A Son of the Rock

Burnt-out tanks in the Caucasus have unfortunate echoes. Not necessarily of the Second World War – where German armoured units are said to have reached the Caspian Sea – but of more recent events.

This is what we see when multi-ethnic states break up. We’ve seen it before in this same region, in Chechnya. We’ve seen violence in the break up of India, of Pakistan when Bangladesh became independent, in the former Yugoslavia. Personally, knowing its early 20th century history, I was surprised that state held together as long as it did after Tito died.

Now, as Kissinger said in 1982 apropos the Falklands, “No great power retreats forever.” Remember, this part of the world was under Russian control via the Tsars long before the Soviet Union existed. This is perhaps the start of Russia’s comeback.
It is, though, an invasion by Russia of a neighbouring sovereign state and seems like a land grab on Russia’s part – though there are suggestions that they want regime change in Georgia as well.

I’ll get this straight first. I abhor any such action by anybody. War is not an acceptable way of settling disputes between states. Russia’s excuse of protecting its citizens in Georgia is just that, an excuse. It is not a justification.
War must be only a last resort, in self protection after an attack – ie no pre-emptive strikes – or, if a police or humanitarian action, carried out by an international force.

Unfortunately we in Britain do not have a moral leg to stand on in condemning the events in Georgia because we have very recently pre-emptively invaded a sovereign state for no good reason, on flimsy pretexts, without UN authority, and subsequently effected regime change.

At this point I must say, yes, Saddam Hussein was a thug and his demise was welcome. But I will not accept preaching from those who came to this view late. I had a personal interest in Saddam’s Iraq long before even the first Gulf War, as I had some Kurdish friends whose families had suffered under him and let me know all about the situation there. I had as fervent a wish to see him removed as anybody.

But we had no right under international law to do what we did when we did. Had it been done as a consequence of expelling Saddam from Kuwait all those years earlier we would now be on firmer ground, with more international sympathy, and Russia would not have that later precedent to cast in front of us. We must expect to be called hypocrites if we condemn others who follow our example.

I also doubt Russia would have acted so precipitately if Georgia did not wish to get so close to NATO. I think allowing any former Soviet country (though not necessarily the non-Soviet Eastern European ones) to join NATO is a major strategic mistake. It is bound to engender fear and suspicion in Russia – a country which has been invaded, to its great cost, 5 times by western neighbours.

Imagine, for a moment, what the US reaction would have been if, say, Mexico had joined the Warsaw Pact.

Actually there is no need to. Consider only what the actual US reaction was to the Zimmerman Telegram in 1917. War with Germany soon followed.

Russia inevitably sees NATO expansion to its borders in exactly that light. A buffer zone around it would have given it more of a sense of security and may, I say may, have seen more temperate attitudes to its neighbours.

It is just possible that the world was a safer place when the Soviet Union was in existence. Khruschev, after all, did not push the Cuban crisis over the brink (though it cost him his job in the end.)

Peaceful, mutually agreed break-ups of bigger states are the rarity. I can only think of the separation of Norway from Sweden in 1903 and of Czechoslovakia more recently.

Anyway, I know this is not about the same Georgia and is more likely to be about a woman but here’s Ray Charles.

Ray Charles: Georgia