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Jewish World Review August 15, 2008 / 14 Menachem-Av 5768 Georgia, Israel, and the nature of man By Caroline B. Glick
This is all very nice and well. But what does the fact that it took the US a
full five days to issue a clear statement against Russian aggression tell us
about the US? What does it say about Georgia and, in a larger sense, about
the nature of world affairs?
Russia's blitzkrieg offensive in Georgia this week was not simply an act of
aggression against a small, weak democracy. It was an assault against vital
Western security interests. Since it achieved independence in 1990, Georgia
has been the only obstacle in Russia's path to exerting full control over
oil supplies from Central Asia to the West. And now, in the aftermath of
Russia's conquest of Georgia, that obstacle has been set aside.
Georgia has several oil and gas pipelines that traverse its territory from
Azerbaijan to Turkey, the main one being the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
Together they transport more than one percent of global oil supplies from
east to west. In response to the Russian invasion, British Petroleum, which
owns the pipelines, announced that it will close them.
What this means is that Russia has won. In the future that same oil and gas
will either be shipped through Russia, or it will be shipped through Georgia
under the benevolent control of Russian "peacekeeping" forces permanently
stationed in Gori. The West now has no option other than appeasing Russia if
it wishes to receive its oil from the Caucasus.
Russian control of these oil arteries represents as significant a threat to
Western strategic interests as Saddam Hussein's conquest of Kuwait and his
threat to invade Saudi Arabia in 1990. Like Saddam's aggression then,
Russia's takeover of Georgia threatens the stability of the international
economy. While Russia's invasion of Georgia is substantively the same as
Saddam's attempt to assert control over Persian Gulf oil producers eighteen
years ago, what is different is the world's response. Eighteen years ago,
the US led a UN-mandated international coalition to defeat Iraq and rollback
Saddam's aggression. Today, the West is encouraging Georgia to surrender.
Whether due to exhaustion over the domestic fights about the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, to dependence on Russian oil supplies, to residual and
unjustified belief that Russia will side with the West in a confrontation
with Iran over its nuclear weapons program, or to the absence of an easy
option for defending Georgia, it is manifestly clear that today, the West is
fully willing to accept complete Russian control over oil supplies from
Central Asia.
Notwithstanding the strong statements issued Wednesday by Bush and Rice, the
West has taken two steps to make its willingness to accept Russia's moves
clear. First, there was French President Nicholas Sarkozy's photogenic
mediation tour to Moscow and Tbilisi on Tuesday. And second there was the
US's response to Sarkozy's shuttle diplomacy on Wednesday.
Sarkozy's mediation efforts signaled nothing less than Europe's abandonment
of Georgia. During his visit to Moscow, where he met with Russian dictator
Vladimir Putin and Putin's Charlie McCarthy doll "President" Dmitry
Medvedev, Sarkozy agreed to a six-point document setting out the terms of
the ceasefire and the basis for "peace" talks to follow. The document's six
points included the following principles: The non-use of force; a ceasefire;
a guarantee of access to humanitarian aid; the garrisoning of Georgian
military forces; the continued deployment of Russian forces in South Ossetia
and Abkhazia, and anywhere else they wish to go; and an international
discussion of the political status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
As France's *Liberation*'s reporter noted, by agreeing to the document
France abandoned the basic premise that Georgia's territorial integrity
should be respected by Russia. Moreover, by leaving Russian forces in the
country and giving them the right to deploy wherever they deem necessary,
Sarkozy effectively accepted Russian control of Georgia. By grounding
Georgian forces in their garrisons, (or what is left of them after most of
Georgia's major military bases were either destroyed or occupied by Russian
forces), Sarkozy's document denies Georgia the right to defend itself from
future Russian aggression.
In their appearances Wednesday, both Bush and Rice praised Sarkozy's efforts
and Rice explained that the US wishes for France to continue its efforts to
mediate between Russia and Georgia. Although both of them insisted that
Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected, neither offered any sense
of how that is to be accomplished. Neither explained how that aim aligns
with the French-mediated ceasefire agreement which gives international
backing to Russia's occupation of the country.
The West's response tells us three basic things about the nature of world
affairs. First, it teaches us is that "international legitimacy" is
determined neither by a state's adherence to international law nor by a
state's alliances with great powers. Rather, international legitimacy is
determined by the number of divisions a state possesses.
After Russia illegally invaded Georgia, European and American officials as
well as Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama hinted that
Russia had a legitimate right to invade when they wrongly referred to South
Ossetia as "disputed territory." While South Ossetia and Abkhazia are
separatist provinces, their sovereignty is not in dispute. They are part of
Georgia. Georgia acted legally when it tried to protect its territory from
separatist violence last Friday. Russia acted illegally when it invaded. Yet
aside from the Georgian government itself, no one has noticed this basic
distinction.
"We don't have time now to get into long discussions on blame," German
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said Tuesday.
"We shouldn't make any moral judgments on this war. Stopping the war, that's
what we're interested in," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner
explained adding, "Don't ask us who's good and who's bad here."
Then there is the fact that Georgia has gone out of its way to liberalize
and democratize its society and political system and to be a loyal ally to
the US. It sent significant forces to Iraq and Kosovo. Far from returning
the favor, in Georgia's hour of need, all the US agreed to do was give
Georgian forces a free plane ride home from Iraq. That the administration
has no intention of defending its loyal ally was made clear Wednesday
afternoon when the Pentagon sharply denied Georgian claims that the US would
defend Georgian airports and seaports from Russian aggression.
The Pentagon's blunt denial of any plan to restore Georgian sovereignty was
one of the first truly credible statements issued by the US Defense
Department on the conflict. It took the US four days to acknowledge Russian
aggression beyond South Ossetia. Even as convoys of journalists were
shelled, civilian homes were bombed, and Georgian military bases were
destroyed by Russian forces in Gori, a Defense Department official said, "We
don't see anything that supports [the Russians] are in Gori. I don't know
why the Georgians are saying that."
The general lesson that emerges from Washington's claims of ignorance is
that reality itself is of no concern for policymakers bent on ignoring it.
Through its obvious lies, Washington was able to justify taking no action of
any sort against Russia or to speak out in defense of Georgia until after
Russia forced Georgia to surrender its sovereignty through the French
mediators.
The US and European willingness to let Georgia fall in spite of its
strategic importance, in spite of the fact that it has operated strictly
within the bounds of international law, and in spite of its obvious
ideological affinity and loyalty to them will have enormous repercussions
for the West's relations with Ukraine, the Baltic States, Poland and Czech
Republic. But its aftershocks will not be limited to Europe. They will
reverberate in the Middle East as well. And Israel for one, should take note
of what has transpired.
In Israel's early years, with the memory of the Holocaust still fresh in its
leaders' minds, Israel founded its strategic posture on an acceptance of the
fact that the soft power of international legitimacy, peace treaties,
alliances and common interests only matters in the presence of the hard
power of military force. People like David Ben Gurion realized that what was
unique about the Holocaust was not the allies' willingness to sit by and
watch an atrocity unfold but the magnitude of the atrocity they did nothing
to stop. Doing nothing to prevent an innocent nation from be destroyed has
always been the normal practice of nations.
Yet over time, and particularly after Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day
War, that foundational acceptance of the world as it is was lost. It was
first mitigated by Israel's own shock in discovering its power. And it was
further obfuscated in the aftermath of the war when the Soviets and the
Arabs began promulgating the myth of Israeli aggression. In recent years,
the understanding that the only guarantor of Israel's survival is Israel's
ability to defeat all of its enemies decisively has been forgotten
altogether by most of the country's leaders as well as by its intellectual
classes.
Since 1979 and with increasing intensity since 1993, Israeli leaders bent on
appeasing everyone from the Egyptians to the Palestinians to the Syrians to
the Lebanese have called for Israel's inclusion in NATO, or the deployment
of Western forces to its borders or lobbied Washington for a formal
strategic alliance. They have claimed that such forces and such treaties
will unburden the country of the need to protect itself in the event that
our neighbors attack us after we give them the territories necessary to wage
war against us.
It has never made any difference to any of these leaders that none of the
myriad international forces deployed along our borders have ever protected
us. The fact that instead of protecting Israel, they have served as shields
behind which our enemies rebuild their forces and then attack us has made no
impression. Instead, our leaders have argued that once we figure out the
proper form of appeasement everyone will rise to defend us.
If nothing else comes of it, the West's response to the rape of Georgia
should end that delusion. Georgia did almost everything right. And like
Israel, for its actions it was celebrated in the West with platitudes of
enduring friendship and empty promises of alliances which were summarily
discarded the moment Russia invaded.
Georgia only made one mistake and for that mistake it will pay an enormous
price. As it steadily built alliances, it forgot to build an army. Israel
has an army. It has just forgotten why its survival depends on our
willingness to use it.
If we are unwilling to use our military to defeat our enemies, we will lose
everything. This is the basic enduring truth of international affairs that
we have ignored at our peril. No matter what we do, it will always be the
case. For this is the nature of world affairs, and the nature of man.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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