AGGreen
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 Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 5:59 pm Post subject: From Russia With Hate: Blaming the Victim |
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Blaming the Victim
By Matthew Continetti
The Weekly Standard | 8/19/2008
Blaming the victim is nothing new. But, in the days since Russian tanks
first rolled into democratic Georgia, we have been rather surprised at the
alacrity with which some--on both the left and right--have blamed that tiny
country for the onslaught, and the West for encouraging Georgia's
liberalization. That encouragement, it has been argued, led Georgian
president Mikhail Saakashvili to believe he could use military force to
quell insurgents in the breakaway province of South Ossetia, thereby all but
guaranteeing Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's retaliatory assault. This is
not just a foolish argument, it is a pernicious one. It masks the true
nature of the conflict and assumes that all the actors in this drama are
moral equals. They are not.
Putin has been pressuring Georgia for years. Indeed, Russian despots have
long considered the southern Caucasus, along with Eastern Europe and the
Baltic States, their personal stomping grounds. There is no need to rehearse
the long, complicated, and bloody history; suffice it to say that the
tradition did not end with the Soviet empire. In the Caucasus, for example,
Russia almost certainly had a hand in the fall of Georgian nationalist
president Zviad Gamsakhurdia in 1992, as well as that of Azerbaijan's
president Abulfaz Elchibey in 1993. Both were replaced by pro-Moscow
strongmen. But Russian hegemony over Georgia was upset in November 2003,
when the pro-Western democrat Saakashvili came to power.
Saakashvili cuts a colorful figure. And his rise set a powerful example. The
Rose Revolution that ushered in a new era for Georgia was the first of the
"color revolutions" bringing youthful democrats to Russia's near abroad.
That is probably why Putin, who on his borders seeks client autocracies, has
done so much to undermine it. He has used Georgia's territorial conflicts
with the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to weaken
Saakashvili personally and undermine the Georgian people's national
aspirations. To that end, Russia began to distribute passports to the
Abkhazians and South Ossetians as early as 2004. It used its power to
appoint Russians and pro-Moscow locals to positions in the territories'
independent governments. And it built up its military presence in both
places under the guise of peacekeeping operations.
At first the warfare was economic. "Trouble started brewing in 2006," writes
Edward Lucas in The New Cold War, "when from March to May Russia imposed an
escalating series of import restrictions, first on wine, vegetables, and
fruits; then on sparkling wine and brandy, finally Georgian mineral
water--at the time one of the country's most important exports." That July,
Lucas continues, "Russia abruptly closed the only legal land border
crossing" with Georgia. It was the equivalent of a blockade. Georgia had
done nothing to provoke these punitive measures. It was Saakashvili and
democracy that offended Putin.
On September 27, 2006, Saakashvili ordered the arrest of four Russian GRU
officers whom he accused of plotting a coup. He paraded them in front of the
cameras. Moscow was not amused. Putin recalled his ambassador from Tbilisi
and, according to Lucas, "cut postal, phone, and banking links with
Georgia." Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, announced a price spike
specific to Georgia. The following month Putin's government began to detain
and expel ethnic Georgians living in Russia--more than 2,300 of them,
according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
Some were Russian citizens. "Russian authorities denied basic rights to many
of the detained," the authors from Human Rights Watch wrote, "including
access to a lawyer or the possibility of appealing the expulsion decision
taken against them. Most were given trials lasting only a few minutes.
Georgians were held in sometimes appalling conditions of detention and in
some cases were subjected to threats and other ill-treatment. Two Georgians
died in custody awaiting expulsion."
In March 2007, Russian military forces attacked villages in Abkhazia that
had recently fallen under Georgian control. This was an illegal act, and
when the United Nations investigated the incident Moscow did not cooperate.
Another attack--one that failed--occurred in Georgia proper, near Tbilisi,
in August 2007. Russian intransigence followed that incident, too.
Then, in April, Putin issued an order that, according to Johns Hopkins
professor Svante E. Cornell, treated Abkhazia and South Ossetia "as parts of
the Russian Federation." Also around this time, Russian MiGs began
destroying Georgian unmanned aerial vehicles. Russia increased its troop
deployment in Abkhazia. And in July, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
was about to visit Georgia, Russian jets flew over South Ossetia in a show
of force. Also that month, thousands of Russian troops went to the Georgian
frontier for so-called "training exercises." According to the New York
Times, Russian cyberattacks on Georgian computer networks began "as early as
July 20."
Such was the pattern of Russian belligerence prior to Saakashvili's
commitment of ground forces to South Ossetia in early August. Russia views
that decision, of course, as its casus belli. But even here, the story may
be more complicated than Georgian provocation and Russian reaction. For his
part, Saakashvili wrote in the Washington Post last week that "a massive
assault was launched on Georgian settlements" in South Ossetia just hours
after his government sent a peace envoy to the territory.
"Our government then learned," Saakashvili went on, "that columns of Russian
tanks and troops had crossed Georgia's sovereign borders. The thousands of
troops, tanks and artillery amassed on our border are evidence of how long
Russia had been planning this aggression." So Saakashvili sent in his
troops, and the war began.
Whatever the precise sequence of events, however, nothing Saakashvili did
provided a reason for Putin to invade Georgia proper; or to bomb Georgian
targets in the days after the initial ceasefire; or to charge Saakashvili
with crimes against humanity; or to attempt regime change in a democracy
that abides by international norms and seeks integration in the liberal
international order. Nothing.
Nor is it true that the ultimate blame for this conflict lies with the
United States and its NATO and EU allies. It is true that these nations and
alliances encourage democratic governance, free markets, and the promotion
of human rights in all countries, including those in Russia's near abroad.
And it may well be that Russia sees many of the independent states on its
borders, so long under its hegemony, moving in a liberal direction. But why
does Russia feel threatened by this? And what say ought Russia to have over
the decisions of other governments to choose freedom and prosperity?
No one forced Georgia or Ukraine or Poland or Latvia or Lithuania or Estonia
to move toward Europe and the United States. The elected leaders of those
countries decided for themselves. And they made that decision partly because
they understand the distinctions between dominance and submission, freedom
and slavery, prosperity and penury, aggression and comity. They lived those
distinctions. Is it too much to ask that we learn from our friends, and call
a culprit a culprit and a victim a victim? |
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