South Ossetia: Some Balance, If You Know Where To Look For It

Notably this comment, by one Carl, over at The Spectator's Coffee House blog:

1. Georgia overplayed its hand. Saakhashvili foolishly believed the US/NATO was willing and able to stand up to Russia militarily in the Caucasus, an area Russia rightly considers its near abroad. Furthermore, the US is already stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq and the other NATO members do not have the stones to take on Russia.

2. Russia has every right to be alarmed at US/NATO actions in Georgia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, just as the US would be concerned if Russia had bases in Mexico and Canada {btw, due to the latest gaffes by Bush and his neocon cronies, the Russians will have new bases in Cuba and Venezuela soon} as revenge for the NATO missile shield proposed by the Bush administration. Russia is justifiably angered that NATO would even consider countries that border Russia as NATO members. As much as NATO claims they are not trying to antagonize Russia, their actions betray their false statements of peace. Russia feels threatened and thus lashes out and rightly so.

3. The Russia of 2008 and not the same humiliated Russia of 1993. They are even more battle-hardened, well-armed and now very motivated. Russia still manufactures some of the best and most sophisticated armaments ever made and they now have the chance to test them out and show the world they mean business. Their army, despite it lingering problems, is leaner, meaner, and relatively well-trained.

4. Russia is the source for the majority of the EU's oil supply. The Europeans and others do not want to jeopardize their relations with Russia in the long-term and in the short term for that matter. Russia has more oil than the Saudis, the Kazakhs, and the Iranians put together from their resources in Siberia alone.

5. The BTC pipeline exports only 1% of the world oil needs to the market. It is strictly a political pipeline and used to further infuriate Russia. G*d willing, the Russians might decide to destroy it during their assault. This would not surprise me. After the Kurdish assault on the pipeline and the current war in Georgia, the pipeline is starting to appear as a geo-political failure.

6. No, the Russians are not "commies", they are not the big, bad Soviet Union. They are capitalists and doing a pretty good job of it even if the economy is very dependent on the strength of the oil commodity. Russia is a huge market and though still a country mired in poverty, there is a growing middle and wealthy class, job creation, modernization, and economic integration with the west.

7. If the Georgians want so bad to integrate the Ossetians and Abkhazia into Georgia, then why did the Georgians indiscriminately fire missiles directly at the civilian population in Ossetia and kill over 1,000 in two nights? Is that any way to treat people who you claim are you citizens? It reminds me of all the Azeri rhetoric towards the Armenians in Artsakh. Ossetia and Abhazia are lost forever to Georgia. The Ossettes and Abkhazians neither want to be part of Georgia, they do not speak Georgians, and they long to be part of Russia. Georgia would be wise to avoid a future catastrophe and sent them free. Since day 1 of Georgian independence, the Abkahz and Ossettes had decided not to be part of Georgia. The same goes Artsakh in relation to Azerbaijan. Once you begin to mistreat and attack a group of people, you have no right to claim governance over them.

8. If Georgia had let Abkhazia and Ossetia go years ago, they would not be in this mess and relations with their powerful northern neighbor might be cordial.

9. It is entirely hypocritical for the US/NATO/UN to grant independence to Kosovo, East Timor, Montenegro, Eritrea while at the same time denying it to Nagorno-Karabakh, Ossetia, Abkhazia, Kurdistan, etc. It is so transparently hypocritical because it shows that the US/NATO is looking out only for its economic, political, and military interests and not the interests of the people being victimized. If the US was willing to bomb the Serbs in 1999 and violate Yugoslavia territorial integrity to break Kosovo away from it, they have no right to criticize Russia. The head of NATO made a statement today that Russia must ceasefire and relinquish control of Abkhazia and Ossetia to Georgia...is he kidding?

10. The US needs to learn that Russia, Iran, France, etc have their own interests and that was is best for the US is not always best for others. Just as the US will pursue its own interests, so will other nations and furthermore, the US interests are not always right and beneficial to world peace and stability.

11. I've heard a lot of criticism for Russia's action in Chechnya. Russia was indeed heavy-handed and committed atrocities but let's not forget that the Chechens themselves were equally brutal. The Chechens essentially won their freedom from Russia after the 1994-1996 war and were given the chance to have a referendum where they could vote to be free. This was orchestrated by the late General Lebed of the Russian forces. Everyone agreed and the war ended. Yet some Chechens, namely Shamil Basayev {DEAD!} and his militia were not satisfied. In the name of "Jihad" they attacked Daghestan and slaughtered innocents in Beslan and elsewhere, thus provoking Russia. Now Chechnya is really no more, more aptly, Russia is back in control and their is only sporadic fighting on occasion. Most of the male population of Chechnya is gone.

12. The US could have be partners with Russia in fighting global jihad as Russia faces the same pressures but of course the US blew this opportunity.

Well, 6 depends on how you look at these things, of course. But there really is no answer to 9: "It is entirely hypocritical for the US/NATO/UN to grant independence to Kosovo, Montenegro, Eritrea while at the same time denying it to Nagorno-Karabakh, Ossetia, Abkhazia, Kurdistan, etc." (East Timor is another story.) Or absolutely anywhere else at all, in fact.

See also this, on how Russia is arguably engaged in an act of liberal interventionism.

And see the extraordinary comments from Daily Telegraph readers in response to this, by Denis MacShane of the Henry Jackson Society and of the Euston Manifesto (deceased). Just as Telegraph readers have never really bought into the theory that a country with neither a European language nor a Christian majority is somehow part of the West at all, never mind the West's front line, so they have never really bought into hostility to post-Soviet Russia, rightly identifying her instead as, in common with all the Slavs (not least including the Serbs), the bulwark, against Islamic and other threats, of the civilisation defined by the Biblical-Classical synthesis.

And today, they have at last started to say so.

Perhaps they have finally realised that Russia's enemies are old Marxists from back in the day. See, for example, the Harry's Place website, which has its roots in Straight Left, the most unerringly pro-Soviet faction within the old Communist Party of Great Britain and among its nominally Labour fellow-travellers, and which therefore opposes the present Russian Government out of support for the only viable alternative, namely the totally unreconstructed Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Or see the BBC, uncritical cheerleaders for the National Bolsheviks, whose flag says it all: the Nazi flag with a black hammer and sickle in place of the swastika.

These are people who define themselves precisely by their opposition to the Biblical-Classical synthesis, which is the West. And Telegraph-reading conservatives have either only just noticed, or only just started to say so. Either way, though, better late than never. And welcome aboard.