AS Russian forces started to hand over control of the Georgian town of Gori, you could detect a note of surprise, even disappointment, in many media reports. So the all-out Russian invasion of plucky little democratic Georgia might not be going to happen after all. Could it be that the bear was drawing in his claws?
Well, Russia did not have long to worry about losing its reputation as backyard bully. Within hours, the United States envoy to Georgia was spinning a whole new myth to the BBC about how it was only decisive US intervention — by which he presumably meant the warplanes laden with humanitarian aid by then ostentatiously parked at Tbilisi airport — that the mighty erstwhile Red Army had been turned back.
The many Georgians who had counted on more timely and robust assistance from their US protector surely laughed a bitter laugh. But there were signs, with the arrival of the US secretary of state in Georgia, that this version was gaining hold. The story of this war, it seems, will be that the US faced down a snarling, expansionist Russia, and forced it to limp back to its lair.
This is a travesty. But it is only the latest and most glaring in a series of Western misrepresentations and misreadings of Russian intentions throughout this sorry episode. They began with the repeated references to Russian “aggression” and “invasion”, continued through charges of intended “regime change”, and culminated in alarmist reports about Russian efforts to bomb the east-west energy pipeline. None of this, not one bit of it, is true.
And anyway, how did hostilities begin? Georgia sent troops into South Ossetia. The status of that region — which declared unilateral independence — is anomalous. It is inside Georgia’s borders, but outside its control. But one reason why the dispute has not been solved is that the “fudge” over independence brought with it a degree of stability. Georgia’s action upset that stability. But did anyone describe it as “aggression”? Trying to explain Russian “aggression”, many reports went further, observing a “new” mood of Russian aggressive nationalism. Today’s Russia, they reasoned, was uniquely liable to lash out, because energy wealth had fueled new national ambitions. Where, though, is the evidence that Russian national pride is automatically malign?
If you exclude Chechnya, which Russians have always regarded as part of Russia, then neither Putin, nor Medvedev, had sent troops outside Russian borders before this point.
Why was it so difficult for outsiders to believe that Moscow wanted precisely what its leaders said they wanted — a return to the situation that had pertained before Georgia’s incursion into South Ossetia? Yes it does. If outsiders impute to Moscow motives and objectives it does not have, they alienate Russia even further, and make a long-term solution of many international problems that more difficult. It is high time we treated Russia’s post-Soviet leaders as responsible adults representing a legitimate national interest, rather than assuming the stereotypical worst.
