U.S. Must Not Get Drawn Into Russia-Georgia Conflict

August 18, 2008

Our War Party media has been full of the usual cast of characters giving one-sided and often incorrect accounts of the crisis in the Caucus Mountains. The aim seems to be to lay the groundwork for a renewed Cold War. This may be in the interests of the military-industrial-petroleum complex and their propagandists in the mainstream media, but it would not be in the interests of regular American people. While you wouldn't know it from most media reports, it was Georgia and not Russia that initiated military actions, apparently with President Saakashvili believing he had American approval. That Georgia struck first is obvious from media reports early in the conflict, like these from CNN and the BBC. Although it is regrettable that Russia has resorted to violence, it is hard to imagine that the Russian government (or pretty much any government in a similar situation) would have responded otherwise.

The best outcome we can hope for would be to return to the status quo before hostilities, i.e. nominal Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia but with those territories enjoying de facto independence from Georgia. It’s not ideal, but it’s been tolerable for the past 17 years. However, what is key is that it is not for the United States to decide. We are not the world’s policeman. Our intervening and scheming in Georgia is one of the reasons for the totally avoidable deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations. The prizes that Washington seeks -- the expansion of NATO and unfettered access to Caspian gas -- are prizes we don’t need. We should have disbanded NATO in 1991 when the Soviets disbanded the Warsaw Pact. This recent crisis shows that danger in belonging to an alliance, as opportunistic politicians like Saakashvili can exploit treaty commitments to drag us into fights we have no interest in. We must also realize we will never break our addiction to oil and gas as long as we are devoting so much effort to get access to them.

Rather than going into all the details of the history behind the conflict and the logic against a bellicose reaction, I will recommend two articles. One is by Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the editor of the Liberal/Progressive magazine The Nation. The other is by conservative icon Pat Buchanan. (That I need to refer to Pat Buchanan as a voice for peace and reason is a sad commentary on the state of our media!)

I would like to finish by saying that if mankind is ever to live in peace on this planet, we are going to have to find a way to overcome the ideas of borders and nations.