Georgia: Some Background

by tristero

For those interested, here’s an excellent article by Robert English on the history behind the recent Georgian war. As usual, the reasons are far more complicated than the US public is permitted, by their mainstream media and leaders, to consider when trying to become informed about our world.

Essentially, “Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgia’s first post-Soviet president, from 1991 to 1992,” whipped Georgians into a state virulent nationalism, not as bad as what Milosevic did, but still pretty nasty. This led to the inevitable persecution of minorities such as the South Ossetians and the Abkhazians who turned back to Russia for protection.

This wasn’t inevitable, but it underlies the reasons why these two regions wish to break away:

ll this is especially tragic because it could have been avoided. Many Russians, including then-president Boris Yeltsin, were sympathetic to the non-Russian republics’ desire for independence from the USSR. And many Abkhazians and Ossetians were initially hopeful of their prospects in a free, democratic Georgia. “We could have left the [Soviet] Union together, as brothers,” one Ossetian leader told us in Tskhinvali in 1991. But Gamsakhurdia’s aggressive nationalism and strident denunciations of “devil Russia” and its “traitorous” allies within Georgia pushed moderate Abkhazians and Ossetians into support of outright secession and of an unholy alliance with reactionary elements in the Russian military (who began arming them behind Gorbachev’s and Yeltsin’s backs as they struggled with their own hardliners between 1991 and 1993).[10] By the time of Putin’s rise in 1999, Gamsakhurdia’s rhetoric had long since become a self-fulfilling prophecy—both the Abkhazians and Ossetians had voted overwhelmingly for secession.[11] And by 1999, of course, Russian policy toward Georgia, and the broader Caucasian-Caspian region, had also become part of a larger contest for influence with the West.

None of this is to defend Moscow’s manipulation of post-Soviet conflicts to dominate its neighbors—though it is vital to discern the difference in motives behind an offensive, “neo-imperial” strategy and a defensive, “anti-NATO” tactic. Nor is it to justify the devastating attack on Georgia—though Moscow was also clearly lashing out at the West, with pent-up fury for what it sees as an American strategy of isolating and encircling Russia (the attack was also, in effect, a preventive strike against two NATO bases-in-the-making in Georgia). What is important, however, is to highlight the Georgians’ own initial victimization of others in a tragedy in which they ultimately became victims themselves.

Of course it is “unfair” that Georgians today reap the bitter fruits of what Gamsakhurdia sowed in years past—just as it is unfair that today’s Serbs still pay for the sins of Milosevic. And certainly Gamsakhurdia was far from the coldblooded killer that Milosevic was. Yet consider the roughly one thousand South Ossetians who died resisting efforts to impose central Georgian control in 1991 and 1992; for a population of under 100,000 this represents a per capita death toll over twice as high as that which Milosevic inflicted on Kosovo. (Milosevic’s Kosovo savagery took some 10,000 lives, out of a Kosovo Albanian population of nearly 2,000,000.)

Consider, too, that one of Saakashvili’s first acts as president in 2004 was to ceremoniously rehabilitate Gamsakhurdia, hailing him as a “great statesman and patriot.” Many in the West criticized Saakashvili’s 2007 crackdown on opposition politicians and the press, but few noted this earlier insult to Georgia’s restive minorities. Nor are most aware of the continuing tensions between the Tbilisi government and the country’s Armenian, Azeri, and other non-Georgian peoples—many of whom sympathized with the Ossetians, not the Georgians, in the recent war—over ongoing linguistic, economic, and even religious discrimination. Certainly Saakashvili is not the extreme nationalist that Gamsakhurdia was. And along with some provocative steps, he has also made notable efforts toward reconciliation. But his purge of senior Georgian officials from the previous government, and his replacement of them by ministers and ambassadors who in some cases were barely in their teens during the Gamsakhurdia era, seems also to have purged valuable assets of experience, caution, humility, and even recent memory.

We must hope that urgent diplomatic and economic support from abroad, together with some self-critical reflection by Georgians at home, will yet help this proud, long-suffering people escape the humiliation and the debilitating cult of “innocent martyrdom” that has plagued post-Kosovo Serbia. But the Western media that blindly follow the Georgian nationalist line in discounting Ossetian and Abkhazian grievances—viewing their separatist aspirations as largely illegitimate or a Russian invention and casting the entire conflict as the Georgian David vs. Russian Goliath—serve neither the cause of truth nor reconciliation. And American officials who embrace this simplistic narrative—and who reflexively call for Georgia’s rapid rearming and accelerated accession to NATO—risk further inflaming confrontation with Russia to the grave detriment of both Western and Georgian interests.

In short, the situation is complex, the politics convoluted, and a subtle, firm, and intelligent diplomacy will be needed to address the situation. A good guys vs. bad guys attitude is no way to address the problems the people of this region face, let alone America’s self-interest in the region. But one thing is certain:

We are not all Georgians now. That was a remarkably stupid remark that, if made by an American president, had the potential to make a bad situation immensely worse. That is not to excuse Russian aggression, of course. But oversimplifying a complicated reality and tying it to American’s own ugly nationalism is far worse. It is blundering into a china shop with the dumbest, clumsiest bull imaginable.