Decisions that Come Home to Roost

I am not an international security expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I would like to pose a question: Do you think that Russia would be doing what it is doing right now in the Republic of Georgia were it not for the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq?

It seems to me that we set up such a situation by engaging in peremptory war (for shifting policy reasons offered by the Bush Administration). We, being the biggest, most powerful superpower, demonstrated our disdain for the international community by flexing our “hard power.” (While not an expert in international security, I DO know this term, which means military might, versus “soft power,” which means diplomatic and economic pressure.) When others protested or asked for more time, we forged ahead, needing really only a bare pretense, a thin reason, to move forward. In our case, it was the declaration, based on terribly shaky intelligence, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (“WMDs”—remember that term? Not a lot of chatter about it nowadays, is there?). Russia, also, has the thin and debatable reason for crushing Georgia: Russia claims to be preventing the genocide of the South Ossetians at the hands of the Georgians. Of course, the reports out of the region are all about Russian tanks and planes ravaging Georgia, but that doesn’t really matter. The reason seems quasi-legitimate, or at least sounds like it. That was good enough for us when we invaded Iraq, so, of course, our chief rival (this is debatable, but they at least think they are our chief rival) will act in the same manner we did.

This is, of course, cynical policy under the cover of a sort of bizarre PR campaign. I say “sort of bizarre” because anyone with half a brain observing either conflict knows that the proffered reason (the PR) simply cannot be the reason for the action taken. At least in the 19th Century, expanding territory or extraction of resources were sufficient reasons for imperial powers to go to war, and they did not claim to be going to war for some other purpose. I suppose when a country’s government makes a transition from autocracy or monarchy to democracy (or, in the case of Russia, pseudo-democracy), an extra layer of political correctness is required. We've got to fool ourselves, in other words.

The context of each conflict— the war in Iraq and the current conflict in Georgia-- is different, and I am sure that the war in Iraq and the Georgian conflict can be distinguished on a number of factual grounds, but the reaction— swift, aggressive, powerful, and violent-- cannot. Russia’s reaction and disregard of international protest was, I believe, at least partially influenced by our own government’s arrogant refusal to pay proper respect to the international community leading up to the war in Iraq.