Larvatus Prodeo

Standing beside US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Georgian President Mikhael Shaakazvili described Russia as “evil”. It’s probably too much to expect that he might recognise his own degree of responsibility for the war (not forgetting Vladimir Putin’s of course), but the use of language such as this is reminiscent of Rice’s boss and the moralisation of international relations and conflict usually associated with George W. Bush’s regime. Opinions will differ on whether the use of such emotive rhetoric makes the settlement and resolution of conflict easier or more difficult. Of course war is an evil, but some international actors have acted as if it’s a necessary evil over the course of this decade, and indeed made a virtue of pre-emptive war. So it’s been difficult not to notice the hypocrisy of American claims about the inviolability of sovereign states in the 21st century.

In what I think is quite a balanced article in the New Statesman, Misha Glenny looks at the influence of the reality-free thinking of the Dick Cheney faction on the lead up to the Georgian conflict, without minimising the autocratic and bellicose behaviour of the Putin regime. At Open Democracy, Donald Rayfield looks at the realistic options Georgia has, and some of the background to the war, while Neal Ascherson similarly examines how Georgia could progress beyond this war. Both write as avowed friends of Georgia, but both don’t think inflammatory rhetoric from Washington helps at all – they believe that it in fact hinders any positive outcome. This isn’t to adopt some deracinated Kissingerian realism, but rather to argue that the Manichean language of good and evil does anything but achieve the objectives it ostensibly sets out. As Ascherson powerfully demonstrates, there’s evil enough to go around on both sides of this conflict, with atrocities committed at least since the fall of the Soviet Union. A recognition of that – rather than positioning one side as a plucky sovereign democracy and the other as the incarnation of Satan – might actually provide a basis for realistic and peaceful progress.

Continue reading ‘Georgia: Evil, reality and war’