This is one of those conflicts in which you only feel like offering opinions tentatively. Are you simply swallowing a biased Georgian and media line if you side with Georgia and complain about Russian brutality and aggression? What about the South Ossetian civilians who have undoubtedly been killed by Georgian forces? Perhaps there's some truth in Russian complaints that what happened to them has been ignored. On the other hand, is even having such thoughts a sign of having been successfully got at by Russian propaganda, which would paint Georgia as a kind of renegade fascist state and its own actions as those of an innocent, humanitarian liberator? The Russian view conveniently ignores the fact that South Ossetia is actually part of Georgia. If that weren't enough, it's difficult for anyone writing from Britain to have any idea what's actually going on in Georgia - to what extent are Russian troops pulling back, for instance (footage of Russian tanks on roads in itself shows little) and to what extent are they, frankly, taking the piss, their masters in Moscow wanting to show they can do what they like regardless of what George Bush says? What reliable information do we have about the historic background - about why South Ossetia and Abkhazia are "breakaway" republics (in the TV Newsspeak) in the first place, about what kind of politician Mikheil Saakashvili is and how truly democratically elected he is?
But it's not good enough simply to offer no view at all. The first thing I want to say is that it's not enough either simply to ask who "started" this. I'm not one of those who thinks history is the key to every social conflict - how does it help? Does it mean protestants should all be deported from Northern Ireland? - but this summer's conflict is not isolated, but the result of a sustained policy in the Kremlin of undermining and destabilising Russia's neighbours; at least those who cosy up to the west. If Russia really wanted to show solidarity to ethnic Russians in South Ossetia and coexist peacefully with its neighbour it'd make it clear there's no question of the region being anything but Georgian. But it's chosen another path. I'm perfectly prepared to believe Saakashvili's claims that his invasion of South Ossetia - that's what it was in effect - followed provocation from Russia and its proxies on the ground.
I can't spare Saakashvili criticism, though, so this post inevitably has a "plague on both houses" feel. Whatever provocation there was did not justify a large-scale military incursion which, let's not forget, has led to many deaths. I realise Georgia is in difficulties trying to get Russia to behave by diplomatic means, when Russia has a veto on the UN Security Council. Its pleas for help in New York would probably have had little effect. But to raise the stakes, hoping somehow to draw the Americans in by using tanks, was foolish and immoral. Foolish, because surely it's obvious the US doesn't want military confrontation with Russia and is unlikely to risk it over one small area where the majority backs Russia - however artificially created that majority is. Foolish too, because Georgia has ended up with its armed forces destroyed and Russia has ended up strengthened on the ground and, short-term, in the region. Immoral, because people died for the sake of Saakashvili's unwise gamble. He's lucky, I think, to be getting the support that is he is, now, from America.
Russia's behaviour, though, is bullying, brutal and stupid. As I've already said, it should anyway have been trying to calm and resolve this issue, not to stir it up and exploit it. But to have in effect annexed two parts of Georgia, to have attacked its citizens in places nothing to do with the causes of conflict, to be trying to dictate what its neighbour does and to be trying to unseat its president - all of this is unacceptable. What I don't fear, as some might, is that this strengthens Russia significantly in global politics, though. On the contrary, I think it weakens it. Medvedev may feel that he has succeeded in sending a message to Ukraine and to any other former Soviet republic, that throwing your lot in with Washington and ignoring Russian wishes is an unsafe foreign policy. He has succeeded in that. But to compound your neighbours' hatred of you, conceived in the Stalinist years but maturing now, so that all your regional policy depends on being feared - this is seriously ill-judged. Nothing could be more sure to drive republic like Georgia definitely towards the west. And nothing could be more calculated to make the west disengage from Russia. For all Russia's machismo, it needs the west much more than the west needs it, and it's already throwing away its future by giving governments like Britain's good strategic reasons to invest in nuclear power rather than risk energy blackmail from Moscow. Russia may be rich now, but it'll be poorer before long because it just can't be trusted.
A final point on the wider picture. A tiresome but popular wisdom is how awful and mercantile American foreign policy is and how much of a problem it is that it's the world's only superpower. But this crisis shows how lucky we are to live in world run if not solely by the Americans (even they're nowhere near that powerful) then at least run more by them than anyone else. Russia is a long, long way away from running the world - this conflict shows in fact how regional its power it is, rather than global - but if Russia did run the world, that world would see much more chaos, petulance, war, imperialistic greed and stupid Machiavellianism than we see now.
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