The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Never was there a more ridiculous statement for netroot progressives. Yet, it would seem in the current Georgian crisis that because Georgia has been a staunch ally of President Bush and supported his foreign policy – including sending a troop contingent to Iraq – that the current conflict has been reduced ad absurdum to a new round in the Bush Wars. And the obscene corollary – that the Russians are, somehow, liberators.
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I recall, all too well, the famous Domino Theory and its application to Southeast Asia in the 1960s. Were there proxy conflicts between Soviet and American power in Southeast Asia in the 1960s? Yes. However, the reasons for the conflict in Vietnam were far more complicated than any unidimentional Western-centered theory might explain. In fact, the Vietnam War was far more a war for national independence, a civil upheaval between different classes, and a regional war that tapped in ancient hostilities – than any domino for a great power.
To suggest that the current conflict in Georgia is the third stage of the Bush Wars and/or all about oil is to commit the same fallacy as those who operated under the Domino Theory fifty years ago. Although there is an element of Bush neoconservative diplomacy in play here – and although there is an aspect of oil politics, these pale before the larger cultural, historic, and regional security issues that have existed long before Dubya ever put on a ten-gallon hat.
What disturbs me most is the rather glib acceptance of Russian statements by many in the progressive blogosphere. Here is a nation that has ruthlessly subjugated its national minorities for centuries – most recently the Chechen War that may have had a million casualties and refugees. And one is to believe Vladimir Putin when he says that he is defending the rights of South Ossetians? The very same rights that South Ossetians are claiming in Georgia, Putin had snuffed out for the Chechens in Russia.
I do not suggest that this conflict is all one-sided or that Georgian president Saakashvili was not profoundly foolish in escalating the conflict by moving on South Ossetian separatists last week. However, in the larger framework of post-Soviet Georgia, Georgians have been far more often the victims of Russian atrocities than vice-versa. In fact, under Russian oversight Abkhazian separatists committed one of the largest acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the post-Soviet era in the early 1990s – forcing out 250,000 Georgians, Greeks, Armenians, and others and killing 30,000 in an orgy of violence that reduced the population of Abkhazia by half.
What options do Georgians and other nationalities of the former Soviet Union have to resist the resurgent Russian empire? Even today, a Russian diplomat threatened Poland and the Baltic States for their support of Georgia. And remember, under the Soviet Union entire ethnic groups were deported to Central Asia and Siberia – including the Chechens, the Crimean Tatars, and the Kalmyks – genocide on a national scale. So, yes, these newly independent, post-Soviet countries do have reason to fear the new Russian expansionism.
Finally, and almost as disturbing, is the tendency to equate George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin. To do so is obscene. Although Bush has overseen the violation of American international traditions and fundamental Constitutional protections, there still is a democratic opposition, albeit muzzled, that can act to constrain his excesses. Russia has returned to one-party rule. Arianna Huffington may vilify the Bush administration and face only a snub at social gatherings. Anna Politkovskaya was murdered for exposing the Putin regime. Bush is bush league when compared to Putin.
I am deeply saddened when the need to criticize Bush and the neocon disaster trumps a rational consideration of larger issues. Not only is it intellectually dishonest, but it also makes progressives look like fools and simpletons before the larger public. I would hope that we all think carefully before jumping on the Putin bandwagon tank too quickly.