Savior of Peace and Life or Biggest Bully on the Playground? You Decide.
August 10th 2008 10:39
Well what kind of weekend has it been! The world goes to hell in a hand basket but, damn it, Stephanie Rice managed to pull off Australia’s first gold medal of the Beijing Olympics. God bless the Australian obsession with sport. Only the Olympics could obscure the invasion of a sovereign state and the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Gee, it’s almost as if someone planned it that way. You have to hand it to the Russians. They have years of experience in how best to manipulate the media.
But seriously, the Olympics have provided a stunning backdrop to a crisis that threatens to spark an explosion in hostilities in the Caucasus. You can almost imagine the chaos as some of the world’s most prominent leaders gathered in Beijing for the Opening Ceremony, and sat within feet of each other as reports came through of rapidly escalating warfare. You know it’s a bizarre set of events when Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd reports to the media that he witnessed US President George W Bush having a heated exchange with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin right smack-bang in the middle of the Opening Ceremony festivities. It would have been almost like sitting next to a fighting couple in the movies. Except one half of the couple just invaded another and the other wants to make sure his partner stops aerial bombing of civilian casualties.
The Caucasus has never been the most stable of regions to begin with. That kind of thing happens when a world power goes from top of the heap to the bottom again and has to suffer the indignity of seeing countries it had formerly dominated regain their own autonomy. Georgia has, thus far, been one of the more successful stories in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. The root of the problem comes from pure geographical coincidence: Georgia happens to border Russia in the hotbed of chaos: the Caucasus. In the Caucasus, some degree of cultural autonomy may be given but ask anyone and they’ll tell you: Russian authority is the law. The Caucasus is also home to one of Russia’s most embarrassing failures: Chechnya. With the spectre of years of conflict in Chechnya looming over the Russians, it may come as a welcome surprise to the Russians that unlike the Chechnyans there are people in the Caucasus that would willingly bow to Russian government. Problem? Those people aren’t from Russia.
South Ossetia has been a pain for the Georgians for quite some time. A part of Georgia, it has a majority Russian population and the people of South Ossetia have made clear their intention to try and join back to the Russian Federation. Rebel activity in the region led to Georgian authorities trying to re-take control of the region militarily, which the Russians perceived as an act of aggression before moving in with the force of the Russian armed forces to drive the Georgians back out of their own land. The Russian offence is tantamount to an invasion, but not according to the Russians. No. The Russians say they are protecting the rights of the South Ossetians and respecting their wishes to become part of Russia. As the headline of Russian newspaper Pravda boldly claims: “Russia: Again Savior of Peace and Life”.
Right. So how have the “Savior of Peace and Life” gone about their protection of South Ossetians? Aerial bombardments, missile attacks, ground troops... And an expansion of hostilities outside the South Ossetian region and into the rest of Georgia. The rest of the world has called on Russia to cease their advance into Georgia and for the two sides to negotiate a settlement. The Georgians know what’s in their best interests: Russia is thirty-times the size of Georgia and could crush them without international support. So the Georgians have made the first move and called for a ceasefire, withdrawing from the erstwhile capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, and leaving it to the Russians.
The Russian response? Well, thus far, there has been none. The Russian’s are still occupying Georgian territory, gained by military force and are continuing to move resources into the area. What remains to be seen is how the negotiations play out: if the Georgians allow the Russians to annex South Ossetia it will give the Russians a boost in their campaign to regain status as a superpower nation. After all, when Hitler annexed Czechoslovakia for almost identical reasons the West let it go unchecked and it led down the path to World War II. If the Georgians insist on regaining the South Ossetian territory, it is likely the Russians will continue their military campaign against the Georgians. Either way, the Georgians appear to be in a lose-lose situation. It’s just a question of how much they want to lose to the biggest bully in the play ground.
Such is what happens when you toy with the “Savior of Peace and Life”.
But seriously, the Olympics have provided a stunning backdrop to a crisis that threatens to spark an explosion in hostilities in the Caucasus. You can almost imagine the chaos as some of the world’s most prominent leaders gathered in Beijing for the Opening Ceremony, and sat within feet of each other as reports came through of rapidly escalating warfare. You know it’s a bizarre set of events when Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd reports to the media that he witnessed US President George W Bush having a heated exchange with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin right smack-bang in the middle of the Opening Ceremony festivities. It would have been almost like sitting next to a fighting couple in the movies. Except one half of the couple just invaded another and the other wants to make sure his partner stops aerial bombing of civilian casualties.
The Caucasus has never been the most stable of regions to begin with. That kind of thing happens when a world power goes from top of the heap to the bottom again and has to suffer the indignity of seeing countries it had formerly dominated regain their own autonomy. Georgia has, thus far, been one of the more successful stories in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. The root of the problem comes from pure geographical coincidence: Georgia happens to border Russia in the hotbed of chaos: the Caucasus. In the Caucasus, some degree of cultural autonomy may be given but ask anyone and they’ll tell you: Russian authority is the law. The Caucasus is also home to one of Russia’s most embarrassing failures: Chechnya. With the spectre of years of conflict in Chechnya looming over the Russians, it may come as a welcome surprise to the Russians that unlike the Chechnyans there are people in the Caucasus that would willingly bow to Russian government. Problem? Those people aren’t from Russia.
South Ossetia has been a pain for the Georgians for quite some time. A part of Georgia, it has a majority Russian population and the people of South Ossetia have made clear their intention to try and join back to the Russian Federation. Rebel activity in the region led to Georgian authorities trying to re-take control of the region militarily, which the Russians perceived as an act of aggression before moving in with the force of the Russian armed forces to drive the Georgians back out of their own land. The Russian offence is tantamount to an invasion, but not according to the Russians. No. The Russians say they are protecting the rights of the South Ossetians and respecting their wishes to become part of Russia. As the headline of Russian newspaper Pravda boldly claims: “Russia: Again Savior of Peace and Life”.
Right. So how have the “Savior of Peace and Life” gone about their protection of South Ossetians? Aerial bombardments, missile attacks, ground troops... And an expansion of hostilities outside the South Ossetian region and into the rest of Georgia. The rest of the world has called on Russia to cease their advance into Georgia and for the two sides to negotiate a settlement. The Georgians know what’s in their best interests: Russia is thirty-times the size of Georgia and could crush them without international support. So the Georgians have made the first move and called for a ceasefire, withdrawing from the erstwhile capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, and leaving it to the Russians.
The Russian response? Well, thus far, there has been none. The Russian’s are still occupying Georgian territory, gained by military force and are continuing to move resources into the area. What remains to be seen is how the negotiations play out: if the Georgians allow the Russians to annex South Ossetia it will give the Russians a boost in their campaign to regain status as a superpower nation. After all, when Hitler annexed Czechoslovakia for almost identical reasons the West let it go unchecked and it led down the path to World War II. If the Georgians insist on regaining the South Ossetian territory, it is likely the Russians will continue their military campaign against the Georgians. Either way, the Georgians appear to be in a lose-lose situation. It’s just a question of how much they want to lose to the biggest bully in the play ground.
Such is what happens when you toy with the “Savior of Peace and Life”.
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