The Americans arrive Georgia

Russia and Georgia

The Americans arrive

Aug 14th 2008 | GORI, MOSCOW AND TBLISI
From Economist.com

What next for Georgia, as American military cargo-planes land in Tbilisi?

AP

AMERICA'S George Bush delivered a stark warning to Russia this week that led Russia to begin to pull back its forces in Georgia. Mr Bush sent his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, to Georgia and told his defence secretary, Robert Gates, to organise a humanitarian-aid operation. The first American military aircraft landed at Tbilisi airport on Thursday August 14th.

This conflict is about more than the two separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, or displacing Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s hot-headed president. It is about Russia, resurgent and nationalistic, pushing its way back into the Caucasus and chasing others out, and reversing the losses Russia feels it has suffered since the end of the cold war.

The fact that Georgia is backed by the West made it a particularly appealing target. In fighting Georgia, Russia fought a proxy war with the West—especially with America (which had upgraded the Georgian army). All this was a payback for the humiliation that Russia suffered in the 1990s, and its answer to NATO’s bombing of Belgrade in 1999 and to America’s invasion of Iraq.

With the smoke of battle still in the air, it is impossible to say who actually started it. But, given the scale and promptness of Russia’s response, the script must have been written in Moscow. The rattling of sabres has been heard in both capitals for months, if not years. Russia imposed sanctions on Georgia and rounded up Georgians in Moscow. In revenge for the recognition of Kosovo’s independence earlier this year, Mr Putin established legal ties with the governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

In the late spring, Russia and Georgia came close to a clash over Abkhazia but diplomats pulled the two sides apart. A war in Georgia became a favourite subject in Moscow’s rumour mill. In early July Russia staged a massive military exercise on the border with South Ossetia. At the same time Russian jets flew over the region “to establish the situation” and “cool down Georgia’s hot-heads”, according to the Russians.

South Ossetia is a tiny patchwork of villages—Georgian and South Ossetian—which was easy to drag into a war. It is headed by a thuggish former Soviet official, Eduard Kokoity, and run by the Russian security services. It lives off smuggling and Russian money. In early August Georgian and South Ossetian separatists exchanged fire and explosive attacks. South Ossetia blew up a truck carrying Georgian policemen and attacked Georgian villages; Georgia fired back at the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali.

What happened next is less clear. Russia claims that Mr Saakashvili treacherously broke a unilateral ceasefire he had just announced, ordering a massive offensive on Tskhinvali, ethnically cleansing South Ossetian villages and killing as many as 2,000 people. What triggered the Georgian action, says Mr Saakashvili, was the movement of Russian troops through the Roki tunnel that connects South Ossetia to Russia.

Georgia started to shell and invade Tskhinvali. Then the Russian army moved in. The picture Russia presented to the world seemed clear: Georgia was a reckless and dangerous aggressor and Russia had an obligation, as a peacekeeper in the region, to protect the victims. Russia’s response was predictable. One thing which almost all observers agree on is that Mr Saakashvili made a catastrophic mistake by walking into the Russian trap.

Russia was prepared for the war not only militarily, but also ideologically. Its campaign was crude but effective. While its forces were dropping bombs on Georgia, the Kremlin bombarded its own population with an astonishing propaganda campaign. One Russian deputy reflected the mood: “Today, it is quite obvious who the parties in the conflict are. They are the US, UK, Israel who participated in training the Georgian army, Ukraine who supplied it with weapons. We are facing a situation where there is a NATO aggression against us.”

In blue jeans and a sports jacket, Mr Putin, cast as the hero of the war, flew to the Russian side of the Caucasus mountain range to hear hair-raising stories from refugees that ranged from burning young girls alive to stabbing babies and running tanks over old women and children. These stories were whipped up into anti-Georgian and anti-Western hysteria. What Russia was doing, it seemed, was no different from what the West had done in its “humanitarian” interventions.

There was one difference, however. Russia was dealing with a crisis that it had deliberately created. Its biggest justification for military intervention was that it was formally protecting its own citizens. Soon after Mr Putin’s arrival in the Kremlin in 2000, Russia started to hand out passports to Abkhaz and South Ossetians, while also claiming the role of a neutral peacekeeper in the region. When the fighting broke out between Georgia and South Ossetia, Russia, which had killed tens of thousands of its own citizens in Chechnya, argued that it had to defend its nationals.

The biggest victims of this war are civilians in South Ossetia and Georgia. Militarily, Mr Putin has won. But all Russia has got from its victory so far is a ruined reputation, broken ties with Georgia, control over separatist enclaves (which it had anyway) and fear from other former Soviet republics.

A six-point peace plan negotiated by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, recognises Georgian sovereignty but not its integrity. In practice, this means that Russia will not allow Georgia back into Abkhazia and South Ossetia. According to the same plan, Russia should withdraw its troops to where they were before the war broke out.

The ceasefire is signed, but it still needs to be implemented. The early signs were not good with looting, killing and rapes in villages in both Georgia and South Ossetia. On Wednesday the Americans announced that they would send military aircraft and naval forces to deliver humanitarian aid to the Georgians. This seemed to make an impression on the Russians, who soon began to withdraw.

Other former Soviet republics, including Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Ukraine, have been dealt a lesson, about both Russia’s capacity to exert its influence and the weakness of Western commitments. America’s inability to stop or deter Russia from attacking its smaller neighbours has been devastatingly obvious in Georgia over the past week.

Yet the people who are likely in the end to pay the biggest price for the attack on Georgia are the Russians. This price will go well beyond any sanctions America or the European Union could impose. Like any foreign aggression, it will lead to further stifling of civil freedoms in Russia. The war in Georgia has demonstrated convincingly who is in charge in Russia. Just as the war in Chechnya helped Mr Putin’s rise to power in 1999, the war in Georgia may now keep him in power for years to come.