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On-going series: Crisis in the Caucasus - 2008 The Russian / Georgian Conflict and Its Impact on Azerbaijan Testimony by Paul Goble Helsinki Commission of the U.S. Congress Washington, D.C. on September 10, 2008 Paul Goble is Director of Research and Publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy (ADA). The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Academy. Mr. Goble prepares daily reports on developments in the post-Soviet world which are available online at Window on Eurasia - http://www.windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/ Those who would like to receive
the daily blog articles via e-list are invited to contact him:
paul.goble@gmail.com Russian Invasion of
Georgia - Its Significance But if we are to make sense of what has been taking place there and, even more, if we are to learn how to respond in ways that promote both our interests and our values, then we must be very clear in our own minds not only about what has taken place but why and about what we might have done differently, as well as what we should be prepared to do in the future. Hearings like this one can make an important contribution to that effort, and I would like to offer some observations on precisely these issues by focusing on three things: Overview of Testimony Second, I would like to call attention to some of the specific features of this conflict, not in order to provide a history, but rather to call attention to the asymmetries whose reality and implications some in Moscow and the West have refused to acknowledge. To anticipate my argument, the most important of these is that however misguided Tbilisi's actions have been, Georgia did not violate international law, and however justified Moscow may have convinced itself or others its actions were, Russia did. And third, I would like to suggest
some specific lessons we should learn from this current crisis
both because it is important in its own right and also because,
since other countries around the periphery of the Russian Federation,
share some its characteristics, we are going to confront analogous
challenges in the future. And it would be a very good thing,
one that might even prevent or mitigate those challenges, if
we were far more attentive to what the Georgian events can teach
us. But if we are to understand what has taken place in Georgia, what is likely to take place elsewhere, and what we should do, we need to examine these pills which Russians have taken to calling "unexploded mines." [1] Stalin's "Poison
Pills" Before the 1917 Revolution, many people in the Russian Empire did not identify themselves in ethnic terms. The tsarist state did not encourage them to do so, and many saw themselves in terms of class or faith. But Stalin insisted that everyone have an official nationality because he understood that you cannot play the divide-and-rule politics of building an empire if people don't identify themselves as members of one or another nationality. Moreover, Stalin linked nationality to territory, something the tsars had tried in almost every case to avoid. No book was more important during Soviet times than the periodic editions of the administrative-territorial divisions of the country. That is because your rights as a member of an ethnic group depended on whether Moscow gave you the status of an autonomous formation or a union republic. But there was one more aspect to this. Many people believe that Stalin drew the lines so as to put all or most members of a given nationality together. This is nonsense. He drew lines to create tensions between ethnic groups, ensuring there was always a local minority that would do Moscow's bidding in return for being protected by the Soviet center. The Armenian-dominated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan is the most famous of these arrangements, but it is far from the only one. And finally, Stalin instituted the Orwellian principle that "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," an arrangement that guarantees interethnic hatred. Members of small nationalities without a territory got few or no ethnic or linguistic rights and were slated for absorption by others. Members of larger groups got such rights on their territories but nowhere else. But members of the largest nationality - the Russians - got such rights regardless of where they lived. Consequences of "Poison
Pills" (2) When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev did reduce the level of coercion and introduced glasnost, he guaranteed that the Soviet Union would fall into pieces, not along economic lines or regional ones but precisely along the lines Stalin had drawn. (3) When the Soviet Union collapsed, both the Russian leadership and the international community, largely because they hoped to make the process of imperial decay as easy and peaceful as possible, decided to accept certain aspects of Stalin's system - namely, the borders he drew and the ethnic hierarchy he established - while expecting that other aspects of Stalin's system, his tyranny, be jettisoned. Why did this happen? For many, it was simpler and more convenient than doing anything else. Many in Western governments had no idea about the location, let along the character, of the union republics, and even fewer knew about the autonomous ones. It was easier to accept the union republics as the only possible countries and their borders as the only acceptable ones, especially since addressing the bigger problems would have taken a long time. And further, any focus on autonomous republics and their rights would have put at risk in the first instance the Russian Federation. After all, maps showed that 53 percent of the territory of that republic was covered by non-Russian autonomies. Addressing its imperial nature, many feared, could trigger "a nuclear Yugoslavia." Significance of "Poison
Pill" Policy But that 1991 decision has had another consequence, which continues to reverberate throughout the region. Stalin made his system work by means of an authoritarian state. Just because so many people wished for an end to authoritarianism has not guaranteed in Russia or elsewhere that this would happen, and his commitment to ethnocratic arrangements in which one ethnic group dominates others continues as a policy imperative, again regardless of what anyone wants. The events in Georgia are only the latest example of what happens because governments and peoples in the region continue to be forced 17 years after the end of the Soviet Union to swallow Stalin's poison pill. They will not be the last. And the ones ahead, including more ethnic conflicts and more authoritarianism will not only be more serious but will affect the Russian Federation first of all. Georgian Miscalculations
and Russian Aggression But beginning at that time, Russia took a variety of steps designed to lead Tbilisi to take the kind of steps that could be a pretext for Russian action, and Tbilisi under Saakashvili in early August did just that, falling into what had been a carefully laid Russian trap. As a result, many around the world were inclined to blame the Georgians rather than the Russians for what happened next, a chronicle of which is far beyond the scope of this testimony. That was a terrible mistake, one that suggested a moral equivalency or worse in Georgian and Russian actions. In fact, it must be said that while Saakashvili made a mistake after all he sent troops into a region that the international community says is part of Georgia despite being warned not to the Russian government of Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin committed a series of crimes violating international and humanitarian law. [2] Not only are those quite different things, but they should be assessed differently as well. Crisis is Not Over Lessons for the Future The Russian Federation is going to have to learn that the international community, however willing it has often proved to be to go along with much that Moscow does, cannot and will not go along with such blatant violations of the international order and will impose punishments of one kind or another. Lessons for the United
States (1) Despite our hopes and expectations, the end of communism in Eurasia did not mark the end of history or guarantee the rise of democratic, free-market allies of the United States. Indeed, for reasons I have given above, our earlier failure to address Stalin's "poison pills" means that many of our biggest problems are ahead of us. (2) We need to overcome our
proclivity to build our relations on the basis of ties our leaders
have with their leaders, a situation that sometimes leads us
to sacrifice our ideals and interests in the name of maintaining
that friendship and sometimes makes us hostage to the actions
of a leader who feels confident that our support will allow him
to ignore the views of his own people. (4) Fourth, we need to insist on universal standards for ourselves and for others. We cannot credibly ask other countries to play by the rules if we do not, but at the same time, we must insist that other countries live up to those standards as well. The current Russian government complains about "double standards" when in fact what it wants is to be treated differently than anyone else, free to use military force abroad to secure the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia but unwilling to recognize the principle of national self-determination within its own borders. (5) And fifth, we need to recognize that with the Russian Federation as with all other countries, there are and will always be issues on which we agree and issues on which we disagree. If we understand that, we will be able to navigate among them and to ignore suggestions that any disagreement means "a new Cold War." People who invoke that term are using it not descriptively but to promote a policy line they support and to force us to retreat from an active defense of our interests and our principles. Three Long-Term Strategies (1) Do not Recognize
Borders Brought about by Force (2) Expand "People
Ties" with the Region (3) Reaffirm Commitment
for Self-Determination Doing that, indeed, doing any of these things, will not be easy and will certainly not provide the quick fix that so many in this city want. But if we make an effort in those directions, then the tragedy of Georgia in recent months will be mitigated, and both its people and the world will be better off as a result. END Notes 2. To give but one example of
the latter, the United Nations has now documented via satellite
that the Russians and their allies destroyed 50 percent of the
Georgian villages in South Ossetia while Georgian forces destroyed
less than five percent of the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.
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