NEWS & LETTERS, August - September 2008
War in Georgia: dangerous new world
The war which broke out between Russia and Georgia on Aug. 8 represents one of the most significant confrontations between the U.S. and Russia since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Whatever the immediate outcome, it will have serious and dangerous ramifications far into the future.
The current crisis stems from the decision by Georgia's U.S.-allied Mikhail Saakashvili government to settle militarily the matter of South Ossetian separatism. South Ossetians, who live in a former Soviet oblast or administrative region (as well as the similar Georgian region of Abkhazia), looked to Russia for support. Their government is heavily influenced by the class of former KGB and Soviet era bureaucrats tied to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. When Georgia attacked brutally the Ossetian city of Tskhinvali, the Russian military was more than prepared to take advantage.
Despite a two-year long military buildup that more than doubled Georgian armed forces to 28,000, trainers from the U.S., and some modern arms received from Turkey and Israel, the Georgians turned out to be no match for the Russians.
Saakashvilli may have felt he had an optimal moment, when Bush and Putin were to be at the ceremonial opening of the Olympic games, posing as the arena of international peace between nations through athletic competition. To whatever extent Georgia's government was emboldened to challenge the Russians, it wouldn't have happened without the close military ties they have been cultivating with the U.S. and NATO. Indeed, only the demurral of Germany kept Georgia out of NATO last year. And only last month a thousand U.S. military personnel were in Georgia for a training exercise, at a base which Russia has now bombed.
NO MORE UNIPOLAR WORLD
The U.S. military has flown 2,000 Georgian troops back from Iraq, and as well has begun humanitarian aid flights to Tbilisi. At the same time the Russian military has continued its brutal advance through the country and cities of Georgia, with the stated goal of forcing a "regime change." The occupation of Gori effectively split the country in half. This crisis is a direct challenge to the U.S. and essentially puts an end to the idea of a "unipolar world."
Vladimir Putin had stated this goal clearly last year in a speech in Munich, Germany: "What is a unipolar world? It refers to one type of situation, one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making. It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. This is pernicious ... unacceptable ... impossible."
The crisis is a challenge to those countries formerly controlled by the Soviet Union, as seen by the statements and actions of Ukraine and Poland (whose presidents flew into Tbilisi to stand with Saakashvili) and the Baltic states. The logic for an immeasurably wider conflict is firmly in place. The Polish government for instance has now accepted the presence of a U.S. missile shield, and in return a senior Russian general has chillingly declared Poland a legitimate target of Russian nuclear missiles.
NEW THREAT OF TOTAL WAR
Putin's stance is also meant to send a strong message to Western Europe inasmuch as the gas pipelines that pass from Baku, Azerbaijan, through Georgia were shut down. The continent is already dependent upon Russia for much of its energy, and Putin would like to keep that leverage in place, or to strengthen it. The current crisis demonstrates to the Western European governments how easily that can be done. Closing the gas pipelines also establishes Russian dominance over Georgia, as they are seen as strengthening Georgia both economically and politically.
Yet another motive for Putin's Russia is perhaps greater land access to the Middle East, and the opportunity for further military moves in that volatile region.
What is new in Georgia is that this isn't just a flash point but actual war, with Russian imperialism telling U.S. imperialism that the struggle for world mastery is far from over. It makes it more urgent than ever to realize that self-determination can only end capitalist war-mongering if it is a path to global solidarity and getting rid of capitalism. The opposite of war is revolution.
The battle of ideas is as paramount here as the physical battlefield. Russia has tried to justify its actions in Georgia with a specious parallel to the situation of Kosova under Milosevic. (Claims of Georgian "ethnic cleansing" in South Ossetia, and thousands of civilian dead, haven't been verified by Human Rights Watch.) This justification for intervention in South Ossetia and Georgia actually had been raised by Russian diplomats for months, if not years, beforehand.
Far from being outraged by the independence of Kosova, Putin and his mouthpieces were happy to grasp this most cynical and false comparison. It has been echoed widely, in fact, by Russian propagandists, Buchananites, and some leftists alike.
REAL LESSON OF KOSOVA
It becomes imperative here to look back at the work that News and Letters Committees did on Bosnia and Kosova to recall the real issues there. One was the question of the kind of society that would arise in post-Stalinist Eastern Europe and the dire consequences of the failure to project a revolutionary alternative for the future. The void of a revolutionary vision was filled in Serbia by Milosevic's ethnic chauvinism, and his harsh oppression of the Kosovars' non-violent freedom movement, which was followed by the horrors of actual genocide in Bosnia.
That is what Putin wants to validate. On the other hand is the "benign imperialism" of the U.S. which intervened in Bosnia only to impose a "settlement" which settled almost nothing, leaving the fruits of Serbian "ethnic cleansing" in place. This imperialism was described in the May 1993 News & Letters: "Like Stalin, who stood outside the gates of Warsaw in 1944 while Hitler slaughtered a mass uprising, U.S. imperialism manages to come to the 'aid' of suffering peoples only after they have been decimated by the forces arrayed against them. The 'benign imperialism' offers humanity its 'freedom' only on the day of its burial." (Bosnia-Herzegovina: Achilles Heel of Western 'Civilization' p.23.)
The question of the kind of revolutionary solidarity that was required in Bosnia and Kosova is spoken to by the trajectory of events once the great powers become involved. They only come to your aid on the day of your destruction, and they write the opening lines for the next destructive chapter. Even up to World War III. It should be even clearer now that Bosnia was indeed the "test of world politics," as the Marxist-Humanist Perspectives stated in 1995.
The crisis of vision has only deepened since then. The stakes today are as high as they have ever been. In Georgia, Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere the tripwires are being put into place for even wider and more destructive wars between rival imperialisms. The peace movement that has been almost silent so far in this moment of crisis will likely have to dig deep into revolutionary ideas to find its voice.
--Gerry Emmett
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