Late last week, when fighting erupted between Russia and Georgia over the disputed regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, there were some concerns as to who, exactly, was the aggressor. Were Georgian forces moving into those regions to restore order, or were they, as the Russians claimed, perpetrating genocide? Or was Russia using humanitarian concerns as a pretext to force a democracy that was leaning too far to the West into subjugation?
The consensus (in the West, at least) seems to be that Russia is the aggressor—Russia has been overtly hostile to Georgia for years and has imposed sanctions, including natural gas, designed to starve the country into submission—but there seems to have been slow preparations for hostilities on both sides. Such preparation would account for how quickly hostilities rose to their current levels of violence.
If Georgia did prepare for—and perhaps even expected—conflict, this raises significant questions: If they had no hope of winning (other than by waging war to arouse the anger of the West), why did Georgia even consider military action as being a viable option in the first place? Is this a desperate act of a desperate people, or did the West promise to help?
In some ways, neither side seems to be fighting a purely just war. Of the two, of course, Russia has a much harder case to make, since Russia's sanctions could be considered an act of aggression, and their use of force seems far from proportionate. But while self-defense is certainly a just cause, it could be charged that Georgia provoked this attack, and if this is so, this raises significant problems, because just wars have to have a reasonable expectation of success. And given the significant civilian casualties, neither side seems to be showing the restraint necessary to limit civilian deaths.
Headlines:
- Georgia Fight Spreads, Moscow Issues Ultimatum (NYT)
- In Georgia and Russia, a Perfect Brew for a Blowup (NYT)
- Taunting the Bear (NYT)
- South Ossetian refugees head north to flee ruins of war (Guardian)
- Russia criticises US for flying Georgian troops back from Iraq (Guardian)
- Bush, Cheney Increasingly Critical of Russia Over Aggression in Georgia (Washington Post)
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