On the Ossetia War
It’s hard to blog about it, because the situation changes so quickly. But three hasty stitches emerge from the conflict.
1. Russia is a hopeless thugocracy. Putin is a dictator, or at least a proto-dictator. He would bring back the Soviet Union in a flash if he thought he could. In the meantime he will settle for threat-based, military-backed, natural-resource-funded Russian hegemony in the region — what the Russians call their “near abroad.” And Bush’s good ol’ boy, “looked into his soul” smoochiness with Putin over the years may go down as a bigger foreign policy blunder than Iraq (if that’s possible).
2. Not our problem. See generally, “bigger foreign policy blunder than Iraq.” Send them their troops back, wish them well … and let Europe flex its alleged regional “muscle” (you know, like it did in Bosnia).
3. The fact that the South Ossetians actually seemed to want Russia to take them over demonstrates yet again that the ancient, Westphalian theory of nation-state geopolitics simply cannot work well in “mosaic” regions of the world. The notion that clear sovereign boundaries are pragmatic and indeed stabilizing only works under two very rare circumstances:
(a) The most extreme ethnically pure cases, most notably Western Europe (where the Westphalian nation-state was born — “France is where French people live, Spain is where Spanish people live,” etc.).
(b) The most advanced and peaceful societies — most notably the Americas, where questions of ethnicity, language, religion, etc., are far less relevant. The Quebecois may want their independence, for example, but they’re not going to shed blood (or dollars) over it, and the U.S. is not going to “liberate” them by making war on Ottawa.
The idea that one can simply draw a relatively arbitrary line and say, “this side is Georgia, that side is Russia, now play nice and respect each other’s sovereignty” doesn’t do much good for the Ossetians, who are pretty much perfectly split down the middle by that line. (Note also that in the bad old days, that Georgia-Russia boundary was essentially meaningless — to the Ossetians and to everyone else. They were one big miserable Soviet Union.) Indeed, in a post-Soviet world, the South Ossetians essentially become little more than pawns — a pretext for invasion (i.e., to “liberate them” from Georgia).
But this is nothing new. We see the failure of the nation-state model almost everywhere it’s tried, except Western Europe and the Americas (along with single-culture island “nations” and to some extent Asia). The Caucasus, the Balkans, Asia Minor, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent — and most especially Sub-Saharan Africa. Every attempt to overlay Western-style nation-state boundaries on non-Western peoples who simply aren’t ready to live the way modern nation-staters do, with a greater concern for freedom and prosperity than with ancient ethnic, cultural or religious fixations, ends (or, worse, never ends) with bloodshed.
I’m neither an international affairs scholar nor a futurist. I have no idea what model can, should or will replace Westphalian sovereignty in the mosaic regions of the world. But I do know, as a libertarian and as a member of an insular political minority myself, that whatever “new world order” emerges, it will have to be based, not on ethnicities, religions or languages, nor on rivers, mountains or latitudes. It must be based on legitimacy, built from within and not imposed from without. And we know that a government, to be legitimate, must be benign. It must be inoffensive. It must respect not the rights of factions, but of individuals. It must enable people — through property rights, private markets and other institutions, to care about something besides ancient history and ancient hatreds.
The Russians have never understood this. It appears the Ossetians don’t especially understand it either. So the bloodshed in Georgia will continue.
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Anyone remember where the 2014 Olympics are scheduled to be held? Will the free peoples of the world give themselves another “Beijing Lobotomy” when that Olympiad comes around?
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It appears that John “Foreign Policy Experience” McCain has been getting his Georgia briefings from Wikipedia. Splendid.
Filed under: Foreign Affairs
Tom, do you seriously think McCain writes his own speeches? As his off-the-cuff performance at the biker rally last week and his continued mistakes such as referencing a nation that hasn't existed for 15 years (Czechoslovakia) in the present tense and his claiming the fundamentalist Shia government of Iran is giving money, aid and support to a Sunni terrorist organization (Al Qaeda) whose would love nothing more than to smite every Shiite on the earth shows, McCain can't make a coherent sentence unless it is writtenfor him by someone else (who does not speak for him since no one speaks for John McCain including John McCain). I doubt McCain knew it was lifted en masse from Wikipedia since McCain would have no earthly idea what Wikipedia is. I doubt Kip is insinuating McCain is an evil mastermind. I wouldn't even say he's an idiot of Bushian proportions. I simply think he's a cranky, decrepit, senile pawn to whatever aide's advice he manages to remember at any given moment.