Opinion - Editorials

Crisis in the Caucasus

Georgia’s adventurism in attacking and attempting brutally to take military control of the breakaway region of South Ossetia had zero chance of success, given the geopolitical circumstances. Within three days, it announced it had pulled out to avoid a “humanitarian catastrophe,” although Russia has disputed this. Rarely in the modern history of conflict has there been military provocation of this kind against a great power in a context of such extreme mil itary imbalance. Georgia, a transcontinental nation that became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and declared independence as a result of the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, is estimated by Jane’s to have 26,900 military personnel against Russia’s 641,000; 82 main battle tanks against 6,717; 139 armoured personnel carriers against 6,388; and seven combat aircraft against 1,206. Its military achievement has been to devastate Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, kill more than 2,000 civilians (most of them Russian citizens), and create 34,000 refugees, according to Russian and South Ossetian estimates. Russia maintains a peace keeping force in South Ossetia under a 1992 agreement and the Georgian attack, which took place when the world’s attention was focussed on the Beijing Olympics, killed 13 Russian soldiers and injured more than 150. Unsurprisingly, Moscow’s military response has been swift and overwhelming, involving ground forces, combat aircraft, and warships on a scale that made the three-day ‘war’ a no-contest.

It is not clear what President Mikheil Saakashvili — a diehard ally of the United States who has, among other things, sent Georgian soldiers to fight alongside American troops in Iraq and is seeking membership for his country in NATO — expected to achieve on the ground. If part of the plan was to test the differential, in terms of political resolve and will, between Vladimir Putin and Russia’s new President, Dmitry Medvedev has handled it with aplomb, ordering humanitarian aid for civilians and sending in military forces. He has asserted Russia’s right to intervene in South Ossetia in terms of its historical task of guaranteeing “the security of the peoples of the Caucasus,” and its duty to repulse Georgia’s “act of aggression” against the Russian peace keeping force operating under international law and U.N. mandates, and protect the lives and dignity of Russian citizens, estimated to constitute 80 per cent of South Ossetia’s population of 70,000. Significantly, Prime Minister Putin has accused the Saakashvili regime of genocide and ethnic cleansing in South Ossetia and declared that the territorial integrity of Georgia has “suffered a fatal blow.” The United States and western powers have come out, as expected, against the Russian military action against Georgia but there is no conviction in their attempts to broker a truce. With the western powers unwilling to endorse Russia’s proposal to call on Georgia and South Ossetia to lay down arms, the U.N. Security Council has been unable to come up with any constructive response to the crisis. Mr. Shaakashvili, whose political agenda included reasserting Georgian control over the three rebel regions of Ajaria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, has been left with a bloody nose. To make matters worse, Abkhazian fighters have launched a major military offensive against the Georgian forces to drive them out of a strategic foothold in the breakaway Black Sea region. Resurgent Russia, on the other hand, needs to learn from history and ensure that it does not get trapped in any prolonged or widening military operations in the Caucasus.

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