We thought we would never see a war of this sort in this young century.
As the world was engrossed in the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing, Russian and Georgian military units engaged in a battle that is, well, so 20th century. Both sides threw in battle tanks, fired conventional missiles and brutally bombed civilian centers in a mode of total war so reminiscent of the last century.
The motives for this outbreak of conventional armed conflict are, well, also conventional: ethnicity, geopolitics and the assertion of spheres of influence.
There has been trouble brewing in South Ossetia for nearly two decades now. After the Soviet Union broke up, North Ossetia ended up in Russia and South Ossetia became part of Georgian territory.
The Ossetians are a distinct ethnic group. They speak a language that experts say is a dialect of Farsi — the Persian language spoken in what is now Iran. In 1990, the people of South Ossetia declared themselves an independent republic. Georgia suppressed the move with force, attempting to maintain the integrity of her territory.
After that, Russia sent in a “peace-keeping force” to prevent violence between the Georgians and the Ossetians from escalating. Lately, Russia accused Georgia of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” in their heavy handed treatment of the people of South Ossetia.
The relations between Georgia and Russia have never been well, historically as well as geopolitically.
Historically, Georgia was annexed to Russia as part of the old Tsarist empire along with Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and the Baltic states. After the Russian revolution of 1917, the communist government maintained Russian domination of the other ethnicities. The political entity that replaced the Tsarist empire was called the Soviet Union.
For decades, the ruling communists tried to “Russify” the other “republics”: populating them with ethnic Russians, forcing the Russian language upon them and homogenizing them under a single, seamless Soviet bureaucracy. Apart from the large “republics”, several other ethnic groups such as the Chechens and the Ossetians were forcefully tucked into the fabric of Soviet society.
After the socialist experiment failed and the Soviet Union unraveled, the constituent “republics” simply broke from Moscow’s domination. Many, because of long-standing historical identities, easily evolved towards Europe — such as Lithuania and the other Baltic republics.
In Belarus, an old-style Stalinist system remained in place, impervious to the general evolution towards some form of democratic society. Georgia, a nation of only five million, adopted a more western-style government and a free market system ahead of the rest. The Georgians, like the Czechs, the Hungarians and the Poles are seeking membership in the European community and in the NATO military alliance.
The Georgians have established particularly close relations with the US. Notice the television advertisements Georgia has been putting out lately, inviting investments into her open markets. The close relations with the US is obviously Georgia’s way of counterbalancing the fact that she sits on a long border with Russia.
The war that has broken out in South Ossetia pits a small nation against a superpower. There is no way Georgia might hope to defeat Russia’s military might. Her army is small and lightly armed. Deployed across the border, and now quickly spilling into Georgian territory, are several divisions of the Russian Army — including elite combat units hardened by the long war in Chechnya.
In addition to the land forces Russia has deployed in North Ossetia, Moscow also maintains a large naval fleet on the Black Sea. The latest reports indicate that this fleet has now been deployed to blockade Georgia’s western coast.
Apart from South Ossetia, Georgia is also dealing with separatists in another ethnically distinct region, Abkhazia. As the Russian military effort spread beyond South Ossetia itself, the separatists in Abkhazia appear to have taken the opportunity to renew their bid for independence.
Things look quite bleak for Georgia a few days after Russia, citing Georgia-Ossetian hostilities, moved in with a large armed force. By last Sunday, Georgia had pulled out her military forces from South Ossetia after taking heavy casualties from the overpowering Russian forces.
Analysts are saying that Russia is using the problems in South Ossetia as a pretext for reasserting its sphere of influence in the Trans-Caucasus region. Moscow is said to be uncomfortable with a Georgia that has snuggled up too closely with the West.
The Russian military action in Georgia has been compared to the suppression of the pro-democracy uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and in the former Czechoslovakia in 1968. The objective seems to be less the security of the miniscule population of South Ossatia and more the reining in of the Georgian Republic itself.
Moscow apparently calculates that much of western Europe will maintain an uneasy neutrality in this pocket war. This is because western Europe is absolutely dependent on Russian oil and gas supplies, some of it flowing through the Trans-Caucasus.
The US, for its part, is trapped in military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. This makes it unlikely for Washington to be more assertive in defending their beleaguered Georgian allies.
A ceasefire will likely be called soon in this grossly lopsided war. But when that happens, Russia will have effectively annexed South Ossetia and Abkhazia.