Russia, realism and bias....

By Fester:

Are we pro-Russian or realistic? 

A couple of other blogs that I respect have noted the Newshoggers coverage as being very good but slightly anti-Georgian in tenor. I don’t think that is my bias, but I think the tenor comes through in an appreciation and elevation of power politics and great power politics rather than through the alternative analytical lens of moralism in international affairs or rooting for the underdog combined with a distaste for Russia. I’m opposed to predictable stupidity. 

I think Georgia picked a dumb fight that counted on too many things to go right and absolutely stupidity, or drunkenness on the part of the Russian government for that plan to work. Being a small nation next to a very large nation that has been communicating very clearly that it is concerned about its near abroad is not a fun position to be in. Yet, it is also a position that dictates constrained option space that does not  include actions which invite significant armed response by the much bigger nation. 

Sean Paul Kelly at the Agonist is passing along a chunk of the Nelson Report that has a relevant passage in my mind:

Remember..."legitimate" does not have to mean "good"...we're talking about power here, not morality. Morgenthau rules, post Soviet collapse, something the Bush Administration had to learn the hard way, and McCain may not yet grasp....

"Perspective" tonight is from the Nixon Center's Demetri Simes, who knows a thing or two about Soviet brutality. We use it not necessarily because he is 100% right about Georgian provocation, but because if HE sees it this way, so does Russia, and it's Russia we have to deal with here...

That depends on whether Putin has what he needs...including his calculation of how this week may impede other goals.

Specifically, what Georgia wants is to internationalize the dispute, with international peace keepers. Russia wants to supply the peace keepers, and no foreign troops in the disputed areas...as formalized in the 1992 and 1994 agreements.

PLEASE note...the Russian troops through which Georgia attacked on Friday were in place by international agreement?

At this point, Moscow sees no reason to backtrack...including no Georgian peace keepers, and it will demand a "no use of future force" agreement from Georgia (as noted, it was Georgia which gave the Russians the excuse for this week's lesson in reality. Life is not fair.)...

Here's what we opened with last night: the crisis in Georgia puts everyone in a bind, since the "good guys", aka Georgia, brought much of this on themselves, and the "bad guys", aka Russia, have been warning us since Kosovo what the Kremlin's limits are....

I think this shows the limits of values based diplomacy and new age multilateralism. Values are great but in the real world it's interests (Palmerston) and power (Bismarck --Morgenthau) that counts when push comes to shove.

I can not speak for my co-bloggers but this strongly echoes and refines my thinking for this entire crisis.  Russia had been vocally and visibily communicating its interests in its Near Abroad.  The Kosovo independence recognition was perceived as an action against Russian interests, and the Russian national security apparatus sees itself being encircled. Furthermore, there is a clear pattern of Russian behavior to control energy supplies or at least their export routes within the former Soviet Union.  This control serves both economic and geo-strategic reasons. 

Given this pattern of facts and loudly announced signals, Georgia's behavior and expectations of reactions were stupid on first glance.  The Georgian military's actions and plans were high risk.  Those risks materialized faster than they had anticipated. 

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings wraps up a good chunk of my pragmatic based thinking on why she hopes the US tried to warn Georgia off of their initial course of action:

the reason I think we should have tried to prevent Georgia from attacking South Ossetia is not that I think that it's all the Georgians' fault, or anything like that. I think that Russia had plainly been trying to provoke this sort of attack, that Georgia was incredibly stupid to give Russia what it wanted, that Russia's response has been really excessive, and that as a result, thousands of people are dead, Georgia's independence is seriously compromised, many of Russia's other neighbors have a lot less room to maneuver than they did before, and our own interests have been set back badly.

Comments

[Ron Beasley]

Excellent post Fester
There are no good guys here although there were some really stupid ones. The Russians were looking for a reason to make a move and Saakashvili gave it too them with some under the table encouragement from the Cheney administration and perhaps even John McCain's campaign. The Russians are the winners here.

[geoff]

That's a funny comment "anti-Georgian tenor". I thought you guys were neutral, least with the limited information floating around. I think I'm like you. I'm not anti-Georgian nor pro-Russian but I am completely pissed off with the tin-pot leadership of the supposed invaded country and its attempt to drag the western world into yet another absolute fiasco. Wouldn't it be hilarious if in the last 6 months of Bush's reign he demonstrated an ability to deal with a serious problem in a clever manner. Oops I thought too soon, I understand he is sending in the US military on a humanitarian mission including US military over-flights and some naval battle group. I guess he can't do anything without trying to provoke a fight. Must be the fake Texan in him.

[BJ Bjornson]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Ron's "Saakashvili the Thug" post pretty much killed any chance of us being considered pro-Georgian. :-)

I do think each of us has our own way of viewing the conflict, but for the most part none of us are reflexively anti-Russian, which has coloured far too much of the coverage I've read from US sources. Speaking of the MSM types, the earlier coverage from McClatchy wasn't much different than the BBC, but grew increasingly tilted against Russia as time went on, while most of the rest started that way.

I also think it helps that we picked up the story on Thursday, when it was just the Georgians launching their attack, welll before the Russian army began to move. Basically, we were all well aware that Georgia got the ball rolling, which informed most of the rest of our coverage. When the US media picked up on things, it was usually with headlines of the "Russia invades Georgia" type, with pictures of Russian tanks heading into South Ossetia, which would give a far different first impression to begin coverage on.

[Mark]

I'm not sure why I suggested that you all are slightly too anti-Georgian, especially since my intent was to convey that you have been among the few making good faith efforts to sift through the misinformation on both sides. I do recall that I intended to insert a parenthetical that, to the extent you all had a slight anti-Georgian (and definitely not pro-Russian) view, this was in stark and necessary contrast to the massively pro-Georgian bias that exists in most of the coverage.

In retrospect, I think I was just trying to express my own uncertainty as to what to believe in the situation given its fluidity and the massive amounts of misinformation flowing. Since your coverage was in stark contrast to most, there was part of me that figured the prevalent media coverage couldn't be so far off-base as to make the NH crew right about everything, even if I trusted your coverage more than the MSM's. Either that, or there's part of me that still resists taking a nuanced view of Russia due to my (long) past self-affiliation with the GOP. Which is equally possible.

In any event, I'm happy to have given you the opportunity to make the points in this post, which are, as always very informative.

Slightly OT - the silliness of the Sudetenland/Baltic analogies has been covered in depth by a lot of folks. But it's worth noting that there are plenty of other historical analogies that could apply just as easily - one of Sully's readers yesterday (I think) noted that Russia's actions prior to the invasion of Georgia proper were extremely analogous to NATO's actions in Kosovo.

But there's another one that occurred to me that seems to be even more difficult for hawks to resolve - Russia's actions are extremely similar to the actions of the US in the Mexican-American War. Think about it - Territory X (i.e., Texas or South Ossetia) of newly-independent Nation A (i.e., Mexico or Georgia) has a massive population preferring to join the more-powerful neighboring Nation B (i.e., US or Russia), as does Territory Y (i.e., California or Abkhazia). The population of Territory X pushes hard for separatism, going into outright revolt and winning a sort of quasi-independence. Nation B then takes numerous steps in provocation of Nation A (e.g., granting statehood) and sends forces into Territory X to safeguard an uneasy peace, while also fomenting separatism in Territory Y and sending some forces into Territory Y as well. Nation A eventually gives into the provocation and tries to reassert its sovereignty over Territory X by force. Nation B rapidly responds with massive force. Moreover, Nation B does not simply try to drive Nation A out of Territory X or even Territory Y, but in fact launches a full-scale invasion relatively deep into Nation A's undisputed territory. Shortly thereafter, a ceasefire is entered into, which is promptly disregarded by Nation B.

To be sure, there are plenty of dissimilarities, but the analogy is far, far more appropriate than the Sudetenland/Baltic analogies. What I like about this analogy, though, is that it forces the hawks into acknowledging some of the less-honorable actions taken over the years by the US government if they are to hold on to their absolutism.

[Ron Beasley]

An interesting side note. I was just watching FAUX news and they were very critical of Saakashvili suggesting that his election had been fixed. They also talking about the actions of the Georgian army in South Ossetia suggesting that the had been killing citizens. FOX has been surprising me recently.

[Steve Hynd]

What BJ said.

Regards, C

[tgs]

Your site has become my 'go to' location during all this. You coverage has been consistently excellent - and a lot fairer to the Georgians than I would have been. I think that Saakashvili has been way out of line here - and I don't think there is any question that the actual war crimes began with their offensive (or act of aggression).

The 'Western' media has really hit the nadir with this series of events, IMOP. Totally shameless propagand - and a platform for Saakasvili and his lackeys to simply lie.

Thanks for the coverage.

[RAM]

Also slightly OT: There was some discussion earlier about whether our advisers tumbled to the Georgians' plans to invade. The DOD's line is that nobody knew nothin'. However, over at Pat">http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2008/08/fear-of-russia.html">Pat Lang's shop, he reports Israeli advisers in Georgia knew something was cooking a few months ago. So the line that our guys didn't realize what was going on just doesn't pass the smell test.