Putin to world: I promise baby, I'll pull out

Georgia's president lets himself be drawn into Russia's trap.

A few friends have asked me to explain what's been happening in Georgia. What follows is a brief summary.

Georgia declared independence from the Soviet Union in late 1991. Soon afterward the United Nations recognized Georgia, along with the other 14 Soviet Republics, as an independent state. Aside from ethnic Georgians, the country contains a number of ethnic minorities, most prominent among whom are the Ossetians and the Abkhazis. Under Soviet rule, each of these two minorities were granted their own "autonomous republics" - the region where most Ossetians lived was now made into an administrative unit called "South Ossetia," while Abkhazis received "Abkhazia."

The autonomous republics were one step down in status from a "union republic" like Georgia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, etc., each of which, like the autonomous republics, were named after an ethnic group residing there. Stalin, ever the master of divide-and-rule, created these smaller autonomous republics inside some of the union republics so that he would have some future way of sowing discord among the different ethnic groups inhabiting the Soviet Union.

While all the autonomous republics and union republics had their own formal government trappings - a legislature, an executive, a flag, etc., during most of the Soviet period they had no real autonomy; everything was controlled from Moscow. That all changed under Gorbachev, when power began devolving from the center to the regions. The republics began asserting themselves - the Soviet republics against Moscow, and the autonomous republics against the union republics.

This process of devolution was mostly peaceful, with a few exceptions. One of these exceptions was Georgia, where civil war erupted. After Georgia declared independence from the Soviet Union, the rulers of South Ossetia and Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia. This prompted the Georgian government to forcefully intervene in an attempt to prevent the two regions from seceding. It would have succeeded were it not for Russia, who sent "peacekeeping" troops into the two regions and drove out the Georgian forces. Local Russian-backed militias additionally expelled the ethnic Georgians living in these regions in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

This all happened mostly in 1992 and 1993. Ever since then, a peaceful stalemate has prevailed. South Ossetia and Abkhazia, while not recognized as independent states by the United Nations, are independent in all but name. Backed by the Russian military, the two regions conduct their own affairs completely independently of the Georgian state.

While Abkhazia has at least proved functional as a state, South Ossetia has been described by one astute observer as a "joint venture between the KGB and a local gangster." The business this joint venture is engaged in is smuggling - drugs, people, and arms, which are free to pass through the territory under the protection of its political masters. Over the past 15 years there has been a seemingly endless series of initiatives led by the UN to form a conclusive peace settlement, but none of them has ever gotten off the ground; a few powerful people were making too much money from the status quo for that to happen.

Eduard Shevardnadze, when he was president of Georgia from 1995 to 2003, tended not to interfere in the situation. But his successor, Mikhail Saakashvili, is a Georgian nationalist who in 2003 was swept to power in part on a promise to bring South Ossetia and Abkhazia back under Georgian rule. Ever since then, tensions have remained high. Meanwhile, the Bush administration and many European states have offered strong rhetorical backing to Saakashvili, the Columbia University-educated democrat. The Bush administration has even mused about letting Georgia into NATO. That would give Georgia an explicit security guarantee from the alliance, whose member states would be obligated to intervene militarily on Georgia's behalf if any external state (i.e. Russia) attacked it. So admitting Georgia into NATO is obviously regarded as an intolerable prospect by Moscow.

The Kremlin, for its part, has repeatedly tried to provoke Saakashvili into sending Georgian troops to try and reoccupy the two regions. In August, these provocations finally succeeded. The Georgian military started shelling civilian targets in South Ossetia, prompting Russia to launch an excessive "peacekeeping" campaign to defend the region against Georgian "aggression." So, once again, the Russian military has driven Georgian troops out of South Ossetia.

But it didn't stop there. They've also occupied key cities, towns, and ports in the rest of Georgia, blown up transport links connecting one part of the country to another, and embarked on a mass campaign of looting. All the while the Russian government has been signing EU-brokered "cease-fire" agreements which they promptly proceed to violate before the ink has had a chance to dry.

The question is, why did Russia try to provoke Georgia into launching attacks in South Ossetia? For a number of reasons, but mostly because it would give Moscow an excuse to mobilize a brutal display of military force against the Georgian government. This would show the world just who the real boss is in this strategically sensitive part of the former USSR. For all its rhetorical support, the Bush administration was never prepared to intervene militarily on Georgia's behalf in a Russian-Georgian conflict. The Kremlin knew that, and called America's bluff.

Moreover, now that the West sees that Russia is really willing to launch a war against Georgia at the drop of a hat, do they really want to take on the formal obligation of defending Georgia by letting it into NATO? This fiasco the Georgian president let himself be drawn into will only serve to make American and European politicians think twice before admitting Georgia into the alliance. And that was the whole idea. Putin, meanwhile, is relishing his glorious little war against his renegade southern neighbor.