open Democracy News Analysis - The miscalculation of small nations , Fred Halliday - Comments

rebecca6880 on "The miscalculation of small nations "

rebecca6880 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:27:42 +0100

Perhaps the summary of article is:

"Big powers are hypocritical and small
powers have no rights.."

Vassilis Fouskas on "The miscalculation of small nations "

Vassilis Fouskas — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:06:19 +0100

I'm not convinced by Fred's argument that the international context did not determine Georgia's behaviour. The dominant faction in Georgia's polity, the one who took the decision to invade South Ossetia, is wholly subservient to the US. NATO's and US security interests in the Caucasus are interwined with energy security and the safe transportation of oil and gas to Western markets at stable prices denominated in dollars. Furthermore, NATO and the US are interposing between berlin and Moscow, lest an understanding is developed between them, thus thwarting US primacy in Eurasia. Local elites cultivate nationalism in order to serve both US policy and their own bureaucratic interests and privileges

Brian Sporrer on "The miscalculation of small nations "

Brian Sporrer — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 10:29:00 +0100

[... edited ...]. No mention of all the lies told by Russia since the beginning of this incident. Bottom Line is this.... Russia has instigated problems in these regions from the beginning. How could their peace-keepers be allowed to stay with an the inherent bias they possess. Peace-keepers are supposed to be neutral. Lastly, Russia INVADED another country in the name of protecting ethnic Russians. This happened in the lead-up to WWII. Putin and his cronies are not democratic, could care less about human rights and a free press. They CONTROL everything.Further, they are the biggest hypocrites on earth. The protest vehemently over Kosovo's independence and then do the opposite? What about Chechnya?

blessdkrumheit on "The miscalculation of small nations "

blessdkrumheit — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 04:10:05 +0100

Fred Halliday's Article "The Miscalculation of Small Nations" contains a valuable summary of a historical topic. I intend to

download and submit it to archivist of the Bradford, Vermont History Club.

It is a strong argument against federalization, embodied in the

recent complaint of an Ossetian, "Why can't we have peace like under Stalin? And of course, the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

On the other hand are of interest are the arguments between Churchill and Roosevelt toward the end of 1944 about the Brits giving up the colonies.

Not logged in on "The miscalculation of small nations "

Not logged in — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:39:00 +0100

[... edited ...]

The analogy that holds up is the crushing of Chechnia by Russia for doing the same thing as Ossetia. Big powers are hypocritical and small powers have no rights.Might is right seems to be a summary of [the] article.

Tom Paine on "The miscalculation of small nations "

Tom Paine — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:54:14 +0100

Georgia acted alone without US knowledge?! What a load of rubbish! Let's look at this a different way.

The US has military advisors assigned to the Georgian military down to the battalion level.

So we're supposed to believe that large portions of the Georgian army moved into position to launch the attack on S. Ossetia and that those US advisors were not keeping the Pentagon informed? When the Georgian army was emptying ammo dumps to move the munitions into attack positions, those US advisors were not keeping their higher-level US commanders informed? Give me a break.

The Georgian attack was a clear case of the US attacking Russia via a proxy. It fits right in with the well-publicized US "Silk Road Strategy" and the neo-con/Brzezinski plan to control central Asian energy resources. This was not a case of a US puppet acting independently.

I also question the author's assertion that "...North Korea's then president Kim Il-sung to seize South Korea in a sudden attack in June 1950..." There was no sudden attack. If one studies the history of the Korean War, before the North Korean offensive there had been battles and dogfights going on along the 38th parallel for months. Some of those battles involved units of battalion size (500-700 men) engaging each other. This is hardly the "sudden", sneak attack portrayed in most western history books.

Likewise, the author's citation of Saddam Hussein's 1980 invasion of Iran ignores western cheerleading of Hussein and the west's funding and arming of Iraq's war of aggression, along with the west's support and UN diplomatic cover regarding Iraq's use of chemical weapons. This is at best heavy spin, or at worst a selective use of facts to support a straw-man argument.

The author did, however, hit the nail on the head on one point: Georgian President Saakashvili did initiate the assault, thus breaking the peace, breaking a Georgian gov't pledge not to resort to force made only days before the brutal assault, and breaking an international agreement in which Russia was made the guarantor of peace and which authorized Russian (and other) peacekeepers to be deployed to Georgia. As such, Saakashvili is a war criminal guilty of initiating a war.

One might argue that the Russians "overreacted" but that is of little weight in the big scheme of things. Initiating a war is the supreme war crime, because from it arises all other war crimes.

Saakashvili broke the peace, initiated the war, and as such should not whine because he lost his war. Given these facts, it's not surprising that the Russian military went out of its way to blow up US-supplied stocks of weapons in Georgia, destroy Georgian military bases and capabilities, and are reluctant to leave Georgia. As peacekeepers, the Russians would be fools to trust this war criminal a second time.

gerrym on "The miscalculation of small nations "

gerrym — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:29:53 +0100

Saakashvili is typical of many Georgians - he has an inflated sense of his own ability and of his country's importance. The "progress" Georgia has made since he came to power has been grossly over-hyped. A few licks of paint on Rustaveli Avenue and some shiny new police cars don't disguise the same crumbling shambles of a country; living on hand-outs, ruled by clans and riven with factions and corruption. The Ossetians and Abkhazians know that perfectly well.

Saakashvili's Georgia may be convenient as a pawn to pillory Russia but as a symbol of "democracy" it is an unfortunate example and about the last place on earth worthing starting a war - hot or cold - over.

anthony alcock on "The miscalculation of small nations "

anthony alcock — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:23:04 +0100

Sadly the whole region is rife with the sort of overt nationalism that has been reduced to phenomena such as sport in the West. A blunder of major proprtions was committed by the West when it supported the independence declaration of Kosovo.

DE Teodoru on "The miscalculation of small nations "

DE Teodoru — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:48:16 +0100

Saakashvili is a hustler who struted his stuff in the US, like African trial chielfs who come here to "study," and proved what a hustler he is in his relations all over this nation. He is typical of the stock of shysters that are taking over small ex-Soviet nations and deem the national treasury as their own. In doing so they either make their nations invisible, US lackeys or aggressive on the assumption that their "big 'Democracy' brother" is standing behind their bullying bravado.

Saakashvili thought that by buying Randy Sheidermann and some other lobbyists he could get support for violent bully action. Well, at the very least, now we know what "Republican" backing for McCain means, what with one top economic adviser who deems, we moaning pauperized victims of Bush's "entrepreneurs," a "nation of whiners" and a foreign policy adviser that, for a few bucks, assured this Americanized Georgian mad man that if he moved on Russia America would help him. Does this not tell you that the money borrowed for China that we distribute as dollars to so many countries, beggining with Israel, is not foreign aid, but like Rome in its twilight, TRIBUTE to the barbarians?

deborah.gordon on "The miscalculation of small nations "

deborah.gordon — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:25:07 +0100

an interesting article; i wondered why the author didn't connect Israel and Georgia, since the former has helped arm the latter. Saakashvili is like Olmert or Sharon, and like both of them he is "helped" in his arrogance by the Bush administration, which after all, has just this sort of mentality of a small nation as described here and shares with Israel a large robustly-funded military. In fact, hearing more about that triangle might have told more of the story Halliday wants to tell than doing the whirlwind tour of every miscalculation by "small nations," regardless of where, when, who (the Palestinians are not a nation like Greece or Georgia, since they are stateless--a refugee population not a citizenry), etc.

Cathy Fitzpatrick on "The miscalculation of small nations "

Cathy Fitzpatrick — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:38:16 +0100

Cathy Fitzpatrick

I'd have to strenuously disgree that "the chief responsibility" for this war belongs to Georgia, while noting that Georgia bears *some* responsibility of course. Russia is a great power and a UN Security Council member; it can be called upon to behave better and not cave to provocations, but of course, it had engaged in many of its own leading up to this point.

For years, Russia incited this unrest by issuing passports to people in South Ossetia and declaring them citizens, although as the OSCE has said, states are not entitled under international law to exercise such jurisdiction over other states' territories:

http://www.osce.org/hcnm/item_1_32663.html

Leading up to the war, in July, Georgia tried several times to get the UN Security Council to do something about Russia's provocative flights over the region, but no action was taken -- the SC freshly weakened by Russia's unexpected veto over the action on Zimbabwe the previous month.

It's curious to drive this whole discussion about the blame Georgia must take for being some sort of hothead nationalist, and yet remain silent about the provocative actions of the pro-Russian South Ossetian government, whose leader made has no secret of deliberate ethnic cleansing actions now.

It's good that you're criticizing the Palestinians, which so few on the left do, but your condemnation of Israel then doesn't quite wash, as they can then justify their actions based on having an unpredictable and extreme enemy.

And...what do you expect, Fred, of these small nations, that they will suddenly say, because they've been told, almost in racist terms, that they are Caucasian or Middle Eastern or Asian hotheads, that they'll say "Oh, ok, we'll stop now, thanks for pointing that out?"

Because the universality of human rights isn't helping them -- it doesn't work fast enough and the great powers, starting with Russia in this situation, don't uphold them -- they turn to nationalism. Nationalism works to mobilize people and make them cohese under attack and stress and you don't have to work hard to get people to feel defensive about their homeland where they live and where their ancestors are buried. Nationalisms of these ferocious sorts happen precisely because internationalism doesn't work; when it is imposed for years, as Soviet internationalism was, it doesn't deliver.

As for the "clash of civilizations", look at where most of the clashes occur, and by whom, and don't take these Caucasian exceptions as a discounting of the rule.

And regarding "arrogance, recklessness
and ignorance born of nationalist excess - which, to be sure, often uses
religion and associated "cultural" offerings as part of its packaging" -- well sure, but why does it even get started? Because internationalism is fake, and proven to be a vehicle for imperialism in this part of the world; because international institutions are weakened, by Russia's role in them.

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/un_tethered

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/ngo_accountability

The miscalculation of small nations , Fred Halliday

david hayes — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:16:03 +0100

The brief and vicious war between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia has killed an untold number of people and displaced and traumatised many thousands more; promised a lengthy and abrasive aftermath; postponed even further the prospects of a settlement over this and the region's other territory lost to Georgia's control in the early 1990s, Abkhazia; created new enmities as well as poisoning existing ones; and planted seeds of yet further conflict.

Among openDemocracy's articles on Georgian politics and the region, including the war of August 2008:

Robert Parsons, "Mikheil Saakashvili's bitter victory" (11 January 2008),

Jonathan Wheatley, "Georgia's democratic stalemate" (14 April 2008),

Robert Parsons, "Georgia, Abkhazia, Russia: the war option" (13 May 2008),

Thomas de Waal, "The Russia-Georgia tinderbox" (16 May 2008),

Alexander Rondeli, "Georgia's search for itself" (8 July 2008),

Thomas de Waal, "South Ossetia: the avoidable tragedy" (11 August 2008),

Ghia Nodia, "The war for Georgia: Russia, the west, the future" (12 August 2008),

Donald Rayfield, "The Georgia-Russia conflict: lost territory, found nation" (13 August 2008),

Neal Ascherson, "After the war: recognising reality in Abkhazia and Georgia" (15 August 2008),

George Hewitt, "Abkhazia and South Ossetia: heart of conflict, key to solution" (18 August 2008),

Ivan Krastev, "Russia and the Georgia war: the great-power trap" (19 August 2008).

Plus: openDemocracy's Russia section reports, debates and blogs the Georgia war.

In the wake of the disaster, the urgent need is via an intense effort of humanitarian mobilisation and sensitive diplomacy to assist and protect the civilian victims from its continuing ravages. Beyond that, a survey of the freshly ruined landscape is needed to assess how the region, the continent and the notional "international community" can begin to pick up the pieces. But between the immediate and the strategic, an interim political assessment of this war suggests a lesson that relates both to Georgia itself and to the political leaderships of other local actors (and especially "small nations") who have found themselves - or chosen to be - involved in military contest with bigger neighbours.

The puff of ideology

Where Georgia itself is concerned, the lesson can be summed up in a phrase: pity (and of course help) the Georgians, but condemn their leaders. For if most western governments and commentators have focused on the high politics and historical echoes of the conflict - from Russia's excessive military response to the implications for Georgia's entry into Nato, from the role of the United States to echoes of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1968 - less attention than is warranted has been paid to Tbilisi's contribution to the disaster.

In strict terms, the chief responsibility belongs to Georgia's reckless and demagogic president, Mikhail Saakashvili. His precipitous launch of a brutal assault on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali on the night of 7-8 August 2008 is worse than a crime: it is a terrible blunder. More broadly, however, the responsibility devolves onto the self-inflating nationalist ideology which traps Saakashvili and Georgians who think like him. Here, indeed, is a local manifestation of a universal problem. For while the particular circumstances of the latest Caucasian war have been ably analysed (not least on openDemocracy), it is important to broaden the discussion by exploring the role that the nationalist ideology of Saakashvili's type - with its heady mix of vanity, presumption and miscalculation - has played in the modern world.

There is still a reluctance among many analysts of international relations to believe that local and / or "small" actors in a political situation - in this case the Georgian leadership - have their own agency, freedom of manoeuvre, and responsibility (a flaw that is shared by that particular kind of American - and of course "anti-American" - leftist for whom everything that happens in the world must by definition be the United States's responsibility: an understudied genre of vulgar imperialism).

In fact, it is routinely impossible to make sense of almost any conflict or region without registering how much local states, opposition groups, or minority movements can act with considerable autonomy in pursuit of their own interests - even to the extent of manipulating (and on occasion deceiving) distant and more powerful "allies". There are many cases during the cold war, for example, where "third-world" states attacked their neighbours on their own accord yet were widely characterised as having acted on orders - as "clients", "proxies", "agents", "pawns"'. They include: Israel in attacking Egypt in 1967, and Lebanon in 1982; Turkey in invading Cyprus in 1974; Egypt in attacking Israel in 1973; Cuba in sending troops to Angola in 1975; Iraq in attacking Iran in 1980, and Kuwait in 1990.

The international context matters, but it is not determinant: what is determinant is the reading of that international situation, and the calculation of risks and opportunities, which the local leaders and political forces make. Sometimes they get it right. Cuba's judgment that Washington, battered by defeat in Vietnam, would not stop its forces crossing the Atlantic to Angola in 1975, was one such - yet before he took that decision, Fidel Castro asked for a detailed analysis of opinion in the US Congress. More frequently, the leaders concerned are not so careful.

If the supreme responsibility of democratic leaders is indeed to protect their own peoples, then the briefest of comparative overview can show just how pernicious the impact of the kind of nationalist delusion displayed by Mikhail Saakashvili. His blundering into war over South Ossetia is but the latest example of how the nationalist obsession with the fetish of "territorial integrity" corrupts their worldview: for it entails a multiple refusal to look at reasonable, humane compromises; a misreading of international political realities; and a resort to destructive and often useless violence.

Here, the flaws of nationalism can match or exceed those of religion, in a way that offers a sidelight on the much-vaunted catch-all ascription of responsibility for modern conflicts to a supposed "clash of civilisations" (by which is usually meant "Islam"). But South Ossetia and its neighbours share a history where Christianity intermingles with empire (Georgian, Ottoman, Russian and Soviet) in the experience of its peoples. The chief agent of destruction is not to be found in "culture" (in the guise of religion or some other vague source of identity) but in the arrogance, recklessness and ignorance born of nationalist excess - which, to be sure, often uses religion and associated "cultural" offerings as part of its packaging. The problem is a political one; and where "cultural" differences are small - as in Transcaucasia, parts of the Balkans and Northern Ireland - the political conflicts can more than compensate.

The wind of blame

The case of Cyprus is illustrative in this regard. In July 1974 a group of right-wing Greek Cypriots, with the support of the junta in Athens, toppled the elected (and more moderate) government of Archbishop Makarios. At first it seemed that the world - even Turkey - had accepted it. I was in Cyprus at the time, and recall well conversations with Greek Cypriots to the effect that "The Turks will never invade. The Russians will stop them." So it went until the sky north of Nikosia was filled with the transport-planes despatched by Turkish prime minister Bülent Ecevit, out of which floated the Turkish paratroops coming to occupy the north of the city, and of the island - where they remain to this day.

Fred Halliday is ICREA research professor at the Barcelona Institute for International Studies (IBEI)

His many books include Islam and the Myth of Confrontation (IB Tauris, 2003), 100 Myths About the Middle East (Saqi, 2005), and The Middle East in International Relations: Power, Politics and Ideology (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Fred Halliday's "global politics" column on openDemocracy surveys the national histories, geopolitical currents, and dominant ideas across the world. The recent articles include:

"Lebanon, Gaza, and Iraq: three crises" (22 June 2007),

"Yemen: murder in Arabia Felix" (13 July 2007),

"Eternal Euzkadi, enduring ETA" (3 August 2007),

"Cyprus's risky stalemate" (26 August 2007),

"Justice in Madrid: the "11M" verdict" (5 November 2007),

"The mysteries of the US empire" (30 November 2007),

"Islam, law and finance: the elusive divine" (12 February 2008),

"Mediterranean mirage: Europe's sunken politics" (29 July 2008).

Ever since, the Greek Cypriots have blamed everyone but themselves for this debacle: the Americans (who encouraged the Turks to invade because they wanted a base in northern Cyprus, at Kyrenia); the British (committed under a 1960 treaty to defending the integrity of Cyprus and with two bases on the island, who did nothing and so showed their historic "pro-Turkish" bias); the European Union and the United Nations (who have sought to impose unwanted solutions).

Similar miscalculations have dominated in the Palestine conflict. Few nationalist leaderships have shown such little strategic sense; ever since the re-emergence of a nationalist movement in the 1960s, policy has been led by militaristic rhetoric, a misjudgment of the regional and international situation, and misconceived sense of how friend and foes alike would react.

On two occasions the Palestinians, led by Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation, found themselves with forces, and considerable political support, in neighbouring Arab states: Jordan (1967-70) and Lebanon (1970-82). On each occasion the movement was carried away by delusions of power and of allied support far in excess of the reality, which led them needlessly to provoke local political forces and armed groups; the result was the destruction of their local bases and their expulsion from the country. In 2000, Arafat, faced with the failure of peace talks with Ehud Barak, agreed to support and promote a "spontaneous" uprising (the second intifada) He apparently imagined that, in so doing, he could break Barak's political will and obtain more concessions: instead he got Ariel Sharon, who had ideas about to provoke a spontaneous uprising, and did a far better job of it in September 2000.

The Israelis themselves are possessed of a military efficiency, a strong international ally and a historic self-righteousness that at times has served them ill; but they have also repeatedly overplayed their own hand. They missed the historic opportunity to resolve the Palestinian issue in the aftermath of the 1967 war by withdrawing promptly from the territories they had occupied by force. In 1982 they blundered into a war in Lebanon, where they failed either to destroy their enemies, or to instal a client regime, and ended up eighteen years later in unconditional flight with a ferocious Hizbollah enemy on their tail.

For years the Israelis boasted that they had achieved complete control of Gaza, only in the end to pull out, leaving the terrain open for Hamas. Many citizens of the Israeli state must wonder what the costs of long-term intransigence and settlement expansion will be; and indeed if such a posture may, in the end, not produce the very dire consequences that Israel seeks to avoid.

The tide of failure

The blunders brought on by nationalist (and associated revolutionary) delusion of the 20th century are indeed global. There was the disastrous attempt by North Korea's then president Kim Il-sung to seize South Korea in a sudden attack in June 1950, to be repulsed by a rapidly mobilised United States expeditionary force. Only the massive intervention of Chinese "volunteers" saved the communist regime from annihilation. The inhabitants of Baghdad may also recall the miscalculations of Saddam Hussein, in his invasions of Iran (1980) and Kuwait (1990). These comparatively more recent examples were long preceded by the classic such miscalculation of the Easter uprising of 1916 in Dublin. On that occasion a poorly armed insurrectionary force was defeated, and part of the city destroyed, by a British riposte as rapid and predictable as that of the Russian in Tskhinvali.

True, such miscalculations about the capabilities of one's own forces and the reactions of others are not confined to small nations. Most major nations have many and larger blunders to their name: the Americans in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq; the British in Suez; the French in Vietnam, Suez and Algeria; the Russians in Afghanistan; the Italians and Germans in the 1930s and 1940s. The difference is that except in the most extreme of cases - notably Nazi Germany - these large states have been able to recuperate their losses and in large measure continue to inhabit their illusions of grandeur. Smaller peoples pay a higher price.

It is said that, when he took over from veteran Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze in 2004, Mikhail Saakashvili told the older man - known in Georgian as tetri melia (the white fox) - that he had had the chance to be the great founder of a new Georgia, but that he had missed the opportunity. Saakashvili‘s entrapment in nationalist delusion was always going to backfire. In the moment of Georgia's latest agony, it will be little consolation that he has brought his country into the modern world in a very different way.

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