Bush is demanding that Russia remove troops, and sending in military planes with humanitarian aid. This has sparked concern from humanitarian groups who try to keep a separation between military action and the delivery of humanitarian aid, to keep the humanitarian space open.
This isn't an abstract issue; today brought the tragic news of the murder of 4 aid workers in Afghanistan, an American, a Canadian, a Brit, and their Afghan driver, all of whom worked for International Rescue Committee on children's education. Apparently it is the worst security incident the NGO has faced in its history, after working in Afghanistan for 25 years, and a vivid sign of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. The Taliban takes responsibility for the deliberate attack targeting foreigners, and a Taliban spokesman even claims falsely that the women were "military" and that is why they were shot -- indicative of precisely this sensitive issue of trying to keep these distinctions as literally a matter of life and death, especially in a context where they are deliberately misrepresented.
The issue of just what kind of aid the U.S. has given Georgia is now under much scrutiny. The BBC says, "It [the U.S.] has already helped revamp and re-train Georgian forces, provided more sophisticated military equipment and updated bases to meet Nato standards" -- actions the BBC says may have caused Russia to "re-assert its authority in the region in the first place" -- an analysis that strikes me as heavily Western-centric and self-flagellating about a situation where Russia has been dominating the entire region and its oil routes, quite apart from any U.S. meddling, which is hard to characterize as significant.
Ken Anderson has a very long, rant about the New York Times's C.J. Chivers following the "blame America first" with a description of U.S. involvement in providing miltiary aid to Georgia:
"The risks were intensified by the fact that the United States did not merely encourage Georgia’s young democracy, it helped militarize the weak Georgian state."
I agree that claiming that self-defense of a small country like this is the same thing as "militarization," but I'd like to understand more from the experts just what the U.S. and others provided in terms of equipment that could have justifiably been seen as "provocative" from Russia (although I don't think we heard Russia make these arguments much before now).
Writes Chivers,
"At senior levels, the United States helped rewrite Georgian military doctrine and train its commanders and staff officers. At the squad level, American marines and soldiers trained Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of battle.
Georgia, meanwhile, began re-equipping its forces with Israeli and American firearms, reconnaissance drones, communications and battlefield-management equipment, new convoys of vehicles and stockpiles of ammunition." What kinds?
As for the sequencing of events, and the recurring news accounts tuning in first when Georgia attacks Southern Ossetia, then, when Russia responds with force that many agree is excessive, I do wonder about reports of the situation as it was developing in July and why those who are talking tough now weren't around back then, when Russia admitted its fighter jets had flown over Southern Ossetia on July 8. Wrote UN Security Council Report:
"The Russian foreign ministry issued a statement that said that the flights took place ”to prevent bloodshed and to keep the situation within legal and peaceful bounds.” It went on to say that the step had helped “cool hot heads” in Tbilisi and prevented the use of force. It also claimed that Russia had received information that Georgian troops were preparing a military operation in South Ossetia to free four Georgian soldiers who had been arrested in South Ossetia.
Georgia called the statement an “unprecedented acknowledgement of aggression” and called on major powers to condemn Russia. It also recalled its ambassador from Moscow in protest."
Of course U.S. involvement has been extensive, as we can see from the gasping about McCain's aide taking money from Georgia; it's almost as if Georgia in recent years was a kind of surrogate for all the democracy-promotion and expenditures that the U.S. couldn't engage in elsewhere, including in Russia itself.
But I found Lavrov to be condescending and offensive in asking the U.S. to chose between its "virtual project" of Georgia or partnership with Russia. Maybe Russia should chose between its "virtual project" of keeping its empire intact and partnership with those former subjects, for one, let alone the rest of the world.
At times like this, when everyone is in a frenzy of news-junky fixes of every sort, I do wish we had public intellectuals in this country.
I wish we did have these figures not only to appear on TV (there's no shortage of analysts, but they aren't always the same thing as the intelligentsia) but to write something thoughtful to try to figure out what the right thing to do is in this Spanish Civil War type of event of our times.
A Russian public intellectual, Elena Bonner, an avid user of email, sent me a clipping today about a statement in France, where the public intellectuals Bernard-Henri and Lévy André Glucksmann had come up with something to say. I saw it in Russian as a result. They characterized the events in Georgia as "the most important turning point in Europe since the fall of the Berlin wall". They refused to get into the debate about "who first," figuring it was enough for Georgia to act in its own territory, under international law, as it is entitled. (Naturally, the woman whose son was shot and killed and wailed, “What do I need a country that kills its citizens for?”would see it differently.)
The French intellectuals didn't hesitate to ask whether the West would capitulate, like Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968 and leave Saakashvili to be arrested or exiled or hung, as independence leaders were in those fateful days. Condoleeza Rice might be scolding Russia that "this isn't 1968", and yet, Russia didn't really wholly absorb the lessons exemplified by the brave protest of 7 Russians who walked out on Red Square 40 years ago this month to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Scott Horton, who mentored Saakashvili, has said "a new, colder, and more threatening world is being born."; the French are calling it "a new world with new norms". It was all predictable, and Scott predicted it. Now what?
Lévy and Glucksmann didn't just predict the outbreak of war, they thought back in March when they wrote to Merkel and Sarkozy that bringing Georgia closer to NATO (on the eve of the NATO summit in Bucharest) would help forestall what was seen as inevitable behaviour from Russia, after the West granted recognition of Kosovo's independence in defiance of Russian warnings -- blackmail -- that it would retaliate against Georgia if that happened. The French thinkers thought that if the West didn't accept Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, they would capitulate to Putin and show weakness to Russia that would be exploited. France, Germany and other European NATO members, unlike the U.S., thought that the solution to keeping Russia from overreacting was *not* to add new NATO members. The U.S. didn't put up too much of a fuss, as it got another deal out of the NATO summit more quietly, which was acquiesence from Russia and Central Asia to NATO's running of supply lines through their territories to Afghanistan.
My own feeling is that NATO shouldn't have been pursuing this expansion, especially if it had absolutely no intention of *really* going to war with a nuclear superpower. Yet Old Europe's solution -- to drop the NATO membership issue -- didn't work to forestall Russia's war with Georgia anyway; so much for realpolitik.
I agree it's a shockingly perilous time for the West and its values, which have been shown up as so weak; Sarkozy's plan seems to have served as an enabler of Russian military intentions, not a deterrent.
And in the vacuum of our horizon without public intellectuals, in steps the New York Times:
"We’re not sure if that means Mr. Medvedev isn’t in charge or that he was lying to buy more time to push for the overthrow of Georgia’s democratically elected government. Either explanation is chilling."
Seriously, New York Times, 75 years of Soviet history and 17 years of recent Russian history should have let you know that both these statements are true. Medvedev is a foil not really in charge and yes, the Russian leadership was lying.
Your editorial would have been a lot stronger if you could have indicated *what kind of price* Russia should pay. Perhaps expulsion from the G-8?
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