The outbreak of hostilities between Georgia and Russia demonstrates the speed with which Eurasia’s frozen conflicts can rapidly transform into destabilizing shooting wars. Indeed, the fighting in South Ossetia highlights the danger of allowing these conflicts to simmer under the veil of international management. Over the last decade, the United States and international partners failed to directly challenge the logic of Russia’s dual status as both mediator and spoiler in the Georgian peace process. In the current environment, this failure has allowed Moscow to claim the role of peacekeeper as it pursues its own agenda in the Caucasus. For almost [...]
The political and historic intricacies of the war raging between Russian and Georgian forces in South Ossetia are rather complicated, but the message fired off by the relentless Russian onslaught is as clearly discernible as the blast of a cannon: The territories of the former Soviet Union will answer to Moscow — whether they want to or not. That smoldering salvo has its intended audience, more than anywhere else, in those former Soviet territories: in lands that include Georgia, of course, but also other former Soviet republics than have worked to moved away from Moscow’s influence. The message is meant [...]
Although the precise catalyst for the war between Russia and Georgia is unclear, the escalation was almost inevitable given the years of tension and the diplomatic stalemate over the status of the pro-Russian separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as well as other fundamental issues such as Georgian aspirations to join NATO. The question was always whether Moscow would exploit its local military superiority to compel Georgia’s formal dismemberment or would instead hold the threat of armed interventions in reserve in an attempt to influence Georgian foreign policy without incurring the damage to Russian-Western relations that might ensue from [...]
