One more Georgia-related post then I’m on to other things. There are a couple exquisitely-written columns out today that I think are worth your time.
The first comes from Gerard Baker, my favorite columnist from across the Pond. He is, as you might expect, not particularly happy with those who have drawn moral equivalence between Russia and the US.
We need to be morally clear about what is going on in Georgia. Perhaps Mr Saakashvili was a little reckless in seeking to stamp out the separatist guerrillas. But to suggest that he somehow got what he deserved is tantamount to saying that a woman who dresses in a miniskirt and high heels and gets drunk in a bar one night is asking to be raped.
If shifting moral blame won’t relieve us of our responsibilities then surely defeatism will. Whoever is right or wrong, the critics say, we can’t do anything about it…
There’s something odd about listening to European governments speak about the futility of diplomacy. They are the ones who usually insist that military force alone can achieve little and who say that diplomacy must be given a chance. But now they seem to say that, since we can’t stop Russia militarily, there is nothing else we can do.
John Bolton also waded into the fray and brought his estimable foreign policy know-how with him.
It profits us little to blame Georgia for “provoking” the Russian attack. Nor is it becoming of the United States to have anonymous officials from its State Department telling reporters, as they did earlier this week, that they had warned Georgia not to provoke Russia. This confrontation is not about who violated the Marquess of Queensbury rules in South Ossetia, where ethnic violence has been a fact of life since the break-up of the Soviet Union on December 31, 1991 – and, indeed, long before. Instead, we are facing the much larger issue of how Russia plans to behave in international affairs for decades to come. Whether Mikhail Saakashvili “provoked” the Russians on August 8, or September 8, or whenever, this rape was well-planned and clearly coming, given Georgia’s manifest unwillingness to be “Finlandized” – the Cold War term for effectively losing your foreign-policy independence.
Spend a little time with both. I think you’ll find them instructive.
Tags: Foreign Policy, Georgia, Gerard Baker, John Bolton, Mikhail Saakashvili, Russia, South Ossetia, Vladimir Putin
