South Ossetia is not Kosovo

tauringhuang.

Aug 28th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia cannot be justified by a bogus comparison to Kosovo

WITH a flourish, Russia this week recognised the “independence” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the enclaves that gave it a casus belli for its war on Georgia (see article). The Abkhaz and Ossetians celebrated their reward for living under Russian protection for 15 years. The Russians saw it as a logical outcome of their victory, a further stage in their confrontation with the West—and a copy of what happened in Kosovo. As Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, argued, “you cannot have one rule for some and another rule for others.”

Yet the West is right to respond firmly to Russia’s new belligerence by refusing to recognise the new states. Never mind that Russia is itself being incoherent in continuing to insist that Kosovo’s independence from Serbia is still illegal (a stance driven in part by its wish to avoid setting a precedent for Chechnya or other restive republics within Russia). Mr Medvedev’s assertion of a parallel between Kosovo and South Ossetia is almost entirely bogus.

This is not to deny the superficial similarities that the West would do well to accept. NATO’s air war on Kosovo and Serbia in 1999 was, like the Iraq war in 2003, conducted without the legal approval of the United Nations. Both wars were aimed in part at regime change. Last February’s recognition by many Western countries of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia again lacked formal UN blessing (thanks to Russia’s threatened veto). All this made it inevitable that Kosovo, like Iraq, would be cited as justification for other adventures. The West knew that Kosovo’s independence, in particular, risked becoming an excuse for Russian recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Yet this is where the parallels run out. In Georgia’s enclaves, Russian forces have acted as self-interested troublemakers, not as neutral peacekeepers. Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic long oppressed the Kosovo Albanians, as well as perpetrating war and ethnic cleansing right across former Yugoslavia. But it was the Georgians who ended up as the bigger victims of ethnic cleansing in Abkhazia in the 1990s, and have been again in South Ossetia in the past three weeks. Unlike Milosevic, Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili is a democratically elected president who will surely be held to account by voters for his impetuous decision to invade South Ossetia on August 7th.

tauringhuang.

Motive provides an even clearer difference. Throughout the 1990s the Americans and Europeans were extremely reluctant to get involved in the Balkans. After Milosevic’s withdrawal from Kosovo in 1999, the main role of the UN and NATO forces in the province was to protect the Serb minority and Serb religious sites. The Western powers devoted years to negotiations over the province’s future, culminating in UN-led talks under Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president. Only when these failed, again thanks mainly to Russian intransigence, did Kosovo’s unilateral independence become inevitable.

In total contrast, Russia has nakedly pursued its own interests in the Caucasus. It did its utmost to provoke Mr Saakashvili into a fight. Its “peacekeepers” have made no pretence of protecting minorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It has not even tried to promote serious negotiations over the territories’ future. Instead, it has steadily cemented their links with Russia, building up military facilities and giving the local people Russian passports (a transparent ploy to justify a later purported need to “protect” Russian citizens). Although Mr Saakashvili took the catastrophic decision to send in the Georgian army, resulting in many civilian deaths, no evidence has been offered by the Russians to support their wild claims of genocide or ethnic cleansing.

Peacekeepers or piece-keepers?
The difference between Kosovo and South Ossetia has been starker still in the war’s aftermath. In 1999 the Western powers went in as a last resort and quickly internationalised the issue, bringing in the UN and international peacekeepers. Eight years of patient diplomacy preceded Kosovo’s independence. The Russians invaded Georgia in a fever of war enthusiasm; have refused to pull out and rejected attempts to internationalise the dispute; and have now recognised the enclaves’ independence less than three weeks after the war began.

In principle, sub-national states should sometimes be able to secede, but South Ossetia and Abkhazia clearly do not qualify. Neither enclave has properly consulted its people, including huge numbers of Georgian refugees. Nor has there been a long, hard effort to find a negotiated settlement. Mr Saakashvili should stop promising to regain control of the enclaves, and the West should insist on the case for international peacekeepers. But Russia’s aggression in Georgia must not be rewarded by conceding the enclaves’ independence. That really could set a dangerous precedent, in Ukraine, Moldova and—not least—inside Russia itself.