Another battle in the 1,000 year Russia-Georgia grudge match
From The Times
August 12, 2008
Retaking Ossetia is just one part of Russia's campaign to reassertdominance over the Caucasus - and defy America
Simon Sebag Montefiore
The Russian tank columns rumbling into Georgia reveal the anger of atiger finally swatting the mouse that has teased it for years. SouthOssetia may seem as distant, trivial and complicated as the19th-century Schleswig-Holstein question but Russia's fury is about much more than the Ossetians. The Caucasus matters greatly to theRussians for all sorts of reasons, none greater than the fact that itnow also matters to us.The troubles in Georgia are not the equivalent of an assassinatedarchduke in Sarajevo. But historians may well point to this littlewar, beside the spectacular Olympic launch of resurgent China, as thestart of the twilight of America's sole world hegemony. If the newGreat Game is for the oil of the Caucasus and Central Asia, the Westmay be in the process of losing it.
I've been visiting Georgia since the fall of the Soviet Empire in1991. I've known all three Georgian presidents since independence, andwitnessed the wars and revolutions of the Caucasian tinderbox. In 1991the chief of the Georgian partisans in the first Ossetian war, adentist turned warlord, drove me up to villages around Tskhinvali,highlands of lusciously green beauty, where a vicious war betweenGeorgian and Ossetian farmers was being waged with the ferocity ofintimate neighbours, using comically armoured tractors instead oftanks.My Georgian hosts leant their guns against a tree and took me to anopen-air feast at a table stacked with delicacies in honour of a localboy killed that day. During the long drunken banquet I asked where theboy was buried. “He hasn't been buried,” replied my host, “he's underyour feet.” Paling, I looked and there he lay, stretched out under thetable, cradled with bouquets of flowers.
To understand this week's events, we must travel back a thousandyears: long before Russia existed, Georgia was a Christian-warriorkingdom. The Caucasus was the natural borderland of the three greatempires of the Near East: the battlefield between Orthodox Russia, theIslamic Ottomans and Persians. In 1783 the embattled King Eralke IIwas forced to claim the protection of Prince Potemkin, Catherine theGreat's partner-in-power. Between 1801 and 1810 Russia swallowed thelast Georgian principalities. In 1918 Georgia enjoyed independence forthree years before Stalin seized it back for Moscow.
No one understood its ethnic complexity and strategic significancelike Stalin, that Georgian romantic turned Russian imperialist, whohad been born in Gori, the town that has been overrun by Russianforces and where a marble temple now stands over the hut where he wasborn. The Ossetians who straddled the border had early sought Russianalliance, earning Georgian disdain. Hence Stalin was accused by hisenemies of being an Ossetian: his father was of Ossetian descent,though long since Georgianised. Stalin drew the borders of the Sovietrepublics to ensure Georgia contained autonomous ethnic entities,South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Adzharia, through which Moscow could keepGeorgia in order.
When that proud, cocky bantam, Georgia, became independent in 1991,the Russian double-headed eagle was humiliated. Ever since, Russianinterference and skulduggery has bedevilled Georgia. Russia encouragedsouthern Ossetia to establish a statelet within Georgia, whose insanefirst President, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, had inflamed ethnic tensions. AsOssetians fought Georgians who themselves rebelled againstGamsakhurdia, I sat in his office: he was a Shakespearean scholar andquoted King Lear to me.
Gamsakhurdia was either murdered or committed suicide. In 1993, hissuccessor Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet Foreign Minister andPolitburo member, lost Abkhazia in another bloody Russian-orchestratedwar. But Shevardnadze won the peace. Georgia, which had longed to bepart of Europe, embraced Western democracy and US friendship. Yet Shevardnadze recognised the limits of Georgian defiance, once tellingme as we flew in 1993 in his plane to make peace with the Kremlin:“The destiny of Russia is reflected in the Caucasus like the rays ofthe sun are reflected in a drop of water.”
Old, autocratic Shevardnadze was toppled in the Rose Revolution of2003 by an energetic and decent if impulsive US-educated lawyer,Mikhail Saakashvili, who hoped to escape Moscow for ever by joiningthe EU and Nato - as did Russia's huge neighbour, Ukraine. Thisprospect of encirclement by triumphant America infuriated Russia.Imagine if newly independent Wales cockily joined the Warsaw Pact.
Russia is no longer the spineless giant of the Nineties: VladimirPutin's musclebound, oil-fuelled authoritarian regime has aggressivelyreinvigorated Russia. He had already shown his ruthless determinationto master the Caucasus by crushing Chechnya. Nato in Georgia wouldhave made that meaningless. The Kremlin has used its clients, Abkhaziaand Ossetia, as Trojan Horses to ruin Tbilisi's independence -recently raising the tension by offering Russian passports to allOssetians and testing Georgian resolve with cross-border skirmishing:the trap of a practised imperial power.Georgia is not guiltless: most Georgians I know care little aboutOssetia even though it is part of sovereign Georgia. But in order tojoin Nato, President Saakashvili wanted to settle Georgia'sinstability by reclaiming Ossetia and Abkhazia. By seizing Tskhinvali,he took one hell of a gamble that Russia wouldn't intervene. Georgiais paying a high price for this. To finish this vicious circle,Russian attacks show how badly Georgia needs EU/Nato protection, yetGeorgia will never get it while embroiled in fighting.
The retaking of Ossetia is a minor part of the Russian campaign. Moresignificant is the attack on Georgia proper, which reasserts Russia'shegemony over the Caucasus, assuages the humiliations of the past 20years, subverts Georgian democracy - and defies and defangs Americansuperpowerdom. The swaggering arrival of Vladimir Putin, now the PrimeMinister, across the border, macho in his tight jeans and whiteleather jacket, shows he, not President Medvedev, remains Russia'sparamount leader.
This war is really a celebration of ferocious force in the realm ofinternational power, a dangerous precedent. The West must protest withunified resolve; Russia both despises Western hypocrisy and cravesWestern approval. Georgian democracy and sovereignty matter. So do ouroil supplies: the West built a pipeline to bring oil from Azerbaijanand Central Asian across Georgia to Turkey, free of Russianinterference.
Russia's clumsy ferocity could ignite a Caucasian tinderbox that evenMoscow cannot extinguish. But faced with Western outrage, the Kremlinmight toss Stalin's words back at President Bush: “How many divisionshas the Pope?” None: Washington and London are not sending the 101stAirborne or the SAS.
Russia, which appears to be pushing its tanks into Georgia tooverthrow its democratically elected president, has demonstratedgleefully the limits of US power. The Empire has struck back andshaken the order of the world.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is the author of Young Stalin
From The Times
August 12, 2008
Retaking Ossetia is just one part of Russia's campaign to reassertdominance over the Caucasus - and defy America
Simon Sebag Montefiore
The Russian tank columns rumbling into Georgia reveal the anger of atiger finally swatting the mouse that has teased it for years. SouthOssetia may seem as distant, trivial and complicated as the19th-century Schleswig-Holstein question but Russia's fury is about much more than the Ossetians. The Caucasus matters greatly to theRussians for all sorts of reasons, none greater than the fact that itnow also matters to us.The troubles in Georgia are not the equivalent of an assassinatedarchduke in Sarajevo. But historians may well point to this littlewar, beside the spectacular Olympic launch of resurgent China, as thestart of the twilight of America's sole world hegemony. If the newGreat Game is for the oil of the Caucasus and Central Asia, the Westmay be in the process of losing it.
I've been visiting Georgia since the fall of the Soviet Empire in1991. I've known all three Georgian presidents since independence, andwitnessed the wars and revolutions of the Caucasian tinderbox. In 1991the chief of the Georgian partisans in the first Ossetian war, adentist turned warlord, drove me up to villages around Tskhinvali,highlands of lusciously green beauty, where a vicious war betweenGeorgian and Ossetian farmers was being waged with the ferocity ofintimate neighbours, using comically armoured tractors instead oftanks.My Georgian hosts leant their guns against a tree and took me to anopen-air feast at a table stacked with delicacies in honour of a localboy killed that day. During the long drunken banquet I asked where theboy was buried. “He hasn't been buried,” replied my host, “he's underyour feet.” Paling, I looked and there he lay, stretched out under thetable, cradled with bouquets of flowers.
To understand this week's events, we must travel back a thousandyears: long before Russia existed, Georgia was a Christian-warriorkingdom. The Caucasus was the natural borderland of the three greatempires of the Near East: the battlefield between Orthodox Russia, theIslamic Ottomans and Persians. In 1783 the embattled King Eralke IIwas forced to claim the protection of Prince Potemkin, Catherine theGreat's partner-in-power. Between 1801 and 1810 Russia swallowed thelast Georgian principalities. In 1918 Georgia enjoyed independence forthree years before Stalin seized it back for Moscow.
No one understood its ethnic complexity and strategic significancelike Stalin, that Georgian romantic turned Russian imperialist, whohad been born in Gori, the town that has been overrun by Russianforces and where a marble temple now stands over the hut where he wasborn. The Ossetians who straddled the border had early sought Russianalliance, earning Georgian disdain. Hence Stalin was accused by hisenemies of being an Ossetian: his father was of Ossetian descent,though long since Georgianised. Stalin drew the borders of the Sovietrepublics to ensure Georgia contained autonomous ethnic entities,South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Adzharia, through which Moscow could keepGeorgia in order.
When that proud, cocky bantam, Georgia, became independent in 1991,the Russian double-headed eagle was humiliated. Ever since, Russianinterference and skulduggery has bedevilled Georgia. Russia encouragedsouthern Ossetia to establish a statelet within Georgia, whose insanefirst President, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, had inflamed ethnic tensions. AsOssetians fought Georgians who themselves rebelled againstGamsakhurdia, I sat in his office: he was a Shakespearean scholar andquoted King Lear to me.
Gamsakhurdia was either murdered or committed suicide. In 1993, hissuccessor Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet Foreign Minister andPolitburo member, lost Abkhazia in another bloody Russian-orchestratedwar. But Shevardnadze won the peace. Georgia, which had longed to bepart of Europe, embraced Western democracy and US friendship. Yet Shevardnadze recognised the limits of Georgian defiance, once tellingme as we flew in 1993 in his plane to make peace with the Kremlin:“The destiny of Russia is reflected in the Caucasus like the rays ofthe sun are reflected in a drop of water.”
Old, autocratic Shevardnadze was toppled in the Rose Revolution of2003 by an energetic and decent if impulsive US-educated lawyer,Mikhail Saakashvili, who hoped to escape Moscow for ever by joiningthe EU and Nato - as did Russia's huge neighbour, Ukraine. Thisprospect of encirclement by triumphant America infuriated Russia.Imagine if newly independent Wales cockily joined the Warsaw Pact.
Russia is no longer the spineless giant of the Nineties: VladimirPutin's musclebound, oil-fuelled authoritarian regime has aggressivelyreinvigorated Russia. He had already shown his ruthless determinationto master the Caucasus by crushing Chechnya. Nato in Georgia wouldhave made that meaningless. The Kremlin has used its clients, Abkhaziaand Ossetia, as Trojan Horses to ruin Tbilisi's independence -recently raising the tension by offering Russian passports to allOssetians and testing Georgian resolve with cross-border skirmishing:the trap of a practised imperial power.Georgia is not guiltless: most Georgians I know care little aboutOssetia even though it is part of sovereign Georgia. But in order tojoin Nato, President Saakashvili wanted to settle Georgia'sinstability by reclaiming Ossetia and Abkhazia. By seizing Tskhinvali,he took one hell of a gamble that Russia wouldn't intervene. Georgiais paying a high price for this. To finish this vicious circle,Russian attacks show how badly Georgia needs EU/Nato protection, yetGeorgia will never get it while embroiled in fighting.
The retaking of Ossetia is a minor part of the Russian campaign. Moresignificant is the attack on Georgia proper, which reasserts Russia'shegemony over the Caucasus, assuages the humiliations of the past 20years, subverts Georgian democracy - and defies and defangs Americansuperpowerdom. The swaggering arrival of Vladimir Putin, now the PrimeMinister, across the border, macho in his tight jeans and whiteleather jacket, shows he, not President Medvedev, remains Russia'sparamount leader.
This war is really a celebration of ferocious force in the realm ofinternational power, a dangerous precedent. The West must protest withunified resolve; Russia both despises Western hypocrisy and cravesWestern approval. Georgian democracy and sovereignty matter. So do ouroil supplies: the West built a pipeline to bring oil from Azerbaijanand Central Asian across Georgia to Turkey, free of Russianinterference.
Russia's clumsy ferocity could ignite a Caucasian tinderbox that evenMoscow cannot extinguish. But faced with Western outrage, the Kremlinmight toss Stalin's words back at President Bush: “How many divisionshas the Pope?” None: Washington and London are not sending the 101stAirborne or the SAS.
Russia, which appears to be pushing its tanks into Georgia tooverthrow its democratically elected president, has demonstratedgleefully the limits of US power. The Empire has struck back andshaken the order of the world.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is the author of Young Stalin
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