito struggled to keep the country together by holding back Serbian dominance. After his death in 1979, the serbs thought that they had free rein, and inevitably - with hindsight - this led to the break-up of Yugoslavia. Like you, I mourn its passing, but I would far rather see six or whatever separate republics running their own affairs than one republic totally dominated by one minority ethnic group. The bottom line is simply that the republics did not have quite enough in common, as you cal it, to keep them together. Is this forever ? Perhaps not - perhaps they will re-form alliances and positive relations, and bit by bit, democratically, come back together voluntarily. Perhaps with the present Serbian government, but the ball would be in their court: if they want to go back down the fascist road, then it will be no deal. No more people pushing their mothers over rocky and wintry mountains in wheelbarrows. No more young couple being shot down in the street for being from different ethnic groups. The various ex-Yugoslav republics have said no to fascism, and that’s fine with me. There is still hope, but only as long as Setrbia eschews fascism for good.
Joe
Ruddegar,
To follow on from my last paragraph, have a look at this Guardian article - no, not THAT Guardian, the UK one:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/26/serbia.georgia
There is still some hope for Serbs if they are prepared to treat other people equitably.
Cheers,
Joe
It seems to me that the article says more about its author than his subject matter. "See how well the nasty little natives are getting along in Brcko."
Hope for the Serbs has more to do with their capacity to prevent their government from joining the EU than their people skills I would say.
Maybe my old eyes are playing up, and the odd Shiraz may be blurring my vision, but I can’t find that sentence in the Guradian (UK)article, Rudigar. The point of the article, I assumed, was that many of the Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs in Brcko were not necessarily ‘natives’, but nevertheless were trying to get along with each other, on the assumption that they were all going to be living in Brcko for the foreseeable future. Forgive me if I misunderstood that segregation had been for some time the approved CPA/SPA policy.
I hope and pray that one day, all those living in Brcko, and in Bosnia, and in the former Yugoslavia as a whole, including Kosovars, can work together, associate and socialise together, and intermarry, move freely between countries, in a spirit of equality and voluntary community, with no one group trying to dominate any of the others, as if those others ‘belong’ to it. Nobody ‘belongs’ to anybody else. nobody is anybody else’s f*cking slave, and never again will be, so you national socialists better get used to it.
From your last sentence, Ruddigar, are you saying that membership in the EU is sort of a fate worse than death, or what ? And what has this to do with Kosovo or Ossetia ? Isn’t one of the spin-offs of European integration that local representation is far more achievable ? Oh, I get it now - that means, of course, that strong local powers, like Serbia, would have had less leeway and control over smaller entities. Ergo, down with the EU ! Gotcha !
Joe
Hi again Ruddigar,
This story on Yahoo is very instructive, and for those of us who oppose oppression and imperialism, very heartening:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080828/ap_on_re_eu/georgia
As the news item points out, at the crucial Conference of the Shanghai Group in Tajikistan, no other country supported Russia in its imerialist venture.
And no other country in the world has yet recognised its annexation of bits of Georgia. Not even lick-spittle countries like Venezuela and Cuba. Perhaps Cuba may be keeping shtum while looking over its right shoulder at the US, with the thought that what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.
So it’s not all bad news for the people !
Cheers,
Joe
Christopher Hitchens (who, in spite of his support for the US invasion of Iraq, is more of a leftist than most NM readers) quotes WH. Auden, who wrote forty years ago, on the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the social fascists (as Chou En-Lai called them):
The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech.
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
And the Ogre won’t stop: it will demand and demand and demand that the world recognises its crime as a virtuous act, and it will have plenty of arse-lickers, even amongst NM readers, who will praise whatever it excretes, just like the SPA people did in 1968, scum who might even call themselves ‘left’.
No, the national socialists will not win every battle. Fascism doesn’t always triumph. Not one country in the world yet has recognised Russia’s invasion of Georgian territory, but one can predict those which eventually may do so: Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Sudan, perhaps Iran. There may be some surprises (South Africa, Vietnam, Laos, Tajikistan).
But like the Nazis, Russia will wave the US bogeyman at everybody, its stupid invasion of Iraq in particular, as a rationale for its own actions. Both are shit powers, both have imperialist ambitions, and we all know it. X = X. US fascism = Russian fascism. Neither is acceptable. Both are wrong. Children may have to have this explainedcarefully to them, those who believe that if A is bad, then B must be good. No, children: both A and B are bad. A = B. Both.
So who is going to come out in support of the Ogre ? Which NM reader will put me ‘right’ ?
Joe