08.13.08
Heating up a Cold War
From theNews Review, Aug. 13, 2008
When I wrote an opinion in October that the Cold War between the United States and its old communist adversaries Russia and China had resumed, I sincerely hoped to look back in 10 or 20 years and feel like a fool.
Sadly, less than a year later, I’m now looking like a trend spotter.
Worse, the conflict between Russia and Georgia has done more than bear out the theory that Cold War II is on. I now believe that the first “shot” in a proxy war between the United States and Russia was fired on Sunday.
When Georgia defied Russia and attacked separatists who control the breakaway region of South Ossetia, Georgia opened a daring gambit but also played right into Moscow’s hands.
For 14 years, the Russians have been subverting Georgian control over two of the tiny country’s regions under the guise of peacekeepers. Far from acting as mere peacekeepers with neutral troops in South Ossetia, Moscow gave Russian citizenship to a majority of the region’s people. Russia probably trained, armed and aided ethnic Ossetian guerillas to conduct attacks against Georgia. And underlying all these hostile acts was a threat to the elected Georgian government – if you fight back, the might of Russia will punish you.
Those actions were part of a wider Russian effort to draw a line around its former Soviet territories and divide them from the West. Rather than becoming a member of a peaceful and prosperous world community, the Russians have used their growing wealth to reestablish hegemony and undermine liberty in the East.
On Thursday Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili stepped across that line by defying Russia’s threats and invading South Ossetia. The nobility of his cause was tarnished – South Ossetia may be Georgian soil, but its people overwhelmingly want to be free of Georgian rule – but the attack was more justified because of cross-border violence by Ossetians supported by the Russians.
The Russians not only fought the Georgians, but also sent thousands more troops into South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia. The Russians bombed and raided far beyond the borders of the regions they claimed to be protecting and bragged on Russian television that the “aggressor” – the Georgians – had been punished.
So why did Saakashvili start a losing battle? I believe he was counting on material support from the United States, which owes Georgia a large psychological debt for the tiny country’s 2,000-man-strong force in Iraq. (Five Georgians have died in fighting there.) Russia, on the other hand, must have counted on the West – and mainly the U.S. – to talk down about Russia’s invasion but not take military action against it.
Russia was wrong. Not one American shot has been fired at the Russian side – and I take that as a glimmer of hope in this terrifying turn of events – but it seems the U.S. has done something more daring than Russia gave us credit for. When Saakashvili recalled Georgia’s troops in Iraq to shore up forces in Georgia, the U.S. put those Georgians on C-17 Globemaster transports and flew them directly into the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.
Bringing troops to the fight so that they can ostensibly fight and kill Russians engaged in a military conflict is an act of war. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said as much when he criticized the U.S. for bringing the troops “effectively into the conflict zone.”
And I say, way to go, President George Bush. Way to go also, Dick Cheney and the rest of the administration that did the hard work while Bush confidently stuck to cheering with one hand and wagging his finger with the other in Beijing.
The battle unfolding in Georgia is only a proxy for a cold war between Russia and the West that is heating up by the month. Georgia is a soft target that the Russians are using to prove their point, but the message was also heard loud and clear in Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, among others.
Now that Russia has thrown down the gauntlet, the West has only two choices – appease Russia or oppose them. To appease the Russians – who just before press time dropped all pretense of peacekeeping and declared their forces occupiers, then carried out an attack in Abkhazia witnessed by the Associated Press after declaring that Russia had ceased attacks – would teach them that we will back down from them in this first proxy war of Cold War II.
We must not back down. We must not appease a tyrant nation by letting it invade a democratic nation reaching out to the West. And if that means everything short of bombing the Russians ourselves, so be it.
— Adam L.R. Summers, Staff Writer
