1914 –> 2008

I am surely not the first to compare the recent conflict in Georgia to the Balkans in 1914, where two bullets from Gavrilo Princip’s revolver started the First World War. Mr. Putin clearly has dreams of a new Russian Empire dancing in his head. If he does not, his strongly nationalist attitudes, couched in nineteenth-century concepts, and the tsar-esque executive powers he has arrogated to himself certainly give a reasonable facsimile. Georgia has its own strongly nationalist president, Mr. Mikheil Saakashvili, who is intent on seeing the whole of Georgia – including breakaway provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia – under Georgian control.

In order to reassert Georgian control of the de facto independent region, Mr. Saakashvili ordered Georgian troops into South Ossetia after midnight, 8 August. The Russian Federation moved to protect pro-Russian South Ossetia, whose official languages include Russian and whose currency is the Russian Ruble.

On 25 July 1914, Russia became the first nation to mobilize in what would become the First World War. Tsar Nicholas II moved to protect his sphere of influence in the Balkans, which he believed was strengthened by an ethnic bond between South Slavs (Yugo-Slavs) in Serbia and Slavs in Russia, after Austria-Hungary demanded that Serbia severely punish the conspirators of the 28 June assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and suppress all nationalist elements of its government.

The analogy becomes more acute when it is considered how much worse the situation could have been. Georgia has been campaigning for NATO membership for some time. If that had been granted before recent hostilities, the United States would have been legally obligated to give military aid to Georgia. However, a Georgian farmer seems to grasp with relative clarity the moral and political obligation that the United States already has to Georgia.

Spheres of influence and complex alliances formed several automatic systems of defense in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe. Russian defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1905 forced Russia to allow Japanese influence in southern Manchuria and China, and to grant Britain (Japan’s supporter) expansion of its sphere of influence in Afghanistan, in order to maintain its own influence over northern Manchuria and parts of Mongolia. This also fostered anti-American feeling in Russia, whose Far Eastern foreign policy aimed at minimizing the number of other nations with a foothold in China. With Russian potency in the Far East somewhat neutralized, Russia renewed interest in the Balkans, becoming the patron state of Serbia and nurturing Slavic nationalist sentiments. Austria-Hungary similarly supported Bulgaria. Meanwhile, in order to check Austro-Hungarian aggression from the other direction, the Triple Entente powers of Great Britain, France, and Russia signed a secret alliance with Italy in September 1914, when Italy was still formally and openly allied to Germany and Austria-Hungary. Tripping any of the wires criss-crossing Europe and their spheres of influence could set in motion prearranged contingency plans for military action.

Russia has also mobilized its Black Sea Fleet for action against Georgia; the Fleet is bilaterally commanded by Russia and Ukraine. Kjiv has already warned that the Fleet will not be allowed to return to its station at Sevastopol in the Ukrainian Crimea. Both Russia and South Ossetia have accused Ukraine of supplying Georgia with arms.

Western Europe has been relatively ambivalent: a French official called Mr. Saakashvili mad for invading South Ossetia while French President Nicolas Sarkozy flew to Moskva and Tbilisi to broker a cease-fire. After all, Russia controls most of the petroleum supply into Europe. For nations like Germany, almost one-quarter of their petroleum and forty percent of their natural gas needs are provided by Russia. In the past, the Kremlin has not shied away from using this power. Ukraine’s vocal support of Georgia and apparent readiness to help their brother former Soviet republic is even more surprising, and perhaps brave, considering three major flare-ups in an ongoing petrol trade war between Kjiv and Moskva in January 2006, October 2007, and January 2008.

But, should we really be surprised that we engage in complex political and economic relations, and that the webs we weave often bring us to unpleasant choices? Should we renounce these complex foreign alliances, to follow the advice of George Washington? The Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Treaty of Paris (1783), the Congress of Vienna (1815), the Peace of Paris (1919), and the Potsdam Agreement (1945) all stand in a long line of European peace accords that set the standard for diplomatic theory and strategy: peace was instituted, and supposedly guaranteed, by territorial transfers, political quid-pro-quo, and economic provisions with the ultimate goal of enabling a balance of power. Today we have the United Nations – has it changed the rules of the balance of power game, or has it just applied the same strategies to the whole world?

So what are the options on the table for the United States and Europe? Several strategies have been suggested in an attempt to slap Russia’s wrist hard enough without souring relations further. These include denying Russia entrance into the G7, and/or speeding up Georgian and Ukrainian bids for NATO membership. But Western Europe has shown itself reluctant to do the latter, precisely because of the obligations demanded if there are future hostilities between Georgia and Russia. The United States has shown willingness to enter the fray with limited military assistance to Georgia (ferrying its troops in Iraq back home), and a promised humanitarian aid campaign. President Bush delivered some sharp words this morning, saying that Russia has “tended to view the expansion of freedom and democracy as a threat to its interests.” But the tightrope walk for America is made that much thinner by Russia’s support of Iran, which could be aggravated and increased by American action in Georgia – much to the detriment of troops in Iraq and civilians in Israel. The UN has been rendered useless by Russia’s veto power.

Mr. Putin’s strongly centralizing power and foreign policy initiatives are is couched in terms that belong to the nineteenth century or the Cold War: nationalism, spheres of influence, and satellite states. But in order to prevent the Georgian conflict, or any future conflicts propagated by Russia (or other aggressive nations: North Korea, Iran, China), from becoming the spark to the powder keg, there needs to be twenty-first century diplomatic innovation that combines a versatility to deal with complicated economic, military, and political relationships with a strength to solve these problems without allowing compromise to undermine the outcome.

The United States and Europe have the bear by the ears. Europe cannot let go, for fear of an energy crisis. America cannot let go, for fear of Russia’s enduring political clout in areas of the world that have become vital to American interests. But neither can they hold onto it for much longer, for the bear has them too and it has claws.