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Georgia, Russia, Gas, Oil and Kosovo

The attack and entry of Russian troops into Georgia has already claimed an estimated 1500 civilians lives. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili gave an 11 minute interview on the BBC describing what he called an outright Soviet invasion. He claims that the Russians are intentionally targeting civilians and oil pipelines going to Europe. He also points out, in response to Russian claims of protecting a minority in Southern Ossetia that this has been the excuse for previous Soviet invasions of Poland, Hungary, Finland, Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, and although he doesn't add, this was also the excuse of the Nazis for invading the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia.

There are two salient points to touch upon in other coverage of the conflict. The first is a theme of Russian imperialism, that it is doing this primarily to try to reassert influence over the southern Caucus region where the construction of alternative oil and gas pipelines going to Europe could undermine Russian control (where the current pipelines are) over the region's energy resources. A long piece in the New York Times by James Traub comments on this:

Marshall Goldman, a leading Russia scholar, argues in a recent book that Mr. Putin has established a "petrostate," in which oil and gas are strategically deployed as punishments, rewards and threats. The author details the lengths to which Mr. Putin has gone to retain control over the delivery of natural gas from Central Asia to the West. A proposed alternative pipeline would skirt Russia and run through Georgia, as an oil pipeline now does. "If Georgia collapses in turmoil," Mr. Goldman notes, "investors will not put up the money for a bypass pipeline." And so, he concludes, Mr. Putin has done his best to destabilize the Saakashvili regime.

The book by the Harvard scholar mentioned, Marshall Goldman, "Petrostate" is available to search inside on Amazon.com. The fact that this may largely be a play to control the region's energy resources, as opposed to simply being a case for "humanitarian intervention", increases the chance that the west could ponder a military or economic response.

The second theme is the role of Kosovo in the Russian justification for its actions. This is also touched upon in the piece by James Traub in the New York Times while recounting the history of the conflict:

This brief interval of talk came to an abrupt end two summers ago, when Mr. Saakashvili sent troops to retake the Kodori Valley in Abkhazia -- in order, once again, to curb banditry (of which there was, in fact, a great deal). Both the Abkhaz and the Russians took this as a sign that Georgia was prepared to fight to regain its former province. Indeed, last year Mr. Saakashvili traveled to the Abkhaz border and promised a crowd of Georgian refugees that they would be back home within a year.

The breakaway regions were thus a stick of dynamite waiting to be lit. And Mr. Putin struck a match. Although Russia, as the peacekeeping power, was charged with preserving an international consensus that recognized Georgia's claims over Abkhazia, Russia lifted sanctions on Abkhazia last March. This had nothing to do with local events: Mr. Putin had tried for years to prevent Kosovo from declaring its independence from Serbia, and when the Kosovars went ahead, with strong American and European support, last February, Mr. Putin responded by leveling a blow at America's Caucasus darling.

Soon afterward, the Russian Duma held hearings on recognition of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria, a pro-Russian breakaway republic in Moldova. Moscow argued that the West's logic on Kosovo should apply as well to these ethnic communities seeking to free themselves from the control of a hostile state. And then, in mid-April, Mr. Putin held out the possibility of recognition for the breakaway republics.

Now things began to degenerate rapidly.

Another article in the New York Times mentions the same theme:

When Kosovo won Western backing for its bid for independence from Russia's historical ally Serbia, the Kremlin answered by vowing to win similar status for South Ossetia and for the Black Sea enclave of Abkhazia, which fall inside Georgia's borders. Georgian leaders, meanwhile, hoped to quiet the conflict once and for all before applying for NATO membership.

Regardless of how slighted the Russian leadership actually feels for the support of the West for the unilateral declaration of independence of by Kosovo, it has allowed them to stoke feelings of Russian nationalism as a cover for invading and taking innocent lives in a nearby democracy. By what clear criteria can the west say that its support for the breakaway republic of Kosovo is different than Russian involvement in Southern Ossetia?

Posted on August 09, 2008 | Comments? (0)