A FEW months ago Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s new president, did not
think he would be recognising the independence of two separatist
regions of Georgia and heading into direct confrontation with the West.
When he met Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, in St Petersburg
in June, both seemed happy. War did not feature in Mr Medvedev’s plans;
he was even considering an early visit to Tbilisi. But when the two
leaders met again in early July, the temperature was far chillier. The
night before, South Ossetian and Georgian forces had exchanged fire. Mr
Medvedev never made it to Tbilisi: instead Russian tanks poured into
Georgia.
Did Russia’s security chiefs fear that the two presidents might
agree on something that would spoil their long-planned conflict? Did
Vladimir Putin, Mr Medvedev’s patron and prime minister, crave a small,
victorious war? Or did Mr Saakashvili think Mr Medvedev was too soft to
respond to Georgia’s attempt to regain control over South Ossetia? The
answer may never be known. But after barely 100 days in office, the
soft-spoken Mr Medvedev was cast in the unlikely role of war leader.
His initial job appeared to be as Mr Putin’s spokesman. But he
quickly got a taste for war. This former lawyer may have been
overcompensating for his civilian background. At any rate, on August
26th he stood beneath the two-headed Russian eagle and solemnly
announced the Kremlin’s decision to recognise the independence of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia. A day earlier the Russian parliament had
demanded that Mr Medvedev do just that.
Mr Medvedev said he had no choice and had to protect human lives.
The decision, he argued, was forced on him by Georgia’s aggression and
“genocide” against South Ossetia. But the argument is spurious. It is
true that, in the early 1990s, when Georgia was barely a state, its
nationalistic leaders (one military commander is still hiding in
Russia) committed atrocities in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But it is
also true that more than 200,000 Georgians were driven out of Abkhazia
in a burst of ethnic cleansing, and that Russia backed Abkhazia
militarily.
Abkhazia had the trappings of a nascent state, but South Ossetia was
a chessboard of villages (Georgian and Ossetian) which suffered under a
Moscow-sponsored, thuggish and corrupt regime whose main job seemed to
be to provoke Georgia. Mr Saakashvili made mistakes: he was in too much
of a rush to take back the enclaves and did too little to disown
Georgia’s nationalist past. His worst mistake (which he does not admit
to) was to order the shelling of Tskhinvali, South Ossetia’s capital,
on August 7th. But this was not, as Russia claimed, genocide; the death
toll was fewer than 200. Moreover, the ethnic cleansing of Georgians in
South Ossetia is all too evident: Georgian villages have been destroyed
and thousands of Georgians displaced by South Ossetian militia under
Russia’s watch.
< ="text/" ="http://www.economist.com//adcode1.js">
< ="text/" ="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/main.economist.com/worldart;abr=%21webtv;sect=nonsubscriber;count=;sect=world;pos=v5_art350x300;sz=350x300;tile=1;;sect=europe;ord=8113082445524349?">
< ="http://m1.2mdn.net/879366/flash_1_2.js">
< id=":D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="FLASH_AD" width="300" height="250">< name="movie" value="http://m1.2mdn.net/1448084/global_emba_300x250.swf">< name="flashvars" value="clickTAG=http%3A//ad.doubleclick.net/click%253Bh%3Dv8/372c/3/0/%252a/v%253B206871097%253B0-0%253B2%253B7047083%253B799-350/300%253B27844638/27862517/1%253B%253B%257Eaopt%253D2/1/ba/0%253B%257Esscs%253D%253fhttp%3A//www4.gsb.columbia.edu/emba/overview/partner/emba-global%3Fadid%3D1152">< name="quality" value="high">< name="" value="#">< name="wmode" value="opaque">< name="AllowAccess" value="never">< ="http://m1.2mdn.net/1448084/global_emba_300x250.swf?clickTAG=http%3A//ad.doubleclick.net/click%253Bh%3Dv8/372c/3/0/%252a/v%253B206871097%253B0-0%253B2%253B7047083%253B799-350/300%253B27844638/27862517/1%253B%253B%257Eaopt%253D2/1/ba/0%253B%257Esscs%253D%253fhttp%3A//www4.gsb.columbia.edu/emba/overview/partner/emba-global%3Fadid%3D1152" quality="high" wmode="opaque" swliveconnect="TRUE" ="#" ="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowaccess="never" width="300" height="250">
If Russia had really wanted to resolve the separatist conflicts in
Georgia, it had opportunities. It might have begun by not handing out
Russian passports and then claiming a purported need to defend its
“citizens”. It might also have avoided unleashing anti-Georgian and
anti-Western hysteria in the Russian media.
And although the latest conflict was triggered by Georgia, the
deeper roots of Russia’s invasion lie in domestic events that go back
as far as 2003-04: the destruction of the Yukos oil company, and
Russia’s perception of the colour revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine as
a Western plot to undermine its sovereignty. Mr Saakashvili’s support
for Ukraine’s orange revolution particularly irked Mr Putin.
Lilia Shevtsova of the Carnegie Moscow Centre argues that the
political system built by Mr Putin requires the images of an enemy and
a besieged fortress. “This war is not about South Ossetia, Abkhazia or
Georgia,” she says. “It is about the matrix of the Russian state and
its survival. The beast needs feeding.” Konstantin Zatulin, a Duma
deputy handling relations with former Soviet republics, is more
belligerent. “The time when we needed Western applause is over,” he
says. “Mikhail Gorbachev made military and political concessions to the
West: he agreed to the unification of Germany and the liquidation of
the Warsaw Pact but a few years later the country where he was
president fell apart.”
After years of cultivating xenophobic sentiment and persuading
Russians that they face an enemy, the Kremlin had prepared the
population psychologically for war. That, says Boris Dubin, a
sociologist, is why Russia’s propaganda fell on fertile ground. In the
public mind, he claims, the cause of the war is to be found in
“America’s expansionist plans and desire to establish control over
Russia’s neighbours.”
In practice, Russia’s recognition of the two territories may not
change much. Russia already had almost full control over South Ossetia
and Abkhazia and dealt openly with its self-proclaimed presidents. Few
countries will follow Russia’s recognition. With its troops still in
Georgia, Russia has also made a mockery of the French-negotiated
ceasefire that demanded their withdrawal to pre-war positions and an
international discussion about the enclaves. But overall the war has
cemented the victory of isolationist ideology in Russia, which will
shape both domestic politics and foreign relations for years to come.
The partition of Georgia may cause a long-term confrontation
between Russia and the West, with echoes of the cold war. Too bad, Mr
Medvedev said this week: “Nothing scares us, including the prospect of
a cold war…we have lived in different situations and we will survive.”
(“If it’s only cold, that’s not a problem,” Bernard Kouchner, the
French foreign minister retorted.) Russia’s elite is convinced that the
West is weak and will swallow Russia’s decision. “When you cross the
road you have to check for dangers,” declares Mr Zatulin. “The West can
apply psychological pressure. But Europe cannot afford to turn down our
gas and America needs our help with Afghanistan and Iran.”
The fallout may be felt most inside Russia itself. Hopes for
liberalisation and modernisation under Mr Medvedev have evaporated. In
the past few days the Kremlin has rejected Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s
parole application, refused to grant Russian citizenship to an
investigative Moldovan journalist from Russia and briefly detained
protesters in Red Square who held a banner “For Your Freedom and Ours”
in a repeat of a protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia staged
by dissidents 40 years ago. Views once considered extreme are creeping
into the mainstream. For example, Alexander Dugin, a nationalist
ideologue, greeted events in Georgia by celebrating the removal of the
previous “masks”. “We are at war,” he proclaimed. “Now the country
should fight not only against its external enemies but also with the
fifth column. Pro-Western liberals …should be interned. War is war. The
time of patriots is coming: the time for revenge for all the
humiliation from these people that we have been suffering for years.”
Mr Medvedev’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia may also
have unpredictable consequences for Russia’s north Caucasus. Russia has
bolstered separatism in Georgia but crushed it brutally in Chechnya.
“Talking about the right for independence, about genocide and the war
crimes of Mr Saakashvili, Russia’s leaders are perhaps forgetting about
the tens of thousands of civilians who were killed by Russia’s
bombardment of Grozny and who were executed, cleansed and tortured by
the Russian military in Chechnya,” says Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya of
Memorial, a human-rights group.
Indeed, Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia could
easily reignite separatist sentiment in the north Caucasus. Chechnya
may be too exhausted to fight another war with Russia at present, but
in ten years’ time “the question of independence of Chechnya will arise
again,” says Ms Sokiryanskaya. Russia maintains stability in the
Caucasus by military force and fear. Even as Russia was “liberating”
South Ossetia, its security services were intimidating human-rights
activists in Ingushetia and Dagestan. The methods they use differ
little from those of the separatists and terrorists they are fighting.
Inevitably, this leads to further radicalisation of the population,
says Magomet Mutsolgov, a human-rights activist in Ingushetia.
Mr Mutsolgov says the war in Georgia found little support in
Ingushetia, not long ago engaged in a bitter ethnic conflict with North
Ossetia. Rather, Russia’s actions in Georgia have created a general
sense of injustice, says Mr Mutsolgov. “What about the thousands of
Ingush who have been forced out of their homes by Ossetians?” Many
Ingush refused to fight in Georgia. “People here say ‘it is not our
war’ ”. The seeds of many conflicts in the Caucasus, as of Russia’s own
problems, were planted by Stalin’s ruthless nationalist policies in the
1930s and 1940s. Today’s Russia is planting new ones.
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=12009856
I hope the Russian leadership realizes just what type of genie it's released from the bottle.