The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Three weeks ago, when the Georgian army foolishly invaded South Ossetia and the Russian army drove it back out, I wrote that we shouldnÕt worry about a new Cold War. An old journalist friend in Moscow immediately e-mailed me saying that I was wrong, and IÕm beginning to think he was right. The preparations for a new Cold War, or at least a Very Cool War, are coming along quite nicely. On August 27, BritainÕs foreign minister, David Miliband, flew into Kiev to say that Òthe Georgia crisis has provided a rude awakening. The sight of Russian tanks in a neighbouring country on the 40th anniversary of the crushing of the Prague Spring has shown that the temptations of power politics remain.Ó By recognizing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Miliband said, Russia has ended Òthe post Cold War period of growing geopolitical calm in and around Europe.Ó So Ukraine and Georgia, formerly parts of the Soviet Union, would be welcome to join NATO, formerly RussiaÕs great enemy. Oh, and one other thing. Russia bore Òa great responsibilityÓ not to start a new Cold War. On the same day Mitt Romney, a leading candidate for the Republican vice-presidential nomination, was in Denver to make the point that Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, lacked the judgment and the experience to deal with a crisis like the Òinvasion of Georgia.Ó He then proceeded to speculate that the next move of Òthe SovietsÓ might be to invade Poland. Well, why not? If weÕre going to have the Cold War back, we might as well have the Soviet Union back too. And so to RussiaÕs prime minister, Vladimir Putin, raised the stakes on the following day by speculating that the United States government had encouraged Georgia to attack South Ossetia in order to provoke a crisis. ÒThe American side in effect armed and trained the Georgian army....The suspicion arises that someone in the United States especially created this conflict with the aim of making the situation more tense and creating a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of US president.Ó But I donÕt believe that the White House told Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to go ahead and grab South Ossetia, counting on the Russians to counterattack, smash the Georgian army, and scare Americans into voting for John McCain. The Bush administration would not have betrayed its favourite Georgian so callously. The truth is probably that Saakashvili, having been promised NATO membership, attacked South Ossetia on the false assumption that the United States would threaten war with Russia to back his play. Now Russia has enraged the West further by recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and GeorgiaÕs other breakaway territory, Abkhazia. This is no real loss for Georgia, which has never controlled them since it got its own independence when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. The local ethnic groups fought off the first Georgian attempts to conquer them in 1991-92, and the Òethnic cleansingÓ by both sides in those wars ensured that the Ossetian and Abkhaz minorities would never again accept Georgian rule. Yet for the past 16 years, Moscow did not recognize their independence. Russia has always insisted on preserving the territorial integrity of states, because so many of its own minorities might be tempted by separatism if it were legal for unhappy ethnic groups to just leave a country. If South Ossetia can secede from Georgia, why canÕt North Ossetia secede from Russia? When the major Western countries, having occupied SerbiaÕs Albanian-majority province of Kosovo in 1999 to stop the atrocities being committed there by the Serbian army, finally recognized KosovoÕs independence last February, Moscow was furious. This was a precedent that could unleash international chaos. Well, now it has accepted that same precedent for South Ossetia and Abkhazia Ð although Hell will freeze over before it agrees that the same principle might apply to, say Chechnya.
