Illini Security Briefing: Analyzing the Georgia Conflict
Published: September 15, 2008
by Richelle Bernazzoli
Professor of Political Science Carol S. Leff responds to questions about the causes and implications of the recent conflict between Georgia and Russia.
Carol S. Leff is associate professor of political science at the University of Illinois, and an executive committee member of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS) and of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her major research interests are former Soviet/East European domestic and international politics, regime change, and ethnic conflict. Dr. Leff is the author of National Conflict in Czechoslovakia: The Making and Remaking of a State, 1918-1987 (Princeton University Press, 1988) and The Czech and Slovak Republics: Nation vs. State (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1997). Her teaching includes courses on ethnic politics, government and politics of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
For those who are not familiar with the region or past Russian and U.S. interactions with it, it may be difficult to wade through the various historical claims of control, sovereignty, et cetera that are being made by the different parties involved. Can you briefly summarize the history of Georgia and the enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, with regard to Russian and U.S. concerns there?
Most ethnic Ossetians live in Russia, but the North and South Ossetians have been territorially separate since the 19th century Russian imperial expansion into the Caucasus; Abkhazia was also absorbed into the Russian empire in that period. Both Abkhazia and South Ossetia were incorporated into the Soviet Union as part of the Georgian Republic in 1922, and granted autonomous status (which protected some language, educational and cultural rights). The first post-communist President of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, abrogated Ossetian autonomy in 1990; Abkhazia’s autonomy was deemed revoked when Georgia’s Soviet-era constitution was annulled in 1992. Both regions then declared independence of Georgia in the course of a brief period of open conflict with large refugee flows. International mediation starting in 1992 failed to overturn a stalemate in which the breakaway regions’ statehood was unrecognized, but Georgia no longer controlled Abkhazi and South Ossetian territory. Russian peacekeepers have been present in these territories since 1992 and the Russian government has freely granted Russian passports and citizenship to an estimated 70% of residents of the disputed regions. Each region has held its own unmonitored elections, unrecognized by Georgia, that brought former wrestling champion Eduard Koikoty to the presidency in South Ossetia in 2001 and businessman and former communist official Sergei Bagapsh to the Abkhazian presidency in 2004.
It seems that there are a number of ways in which the present situation in Georgia may be understood. On one hand, some experts speak of one or both sides being stuck in a “Cold War” mentality, with questions of NATO expansion, the missile shield, and Russian opposition to these things at the core of the analysis. Others interpret the situation in overtly economic terms, with control over Caspian Sea resources and trans-Caucasus pipelines the primary factors. In your view, are any of the explanations currently being offered in the popular media satisfactory, or do they fall short of sufficiently elucidating the issues?
Both types of analyses are important to a balanced assessment. First of all, the broad security context both frames Russian security assessments and offers rationalization for military actions; the recognition of Kosovo’s independence, for example, is cited as precedent for Russian recognition of Abkhazian and Ossetian independence; NATO expansion, the abrogation of the U.S. ABM treaty and the missile shield are characterized as destabilizing aggressive actions by the West. Here it is important to understand that these official arguments are not solely rationalizations; they also reflect a genuine, if perhaps tactically exaggerated, outrage at Western unilateralism and disregard for Russian interests. Likewise, energy politics—resource control and the whole question of “transit dependence” created by pipeline routes—have been a central component of Russian international policies since the break-up of the Soviet Union and particularly after Putin took office in 2000.
An attentive reader can garner a fairly good picture of the interacting interests that drive Russian policy in this crisis. One important component of the crisis that was underemphasized at the outset, especially on the broadcast media, was that the trigger was Georgian military action against South Ossetia, a course of action that the Bush administration had opposed. U.S. government spokesmen were, perhaps understandably, reluctant to emphasize this, so as to avoid granting any legitimacy to the Russian response, and much of the media appears to have followed suit. Nevertheless, those wishing to understand the genesis of international crises should recognize that Georgian President Saakashvili almost certainly rashly miscalculated here, and that he has a history of brinksmanship in dealing with Russia.
A parallel commonly being drawn of late is that between the situation in Kosovo and the situations in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This often precedes comments that U.S. support for Kosovo’s independence on one hand, and for Georgia’s “territorial integrity” on the other, present a glaring contradiction. Likewise, observers point out that Russia’s differing positions on these matters have also been at odds with one another. Do you think the Kosovo-Georgia comparison is a useful one, or are the situations too disparate for this parallel to be of any analytical value?
The Bush administration has argued that Kosovo was a special case, that the atrocities of the Milosevic era had ultimately made independence necessary and inevitable. However, the parallels are still strong. The core issue is the same in each case—and that is the vexed question of the conditions under which the logic of self-determination applies and should be recognized by the international community. An additional contextual parallel is the so-called “Russian doll” problem: when larger states such as Yugoslavia and the USSR dissolve, nested within the newly created successor states are still further unresolved ethnic divisions.
Specifically, as well, both the breakaway Georgian regions and Kosovar Albanians lost their autonomy in the course of the breakdown of the larger federations in which Georgia and Serbia had previously been imbedded, thus increasing the level of insecurity. It is true that Kosovo has been more firmly imbedded in a UN-mandated process—Kosovo itself at the time of its declaration of independence was under international protectorate as opposed to the less embracing UN peacekeeping mandate in Georgia, manned by Russian troops authorized to observe the post-conflict ceasefire. There had been some fears of a Serbian military response, fears that were probably unfounded because Serbia’s long-term stake in European integration was a strong inhibition. Both the international mandate in Kosovo and Serbian interests, then, kept the outcome peaceful. However, although non-violent, Kosovo independence was declared unilaterally, outside the framework of the aborted status talks, and international recognition a matter of individual state policy, which is the case as well for Abkhazia and Ossetia. There is clearly some Cold War style mirror imaging at play on both sides, with both Russia and the United States interpreting international standards such as minority rights in a way that justifies an inconsistency in the way they accord recognition to these new states.
As with many similar conflicts, the situation in South Ossetia has been characterized as a struggle between “great powers,” namely, Russia and the United States, or between Russia and its former Soviet republic, Georgia. To a lesser extent, the views of German and other European leaders are illuminated. However, the discussions in U.S. foreign policy circles, as well as the U.S. popular media, often disregard the South Ossetians themselves, who constitute the ethnic majority in the enclave. Are U.S. audiences missing a crucial part of the story due to the (frequent) omission of South Ossetian perspectives?
If we are to pay heed to South Ossetia in human terms as more than a battleground for great power interests, I think three points are important.
- The breakaway leadership in South Ossetia appears to have considerable public support for its project. Two referendums there, in 1992 and 2006, backed independence.
- On the other hand, these polls cannot be evaluated outside the context of the region’s demography. South Ossetia’s pre-conflict population in the 1989 census was about two thirds Ossetian and 30 percent Georgian. South Ossetia’s president has said that the ethnically Georgian refugees who fled in the August 2008 conflict will not be allowed to return, and large refugee populations who fled in the earlier conflict of the early 1990s also remain outside Ossetia (ethnic Ossetians who fled across the Russian border are being permitted to return). The rights of displaced refugees of all ethnicities are important components of the conflict.
- Finally, South Ossetia in fact has had rival governments, one administratively dominant in predominantly Ossetian regions and an administration sanctioned by Georgia in more ethnically Georgian areas. The intermixture here is thus particularly explosive. In addition, an organization called People of South Ossetia for Peace, led by Ossetian rivals to President Koikoty, have held parallel referendums and elections. The OSCE has been unwilling to sanction either side’s voting practices, and it remains very difficult to assess the wishes of a politically and ethnically divided populace.
Following the confrontation over South Ossetia, some policy discussion has turned to an acceleration of the U.S. missile defense base in Poland, with many U.S. commentators claiming that the Polish public desires this arrangement now more than ever due to Russian actions in Georgia. As someone who has followed this debate in Poland and other Eastern European societies, what is your sense of how the general public in Poland views the missile defense agreement?
Poland and the United States went ahead in signing agreements on the Polish missile defense shield on August 14, 2008, despite the outbreak of conflict in Georgia. Polish Prime Minister Tusk heralded the deal as one that enhanced Polish security, given US pledges to assist in further military modernization and to shore up Poland’s air defenses with Patriot missiles (Russia has threatened to target Poland if the missile shield agreement goes through). Polish public opinion polls showed ever diminishing enthusiasm for the project through summer 2008, with only 25% support and 60% opposition in late June. The Georgian crisis radically reversed these figures in August, with support surging to 63%. It is clear that the crisis reignited historically durable Polish fears and defiance of Russia, a result that might seem counterintuitive given the missile shield’s role as a magnet of Russian criticism. Interestingly, I have found no evidence that the strong public sentiment against the project has shifted in the Czech Republic, where the radar installation for the missile shield is scheduled to be based.
What are the short- and long-term implications of the Georgia conflict for Russian relations with the United States, the European Union, and Russia’s neighbors in the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, and the Baltic region?
In a sense, the conflict didn’t create new realities. Russian forces in South Ossetia and Abkhazia were dominant there before, and only Russia has recognized the two entities as states. What it does is underline some stark realities that make a coherent response difficult: European energy dependence on Russia, the vehement Russian resentment and resistance to perceived alterations of the security balance in terms of the missile shield, the prospect of further NATO expansion, and the uncertain position of other post-communist countries on or near Russian borders, especially Ukraine.