Mikhail Saakashvili might be the darling of the west, George Bush’s beacon of democracy in the darkness of the Caucasus, but he is not subtle. Which is a shame, because the current game requires a degree of caution, a smidgen of wisdom, and above all, the experience to understand the peculiar fragility of the moment.
Much of the English-language media rushed to explain the recent violence in the Caucasus in terms of big, nasty Russia threatening small democratic Georgia.
There was a plethora of references to the Cold War, and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. While the newsroom hacks might have enjoyed, in a Proustian fashion, indulging their reminiscences from their misspent youth in the all too public medium of the national press, it quickly became clear that they were getting it badly wrong.
There is a parallel emerging with the Czech experience: the Georgians too have now been betrayed by both their own government, and by the great Western powers.
What limited room they had to oppose their government’s undemocratic, violent, controlling excesses before what could one day become known as the latest “Russo-Georgian War” has shrunk yet further now they know it’s not just the Azeri interior minister that will come to Saakashvili’s aid, but also NATO.
Wars & rumours of wars.
In this case, the story in the press really started with the Russian response to a fatal Georgian attack on legitimate Russian peacekeepers. That attack was lost in a boozy hack’s shrugged shoulders as he drawled: “They do that kind of thing there, it happens all the time, it’s not important”.
When the Georgian army razed the regional capital Tskhinvali to the ground, people started paying attention. Not because of any threat to the civilian population, but because some were slightly confused about the difference between Georgian ground-based missile launchers and Russian bombing. The ensuing coverage somehow failed to mention the fact that the last time the Georgian president mobilised his forces it was to quell incipient rebellion by his very own people against his “democratic” government.
Also missing was the crucial fact that, whatever the long back story, in this instance it was highly predictable that Russia would respond in this way to the Georgian army’s attack on legitimate Russian peacekeepers in the region, and the blitzkrieg launched by the Georgian army on the regional capital Tskhinvali.
The reality is that in this game there are few good guys. Talk to people on the ground in Tblisi, Gori, Tskhinvali or Poti, they’ll tell you that Kokoity’s a crook, Saakashvili’s mad, the Russians only want the territory for the sake of the good old days, and the west only wants it for oil.
Rose-tinted shades
Many now say that the strategic battle was won by the US, the battle on the ground by Russia, and Saakashvili was victorious in the media war. He was ubiquitous.
Some Georgians noted that, seeing as he spent so much time on foreign TV stations, and giving long rambling speeches to anyone who would listen, it was a miracle he had time to give any orders to anyone.
On English and US TV, he was the hero of the Rose Revolution bravely fending off the red threat. On Russian TV, he nibbled his tie, ducked from what he thought an attack on him (but which was ironically merely the distant thunder of his own guns) and had his gestures analysed in comparison with those of Hitler. On Georgian TV… they say one of his speeches lasted half a day.
Where NATO?
Had Georgia been a member of the anti-Russian aggressive bloc, then we could have had a proper World War One-style start to World War Three.
Thanks to this, those who favour keeping NATO small, and those who want to prod the bear till it bleeds, are both stronger. NATO as a bloc, and Washington as its policy hub, are more polarised than they’ve been in years.
While the Russian bear might have emerged wounded from the media war on this one, and may be sulking, licking its wounds, it will certainly have noticed that. And a polarised opponent is a weakened opponent.
So, who are the losers? Finally the Czech parallel comes into its own – remember how Europe abandoned the Czechs in 1938 and again in 1968. So, too, this time the losers are: the residents of the ruined cities of Tskinvali and Gori; all those in Georgia who hoped the West would defend its stated ideals not its pipelines; and those who worry about the rising tide of extremist nationalism sweeping the region.
Georgian democrats see the government they loathe bolstered, and its army replenished – to a great extent thanks to the US – but where they led, others followed. They now face an increasingly violent future and a very real risk of being drawn into the undeclared state of war which plagues much of the Caucasus.
Factors in that instability include the knock-on effects of the brutal Chechen conflict, local banditry and serious organised crime – all added to centuries of ethnic tension and imperial meddling by great powers a long way from those beautiful mountains.
This was a situation that people on the ground have been working to defuse for decades, and one which, thanks to a misplaced desire to recreate the Great Game, or the Cold War (depending upon whose column you read), is now as perilous as it was in the years which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Georgians fear this is not the end of it, and discussion rages about what will be next – Sevastopol? Transdnistria? Nagorno-Karabakh? Iran?