Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

ARTICLE: "Georgian, Russian Troops Clash in South Ossetia Putin Vows to Protect S. Ossetians, Says Conflict Will Lead to 'Retaliatory Actions,'" by Peter Finn, Washington Post, 8 August 2008

After hearing about McCain and Obama were scheduling their VP announcements around the Olympics, I had started wondering who might be scheduling something for the Olympics--as in, taking advantage of the limited media space to slip something through.

It appears that Putin feels confident enough now to act more openly vis-a-vis the separatists/breakaway bits of Georgia (both of whom broke from Georgia back in the early 1990s on the basis of being high-Russian populations and have been de facto independent something-or-others ever since--albeit recognized by no one save Moscow).

Tricky but predictable stuff: whenever something breaks off from something larger, you always find this littler bit inside the smaller entity that identifies more with the larger entity. Saw--and still see--this in the Balkans. Ditto for the Caucasus. Go back a bit farther and you see that Stalin set this up purposefully in many instances, shifting borders just so to trap a chunk of one historical state within another, also purposefully settling Russians for the same effect. Go back even further and you see the Russian empire using the pretext of the "fellow Slavs" needing protection to expand its borders (then again, we were masters at that ploy too in our own expansion in more than a few cases--as are expanding powers throughout history).

What I see here is Putin working familiar Russian themes for both domestic consumption and signaling to the West that Russia is once again a full-spectrum great power that defends its perceived interests like any other (admittedly, South Ossetia isn't exactly Iraq, but that's what a Russia can muster at this point). Timing is good (end of Bush term, Olympics, Iraq winding down but Afghanistan winding up). Man knows how to pick his moments.

What do we do?

UN efforts will go nowhere. Russia's got the same veto we do (always nifty for a great power when military operations in somebody else's country are the issue).

For now, the Bush-McCain-Obama calls for cease-fire seem the logical course, but I see no easy fixes. These little breakaway bits (along with others) are sort of Russia's post-Soviet "Taiwan"--something it likes to get all jacked about but essentially harmless to the wider security world (in the sense that no one is really going to go to the mattresses over Abkhazia or South Ossetia). China's got its route on Taiwan (full of indirectness) and Russia's got its centuries-old approach.

But it's interesting how easy it is for Russia to settle up on those bits and pieces with certain neighbors (it just figured out a scheme for a sliver between itself and China) but prefers to shoot it up some on others.

You get the sense--as always--that Georgia is simply a pawn here, an excuse for signaling both to Russian citizens and the outside world that Moscow's got its great power-dom back on and ain't taking any crap from anybody.

Such is the state of Russia's relations with the West. The question here will be, How far does Putin think he needs to go to complete his signal? The actual control of this or that sliver matters little. It's all about demarcating boundaries of behavior, not territory.

Any blame here to Bush? Nothing direct. Much as with China, Bush gets more than passing grades. There are those who bemoan the "loss" of this or that, like we're in charge of determining such things the world over, but the Russian rebound was always going to happen. It's just too big and too rich in too many things not to become powerful again, especially when globalization's rapid expansion fuels all these heightened energy and commodity prices.

And yeah, it was always in the cards that Russia's resurgence would be tinged with a certain anger toward the West. You can't just expect a nation to pretend that eight decades of its existence was all "evil" (even though the vast majority of it was). That's just human nature. As we saw with Germany and Japan, that stuff dies out within a couple of generations, maintaining itself uncomfortably until you get a leadership generation "untainted" by the past.

Have we done enough to incorporate Russia in the meantime? Arguably not. For all the joy Moscow gave us by unilaterally dismantling the Soviet Empire, we offered virtually nothing in return--going all the way back to 1990. Instead, we've displayed a lot of willingness to do what we want and expect Russia to simply take it all in stride. I mean, you add up all of Russia's military ops since 1990 and you add up all of ours, and there's just no comparison: we've been all over the map and engaged in some very big interventions when Russia's just worked its geographic margins.

On the other hand, you can say with great fairness that we've spend a lot of effort since 1990 managing the world to Russia's general benefit and it's free-rode throughout, bothering us here and there with nonsense militarism on its borders but otherwise causing us no real heartburn.

So fair's fair: we've done some real heavy lifting and Russia's just dicked around on minor bits, emulating the same sort of strategic myopia that India (Kashmir), Pakistan (ditto), and China (Taiwan) still suffer.

But again, all these limited strategic mindsets remind me of the U.S. in the 19th century: it was like we couldn't grow up and become a real world power until we had worked our way through all of them and felt all secure in our modern, complete incarnation.

So what do we do to get these rising great powers beyond such nonsense?

If I hadn't already written a book on that subject, I would certainly feel the need.

Anyway, this is what I can manage on a day when my brain isn't working so well.

Probably good grist for a future column.