Kremlin hawks are thankful to President George W. Bush for inventing the doctrine of preemptive strikes in the conduct of foreign policy. Bush also set a dangerous precedent by invading Iraq, toppling the regime, and replacing it with people of his choice – without international sanction. All in the name of US interests. Yet, after a long series of attempts to undermine Russian authority and interests in the regions around Russia via various “colour revolutions”, the US and her western followers finally met a classical Russian response in Georgia on August 7, 2008.

An immature move by the Georgian President Saakashvilli i.e. sending Georgian troops into the South Ossetian region thinking that the US and her western allies will do some foreign policy magic, simply boomeranged.  Surprisingly, while the Russians moved to display and reassert their right to protect their political and economic interests in the region, the US and UK along with other major European powers were outraged by the Russian troops’ entry into Georgia. The western alliance glossed over its own adventure in Afghanistan and particularly Iraq – both thousands of miles away from their territory.

The Russians took the western – mainly the G-7 countries – reaction as nothing more than their duplicity and hypocritical conduct of foreign policy issues in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq. No country of as important stature as Russia would simply sit back and watch a detractor like Saakashvilli undermine its political, economic and foreign policy interests.
Both President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin were quite vociferous in defence of their move into Georgia as well as recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia; Russia is not afraid of anything “including the prospects of a new cold war and will ensure its interests along the whole length of its borders”. So read the message.

That is why Moscow refused to give in to the Georgian demand of a Russian troop pullback. Citing the Moscow Agreement (1944), CIS-CHJS decision on the use of CIS Collective Peace Keeping Force (1994), the CIS-UN Agreement (1995) and the UNSC Resolution No. 1808 (2008), the Russian foreign ministry  pointed out that the use of the CIS Collective Peacekeeping Force (CPKF) is made with the consent of not only the Georgian, but also of the Abkhaz side. The CIS CHJS decision on the use of the CPKF of August 22, 1994, contains a direct reference to the request from the Abkhaz side of May 15, 1994 and to the aforesaid Moscow Agreement apprehended that a pullback and restoration of the August 7 status will fan the “risks (of) getting bogged down even deeper in the quagmire of crisis brought on by the unhealthy ambitions of the present Georgian leadership”. It added that agreeing to the Georgian demands would be “categorically unacceptable for the people inhibiting the region”.
Secondly, the deployment of the CIS CPKF in the Georgian-Abkhaz zone of conflict has the support of the United Nations Security Council, repeatedly expressed in its resolutions, including resolution 1808 of April 15, 2008. The provision on CIS CPKF is an integral part of the 1994 Moscow Agreement; i.e. in case of liquidation of CPKF the entire international legal architecture of Georgian-Abkhaz settlement would collapse.

History tells us that both in the beginning of the 1900 as well as between 1989 and 1992, the Georgians committed atrocities against both the Ossetians and the ethnic Russian communities in South Ossetia. The Georgian military killed 3,000 and ousted 40,000 Ossetians from their homes while nearly 1,000 went missing. In July 2008 during his trip to Ukraine, the Georgian Foreign Minister, Mamuka Mujiry, declared that his country was ready to start “large-scale military operations against unrecognised republics”. These statements were then followed by the joint US-Georgian military exercises the same month and these focused on harnessing the military tactics in mountains and settlements that both the regions of Ossetia and Abkhazia are. Following the Russian-Georgian conflict, the Russian parliament recognised Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states and many observers drew parallels with the US/western action of recognising Kosovo as in independent state.

The Russian move over Georgia also amounted to the first serious challenge to the US’s “unfettered power pursuit and trampling and trampling of international laws and conventions. For the last two decades, as China built herself into an economic powerhouse, US went on a rampage around the world challenging settled international norms and threatening the sovereignties via direct or proxy interventions while Russia concentrated in building up the state and national structure largely because of the recent petrodollars’ boom. With Russia on a stronger ground over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where its own troops form the international peace keeping force under the UN mandate for the last 16 years, there is no margin for any western power to help Georgia reintegrate both the regions.

The West’s reaction against the Russian action bemused many in the world including former Singaporean ambassador to the UN who noted that the difference between the world stance and that of the world couldn’t be “clearer”. “The world hardly saw any reason to support the West’s moralising the Georgian cause when US, UK and their allies are the very reason of brining death and destruction to the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan ….in most cases, they clearly ignored the requirements of the international law and violated the sovereignty and right to independence of many nations.”

“Saakashvilli and many of his western backers used ludicrous analogies to hype the crisis, from Poland in 1939 to Hungary in 1956, even though it is clear South Ossetians welcomed Russian aid and now want to break from Georgia once and for all. The more accurate comparison was Kosovo. Suppose Serbia’s leaders were suddenly to kill US peacekeepers, fire rockets at civilian houses in Pristina and storm the town, wouldn’t the Americans be expected to expel the invaders, even if the UN still recognises Kosovo as legally part of Serbia,” asked Jonathan Steele in the daily Guardian.
 
“Russia’s destruction of Georgia’s radar stations, its military and naval bases, and several bridges in order to degrade the country’s military capability looks similar to Nato’s attacks on Serbian infrastructure in 1999. Instead of confining itself to Kosovo in seeking to protect Albanian civilians from ethnic cleansing, Nato bombed deep into Serbia proper. What Russia did to Georgia was disproportionate, but less so than Nato on Serbia a decade ago,” argued Steele.

Some of the blame for the Georgian adventure also goes to the misguided policies of the Bush administration in regard to both Russia and two countries in the Middle East, namely, Syria and Iran. Over the years, Bush and his aides gradually detached Russia from resolving the global problems and contemptuously brushed it aside on issues such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran and the Middle East.

Regarding Russia, the Bush administration failed to engage the Russians on an equal footing as partners for peace, opting instead to aggravate Moscow by moving ahead with controversial projects such as the missile and radar system the United States is installing in the Czech Republic and Poland -- both former Warsaw Pact countries. And in addition, rankling Moscow by inviting two former Soviet states, Georgia and Ukraine, to join Nato -- an action perceived by Moscow as outright defiance.

For the time being, Nato and Russia are boycotting each other but both would be talking soon. Russia’s newly gained petro-strength and increased confidence will make the West’s leadership see the crisis as a manufactured-crisis and they would like to avoid any chance of starting a new cold war. Thus far, the language coming out of the western capitals, mainly London, suggests that they seemingly are towing Washington’s line in whose leadership Nato wanted to install the missile defence shields in Poland and Czech Republic, both former Warsaw Pact members. After the conflict with Russia, Georgian designs to be part of Nato may not go weaker but the Alliance’s keenness to offer membership to Georgia would certainly be dampened.