Exactly ten years ago, Russian forces crossed the Georgian border in anger. They initially denied that they were doing it, of course, claiming that the fighting was between Georgian forces and South Ossetian separatists.
But what followed was an annexation in all but name. South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two disputed parts of Georgia, were de facto absorbed into the Russian Federation. Their inhabitants were given Russian passports, their militias integrated into the Russian Armed Forces, their state budgets supplied by Moscow. Ethnic Georgians — previously the most numerous nationality in Abkhazia — were expelled. Now, on the tenth anniversary of the invasion, the Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, menaces Georgia with another “terrible conflict” if it dares to join NATO.
You hadn’t heard? I’m not surprised. Medvedev’s shocking comments have been shockingly under-reported. Here is Russia, blatantly threatening a neighboring state with war if it seeks to pursue an independent foreign policy, yet we are so habituated to Russian flouting of international law that we barely notice any more.
Putin rattles his saber yet again? Meh.
George Kennan, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, put it beautifully: “The jealous and intolerant eye of the Kremlin can distinguish, in the end, only vassals and enemies, and the neighbors of Russia, if they do not wish to be one, must reconcile themselves to being the other.”
The “vassals or enemies” dilemma is understood by every state contiguous to Russia, from Finland to Mongolia. In Moldova and in Ukraine, Russia has pulled the same trick as it did in Georgia, seizing territory under the guise of recognizing local separatist movements.
It’s a move from a very old Russian playbook. When Stalin invaded Poland in September 1939, he claimed to be defending ethnic Ukrainians and Belarussians. Soviet sympathizers from these communities were then induced to hold “elections” to special assemblies, which duly petitioned to join the U.S.S.R. Sound familiar?
Stalin got away with it. His conquests in Poland were accepted by the United States and Britain at the 1945 Yalta Conference. Putin has got away with his various land-grabs too, and for the same reason, namely that plenty of people in the West still think in terms of spheres of influence, and tacitly acknowledge Russia’s right to intervene in its own backyard.
It’s an odd way of thinking. Imagine it in any other context. There is currently, for example, an argument about how to ensure that Brexit does not require full border controls in Ireland. Various ideas have been put forward to avoid such an outcome, but no one has proposed establishing a British protectorate over the entire island. Nor would anyone suggest that the current argument between the United States and Canada over dairy tariffs could be short-circuited by sending the Green Berets to occupy Ottawa.
Georgia, like Ukraine and Moldova, is a sovereign state. If we accept, in practice, that Russia can alter borders by force, we signal to Moscow that it can violate international norms with impunity. We can hardly then complain if the Kremlin meddles in American elections, or orders murders on British soil.
We may, of course, have convinced ourselves that we are too weak to do anything about it. We may believe that we have no option but to tolerate Russia’s extraterritorial assassinations and domestic repression. We may even see Russia as a long-term ally against an equally expansionist China — though, at present, the two autocracies seem to be getting on pretty well.
If so, then let’s admit the consequences frankly. We — the West in general and the United States in particular — are giving up on the postwar international order. We are no longer willing to stand up for the principles of national sovereignty and territorial jurisdiction that have guaranteed the most peaceful and prosperous era our species has known. Humanity will no longer be led by liberal democracies which elevate the individual over the collective. An altogether chillier future beckons.
Is that what we want? Have we become so introverted that we now see relations with Russia as a subset of a domestic story about the 2016 presidential election? Do we truly believe that the clear evidence of Russian meddling in the West is some sort of anti-Trump plot? Or have we convinced ourselves that we can no longer face down a state with an economy about the same size as Spain’s or South Korea’s? We threaten to rain fire upon North Korea and Iran, yet we quail before an elderly, impoverished and decrepit Russia. How diminished we are as a civilization.
