“Israel too invaded and attacked a sovereign, democratic state in just as vicious a fashion”

A state that was shelling its citizens on a daily basis - no such allegations of Georgia shelling Russia have been made to my knowledge. That’s a lazy parallel…..

No, just killing 2000 Russians.

Doesn’t really change my point John.

Unlike the attrocity you cite the actions of Hezbollah weren’t in dispute and had been foretold by Hezbollah themselves and condemned internationally.

What’s more the parallel is ludicrous for reasons of scale and history - Russia isn’t surrounded by hostile nations with a history of attacking it, quite the reverse in fact.

Liam Murray: Russia isn’t surrounded by hostile nations with a history of attacking it, quite the reverse in fact.

That’s probably not how the Russians see it, you know.

[...] Conspiracy notes that Saakashvili is not without blame: You can however hardly blame Russia’s initial response to what was a naive, foolhardy and [...]

Amazing. I’ve always been in awe of how Israel can be worked into almost any lefty discussion of events overseas and here I have yet another incredible example!

Though I agree with your argument that there are ‘no good guys’ - Saakashvili has long displayed a brash authoritarianism, at home and abroad - I’m not sure that it’s particularly relevant if Russia continues to enter uncontested Georgian territory. With that comes the threat of a full-scale invasion, which - as even Saakashvili’s most hostile political enemies now support him - could only end in Georgia’s power structure being removed, and, I believe, would only have imperialistic motives.

Medvedev has declared that he is ending ‘the Georgian operation’, however, so we shall await further developments.

Good to see that the BBC website is currently running a “have your say” on what can be done to resolve the Georgia Russia crisis. I am sure that will turn up some useful insights.

60 per cent of its exports go to the EU.
Russia stopping trade with the nations on it’s western border would decimate it’s economy. While the EU would just buy the oil of someone else. As small nations we can be bullied by russia as a union they are subservient to us. Euroskeptics hate this fact. But it is the simple truth, as was the case in the cold war. No russian leader would want to make a enemy of the UNion In fact it would be better for them to join. It is noticable when the president bush spoke it had no impact on russia,. when the UK PM and the french leader spoke they stopped. But the euroskeptics media will not report this fact as it pains them to accept common sense that Russia listens to euriope not to the USA. I hope russia joins the unio to as it would make us stronger.:

A state that was shelling its citizens on a daily basis - no such allegations of Georgia shelling Russia have been made to my knowledge. That’s a lazy parallel…..

Hold on a minute, it wasn’t Lebanon that was shelling Israel, it was elements of Hizbullah. Not that it makes it any better, but the point here is about ‘proportionality’ and invading sovereign states rather than who is surrounded by hostile nations. After all, India overlooks a hostile China (until very recently) and a hostile Pakistan, but that wouldn’t justify invading and shelling the crap out of Pakistani cities on the basis of what militants do in Kashmir.

“You can however hardly blame Russia’s initial response to what was a naive, foolhardy and apparently murderous gambit by Saakashvili”

Since such a response is constitutionally required of the Russian political leadership it must have been expected.

Considering that this flashpoint has been festering for 17 years without coming close to any diplomatic solution it was only a matter of time before the right combination of circumstances was found for one side or the other to try to gain an advantage.

Georgia had tacit support from Nato, as the recent statements by the French and US have made clear with the call for territorial integrity to be maintained, and the subsequent resolution of the matter with international peacekeeping forces will inevitably speed Georgia’s effective and practical membership of Nato and its reabsorbtion of the breakaway territories of both S Ossetia and Abkhazia.

This is an old and simple game of bear baiting being played against the Russian bear and the new leadership has simply proved too inexperienced to be able to prevent themselves falling into a relatively simple trap. Putin is furiously trying to regain control of the situation after having been surprised while out of the country at the Olympics, and all the democratic gains made during his leadership may now be lost as the military advance its power base within the Kremlin and over the Presidency.

Ultimately though, politics is a game that is always won in the long run by hard diplomacy, so even escalating the situation with a successful invasion and defeat of the Ukraine will not entrench central Russian power in the face of greater allied resolve, it will only prolong the bloodbath.

What this incident does prove, however, is that the democratic nations cannot retain any previous claims to innocence and our ‘holier than thou’ stance towards muslim theocracies and dictatorships - particularly Iran, Burma, Sudan or Zimbabwe - when what is being demonstrated before our eyes is pure power politics and a contemptible callous attitude towards civilian life. Democracies are more powerful because they can draw on greater reserves of legitimacy.

The geo-political commitment of the central Russian state to maintain access to the Black sea and control over energy supply routes is the issue which creates the regional instability, so until the northern Caucasus and lower Don territories cede from the Russian Federation and can secure their independence with friendly, rather than subservient relations similar problems will continue to rear their head.

Sunny - not sure there’s any mileage in us rehashing arguments about 2006 but remember the attacks were carried out from Lebanese territory and Hezbollah had two ministers serving in the Lebanese cabinet at the time so Siniora’s claims of ignorance ran hollow by any impartial reading of that situation.

My point stands that Russia’s invasion in response to Georgia moving internally against its own citizens (however brutally) doesn’t bear honest comparison with Israel’s response to being attacked from foreign soil and having soldiers kidnapped - that’s not a defence of Israels behaviour over the subsequent month by any means, just a straightforward comparison of two different events.

Israel must be watching events play out with some trepidation, because it will see that a nuclear arsenal can be challenged successfully in the theatre of war by claims of greater legitimacy, and the fact that it’s relatively democratic society is flawed by the state of racial and religious segregation which exists there.

I expect tension to rise in the ME, and unless Tzipi Livni is highly skilled she may suffer an ignominious fate due to events unrelated to her own performance.

“You can however hardly blame Russia’s initial response to what was a naive, foolhardy and apparently murderous gambit by Saakashvili.”

Because two wrongs make a right? I’m not following that logic. In 1969, UK troops were sent in to quell secessionist (and anti-secessionist retaliation) violence in a province of the UK (Northern Ireland). Many in the Republic of Ireland saw this as a negative move, especially as (at the time) the Irish Constitution still laid claim to the “island of Ireland”, i.e. including Northern Ireland. Within the following years, British troops killed numerous (though not on the scale of the current conflict) civilians. Now, under your logic, you could “hardly blame” the Republic of Ireland, if they drove tanks into Northern Ireland, and started precision bombing Cardiff and Edinburgh. Perhaps not.

Furthermore, I don’t really agree with the tone of the Israel remarks. The thinking seems to be “p: didn’t do enough to stop Israeli war, q: other people are engaging in highly questionable, if not utterly misguided, conflicts; therefore p-> q: we *must* say nothing now.” As you might have guessed, I don’t really agree with that logic. If you considered not engaging with the Israelis and Palestinians in 2006 a grave mistake, why is staying silent in future conflicts not simply a further mistake? I would have to wonder if ideological preferences between Israel, Russia, the US etc. are not clouding clear judgement.

thomas: I think you’re being a little too pessimistic. With Russia now apparently accepting the deal offered by Sarkozy, it’s they who are left looking like the magnanimous ones while the Georgians are still hyperventilating hysterically. I don’t know whether it’s because they haven’t been monitoring the media and are still imagining that they’re still going along with Russia starting the whole affair, but their response has been so over the top to be almost comical, as though they think everyone’s fooled by their desperate need to be seen as the victims.

Synergy6: I’m not exactly sure that’s an apposite analogy, mainly because I don’t think Ireland had troops in the North in 1969, as Russia does in South Ossetia, whether they’re peacekeepers or not. Sending in troops to restore order is also a lot different to the Georgian assault on SO, as we currently understand the situation.

I’m also clearly not saying that we shouldn’t do anything about Russia/Georgia now because of the abject hypocrisy over Israel-Hizbullah-Lebanon. My stance is in fact the same as it was then: that there should be an immediate ceasefire and that both sides should withdraw back to their positions prior to the beginning of the conflict in lieu of talks. I have no ideological preference at all, but what I do object to is as thomas points out, the pure power politics and callous attitude towards civilian life displayed by all sides, especially those that regard the lives of some civilians as worth more than others.

Bush has just described Russia’s actions as “unacceptable in the 21st century”, even though Israel too invaded and attacked a sovereign, democratic state in just as vicious a fashion.

Yes, why use an analogy that actually fits when Israel will do? It doesn’t quite work for the reasons mentioned above plus one or two others. Assuming you’d continue to insist it does fit, I’d be interested to know why you think it is that those who found Israel’s assault on Lebannon not merely disproportionate but positively demonic seem generally disinclined to make this assessment of Russia? Perhaps it’s nostalgia for the good ol’ USSR - which brings me to this:

What must urgently be rejected is the tendency to see this either as a resurrection of the cold war or as a great opportunity for the old Russiaphobia to once again take hold

Russia has a history of treating Georgia as a province of its empire that pre-dates the Cold War. What they are doing now is simply a return to historical type. And the idea that post-Soviet Russia recognises the sovereignty of its former ‘autonomous republics’ in any real sense is questionable, to say no more than that. The question is whether you think this is legitimate or not. If you do then you don’t really believe in this stuff about the integrity of nation-states’ sovereignty. This would be fair enough where it not for the fact that you’ve used these concepts to condemn the United States and Israel above on Iraq and Lebannon respectively - because that would suggest that you do believe in it. This is the confusion that lies at the heart of your article and this is why you’ve been unable to put the actions of Russia here into any kind of context.

Shuggy - so ‘territorial integrity’ can reference historical and contemporary realities which overlap?

Then this is a conflict in microcosm between imperialism/continentalism on the one hand and nationalism/globalism on the other.

A warning of what is to come, perhaps.

Shuggy: You seem to imagine that I’m taking sides here when I am most certainly not. I’m also not going to comment on why others sympathetic to Russia in this instance were not towards Israel - can we not get past this will you condemn and tiresome point scoring regarding right and left, pro and anti, “decent” and indecent crap? I still regard the Israel analogy as more than valid as quite clearly, as has been shown by the pictures of Tskhinvali today, the Georgian offensive went far beyond the initial actions of Hizbullah. In the same sense, I also condemn the Russian response as also being wholly disproportionate, as the report of Luke Harding today also suggests. As I wrote, there are no good guys here.

What is clear is that regardless of the historical and contemporary realities, the Georgian assault has reaped a response that could have hardly been more predictable. That doesn’t make it right, and still what is required as a ceasefire from the Russians which is genuine and with a dialogue which follows which doesn’t dispense victors’ justice. The Georgian miscalculation, and also the west’s role in encouraging it though are going to make that incredibly difficult.

can we not get past this will you condemn and tiresome point scoring regarding right and left, pro and anti, “decent” and indecent crap?

I don’t recall asking you to condemn anything. I was simply making an observation on the current commentary - which on reflection I still think is valid. But I was also asking a genuine question in relation to your view on nationalism and the way it is understood in international law. This you haven’t answered. My own view is that it isn’t necessary to identify the ‘good guys’ before you formulate a position on this issue.