U.S.: Interstate War is an Acceptable form of Diplomacy
by tdaxp ~ August 22nd, 2008
Really disturbing news, courtesy of Duck of Minerva:
MOSCOW: The U.S. ambassador to Russia has told a Russian daily that Washington strongly urged Georgia not to invade its breakaway province of South Ossetia.
John Beyrle also told the Kommersant Friday that Russia “gave a well-grounded response” to a Georgian attack on Russian peacekeepers, but exceeded its authority by invading Georgia proper.
Beyrle was quoted as saying that Russia should respect a cease-fire deal and withdraw its troops from the ex-Soviet neighbor to positions they held before the fighting erupted.
Ambassador: US warned Georgia about invasion - International Herald Tribune.
Of course, it’s not easy to know exactly what is meant by cheap talk, but the implications are troubling. The US has (verbally, at least) retreated from its post-Cold-War committment to keep the peace.
Some support actions such as this, by claiming (for no good reason, as far as I can tell) that Russia is a Core state. Hardly: Russian is an central asian dictatorship, a bigger version of Kazakhstan.
Supporters of Russia invasion speak of indirection, a 5GW effort to manipulate Russian actions into serving the Core’s instancese. Perhaps. Such a policy is similar to regulating crime on a domestic level, and is analogou to China’s “guanxi” system. Of course, this teaches the wrong lessons, and encourages more wars, whetheter they are part of a manipulation or not.
If the US Ambassador’s words are to be believed, we have suffered a serious blow to our power. There is little point in paying someone to provide a security function when the provider has lousy quality-of-service. We can expect a new birth of regional military alliances, an increase in terrorism secretly supported by states, reduced trust for US promises, a decline in Central Asian security, and so on.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2 008/06/19/the-foreign-polic...
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:17 pm
What was the broken US promise? If Georgia knew ahead of time the US position regarding taking military action in South Ossetia, and Georgia took military action anyway, who is the one reducing trust in the relationship?
August 23rd, 2008 at 5:15 am
Galrhan,
Interstate War in parts of the world that mattered was effectively criminalized in 1990 [1], and this has helped bring interstate wars down to historic lows.
Now, it’s certainly important to realize the difference between action and cheap talk. So perhaps Beyrle’s words are less ominous than they sound. I certainly hope so.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/08/10/8808-like-8290-and-91101.html
August 25th, 2008 at 5:33 am
[...] U.S.: Interstate War is an Acceptable form of Diplomacy [...]
September 8th, 2008 at 8:01 am
>>John Beyrle also told the Kommersant Friday that Russia “gave a well-grounded response” to a Georgian attack on Russian peacekeepers, but exceeded its authority by invading Georgia proper.<<
IF the predicate is correct, and Georgia attacked Russian peacekeepers, and if there was reason to believe that Russia would in fact pull back (which is what I expected) then I’d say his statement was just about right.
The conflict between Georgia can be traced 500 years. Since independence it has become a tangle of mutual recriminations, with some locals playing Tblisi against Moscow to their own advantage. What happens next is what’s important: once people start redrawing boundaries by force, there’s a lot of reason for war, in a lot of places.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:35 am
What is/was the legal status of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia and Abkhazia? I can find a reference to the Dagomys Agreement (that I believe authorized them), but only commentary and signaling of its present status.