Tbilisi/Baku, August 28, 2008

Well, it seems to be over, surprise, surprise, unless it turns into WW III, which I hope it does not.

The Caucasus War of 8.8.8 that is, the two-week (or two day) hurly burly in the mountainous southwest corner of the defunct Soviet Union that was a national debacle for West-obsessed Georgia and a crushing victory for a resurgent Russia.

For those of you who chose to watch the Beijing Olympics instead, which seemed to be timed almost purposely to create maximum distraction from the seismic events happening in the place that gave rise to the legend of Pandora’s Box getting re-opened, geo-politically speaking, let me fill you in on a fistful of details.

On August 8, in a coordinated land, air and sea assault, the pre-positioned military of the Russian Federation attacked the Republic of Georgia, theoretically to defend its citizens of Ossetian ethnicity from what it described as a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Georgians. Those citizens under siege happened to live in a tiny, mountainous region known as South Ossetia (within Georgia), but which just happens to abut on the Autonomous Republic of North Ossetia (within the Russian Federation). South Ossetia, populated by around 60,000 Ossets and 40,000 Georgians, had enjoyed a fuzzy sort of independence since 1991, although efforts to peacefully re-integrate the territory back into Georgia have been going on for years. The reintegration process effectively ended when Moscow began distributing Russian passports to the Ossets living in the territory over the past year or two (but not the Georgians), thus making them Russian citizens on the spot, and deserving of Russian protection, even outside Russia’s borders. And so the war began.

By August 9 (and certainly the 10th), the one-sided contest was over for all intents and purposes, with the Russian side having thrown all American-trained Georgian military and police out of South Ossetia, taken over much of the rest of northern Georgia, and seemed poised to make an assault on the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, which was a mere 25 miles/40 kilometers away from the Russian front lines. Meanwhile, to the west, Russian tanks, troops and other gear were rushed to a second breakaway area of Georgia known as the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, lest the impetuous Georgians open a second front there, with the result that whatever Georgian military (and civilians) that remained in the territory were forced out, too, albeit with scarcely a shot getting fired.

By August 11, Georgia had in effect capitulated, and was begging for international diplomatic intervention. Russian tanks ruled the land, Russian aviation ruled the skies and Russian naval craft ruled the shores of the Black Sea. And Russian propaganda largely ruled the airwaves, too. That last victory might be summed up by the way the short war is usually represented even in the western media: namely, that the Russian counter-attack had been massively successful, and the man to blame for the mess was not Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (and certainly not Russian President Dmitry Medvedev) but the mercurial Georgian President, Mikheil (Misha) Saakashvili. Not.

A ‘counter attack’ assumes an initial attack, and the Georgians, while perhaps guilty of being lured into a trap, never attacked Russia. Rather, in the days prior to 8.8.8, Georgia had been responding to an escalating series of provocations inside South Ossetia and to a lesser extent in Abkhazia. That is how the war began, and how it should be remembered: it was and is a war of provocation followed by creeping annexation, and planned and executed with a surprising degree of efficiency, and complete audacity.

This was no where more in evidence than the decision by the Upper House of the Russian Duma on August 25th to recommend the recognition of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, IE, to tear these territories away from Georgia, and forever. The parliamentary decision was next passed by the Lower House and then signed by President Medvedev within 24 hours of its initial getting tabled, to the joy of the Ossetians and Abkhaz, the shock and anguish of Georgia and the baffled cries of ‘foul play!’ in western capitals. A bed-rock of the international system of relations between countries in place since 1945, namely, the inviolability of the territorial integrity of existing states, had just been removed, and Pandora’s Box opened.

In some cynical circles, we call this The Texas Solution, because it so resembles the series of US provocations of Mexico that started with the Alamo and ended with the storming of the Halls of Montezuma and the creation of the (temporary) Texas Republic of 1840 before its annexation as the Lone Star State into the United States in 1845.

For an alternative history of that war, I would recommend The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. Although most of the book is devoted to Grant’s reduction of the Confederacy, it is the first part of the Memoirs that pertains to Russia’s creeping annexation of northern and western Georgia, namely, how a young Lt. Grant viewed President Polk’s Remember The Alamo! campaign against Mexico, starting with the sort of cross-border provocations that would force Mexico to retaliate, and young Grant’s participation in the entire campaign.

“The occupation, separation and annexation (of Texas by the US in 1845) were, from the inception of the movement until its consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union,” he wrote.

And more.

“The Southern Rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican War.(and) Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.”

Grant declared himself bitterly opposed to the war, which he regarded as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.

What will the unintended consequences of Russia’s creeping annexation of the two Georgian autonomous territories be, when it has its own fair share of legally recognized sub-republics, such as Chechnya? Will a Russian lieutenant in the 58th Army in the war against Georgia of 8.8.8 one day write his memoirs about a distant, footnote in history?

I truly hope so, because the wash of propaganda coming out of Moscow right now needs correction, even fifty years hence.

As for the Georgian response to the disaster, only time will tell if Mr Saakashvili can survive; there is sufficient animosity growing against him both domestically and even in western capitals that would suggest that he cannot remain in power much longer, particularly after the ‘formal’ departure of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Russians have made it absolutely clear that they will not tolerate any military adventures that Tbilisi might want to mount, and short of going into a stand-off that might lead us into WW III, no western power, however friendly to Georgia, is going to challenge Moscow on the matter with military might. Like ‘Old Mexico’ being forced to live with the reality of first an independent and then US state of Texas across the Rio Grande River, future generations of Georgians are apparently just have to get used to living without the chunks of their ancestral homeland once known as South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Other paradigms, all evoking the concept of the ‘phantom limb’ syndrome experienced by amputees, are the Kingdom of Jordan’s loss of the West Bank and Jerusalem through war with Israel in 1967, and then final renunciation of all Jordanian claims to that territory a decade later, or Syria’s now very passive, even plaintive whisper that the province of Iskenderoon, which became Turkey’s province of Hatay by quasi-rigged plebiscite in 1938, come home to the motherland some day.

Other observers of shifting frontiers will have their own favorite lost-limb stories, but mine concerns the Scandinavian regions known as Jamtland and Harjedalen, forcibly ceded by Norway to Sweden following the 1645 Peace of Bromsebro, a loss that was not even papered over by the union between those Nordic states during the friendlier period of 1814-1905. To this day, the King of Norway (and indeed all naval officers) keep two buttons unbuttoned on their dress togs remembering those two, obscure chunks of fjord and mountain, and hoping for their eventual return.

I shared that anecdote with Saakashvili at a late night meeting last week; he almost seemed to smile.