Russia debates the war, Boris Dolgin

Boris Dolgin — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:38:04 +0000

This week polit.ru will largely be focusing on the war in the South Caucasus, which has already spread outside South Ossetia. Even events which are not directly connected with it will be inevitably seen through this prism.

There was no formal declaration of war in the South Caucasus. The situation just kept switching from cold to hot and back again, and the war started during one of the hottest moments. This was war in the simplest sense, that is to say systematic military operations directed towards achieving certain goals which are usually outside the military sphere. Those who confront one another in war do not always have all the features of statehood (for instance in civil war, wars of "national liberation", anti-terrorist or terrorist wars).

Responsibility for this war lies with various parties, but chiefly with Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia - if only because these three parties (along with North Ossetia, which is part of Russia) were the ones which could have kept the situation under control.

There can be no doubt who started the war: Georgia, on the night of 8 August. Nothing had fundamentally changed in the conflict zone that forced them to take such a radical step. The Georgians may be right in saying that the attack was needed to restore ‘constitutional order', in view of the continuing (increasing?) fire by the Ossetian side, despite the Georgian moratorium. But this can hardly be seen as grounds for unilateral action.

The legalities

On 8 August, Russia joined the war, declaring the need to protect Russian peacekeepers and Russian citizens. The legal grounds for these actions do not seem convincing to us. Vladimir Putin's reference to a protocol of 1999 might make sense if this protocol actually existed. But we know nothing about this. And the documents dating back to 1992 and 1994 give no grounds for these actions.

As far as we know, there is no universal law permitting a country to start military operations to protect its peacekeepers or the designated force stationed there to maintain the peace (as well as citizens outside its borders). Nor does this depend on whether the designated forces (in this case from the CIS) have a mandate from any international structure.

Let us be clear: Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia and Abkhazia do not have a UN mandate, whatever certain misinformed authors may claim. On the territory of the internationally recognized borders of Georgia, only UN observers hold the UN mandate. This remains true even if the UN Security Council has mentioned CIS peacekeepers in Abkhazia favorably in its resolutions. The decision as to the make-up of the forces in South Ossetia was taken on a bilateral, Russian-Georgian basis. Deputies of the Georgian parliament have spoken against maintaining the existing formats. But passing a decision on this issue lies in the jurisdiction of the executive power of Georgia, and it did not do so according to legal procedure.

While there may be no universal rule, there may special ad hoc rules regulating a particular peacekeeping situation. But in this case, as in the vast majority of other cases, no such rules were established.

In practice, situations where a country has to protect its own peacekeepers and citizens abroad are usually regulated by tradition. Usually, such action is not followed by large-scale military operations. But real or mythical trans-border operations have been the basis for declaring a number of wars. In this regard, the way Russian citizenship was issued en bloc to citizens of Abkhazia and South Ossetia has partly, though not entirely, undermined the position of the permanent residents of these self-proclaimed regions. Usually such grievances form the basis for legal prosecution of the injured party. Or they might lead to fairly local trans-border operations, designed (depending on the situation) to evacuate citizens, liquidate the aggressors, and destroy or ‘disarm' the guilty party.

Finally, there are precedents of ‘humanitarian interventions' whose purpose is to respond to a ‘humanitarian catastrophe'. By this we mean situations which do not have a special UN mandate. Other situations such as the operation in Afghanistan, or sanctions on the operation against Somali pirates obviously have a different legal status.

Much of the international community reacted with restraint and understanding to the first stage of Russia's involvement in the military operations in South Ossetia. It was clear that Russia had some sort of moral right to evacuate the peacekeepers, and even save the residents of South Ossetia from the consequences of the arrival of a hostile army etc.

Early hopes fail

On Friday morning we were still hopeful that the problem could be solved without direct military intervention from the Russian side. We hoped that collective pressure could be brought to bear on Georgia that would enable it to return to the status quo ante (though it is never possible to return it completely). Russia would not then have been exposed to certain dangers:

1) that its status would be changed from being an intermediary (even if this status was in doubt) to a warring side, since this would have made it impossible to remain an intermediary, and would have created the need for new intermediaries;

2) Russia rarely knows when to stop - the pendulum always has a tendency to swing too far in our political culture, and in other areas as well.

This was what happened in Chechnya after our troops destroyed the terrorists who attacked Dagestan. The validity of this was not challenged by anyone (or at least by anyone more or less sensible, at home or abroad).

Now we face both these problems.

Unfortunately, our hope that it would be possible to back off from war quickly by non-military means proved to be somewhat Utopian. Non-intervention or insufficiently effective intervention would also have been a real crime.

We therefore cannot agree with those commentators who make out that the war began only when Russia entered it, or who condemn all attempts to solve problems by forceful means.

Questions and demands

However, we do need to answer a number of different but important questions:

1) why was almost no attempt made to enforce the peace when the Georgians and South Ossetians (peacekeepers and non-peacekeepers) opened fire on one another?

2) why were Russian troops not sent to South Ossetia in due legal order (by decision of the Federation Council)? Attempts to portray these troops as more peacekeepers cannot be taken seriously. The extent and level of troop armaments do not meet existing requirements.

3) why were the troops not publicly given a certain task, one with a comprehensible scope of implementation? This is certainly not a secret operation. Nor was this a military task. It was a political one.

The troops had to be kept strictly to the task of stopping the fighting. As the task was not set clearly, it's hard to assess its implementation. We are left having to imagine what task they were set.

The third question (also the second to some extent) leads us to the serious problem of information policy. Alexei Makarkin and Nikolai Zlobin made a number of important and accurate comments on this topic in Monday's issue of Vedemosti. It's not a question of people standing in Red Square shouting ‘Saakashvili's an idiot'. Nor is it a question of closing down all access to information from Georgia for Russian citizens - Saakashvili's regime does stupid things like that too. The problem is that the position needs to be explained to the world as clearly as possible, as it does to the citizens of Russia. This position must be as well-founded as possible, based on real facts and legal arguments. These facts must be presented to the public, preferably by independent sources.

The genocide argument

If there are exchanges of accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide, we need Russian and foreign journalists on the scene, along with Russian and foreign human rights activists - and not just from governmental and non-governmental organisations. And this should all be accompanied by the information which the head of the Investigative Committee of the prosecutor's office is gathering on President Medvedev's orders.

Incidentally, as the actions took place and are taking place outside of the borders of the Russian Federation, it would be expedient simply to create an international commission to investigate the supposed crimes - either created by an authorized international body (the UN Security Council?) or consisting of representatives of countries with whom participants in the conflict can negotiate.

Until then, serious accusations of genocide will not sound too convincing. Especially if they are made by such people as Russia's UN representative Vitaly Churkin. Georgian troops really may have killed 2,000 people, but this still does not amount to genocide as defined by the UN as ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such.'

Konstantin Remchukov has suggested that "Russia will start to interpret the events in South Ossetia according to the logic of the "unique case of Kosovo". This is possible: "Western leaders explained to Putin and Lavrov why the recognition of Kosovo could not become a precedent: there were no other disputed situations where the kind of genocide was going on which made it impossible for Kosovars and Serbs to live together". For this war crimes or other atrocities were not enough - it had to constitute "genocide".

We would note, however, that elements of genocide have existed in conflicts in the CIS. For as the UN definition quoted above shows, any deliberate destruction of members of a particular ethnic group comes under this definition. Including real reciprocal ethnic cleansing on the territory of the country, at least in Georgia and Azerbaijan. Indeed, if the territories are defined according to internationally recognized names and borders excesses of this kind have also taken place in Moldova.

Russian official statements are pushing the idea that Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia cannot exist in the same nation following the irreparable damage caused by the process of maintaining territorial integrity of Georgia. It is useless to argue whether this claim is true - it is a political statement, not an expert statement. It looks as if it will be used as a tool to promote the final secession of these self-proclaimed nations.

How to stop it

It is to be hoped that the military operations will end this week. Regardless of whether the Russian leadership thinks it is possible to trust Mikhail Saakashvili, the operations should have ended on Sunday or even Saturday.

In Pakistan, impeachment proceedings against Musharraf may be scheduled for Monday. But that should not allow us to hope that the same thing will happen in Georgia. In Islamabad, this move may well lead not so much to Musharraf removal, so much as the return of the military to power.

The only real issue is how to guarantee the non-violation of obligations by all parties in the most effective way.

Increasingly, we hear the opinion being voiced that Russia's reaction was out of proportion. This is too vague a concept. It could be understood literally, in the sense that it is better to take an eye for an eye, rather than10 eyes for one. Or it could be interpreted instrumentally, as the minimum amount of actions required to prevent the possibility of carrying out the actions which drew the response. The first interpretation does not seem practical - the argument can also be seen in Israeli responses to similar complaints. In our case, we don't need to destroy Tbilisi for the sake of symmetry, or make sure that the same number of people die.

The instrumental approach seems more sensible. In order to secure South Ossetia against attacks by Georgia, too much has been done, from the military standpoint, rather than enough. Doing enough means that it will not happen again. Doing too much means that it may well, as will further provocations.

In any case, outside Russia the sympathies of ordinary people are already on Georgia's side. Nor is this just because we have handled our information badly, but because of the situation as a whole. The more that Russia's response looks like bullying, the less justified Russia's position appears, as these events appear increasingly less connected with South Ossetia. On 8 August, this was not the case at all.

In fact, Russia has not been particularly warmly supported by anyone. Not even "allied" Belarus. It will be interesting to see how this topic is discussed at the meeting between the presidents of the two countries scheduled for Thursday. As usual, the topic on the agenda is a common currency. What has prompted the meeting is Belarus' need for another loan. But the topic of Georgia will surely be discussed.

Abkhazia

The desire of the authorities in unrecognized Abkhazia to help their ally offers even less cause for optimism. So too does the presence of Georgian troops in Verkhny Kodori. So too does the build-up of Russian troops in the Zugdidi region of Georgia, where they have been demanding that the Georgian police be disarmed.

The removal of UN observers from the conflict zone, and the entry of Abkhaz troops, are a further serious violation of existing agreements. In a similar manner, Georgia has more or less openly violated the same agreements since 2006 by keeping divisions in Verkhny Kodori, which are not just police divisions. If with the non-intervention of Russian peacekeepers, Abkhazia is able to get Georgia out of Verkhny Kodori, or even cross Inguri, it will be impossible to interpret this in any other way than as aggression by unrecognized Abkhazia with the connivance of Russia. It would be a very good thing if this could be avoided.

Negotiating a settlement

This week, Nicolas Sarkozy is due to visit Moscow with his peacekeeping initiative, including a ceasefire, removal of troops, recognition of the territorial integrity of Georgia etc. It is to be hoped that our positive relationship with the French president will mean that the Russian leadership does not ignore his ideas, although they will inevitably be quite problematic. For example, in the current situation where trust has completely broken down, the Georgian-Ossetian villages will find co-existence much more difficult.

On Monday, the foreign ministers of France and Finland came to Moscow with a ceasefire document prepared by them and signed by Saakashvili. Ignoring an appeal of this time will be much more difficult than Saakashvili's attempts to call the Russian President directly.

A visit by German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel to Sochi on 15 August was planned some time ago. Perhaps her skills as a negotiator and the unspoiled relations with Russia will also come in handy.

On Wednesday, the European Union summit of foreign ministers is due to meet - specially to discuss the situation in the Caucasus. It is unlikely that unanimity will be seen there - the reactions of politicians in Lithuania and Germany, for example, were too different. But almost certainly, there will be an appeal for a swift ceasefire.

A situation where Russia needs intermediaries to deal with Georgia now seems unavoidable.

Russian public's reaction

The Russian public reacted quite predictably to the war. These reactions ranged from enthusiastic endorsement by the official quasi-community and demands for a radical response from the nationalists to liberal reactions on the other end of the spectrum. These were summed up most memorably by a wonderful contemporary writer: ‘Ever since I was a child I've known the answer to the eternal Russian question "Who is to blame": it's always the big, strong and stupid one who is to blame. From yesterday evening until the middle of today [8 August - BD], I thought of Saakashvili as one of these people. Then everything fell back into its usual place, alas." The clearest and most immediate reaction seems to have come from <the organization> Memorial, which, without waiting for any official statements from government, called for an end to the war.

In the present situation, we see the tasks of the more or less liberal Russian community (apart from the humanitarian ones) being as follows:

To explain to the government and citizens why it is time to stop
To supervise the non-violation of human rights by Russian soldiers in the conflict zone
To study the situation in all its complexity, with all the different truths and tragedies, and to explain this complexity within the country and abroad
To attempt to restore the fabric of mutual trust that has been destroyed between ethnic groups

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