It seems like each new day brings a new development in the Georgian crisis. Today President Bush reacted to Russia recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (The Associated Press – Bush slams Russian recognition of breakaway areas):
In an escalating war of words, President Bush on Tuesday urged Russia to reconsider its “irresponsible decision” to shower independent status on two breakaway Georgian provinces. Already rebuffed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Bush warned Russia to change course and respect the borders of its Georgian neighbor. […] Bush shot back that Russia's move violates both United Nations resolutions and the six-point cease-fire deal that Russia, under Medvedev's watch, signed with Georgia to end a war. “We expect Russia to live up to its international commitments, reconsider this irresponsible decision, and follow the approach set out (in the cease-fire deal),” Bush said. The White House says the U.S. will use its veto power on the U.N. Security Council to ensure that the two separatist provinces remain part of Georgia in the eyes of the world.
In this op-ed, J. Victor Marshall, of The Independent Institute, argues that U.S. support for Kosovo's independence from Serbia helped set the stage for the conflict in Georgia.
Just as NATO justified its intervention in 1999 as a humanitarian defense of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians against Serbian atrocities, so Russia said it came to the defense of South Ossetia, which suffered terrible atrocities at Georgian hands in the early 1990s, after Georgian troops shelled its capital earlier this month.
Marshall quotes several analysts who warned that U.S. support for an independent Kosovo could set a risky precedent for other countries. Is there any evidence that this may in fact be happening? Russia today warned Moldova to avoid a repeat of the Georgia crisis in their separatist Trans-Dniester region which is mainly populated by Russians and Ukrainians and already has Russian troops stationed there.
The West told Russia that Kosovo was a special case, but I fear that in world affairs such fine distinctions are not as clear as we would sometimes like or wish them to be. The borders of Europe had been settled by past conflict and by law until Kosovo once again opened the door to the nationalist aspirations of restless ethnic enclaves. This is a world that Woodrow Wilson would be comfortable with, but not one that we easily recognize.
