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South Ossetia Isn't KosovoWhatever Moscow says, there are at least six significant differences between the two situations.

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, Aug. 18, 2008, at 12:00 PM ET

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir PutinWhile it is almost certainly true that Moscow's action in the Ossetian and (for good measure) the Abkhazian enclave of Georgia has been, in a real sense, the revenge for the independence of Kosovo (on Feb. 14 Vladimir Putin said publicly that Western recognition of Kosovar independence would be met by intensified Russian support for irredentism in South Ossetia), it is extremely important to bear in mind that this observation does not permit us the moral sloth of allowing any equivalence between the two dramas.

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Perhaps one could mention just some of the more salient differences?

Russia had never expressed any interest in Ossetian or Abkhazian micronationalisms, while Georgia was an integral part of the Soviet Union. It is thus impossible to avoid the suspicion that these small peoples are being used as "strategic minorities" to negate the independence of the larger Georgian republic and to warn all those with pro-Russian populations on their soil of what may, in turn, befall them. This is like nothing so much as Turkish imperialism in Cyprus and Thrace and Iraq, where local minorities can be turned on and off like a faucet according to the needs of the local superpower.
Kosovo, which was legally part of Yugoslavia but not of Serbia was never manipulated as part of the partition or intervention plan of another country—the United States, in fact, spent far too long on the pretense that the Yugoslav federation could be saved—and, for a lengthy period, pursued its majority-rule claims by passive resistance and other nonviolent means. NATO intervention occurred only when Serbian forces had resorted to mass deportation and full-dress ethnic "cleansing." Whatever may be said of Georgia's incautious policy toward secessionism within its own internationally recognized borders, it does not deserve comparison with the lawless and criminal behavior of the Slobodan Milosevic regime. And in any case, it is unwise for Moscow to be making the analogy, since it supported Milosevic at the time and has excused him since on the less-than-adorable grounds (barely even disguised in Russian propaganda) of Christian Orthodox solidarity. It also armed and incited the most extreme and least pacifist forces in Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Does anybody remember the speeches in which the Russian ambassador to the United Nations asked the General Assembly or Security Council to endorse his country's plan to send land, air, and sea forces deep into the territory and waters of a former colony that is now a U.N. member state? I thought not. I look at the newspaper editorials every day, waiting to see who will be the first to use the word unilateral in the same sentence as the name Russia. Nothing so far. Yet U.N. Resolution 1441, warning Saddam Hussein of serious consequences, was the fruit of years of thwarted diplomacy and was passed without a dissenting vote.
The six former constituent republics of Yugoslavia, which all exercised their pre-existing constitutional right to secede from rule by Belgrade, are seated as members of the United Nations, as, indeed, is Georgia. Twenty out of 27 states of the European Union have also recognized the government of Kosovo as an entity de jure as well as de facto. The Kosovar population is estimated at 1.8 million, which makes it larger than that of some existing E.U. member states. Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia ever even remotely intends to sponsor any statehood claims for the tiny local populations of Ossetia and Abkhazia? On the contrary, these peoples will be reassimilated into the Russian empire. So any comparison with Kosovo would have to be not to its breaking away but to its potential absorption and annexation by Albania. And nobody has even proposed this, let alone countenanced the unilateral stationing of Albanian armed forces on Kosovar soil.
Heartbreakingly difficult though the task has been, and remains, the whole emphasis of Western policy in the Balkans has been on de-emphasizing ethnic divisions; subsidizing cities and communities that practice reconciliation; and encouraging, for example, Serbs and Albanians to cooperate in Kosovo. One need not romanticize this policy, but it would nonetheless stand up to any comparison with Russian behavior in the Caucasus (and indeed the Balkans), which is explicitly based on an outright appeal to sectarianism, nationalism, and—even worse—confessionalism.
The fans of moral equivalence may or may not have noticed this, but the obviously long-meditated and coordinated Russian military intervention in Georgia comes in the same month as explicit threats to the sovereignty of Poland and Ukraine, and hard on the heels of a Russian obstruction of any U.N. action in the case of Zimbabwe. Those who like to describe Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev as reacting to an "encirclement" of Russia may wish to spill some geopolitical ink on explaining how Kosovo forms part of this menacing ring of steel—or how the repression of the people of Zimbabwe can assist in Moscow's breakout strategy from it.

If it matters, I agree with the critics who say that the Bush administration garnered the worst of both worlds by giving the Georgians the impression of U.S. support and then defaulting at the push-comes-to-shove moment. The Clintonoids made exactly that mistake with Serbian aggression a decade and more ago, giving the Bosnians hope and then letting them be slaughtered until the position became untenable—and then astoundingly, and even after the Dayton Accords, repeating the same series of dithering errors in the case of Kosovo. The longer the moment of truth was postponed, the worse things became. But this in itself argues quite convincingly that there was no deliberate imperial design involved. Will anyone say the same about Putin's undisguised plan for the forcible restoration of Russian hegemony all around his empire's periphery? It would be nice to think that there was a consistent response to this from Washington, but I would not even bet someone else's house on the idea, which is what President Bush has given the strong impression of doing in the low farce and frivolity of the last two weeks.

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Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Photograph of Vladimir Putin by Alexey Nikolosky/AFP/Getty Images.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

Mr Hitchens leaves out a few salient points in his analysis of the Russo-Georgian conflict. Georgia invaded South Ossetia; a republic that had been de facto independent of Georgia since 1992. If the Georgians had not invaded, none of this would have happened.

When the Soviet Union broke up there were, and still are many anomalies in the borders of the new states. Georgia is one example; Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenia is another. Under the Soviet Union these boundaries were internal and meant little or nothing for the peoples living there. Over night they became international frontiers meaning a great deal. In Ossetia (both North and South) Georgian villages have lived side by side with Ossetian villages for hundreds of years. Therefore Mr Hitchens's claim that the South Osestian enclave was left there on purpose is absurd.

The Georgian President, Mr Saakashvili, is not exactly an example of truth, justice and the American way. He came to power in a coup d'etat against former Georgian President Schvardnadze. He then called for elections to legitimise his claim to power. The elections, held in January of 2008, only eight months ago, were widely questioned by international observers. The OSCE said they were not free and fair by democratic standards. Indeed Mr Saakashvili's own people began to demonstrate against him in exactly the same manner as they did against Mr Schvardnadze.

The Russian troops in South Ossetia and Abkzazia were there because of UN resolution. The Sochi Agreement was codified by the United Nations in August 1993 giving Russian peace keeping forces every right to be in both of the break away regions of Georgia. What are peace keepers to do when the area they are guarding is being invaded?

Don't get me wrong: there has been a lot of wanton brutality from the Russian forces; there is no excuse for that. What I want to say is the picture is not black and white, there are no "good guys" and "bad guys" here, only bad and worse.

--Robert from Norway

(To reply, click here.)

Now here is how they are the same, South Ossetians were just as dead when the ethnic based tensions erupted. And when South Ossetians got in charge, to be totally honest, there were ethnic based reprisals against Georgians. I'm not saying one group is better than the other, but its clear from both sides, that they don't live together.

Your problem is seeing the world as a cold war between Russia and the United States. Russia may indeed be the voice for these small people, but it's about South Ossetians, not about Russia. Ossetia is an ancient people, not some recent uprising of a religious group or something of that nature.

Again, I cannot stress how irrelevant it is, about how the Soviet Union treated Ossetia. Ossetians were dominated by the much larger Soviet Union, just as they can be dominated by the much larger Georgia. But throughout all that time, they remained a separate culture with their own language, their own traditions, and their homeland intact.

There would be nothing good about sacrificing them to the Georgians now. Democracy or not, this is a democracy that has proven time and time again it does not restrain itself or protect ethnic minorities.

--Robert2008

(To reply, click here.)

The only thing I can really say I've learned about the band of ethnic instability running from the Adriatic to the Aral is that someone can come up with a preferred set of facts to generate a historical narrative to "prove" anything--absolutely anything. Perhaps we could convince ourselves that the Golden Horde was never legally dissolved, and the whole mess should be handed back to the Mongolians.

So Hitch has some fine points of constitutional law that were not met to his satisfaction the better part of a hundred years ago--you might as easily prove that Vermont isn't legally part of the United States. Lovely for the debating society; of less application in the wider world.

There are ultimately no laws to govern the creation and dissolution of nations, no reliable police, no competent court--centuries of effort and good intentions to the contrary. My inclination is to support the rights of identifiable peoples to self-determination, and I try to fall back on that principle when it becomes hard to work out which lines on a map ought to be drawn in ink and which in pencil. Hitchens' evaluations of Yugoslav borders as inconsequential and Georgian borders as sacrosanct seem to be built on little more than his dislike for Russia. They're dislikable enough, I grant him, but this seems a flimsy basis for questions of war and peace.

--ckbryant

(To reply, click here.)

Hitchens' first argument that Kosovo is not equivalent to South Ossetia is not really an argument, but merely a protest. He argues that since the USSR never had any interest in South Ossetia while Georgia was one of its republics, that now it's simply using South Ossetia as a pawn to get back at Georgia's tilt to toward the West. Perhaps that is what is going on, but what is the West's interest in Kosovar independence, and how long has that mattered to us? Russia warned that acknowledging Kosovo would set a precedent for over 200 other regions that yearned for independence. That Russia itself may have started this crisis does not negate its argument.

Hitchens is also on shaky ground in his second argument. He is correct that Georgia cannot be compared to Milosevic's Serbia. However, the link between the acknowledgement of Kosovo 6 months ago and South Ossetia's independence is what we're talking about, and not about the justification for Russia's invasion of Georgia. Indeed, acknowledging seceding regions of nations is one of the thorniest political problems, and one that has plagued us since the rise of the nation state. Proving that this is a very complicated issue, Hitchens is correct that Russia's support of the integrity of Serbia makes it look hypocritical now, in the same way that our support of Kosovo's secession seems hypocritical. It really does seem to work both ways.

The real argument that I have with Hitchens is that he seems to simplify this situation to almost cartoonish dimensions by his decrying of moral equivalence. The Russians do seem to be handling Georgia in a thuggish manner. However, Russia seems to be acting rationally, if not honorably, to protect its perceived interests. We should have seen this coming, and we should have taken steps to avert this, because it is a distraction from the all important combat of global terrorism, of which Russia is an integral part.

--tychobrahe

(To reply, click here.)

(8/19)

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