No subject

to be had right now. Continued escalation would further victimize the
peoples of Georgia, and Soviet occupation of Georgia would be catastrophic
for Russia and the world over time, and for Russia might well amount to
seizing defeat from the jaws of victory.
Fred Feldman

Russia must prove its diplomatic maturity 
Editorial The Observer, Sunday August 10 2008
Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili is often described as 'pro-West',
although 'pro-Nato' would be more precise, which in most of the former
Soviet Union translates unambiguously as 'anti-Russia'.

But that is not a definition that the North Atlantic alliance should
embrace, especially not in the context of the war currently being waged over
the tiny republic of South Ossetia.

Russia says it has acted to restore a peace that it was mandated to keep in
the region; a peace that was violated when Tbilisi launched an all-out
assault to reclaim the separatist enclave last week. Since that attack
claimed the lives of Russian soldiers based in South Ossetia, Georgia,
according to the Kremlin, has declared war.

Georgia, meanwhile, says it moved against the separatists only after
constant provocation, stoked by the Kremlin. Moscow's zealous intervention,
according to Tbilisi, confirms that the former imperial power in the
Caucasus still sees the region as its private military playground.

There is truth in both accounts, and both sides have a store of historical
grudges to draw upon in portraying their opponent as the reckless aggressor.
Trying to identify 'who started it' leads into a tangle of nationalist
mythology, conspiracy theory and disinformation.

But if the origins of the dispute are obscured by historical detail, the
strategic miscalculations of recent days are clear. The biggest belongs to
Georgia.

President Saakashvili has pledged to 're-integrate' the areas that broke
away from Georgia when it gained independence from the Soviet Union -
Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Both are supported by Moscow. Mr Saakashvili
desperately wants his country to join Nato and knows that the existence of
enclaves inside his borders but outside his jurisdiction is a serious
obstacle to that goal. At a summit in Bucharest earlier this year Nato held
out the prospect of membership at an unspecified point in the future. Mr
Saakashvili appears to have interpreted that lukewarm invitation as a
statement of unalloyed solidarity and a licence to bring the separatists to
heel. He calculated that Russia would not dare invade a Nato
member-in-waiting. He was wrong.

Georgia tried to play the card of mutual Western assistance, which it did
not yet hold. As a result it has badly damaged its credentials as a reliable
candidate for membership, a fact that Russia has been all too eager to point
out.

Until recently Georgia seemed inclined to accept a compromise of substantial
autonomy for South Ossetia, just short of independence. That, given Russia's
deep involvement in the region, is clearly the best deal Tbilisi can hope
for. But the scale of Moscow's response - a full-scale air and ground
onslaught - suggests it now intends to use Georgia's blunder as a pretext to
humiliate and disable the country, to crush its aspirations ever to
challenge Russian authority. It claims licence for its actions from the
West's support for Kosovan independence. The crude calculus is that, if Nato
can help Kosovo break away from Russian ally Serbia, Russia can wrest South
Ossetia from Nato ally Georgia.

Quite aside from the bogus analogy (Mr Saakashvili has many flaws but he is
no Slobodan Milosevic), the Kremlin approach includes a strategic mistake.
Georgia is sabotaging its Nato membership bid all by itself, which gives
Russia the opportunity to play responsible regional peacekeeper. Since it
knows Nato will not go to war over South Ossetia, the Kremlin could use this
conflict to rebut the idea that it still grieves the loss of its old
satellites and itches to reclaim them by force. Dmitri Medvedev, Russia's
new President, is still an unknown quantity in the West with a chance to
reshape his country's global image. With some shrewd diplomacy he could
escape the shadow of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, whose record in the
Caucasus will always be coloured by memories of brutal repression in
Chechnya.

Russian diplomats often complain that the West judges their country by
obsolete Cold War stereotypes, seeing any action in relation to its
neighbours as neo-Soviet aggression. That is certainly the Georgian
perspective. The message should go out from Nato capitals to Tbilisi that
the Alliance expects diplomatic maturity from prospective members. That
means signalling clear readiness for an immediate ceasefire. The message to
Moscow should be that, by moderating its response to Georgia's foolish
gambit and accepting a truce, the Kremlin can prove those Cold War
stereotypes false.