On the War in the Caucasus

It is a shame that amid all the cosmopolitan fervor in Europe and the booming chants for change in America that a specter of the Cold War had to descend upon the Caucasus and remind us all that, in some parts of the world, twentieth century ideological battles still rage.

Russia’s regional imperialism, and to a lesser extent Georgian and Ossetian nationalism, is to blame for the blood splashed roads and villages which have colored the front pages of global newspapers, burying the Summer Olympics in Beijing, an amalgamated celebration of healthy national identities, humanity and internationalism, in a quotidian sea of black and white.

It is the same sort of unilateral hegemony and disregard for international legal institutions which led the United States into war in Iraq, except perhaps even then the US had the option to mask itself as a liberator, a card the Russians cannot honestly play in South Ossetia or Abkhazia with a straight-face.

While it is true that the 1992 Dagomys Treaty signed between the newly forged Russian federation, the South Ossetian breakaway government, and Georgia allowed for 1,500 hundred peacekeeping troops (500 of which were to be Russian) to patrol the breakaway region for some time, it still intended to resolve the 1990-92 Georgian Civil War by reaffirming the new nation’s sovereign borders, South Ossetia and Abkhazia included therein.

Any discussion of war, let alone this week’s fighting in the Caucasus, inherently involves a consideration of “right” and “wrong” principles used to justify an interruption of civil life. The jus ad bellum principles accepted by the international community articulate that a just cause must be established to start war, and that countries initiating aggression in circumstances other than to protect their own sovereignty, the sovereignty of others from invasion, or the human rights of oppressed peoples, are necessarily unjust.

Specific to the Russo-Georgian debacle is determining whether Russia’s actions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia qualifies as the second sort of permissible aggression, or whether Russia is merely meddling in a Civil War, of which it has no place.

And even if that is true, Russia’s aggression on behalf of the Ossetians would need to be evaluated as to whether or not it adheres to jus in bello principles, specifically that of proportionality. In other words, are the Russian war efforts in Ossetia merely empowering the Ossetians to fairly to compete with the Georgians, or do they exceed this threshold and apply inappropriate influence?

In answering the first question, it would be hard for even the slyest Russian diplomat to shoehorn a just cause for Russian intervention. Dagomys only permits a Russian peacekeeping force to soothe tensions in a tumultuous section of a sovereign country. As the Ossetians are not a sovereign country, they have no claim to receive international support in a Civil War. For that matter, neither do the Georgians, who are still clamoring in vain for Western intervention.

Had their human rights been stripped and civil liberties deprived, then perhaps the Ossetians could have cried oppression and hoped for the third type of just intervention. But the Ossetians were not stripped or deprived of their rights. In fact, they were begrudgingly allowed defacto self-government in their principalities.

It is all too clear from the facts that the Russian involvement in northern Georgia is a farce. But what is worse is that their illegitimate aggression exceeds even the prescribed limits a justified aggressor would have been allowed. In bombing Georgian civilians and interests in areas far south of the conflict zone, and now having pushed troop lines further towards the capital of Tbilisi, the Russians are inexcusably and egregiously out of line.

The West should not intervene in Georgia, even though just war principles would allow it in these circumstances. All strategic agreements, interests, and obligations aside, escalating aggression in the world, let alone the near middle east, is moving in the wrong direction of global citizenship, world peace, and the diffusion of human rights.

Russia and other warmongering rogue nations still in cold pursuit of lebensraum, spheres of influence, and national interests at the expense of others need to be dealt with and isolated from the growing international community, but not with force.

Perhaps not coincidentally, many of the world’s belligerents (Russia included) are ballooned by skyrocketing oil profits. The rest of the world effectively held hostage by their own poor habits is forced to pay these undesirables high sums that are then used to invade, oppress, and defy.

In the US, liberals, intellectuals, and environmentalists have long been arguing to support the development of clean renewable energy resources. Now an important lever in foreign policy, hawkish conservatives and isolationists have climbed onboard, renaming the issue “energy independence,” so as not to seem to permit liberals even the slightest policy victory. But all politics aside, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Off-shore drilling is not the solution, as it does not provide the market incentives for American households and businesses to retool their habits to continue without the availability of petroleum.

Wind, hydroelectric, natural gas, geothermal, solar, coal, and even nuclear technologies will need to power our homes. Electric and hydrogen fuel cells, sugar cane and E85 ethanol to power our cars.

We will have to raise the gas tax to provide large subsidies to Detroit automakers to meet not merely emission and mileage standards, but to develop America’s, and the world’s, automotive future once more.

When we can do this, the plan will begin to take form. Global oil belligerents like Russia, Iran, Venezuela, China, and even cartel led nations like Mexico and Nigeria, will be alienated from an increasingly integrated and cooperative international community. These nations will watch their coffers dry up, their standards of living plummet, and their citizens grow restless at the progress in other nations.

The world’s prodigal and wayward sons will then return home and plead to join the burgeoning cosmopolitan system. With a firm yet merciful grip we will embrace them, with a cool stream of investment in education, infrastructure, and clean energy.

For now, the Russians will realize that their continued unjustified aggression in Georgia is only scaring away customers, and that the Georgians on their own cannot muster enough of a fair fight to make it seem otherwise. When the Bear has decided that it has showed enough of its fangs, it will retreat across the Caucasus, leaving a smoldering, bleeding, bitter and broken Georgia, once and hopefully still a stout ally of the West, behind in the dust.

Random and meaningless conflicts like this can cause us to doubt our ideals and turn our backs on the promise we know them to hold. It can enrage us, tempt us to redraw our principles and bomb, bully, invade, infiltrate and confiscate our way out.

But with every step in the wrong direction of global citizenship, world peace, and the diffusion of human rights, with every bomb that goes off in Senaki, and every fallen soldier in Gori, we must not waver in our commitment to seeing these ideals through.