Deep ethnic tensions, an impetuous Georgia and Russian fears all played a part in Ossetia conflict, writes GERARD TOAL
COLD WAR geopolitics, it appears, is back. The bloody fighting over the last week in South Ossetia between the Russian Federation and the state of Georgia, an aspirant member of Nato supported by the Bush administration, has revived memories of cold war proxy battles in strategic locations.
Georgia, an emerging democracy, seeks a reasonable goal, the restoration of its territorial integrity, but faces a neighbourhood bully in Russia which cynically uses ethnic minorities to assert its strategic domination over the region. This storyline may have superficial plausibility and emotional appeal but it hides more than it reveals.
First, the current conflict between South Ossetia and the state of Georgia has a malevolent independent history. Georgia is not a homogeneous nation-state.
In 1989 it had 5.4 million inhabitants, 70 per cent of whom were ethnic Georgians. Armenian (8 per cent), Russian (6.3 per cent), Azeri (5.7 per cent), Osset (3 per cent) and Abkhaz (1.8 per cent) minorities all lived peacefully in the country.
Like a Matyroiska doll, Georgia had smaller units within itself where some of these minorities were concentrated: the autonomous region of South Ossetia in the north and the autonomous republics of Abkhazia and Ajaria in the west. Only in South Ossetia, however, with a population of about 100,000 in 1989, were ethnic Georgians a minority. That didn't matter much - everyone was Georgian and Soviet - until the rise of Georgian nationalism in 1989 redefined belonging in exclusively ethnic terms.
Thousands of non-ethnic Georgians were attacked and driven from their homes by criminal gangs using nationalism as a cover for crimes of plunder, theft and murder. Among others, thousands of Ossetians fled the country in terror and streamed into neighbouring North Ossetia.
In South Ossetia, the Ossetian Georgians fought back and managed to retain control over most of their autonomous region. The rift with Georgia was deep.
Second, Ossetians are a unique people in the Caucasus. Predominantly but not exclusively Orthodox, they are unusual in their closeness to the Russian state, serving the Tsarist empire in the Caucasus wars of the 19th century and prominent in the Red Army in the 20th century.
The influx of about 100,000 Ossetians from Georgia in the early 1990s destabilised North Ossetia and soon it was at war with neighbouring Ingush over disputed territory.
Last summer in Vladikavkaz, I was presented with a large map of Ossetia, one featuring North and South Ossetia as a unified entity. The detachment of South Ossetia from Georgia and its eventual unification with North Ossetia within the Russian Federation is the aspiration of most Ossetians.
Travelling north to the border last summer, it was clear unification was already a material reality as construction crews worked on a pipeline to bind the region to North Ossetia. The independence of Kosovo and last week's events have advanced this scenario significantly.
Third, the ascendancy of Mikheil Saakashvili to the Georgian presidency in early 2004 after the Rose Revolution offered a new start for Georgia.
The western-educated Saakashvili set about reform with enormous zeal but with often careless attention to enduring aspects of history and geography.
To his credit, Saakashvili did try to heal the wounds caused by the events of the early 1990s, promising South Ossetia autonomy and appointing an Ossetian to administer the portions of the region controlled by Georgia. However he was impatient and, in pursuing membership of the European Union and, especially, Nato, he showed a reckless disregard for the security concerns of the Russian Federation.
He went further and signed up to send troops to support the US invasion of Iraq. In Washington DC, the Georgian state cultivated neoconservatives and became a darling of the set - plucky little Georgia defying the historic cold war enemy.
The independence of Kosovo in February and the encouragement to Georgia in April that it may eventually join Nato have changed the game in the Caucasus. Russia strengthened its ties to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and the local regimes there have been emboldened to confront Georgia.
In provocative situations where abundant caution was required, Saakashvili was impetuous. The results are visible for all to see. Saakashvili and his supporters - who include John McCain whose neocon foreign policy adviser doubles as a lobbyist for the Georgian government - are spinning cold war analogies but these are not playing as they once did in an America preoccupied with economic woes.
In Russia, a different analogy is playing well. Prime minister Vladimir Putin described Georgia's actions as a "crime against its own people" and a "massive blow to its national identity". Both Putin and his successor as Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, have described the Georgian actions as "genocide", a term that seems hyperbolic until one realises the analogy they are seeking to promote: South Ossetia is another Kosovo, with Georgia as Serbia and Russia as Nato riding to the rescue of an ethnically oppressed minority. If Nato and the West can grant a secessionist region independence by citing genocide as a putative legal rationale, then so can Russia.
Pity the poor civilians caught in the middle of these geopolitical manoeuvres. They deserved better from an international community celebrating international friendship at the Olympics.
Dr Gerard Toal is professor of government and international affairs at Virginia Tech's campus in Washington DC