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In an opinion piece published in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili asks, “Why this war? This is the question my people are asking. This war is not of Georgia's making, nor is it Georgia's choice.” Those who understand Russia’s history and understand the prism through which Russia’s leaders view the world should not be surprised that Georgia’s effort to militarily settle the South Ossetia dispute resulted in significant Russian intervention.
Russia has historically felt insecure in spite of great power and expansive frontiers. It has had a fear that the surrounding states could grow hostile and strangle it. That fear drove what amounted to an expansionist policy, be through territorial gain or expanded influence, particularly in bordering regions.
In The New Diplomacy: International Affairs In The Modern Age, Abba Eban explained:
Territorial expansion was not a new feature of Russian history, and yet in Russian eyes it was a “defensive expansion” inspired by the lack of defensive frontiers and by the harsh experience of past generations in which invading Russia had been an endemic habit of powerful European states. From the very beginning of the postwar [post-World War II] period the Soviet Union has displayed the classic contradictions of its image: a siege mentality combined with a sweeping audacity beyond the walls…
The nightmare of constant attack from neighboring countries, most recently experienced in the tragedy of 20 million Russian dead at the hands of the Nazis, had hardened the Soviet resolve to be satisfied with nothing less than total control of all contiguous territories.
In Diplomacy Henry Kissinger wrote:
Paradox was Russia’s most distinguishing feature. Constantly at war and expanding in every direction, it nevertheless considered itself permanently threatened. The more polyglot the empire became, the more vulnerable Russia felt, partly because of its need to isolate the various nationalities from their neighbors. To sustain their rule and to surmount the tensions among the empire’s various populations, all of Russia’s rulers invoked the myth of some vast, foreign threat, which, in time, turned into another of the self-fulfilling prophecies that doomed the stability of Europe.
As Russia expanded from the area around Moscow toward the center of Europe, the shores of the Pacific, and into Central Asia, its quest for security evolved into expansion for its own sake.
Russia gradually turned into as much of a threat to the balance of power in Europe as it did to the sovereignty of neighbors around its vast periphery. No matter how much territory it controlled, Russia inexorably pushed its borders outward.
Following the implosion of the Soviet Union and the political and economic crises that followed, the specter of weakness haunted Russia. Russia’s fears were intensified by pundits’ proclamations of a new single Superpower world. However the U.S. tried to explain it, Russia’s leaders saw U.S. unilateralism as a threat to Russia’s national security. U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, the West’s wresting Kosovo from Serbia, and U.S. plans to construct anti-missile radar installations in Poland and the Czech Republic all fed those fears.
A landmark speech by former Russian President Vladimir Putin before the Munich Conference on Security Policy in February 2007 encapsulated the Russian perspective concerning U.S. policy, particularly military interventions, and Russia’s fears. President Putin declared:
I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. And this is not only because if there was individual leadership in today’s – and precisely in today’s – world, then the military, political and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilization…
Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centers of tension. Judge for yourselves: wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished… And no less people perish in these conflicts – even more are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!
Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible.
We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way…
And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this – no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.
The force’s dominance inevitably encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, significantly new threats – though they were also well-known before – have appeared, and today threats such as terrorism have taken on a global character.
I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security.
Russia viewed developments in Georgia as part of a long-run trend that it felt was posing a growing threat to its security interests. “No one feels safe,” Putin had observed in his speech. Russia felt that the ring around its state was closing. Yesterday, The New York Times reported:
The Bush administration’s strong support for Georgia — including the training of Georgia’s military and arms support — came, in part, as a reward for its support of the United States in Iraq. The United States has held Georgia up as a beacon of democracy in the former Soviet Union; it was supposed to be an example to other former Soviet republics of the benefits of tilting to the West.
But that, along with America and Europe’s actions on Kosovo, left Russia feeling threatened, encircled and more convinced that it had to take aggressive measures to restore its power, dignity and influence in a region it considers its strategic back yard, foreign policy experts said.
The Moscow Times wrote of the thinking that guided Russia's government:
The South Ossetian conflict was a foreign policy trap for Russia from the start, and the trap slammed shut after the Georgian troops started shelling Tskhinvali late last week and its residents pleaded for Moscow to intervene, said Alexander Khramchikhin, a senior researcher with the Institute of Political and Military Analysis.
"Russia was left with the choice of either becoming a traitor or an aggressor," he said.
This apparently was a tough choice for a country that feels encircled and humiliated as former vassal regimes turn to the West. The fact that Georgia is a close ally of the United States, which strongly backs its bid to join NATO, promises to further complicate the bigger, geopolitical ramifications of the violence in South Ossetia.
In the end, Russian intervention should reasonably have been expected. Although the conflict was not of Georgia’s choice, it was the unintended consequence of Georgia’s decision to try to settle the South Ossetia dispute through armed force.
Now, looking farther ahead, the question arises as to what impact the success of Russian arms will have with respect to other disputes between Russia and its neighbors, as well as the larger framework of Russia-West relations. Will Russia marry its fears with its military success against Georgia to embark on an even more hawkish course? That is at least one plausible scenario. Such an outcome would increase geopolitical risk and it is a situation for which U.S. and Western policy makers will need to be prepared.
Russia has historically felt insecure in spite of great power and expansive frontiers. It has had a fear that the surrounding states could grow hostile and strangle it. That fear drove what amounted to an expansionist policy, be through territorial gain or expanded influence, particularly in bordering regions.
In The New Diplomacy: International Affairs In The Modern Age, Abba Eban explained:
Territorial expansion was not a new feature of Russian history, and yet in Russian eyes it was a “defensive expansion” inspired by the lack of defensive frontiers and by the harsh experience of past generations in which invading Russia had been an endemic habit of powerful European states. From the very beginning of the postwar [post-World War II] period the Soviet Union has displayed the classic contradictions of its image: a siege mentality combined with a sweeping audacity beyond the walls…
The nightmare of constant attack from neighboring countries, most recently experienced in the tragedy of 20 million Russian dead at the hands of the Nazis, had hardened the Soviet resolve to be satisfied with nothing less than total control of all contiguous territories.
In Diplomacy Henry Kissinger wrote:
Paradox was Russia’s most distinguishing feature. Constantly at war and expanding in every direction, it nevertheless considered itself permanently threatened. The more polyglot the empire became, the more vulnerable Russia felt, partly because of its need to isolate the various nationalities from their neighbors. To sustain their rule and to surmount the tensions among the empire’s various populations, all of Russia’s rulers invoked the myth of some vast, foreign threat, which, in time, turned into another of the self-fulfilling prophecies that doomed the stability of Europe.
As Russia expanded from the area around Moscow toward the center of Europe, the shores of the Pacific, and into Central Asia, its quest for security evolved into expansion for its own sake.
Russia gradually turned into as much of a threat to the balance of power in Europe as it did to the sovereignty of neighbors around its vast periphery. No matter how much territory it controlled, Russia inexorably pushed its borders outward.
Following the implosion of the Soviet Union and the political and economic crises that followed, the specter of weakness haunted Russia. Russia’s fears were intensified by pundits’ proclamations of a new single Superpower world. However the U.S. tried to explain it, Russia’s leaders saw U.S. unilateralism as a threat to Russia’s national security. U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, the West’s wresting Kosovo from Serbia, and U.S. plans to construct anti-missile radar installations in Poland and the Czech Republic all fed those fears.
A landmark speech by former Russian President Vladimir Putin before the Munich Conference on Security Policy in February 2007 encapsulated the Russian perspective concerning U.S. policy, particularly military interventions, and Russia’s fears. President Putin declared:
I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. And this is not only because if there was individual leadership in today’s – and precisely in today’s – world, then the military, political and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilization…
Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centers of tension. Judge for yourselves: wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished… And no less people perish in these conflicts – even more are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!
Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible.
We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way…
And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this – no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.
The force’s dominance inevitably encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, significantly new threats – though they were also well-known before – have appeared, and today threats such as terrorism have taken on a global character.
I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security.
Russia viewed developments in Georgia as part of a long-run trend that it felt was posing a growing threat to its security interests. “No one feels safe,” Putin had observed in his speech. Russia felt that the ring around its state was closing. Yesterday, The New York Times reported:
The Bush administration’s strong support for Georgia — including the training of Georgia’s military and arms support — came, in part, as a reward for its support of the United States in Iraq. The United States has held Georgia up as a beacon of democracy in the former Soviet Union; it was supposed to be an example to other former Soviet republics of the benefits of tilting to the West.
But that, along with America and Europe’s actions on Kosovo, left Russia feeling threatened, encircled and more convinced that it had to take aggressive measures to restore its power, dignity and influence in a region it considers its strategic back yard, foreign policy experts said.
The Moscow Times wrote of the thinking that guided Russia's government:
The South Ossetian conflict was a foreign policy trap for Russia from the start, and the trap slammed shut after the Georgian troops started shelling Tskhinvali late last week and its residents pleaded for Moscow to intervene, said Alexander Khramchikhin, a senior researcher with the Institute of Political and Military Analysis.
"Russia was left with the choice of either becoming a traitor or an aggressor," he said.
This apparently was a tough choice for a country that feels encircled and humiliated as former vassal regimes turn to the West. The fact that Georgia is a close ally of the United States, which strongly backs its bid to join NATO, promises to further complicate the bigger, geopolitical ramifications of the violence in South Ossetia.
In the end, Russian intervention should reasonably have been expected. Although the conflict was not of Georgia’s choice, it was the unintended consequence of Georgia’s decision to try to settle the South Ossetia dispute through armed force.
Now, looking farther ahead, the question arises as to what impact the success of Russian arms will have with respect to other disputes between Russia and its neighbors, as well as the larger framework of Russia-West relations. Will Russia marry its fears with its military success against Georgia to embark on an even more hawkish course? That is at least one plausible scenario. Such an outcome would increase geopolitical risk and it is a situation for which U.S. and Western policy makers will need to be prepared.
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