Returning from Gori
Having hesitated for a short while, Russia’s army entered Southern Ossetia and Georgia and is now withdrawing its units as it has achieved its objectives. The situation is changing many of our prejudices
Photo: Mitya Aleshkovski, AP
The war has been won in five days, by the military, by the country, by the nation, and by its leadership. The battling society has returned with a victory from the Caucasus, it is now a victorious society. It now possesses a new sense of dignity and new rights. The conservative arguments that the population should stay away from politics for its own sake are losing credibility even amongst their supporters. The two leaders have reached success showing that frictions within the Medvedev-Putin tandem had been overestimated. The Mechel story confirmed that those were not deep enough to cause damage and demonstrated improved coordination between the two in the key spheres. The tandem is strong by its strategically important agenda. The political framework of the nascent modernization, rather than “good relations”, underlies it. The country needs unified leadership and does not want to hear about any controversy.
Within three weeks, the tune changed both inside and outside Russia. Having insisted for years on conservative sanctity of sovereignty and territorial integrity, all of a sudden it engaged in a blitz operation “for rights”, and for humanitarian rights at that. It is the European warfare of the 21st century. To carry it out, President Medvedev violated his own concept of Russia’s foreign policy (where peacekeeping operations were strictly conditioned on UN Security Council decisions). Having crossed the red border of dreaming about collective security, Russia entered the adult world and began talking the language of grownups. The grownups responded roughly, making no allowances for the juniors. In the meantime, Russia’s CIS allies were dumbfounded by the U-turn the Kremlin has made from conservatism to interventionism. The war is over; at least, it is considered to be over. Russian troops are returning to their bases, and people expect more than just plain expert commentary on TV footage. It is certainly much easier to keep arguing whether or not Russia should have entered Tskhinvali and Gori, but deep analysis is more practical from any point of view. If we do not call a spade a spade (such as ”Russia’s humanitarian intervention” for instance) our stories would consist only of euphemisms, shouts of “hurray!” alternating with “down with!”
Russia has to adopt many decisions under these new conditions that no one expected. The basis of the CIS and the relationships with NATO and the US are being revised. Additionally, EU feelings have also been affected. The attempt by the US to isolate Russia has run up against globalization. Isolating a power in the globalized world would require a “racization”, that is, describing Russia as an alien pathologic subject both contagious to the rest of the world and guilty of being contagious at the same time. Saakashvili, in the presence of Condoleezza Rice, vividly expressed such racism in his scandalous speech about “the hordes of Russian barbarians”. The existence of such racism is now poisoning discourse both with the US and with Europe. Some experts talk of “losing the information battle”, but in fact, those who are “winning” it are changing the subject.
Russia is now entering a new dangerous world with its grand games. It is no accident that Germany’s Foreign Minister Steinmeier has called this world “indefinite”. Everyone has noticed the weakness of the USA and the failure of Western strategy in the Caucasus. However, Russia did have to take Tskhinvali because of that weakness. In rebuffing Georgia’s onslaught, we entered a dark forest filled with such notions as “the right to humanitarian intervention”, “the responsibility for ethnic cleansings and genocide”, and “peace enforcement”. These new feebly developed areas of international law were discussed in Europe but not in Russia. They were conservatively being postponed until a later date, and suddenly it turned out that August 2008 was in fact the later date.
“The indefinite world” will keep on presenting unpredictable challenges. What would a Russian expert have to say about them? The victory in the Caucasus is no workshop for those political analysts who would prefer to protect the rhetoric of sovereignty by that of rightful interference. The concept has to be changed! However, it is not easy to do this once you cast a glance at Russia’s Foreign Minister, who had on more than one occasion demanded that the US should chose between Russia and Georgia as a “virtual project”. Was that flattery or an ultimatum? Still, such expressions do not mean that Lavrov is weak; they mean that Russia’s foreign policy dogma rests on the relationship between Russia and the US. The good old “hotline” style implied that any problem could be resolved by a single telephone call. In reality, none of those problems has been removed, while the risks have continued to grow. Russia’s Washington-oriented foreign policy is the oldest sacred cow of its Foreign Ministry, and Lavrov’s ultimatum sounded like the whining of a robbed cowboy.
Some time ago, Putin used to be “everybody’s moderator”, and the Foreign Ministry could not spoil things too much. However, the time has come for indefinite world politics. Revising means elaborations rather than “expert comments”. A ministry cannot be smarter than the expert community as long as the latter is split into opposing groupings. They keep telling us that the experts are not influential because of their disagreements. However, conversely, the policy of taking no part in devising politics is turning into getting involved in arguments over trifles. Russia’s government will not be able to work out the concepts on their own.
The policy of values should answer for itself. At this stage, it does not do that well. They believe that comparing the Ossetian operation with the Chechen War would do the trick, adding that the Russia’s right to integrity is in conflict with the right of the former Georgian territories to secession.
Let us cast a sober glance at the goals of the two wars. Year after year, official Georgia was giving priority to its territorial integrity over the future of the people inhabiting the disputed lands. Issuing Russian passports only freshened up the Georgian doctrine of, “you get the citizens; we get the land”. (Or, in a more blatant domestic version, “Let us sweep the Ossetian garbage through the Rokskiy Tunnel [the tunnel connecting Northern and Southern Ossetia].” Georgia’s doctrine of ethnic cleansing expresses itself vividly here; Saakashvili’s goal in the war is the territory less the population, Abkhazia without Abkhazians, and Ossetia without the Ossetians. In this respect, Saakashvili’s war for the territories differs considerably from that of Putin for the Chechen people as a part of Russia. No matter how harsh that war was, the Chechens were not driven from their lands, and the territory was never the goal.
Nevertheless, Russia will have to think about Europe in this situation. This will require broad political debate (and unfortunately not in the Parliament). In the meantime, society will have to change its agenda from a military one to one of peace. The events in the Caucasus exclude the possibility of returning to the pre-war status quo ante (“the way things were before”). President Medvedev, who captured Tskhinvali but disdainfully refused to take Tbilisi, is a president who may require that his subordinates fulfill their duties and that society maintain the law and order that is the prerequisite for the country’s modernization.
