[Marxism] "The real wake-up call of South Ossetia"

[Fred Feldman]

This is of course a bourgeois contribution to a bourgeois debate. But I
think that real as the specifically Georgian issues and nationality problems
are, you cannot leave out of this picture the utter contempt with which the
US and its imperialist allies have treated Russia since the fall of what was
left of the workers' state. I think the Russians -- not just the top
leaders, but even many of the ordinary people, and no, not just the
anti-semites -- would almost welcome a new cold war if that meant that
Washington had to treat Russia as an almost equal, as was true of the Soviet
Union by the 1960s.

I want to point out that the New York Times, bowing its humbled head, I have
no doubt, to Joaquin Bustelo's lashing on Marxmail of their unreliable
coverage of the supposed Russian drive to conquer Georgia, now includes in
the midst of an article full of anti-Russian rumor-mongering, the following
disclaimer:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/world/europe/12georgia.html?hp
"The level of fighting involved, however, remains uncertain amid the welter
of inflated and contradictory reports from both Georgian and Russian
sources. There are no independent observers with either country's forces,
and verifying claims about military activity was not immediately possible."
Go Joaquin!
Fred Feldman



http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/georgia.russia1/print
The real wake-up call of South Ossetia
The anti-Russian lobby is in full flow, but there are more important lessons
to be learned from the Russo-Georgian conflict
James Poulos 
Monday August 11 2008 11:25 BST 

Article historyAs Russian columns advance into Georgia proper, columns in
the American press fill with dire warnings and withering contempt for anyone
so puerile as to ever trust a Russian. George Bush's infamous glimpse into
Putin's soul failed to recognise what nostalgic cold warriors have always
insisted was pinned to his sleeve: a heart that beats for lost imperial
glory, and a ruthless ambition to match. Blogging at the Weekly Standard, 

John Noonan describes the Georgia conflict as the consequence of
"Chamberlain-esque conflict aversion". National Review's Jonah Goldberg
cries that "this is what happens" when the west takes its eye off the
Russians to enjoy the Olympics. 

"This", of course, is the brutalisation of a hapless, innocent, fledgling
democracy - a role played to the hilt by Georgian President Mikheil
Saakashvili, who has spared no absurdity in his increasingly haggard efforts
to trigger a western bailout of his hasty and ill-advised weekend invasion
of long-autonomous South Ossetia. 

Saakashvili's overheated rhetoric - "If the whole world does not stop
Russia," he has remarked, "then Russian tanks will be able to reach any
other European capital" - is illustrative of the kind of feverish thinking
that is sure to transform a regional crisis into a global one. But where the
frustrated desperation that Saakashvili has brought upon himself seems to
explain his descent into hyperbole, American commentators have no such
excuse. The real wake-up call placed by the Russo-Georgian conflict is not a
clarion to a new cold war, but a head check for pro-democracy ideologues -
whose idealism has ratified a style of sloppy thinking and rote sloganeering
that actually threatens the durability of representative government around
the world.

The anti-Russia lobby is giving the pro-Israel lobby a run for its money,
hyping the settling of scores among two European, Orthodox Christian
countries as more dangerous to the peace and security of the west than any
clash of civilisations or jihad ever was. Casting this conflict as a
9/11-style litmus test of patriotism and humanity, New Criterion editor
Roger Kimball praises John McCain as a man who "knows evil and repudiates
it", deriding Barack Obama as one "crippled by moral relativism" for daring
to admit "fault on both sides". For Kimball, Russia, "uncivilised" as our
terrorist enemies, affords the added menace of a disgruntled ex-superpower
hell-bent on "an imperialist mission". Meanwhile, at Slate, Anne Applebaum
balefully warns that Russia may make "Islamic terrorism" look like "the
least of our problems". 

This will only come true if the west, in a paroxysm of fear and loathing,
makes an enemy of Russia - which, indeed, would be a far more formidable foe
than Iran, Hizbullah, and al-Qaida combined. No strategy against jihad can
succeed with Russia aligned actively against the west. But no Russian
official has expressed a desire to eradicate Georgia from the face of the
earth, or drive the Georgian people into the sea. Nor are motives like these
driving an illegal and destabilising Russian nuclear programme. Nor is our
friendship with Georgia quite as deep and profound as our friendship with
Israel. 

Despite moans of wishful outrage to the contrary, the small, democratic ally
is not a Weberian ideal type or a Platonic form. Saakashvili is a deeply
imperfect leader, prone to beating his domestic opposition in the streets,
and the Georgia he leads is a country that has been fragmented from birth. 

The anti-Russian reaction obscures the basic particularity of the Georgian
situation, and all the history that informs it. These lost, sound judgment
in pursuit of even a forthright agenda of assertive democracy promotion
becomes impossible. Treating the Georgia we see on the map as if it were as
sovereign and whole as the state of Israel, or Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania, sets us down a path of danger and confusion. But the
pro-democracy ideologues confusing big hearts for big brains make this
mistake by design. 

The fact of the matter is that the territorial integrity of Georgia has been
continuously undermined from within since the Abkhazians and South Ossetians
first rebelled in the early 1990s. A central contention of the anti-Russian
crowd holds that Georgia today would have been saved, if only the west had
the courage to admit the country into Nato at once. But Nato membership was
in large part imagined to smooth Georgia's reassertion of sovereignty in
Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In short, the integrity of Nato was to be
gambled on precisely the sort of move Saakashvili has just engineered to
such catastrophic effect - and on the odds that Russia would abandon its
citizens in those territories to frank and open aggression. How democratic.

Another talking point advanced relentlessly by the anti-Russians proclaims,
per Saakashvili, "today Georgia, tomorrow the world". The editors of the
Washington Post have railed that:

The principles at stake, including sovereignty and territorial integrity,
apply well beyond the Caucasus. To abandon Georgia and its fragile
democratic Rose Revolution would send a terrible signal to other former
Soviet and Warsaw Pact republics that to Moscow's dismay have achieved or
are working toward democracy and fully independent foreign policies. 

Would that these sacrosanct principles had applied to Serbia, which fought
on just those grounds to keep Kosovo an integral part of its recognised
territory. But the west recognised that European integration and American
good faith would both have been profoundly damaged by stiffing the Kosovans;
and in a sound calculation that combined realpolitik with democratic
principle, Kosovo was recognised as an independent state of the sort that,
soon, Russia will be recognising Abkhazia and Ossetia as. Indeed, it is hard
to see how the Georgian taste for democracy is any weaker than the Kosovan,
or how the fate of Abkhazia and Ossetia affects the fate of Poland, the
Czech Republic, Hungary, or the Baltics - long-sovereign nation-states
without ungovernable autonomous regions, and Nato members to boot. 

The fact remains that even if Russia were to squander its advantages and
foolishly conquer all of Georgia, the consolidation of democratic,
representative government on mainland Europe would be unaffected. American
foreign policy, however, would not be. As much as we must work not to make
an enemy of Russia, we cannot rule out the possibility that Russia, in its
zeal to teach Georgia a lesson it will never forget, may be willing to risk
making an enemy of America. Given the jingoism coming from American
quarters, Russia enjoys, as is its wont, plausible grounds for appealing to
the simple logic of tit for tat. 

The natural response is the firm but fair stance taken up by Barack Obama
and the Bush administration - cognisant of the complex of blame in the
Caucasus, but adamant that Russia not devastate Georgia without consequence.
The alternative, typified by the anti-Russian caucus present within the
McCain campaign and the American commentariat, is to romanticise Georgia and
demonise Russia out of all proportion - not so dreadful, as election-year
shenanigans go, but for the most imprudent and destructive policy that must
follow upon it.

About this articleClose James Poulos: The real wake-up call of the
Russo-Georgian conflict
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Monday August 11 2008.
It was last updated at 16:33 on August 11 2008.