by Alex Evans | Aug 10, 2008 | Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia, South Asia
In an age when media coverage is such a significant dimension of armed conflict, the question of who’s cast as the goodie and who’s the baddie is not a small one. So who’s winning the narrative high ground over South Ossetia?
Until the fighting began, the answer – in western Europe and the US, at least – would clearly have been Georgia. Look at the regular stories over the past few months of Russian sabre-rattling towards Georgia, including YouTube footage that seems to show Russian fighters downing a Georgian UAV.
Those stories dovetailed perfectly with a growing mood of suspicion towards Russia on many fronts; as Jules’s post on Friday observed, the image of Russian tanks rolling in to South Ossetia immediately prompted “dark memories of Afghanistan, Prague, Berlin”.
But a couple of pieces of commentary over the weekend suggest a growing backlash against Mikheil Saakashvili among the centre left European commentariat. In Saturday’s Guardian, Mark Almond tersely dismisses the idea of “plucky little Georgia” standing up to the Russian leviathan: “the cold war reading won’t wash”, he says. Instead, he argues, the conflict in South Ossetia
…has more in common with the Falklands war of 1982 than it does with a cold war crisis. When the Argentine junta was basking in public approval for its bloodless recovery of Las Malvinas, Henry Kissinger anticipated Britain’s widely unexpected military response with the comment: “No great power retreats for ever.” Maybe today Russia has stopped the long retreat to Moscow which started under Gorbachev …
Anyone familiar with the Caucasus knows that the state bleating about its victim status at the hands of a bigger neighbour can be just as nasty to its smaller subjects. Small nationalisms are rarely sweet-natured …
Thomas de Waal, writing in today’s Observer, agrees. While Russia is behaving badly, he says, the same’s true of Georgia too:
Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili seems to care less about [South Ossetians] than about asserting that they live in Georgian territory. Otherwise he would not on the night of 7-8 August have launched a massive artillery assault on the town of Tskhinvali, which has no purely military targets and whose residents, the Georgians say, lest we forget, are their own citizens. This is a blatant breach of international humanitarian law …
Saakashvili is a famously volatile risk-taker, veering between warmonger and peacemaker, democrat and autocrat. On several occasions international officials have pulled him back from the brink. On a visit to Washington in 2004, he received a tongue-lashing from then Secretary of State Colin Powell who told him to act with restraint. Two months ago, he could have triggered a war with his other breakaway province of Abkhazia by calling for the expulsion of Russian peacekeepers from there, but European diplomats persuaded him to step back. This time he has yielded to provocation and stepped over the precipice.
The provocation is real, but the Georgian President is rash to believe this is a war he can win or that the West wants it. Both George Bush and John McCain have visited Georgia, made glowing speeches praising Saakashvili and were rewarded with the Order of St George. But Bush, at least in public, is now bound to be cautious, calling for a ceasefire.
The reaction in much of Europe will be much less forgiving. Even before this crisis, a number of governments, notably France and Germany, were reporting ‘Georgia fatigue’. Though they broadly wished the Saakashvili government well, they did not buy the line that he was a model democrat – the sight last November of his riot police tear-gassing protesters in Tbilisi and smashing up an opposition TV station dispelled that illusion. And they have a long agenda of issues with Russia, which they regard as more important than the post-Soviet quarrel between Moscow and Tbilisi. Paris and Berlin will now say they were right to urge caution on Georgia’s Nato ambitions at the Bucharest Nato summit.
by Jules Evans | Aug 9, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia
One of the interesting questions in the Georgia – Ossetia – Russia conflict is who is calling the shots.
On the Ossetian and Russian side, is Dmitry Medvedev, the young president who many think is the puppet of Putin, calling the shots? It’s interesting to contrast the rhetoric of Putin and Medvedev in the last few days. Medvedev has been quoted as saying: ‘”Under the Constitution and the Federal law … I must protect the life and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they are”.
That’s a Westernized lawyer speaking, almost as if apologizing to the West. ‘Look, I don’t really want to send in the tanks, but you understand, I must, it’s in the constitution.’
I wonder if Medvedev had any say on the movement of Russian armed forces at all. I think Putin would have called the shots on this one. He’s seemed much more up for a confrontation in his comments, saying ‘Of course there will be consequences’ when Georgia invaded Ossetia.
But Putin was quoted yesterday as saying: “There are lots of volunteers being gathered in the region, and it’s very hard to withhold them from taking part. A real war is going on.” This sounds a bit like Lebanon talking about Hezbollah, or the PLO talking about Hamas. ‘We’d like to call a ceasefire, but you know, these volunteers, it’s out of our hands.’
Meanwhile, who’s in charge in Georgia? Mikhail Saakashvili’s chief press spokesman in Tblisi is an American government official. The city is crawling with CIA spooks. You can’t get into a lift in the Radisson without seeing some yank with a crew-cut and shiny black shoes. Did the Georgians tell the Americans what they planned to do? Did the Americans agree? Or are they being pulled into a stand-off with Russia against their will?
This is the weird thing with proxy wars, it’s hard to define who is in control of what. But be assured that Russia will see America’s hand behind Georgia’s actions, even if Saakashvili has been operating more autonomously. This is not just a stand-off between Georgia and Ossetia. It’s a stand-off between Russia and the US, over the borders of NATO.
by Daniel Korski | Aug 9, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia
Following the Georgian War from the Tel Aviv beaches lends a different perspective. The $ 22 million in military exports from Israel to Georgia belie a much deeper security relationship. Numerous ex-IDF generals provide military advice to the Tblisi government while Israeli hardware – especially pilotless drone aircraft- has been shipped by the plane loads.
But the link is also philosophical – both countries seem themselves as to “outposts” in hostile neighbourhoods. When a colleague of mine asked President Mikheil Saakashvili who his political heroes were, he mentioned De Gaulle, Ataturk and David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founder. An Israeli delegation recently visiting Tblisi was told by the Georgian president : “When Israel is harmed, Georgia is harmed as well,” and he later swore: “The only place in the world where I feel at home is Israel.”
Recently, the Israeli press claimed the outgoing government of Ehud Olmert had decided to halt sales of military equipment to Georgia because of objections from Russia and to give Israel leverage with Moscow in its attempts to persuade Russia not to ship arms and equipment to Iran. But these reports have been denied by the Georgian government, as well as Israeli diplomats.
With the Israel-Georgian links tight, any reader will doubtlessly ask whether Georgia will now take the role of Israel in the Second Lebanese War or that of Hezbollah? That is, will Georgian forces undermine Russia’s conventional army and air superiority with Hezbollah-style attacks, using a sophisticated blend of conventional and asymmetric tactics; or will they try to take on the much larger Russian force in a conventional attack?
To thicken the plot, the Israeli company said to be providing advice to the Tblisi government is one Defensive Shield, owned by General Gal Hirsh, the former commander of the 91st division of IDF’s Northern military command and one of the first general officers to retire before the Vinograd commission reported on Israel’s failures during the Second Lebanese War.
Whilst this is early days, it looks like Georgia has chosen to fight like the IDF rather than Hezbollah. Russian tanks were able to roll towards the capital of South Ossetia without road-side bombs etc. and the clashes have until now looked conventional – thus giving Russia the advantage.
But at the same time, Moscow also looks like it is trying to fight like the IDF, with reports that Russian fighters bombed non-military targets, including the Black Sea port of Poti. This will not help Moscow win any international PR competition (for a crude Russian attempt, see here) and may drive the Tblisi government to contemplate unconventional tactics. Perhaps time to send for Sheikh Nasrallah’s men for a few military tips on the next phase of the war…
by David Steven | Aug 8, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia
In Georgia, official websites are being defaced with pictures comparing President Saakashvili to Hitler… The blog – I Love Bonnie – has this screenshot from the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs site:
Georgia's Saakashvili as Hitler
Civil.ge has good coverage, or see our snapshot on netvibes.
by Richard Gowan | Aug 8, 2008 | Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia
The international response to events in Georgia is still at the declaratory stage, and some analysts predict a long struggle. It’s not a good sign when the Finns are talking about “fully-fledged war” (the Finns don’t have a lot of luck: the had the EU presidency during the Lebanon war in 2006, and now they’re chairing the OSCE).
But a couple of things seem clear already. Firstly, this war is not going to end the way the Georgians presumably wanted: a lightning move by their forces creating a fait accompli in South Ossetia that Russia would have to accept. Russia has already nixed that, so Georgia is in a position where it cannot achieve its initial war aim. (I am at a loss to imagine how the Georgians ever thought they could achieve it, as doing so would have required an element of surprise that they couldn’t pull off, but whatever). Logically, it should pull back and look for a deal to consolidate some gains, but that’s not what tends to happen in the cases…
The second thing that’s pretty clear is that South Ossetia is in an unholy mess. As Jules points out, it’s tiny, and there are increasingly credible reports of a death toll in the hundreds – the Ossetes are claiming 1000+. Out of a population of 60,000. Media images imply that physical destruction has been significant. And if the Georgians decide to try to slug it out with the Russians, not only in Ossetia but in Abkhazia and Georgia proper, this damage is going to spread and intensify.
(NB: the really scary scenario is that the Georgians will now decide that their best hope of winning global sympathy, or even direct military aid, is to fall back into their own territory and get lots of CNN coverage of their heroic resistance. Logically, the Russians should refuse to play along, but again, I don’t trust in that).
What seems probable is that, after an indeterminate period of violence, we will end up with a situation in which South Ossetia is under full or partial Russian control, and a wreck. If there was a ceasefire, two basic options would be on the table. Russia could declare South Ossetia a separate state, or even part of Russia – the West would not recognize this, and the Russians would have to handle clearing up the wreckage, as they did in Chechnya. If the outcome is less clear-cut, however, it may be necessary for the international community to (i) patrol a ceasefire line and (ii) pick up a least part of the reconstruction burden.
As far as the peacekeeping part goes, I rather doubt we’ll return to the status quo ante: a dysfunctional mixed force of Russians, Georgians and Ossetes doing joint patrols, monitored by OSCE military observers. The likely alternatives are (i) a light Ceasefire Observation Mission, which could well be created out of the OSCE presence, or by enlarging the UN Observer Mission in Georgia, which currently only watches the Abkhazia situation and (ii) a heavier interpositional military mission, along the lines of the UN forces in Cyprus and the Golan Heights, though probably not on the scale of that in Lebanon. I think we can rule out any larger civilian-military peacebuilding mission – the reconstruction will stay separate.
If you were going for the interpositional military option, who’d do it? NATO is out of the question, and the OSCE doesn’t do military forces beyond the unarmed observer level. That leaves (i) the EU (suggested by the Estonians, but might look too like NATO in Disguise to the Russians), (ii) the UN (not impossible, although if we’re talking about European troops, they’ll want a special command structure that reduces their reliance on UNHQ, as they have in Lebanon) or (iii) an ad hoc multinational force. In all cases, I’d expect the bulk of the force to be European. The obvious lead country is Germany: it has a history of trying to sort out the Caucasus, and it’s got some troops to spare, unlike France and the UK…
In theory, I’d prefer a force made up of higher-end Latin Americans (Argentina, Brazil, Chile) as they’re intelligent peacekeepers and relatively impartial – the problem for any European force, whatever its flag, is that it’ll be pulled in all directions by the EU’s splits over Russia policy. But the LAs are in Haiti, and I don’t think that EU governments would accept such a slight to their collective ego.
I expect to be proved wrong by events. It will all look different in the morning.
