I freely admit: I haven’t yet much of a clue about the sudden war between Russia and Georgia. It’s been interesting to read the news accounts and op/ed pieces, and even more interesting to listen to the observations of the students here at the Army War College, whose long-standing focus on southwest Asia, the regions that border it, and the possibility of a resurgent Russia has plainly given them a decent grasp of the background to the conflict. But I’m still in the mode of trying to “get smart” on the subject, as they say around here, and looking for a good way to gain a handle on the overall picture and its implications.
A tool I often use in matters like this is reasoning by analogy. That’s a pretty common way historians think. And while I couldn’t yet tell you the analogy that best fits the conflict, I’ve started to keep track of the analogies in play.
Inevitably, one of them is Nazi aggression, with South Ossetia as the Sudetenland and the West’s failure to do more than wring its hands suggestive of the British and French leadership of the late 1930s. Is appeasement in the offing? A Munich? Followed by more aggression?
Maybe the sequel to successful Russian aggression would be a number of other countries adjacent to Russia being intimidated into what during the Cold War was called Finlandization — a rollback of emergent pro-western democracies and the restoration of Russia’s historical imperial hegemony over the regions around it — a set of falling dominoes.
Maybe this is a revival of the Cold War requiring the restoration of military containment.
Maybe this is 1979 Afghanistan all over again, and the U.S. should support Georgia with weapons shipments, and since Georgia cannot defeat Russia via conventional military defense, then the weapons assistance should take the form of shoulder-fired surface-to-air weapons that would give Georgian irregulars a fighting chance against Russian aircraft. A solution that carries the risk of blowback if those weapons fall into unfriendly hands.
Maybe this is Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the mid-1990s.
Or, from the Russian perspective, humanitarian intervention a la Kosovo, 1999.
I’ve seen all these analogies invoked so far.
Me, my gut feeling right now is that this could be the equivalent of “some damn fool thing in the Balkans that ignites the next war,” Bismarck’s prescient comment that became reality in 1914.
But that’s just a gut feeling. Obviously I’ll just have to keep reading and learning and contextualizing. As I do, I’m sure I’ll run into more historical analogies. And continue to keep track of them.
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I’ve posted this over at the Russian Front: http://russian-front.com
Mark Grimsley has a piece on his search for historical analogies to the war in Ossetia. I’ve been having trouble coming up with one, and I think one of the key facts about this conflict is the reason. The important point here, and the flaw with the Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan references, is that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili started this war. Sure, there were constant skirmishes and sniping and banditry, but this is the Caucasus. Saakashvili escalated the conflict by a major military effort to exert control over South Ossetia, and he knew he was escalating it–witness the Georgian references (before everything went south) to “restoring constitutional order in South Ossetia.” There have been references in the press coverage to the Bush administration having to dissuade Saakashvili from war previously–something clearly went wrong this time.
And that’s the reason why I have trouble coming up with analogies here. Great Powers smack around their smaller neighbors all the time, sometimes successfully, sometimes not (Soviets in Afghanistan, China in Vietnam) But smaller neighbors very seldom yank the chains of their Great Power neighbors, for the obvious reason that it’s world-record-class stupidity. The closest I can come, and I admit it’s not perfect, is Kosovo: Milosevic clearly believed he could act with impunity in Kosovo, despite a clearly stated American position that he needed to reach a political settlement there, and found out he was wrong. As a British commentator put it, Saakashvili is no Milosevic. Still, that’s as close as I can get.
Serbia (well, Serb nationalists, the Black Hand, to be exact) “smacked around” Austria-Hungary by assassinating the Archduke Ferdinand. Austria-Hungary had been steadily losing its position in European affairs and needed to respond strongly or see its prestige further erode. I wouldn’t push the analogy beyond that. As with all analogies, it’s important to note the differences as well as the similarities.
Georgia has a patron in the form of the US, but in embyonic form — nothing like Russia’s big brother protectiveness of Serbia. And there’s no interlocking system of alliances, etc., etc.
Interesting–one distinction I’d draw there is between non-state actors (though I realize the Black Hand had PLENTY of Serbian officials in it) and the Serbian state, which met almost all the Austrian demands after the assassination. Seems as though being a state generally forces some level of responsibility.
What this makes me think of, though, is the coalition of Balkan powers against the Ottomans in the First Balkan War–though the Ottomans were a great power by courtesy at that point, and there were lots of little neighbors ganging up on them.
To this day we know Russia is the stronger country military wise, they have put their fear into Georgia by showing just that (entering the country with with an unnecessary abundant force, killing a vast amount civilians and then leaving again like nothing had happened)… hoping this fear will generate respect and future obedience to the Mother country. However and I quote… no, not from the Bible but from a known green midget source saying “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering” I pray the latter will not come to be, for the the day will surely come when Russia has burned its own bridges across the world and when allies are running short.
As it is today what has happened will be forgotten in the stream of news from the Olympic Games, another thousand or so people have lost their lives due to Russians atempt to set the status que in balance. but in the end of the day we now that ” Fear is the path to the dark side”!
Some analogies are explicit in the news reports. Others come to mind when you read the reports. For instance, when I saw this news analysis in the New York Times I thought of April Gillespie and her famous meeting with Saddam Hussein, said to have convinced him the U.S. would stand aside if he invaded Iraq. This seems the same dynamic in reverse:
Huffington Post, Aug. 10: ELDER statesman Zbigniew Brzezinski has claimed that the situation in Georgia is reminiscent of the Winter War and Continuation War of 1939 and 1941 when Russia tried to invade neighbours, Finland, in a show of strength.
Adrastos, Aug. 12: The situation in Georgia reminds me not of the Czech crisises of either 1938 *or* 1968 BUT of Hungary in 1956. In the Fifties, Ike’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles claimed that the US would “rollback” Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Dulles encouraged the people of the “captive nations” to rise up against the Russians. His brother CIA director Allen Dulles was covertly funding anti-Soviet forces in Eastern Europe. The Hungarians took this posturing from Washington seriously and rose up. Russian tanks rolled in and crushed the uprising. I hate to be so repetitive but sound familiar?
Stratfor Geopolitical Diary, Aug. 13: The Georgians now have a problem. If they accept these terms [i.e., the truce terms], they are in practice accepting the redrawing of Georgia’s borders. In any negotiation involving the Ossetians, Abkhazians or Russians, no one will agree to return these regions to Georgian control. Given the military reality of the presence of Russian troops, Georgia’s wishes will be irrelevant. On one hand, all this does is continue the de facto situation of the last 16 years. On the other, it forces the Georgians to cross a psychological and political line, similar to what Serbia faced with the independence of Kosovo. This is the Russian intent.
There is one good thing to come out of this. When President Bush heard that Russia was invading Georgia, he ordered troops removed from Iraq to defend Atlanta.
The Gulf war. (1990-1991)
A little country provokes a great power and gets smacked down quickly and easily. The great power walks away with a greatly increased reputation for military strength, making other small countries more compliant and giving other great powers good reason to think twice before opposing them.
Great stuff here, Mark (and everyone else). Seems to me we have the classic confrontation between “the world as it is” and “the world as we would like it to be.” Seen through the eyes of the former, the Georgians erred badly in trying to use force to establish their authority in the enclaves (South Ossetia and Abhazia). They punched the bear in the nose and got mauled for their efforts. In “the world as it is,” this is all Pres. Saakashvili’s fault (and perhaps ever the fault of the US, for encouraging him).
But in “the world as we would like it to be” (the place I try to inhabit as much as possible), the Georgians had every right to put down threats to their authority in their own sovereign territory, without having to worry about the Wrath of Putin. Here, Saakashvili appears not so much as a tyrant, but as Pres. Eduard Benes in 1938.
A tough call, and I lack the data to say much more (and so does everyone here).
But in the interests of a partial rehabilitation of one of the most reviled figures of the 20th Century, I hve to admit this: even WRITING names like “South Ossetia” and “Abhazia” makes me have a strange new respect for Neville Chamberlain, bemoaning the possibility of a war over “a faraway land” and a quarrel “between peoples of whom we know nothing.”
Like Mark, looks like “I’ll just have to keep reading and learning and contextualizing.”
–Rob Citino
I have a terrific colleague with whom I teach who has got, hands down, the best historical analogy I’ve heard. (He ought to: like me, he’s on loan to the Army War College, and in his case, he’s a distinguished career foreign service officer in the State Department. I’ve asked the students in my seminar group to come up with historical analogies in anticipation of a lesson block next week on the uses of history. Therefore I won’t reveal my colleague’s answer until after the lesson. Actually, with any luck, I’ll persuade him to do a guest post, so that he can explain it himself.
Mikheil Saakashvili, president of Georgia, in a Washington Post op/ed, Aug. 14: “The historical parallels are stark: Russia’s war on Georgia echoes events in Finland in 1939, Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Perhaps this is why so many Eastern European countries, which suffered under Soviet occupation, have voiced their support for us.”
I would avoid using equivalences from the past as each equivalent tells us not only what to think about the current situation but also the possible ways to respond.
Why not clean the pre conceptions and the old response patterns and just see the current situation
Andrea, I think I understand what you’re driving at, and you’re right to think that to invoke a historical analogy in a dogmatic way is unhelpful. A current event resembles a previous one in some ways but is different in others. The utility of historical analogy as a tool for analysis lies in noticing the similarities and the differences. Sometimes the differences are so blatant you realize the analogy is unhelpful. At other times the differences are subtle enough that they heighten awareness of the salient dynamics and suggest good questions to explore to better understand the event.
Also, as a practical matter, I don’t think we can just forget about the past. It shapes our impressions of the present no matter what we do. Better then to be intentional about thinking about the ways in which previous events color our interpretation of present ones.
Hi Mark I agree with you and I’ve discusses the now vs. past references a little further on the blog
http://www.warhistoryfans.com/the-georgia-situation-it-is-happening-now-86.html
It is that the “wrong” analogy can sometimes lead to “wrong” interpretations and reactions and I think I just prefer wider analogies that enable more place to be flexible
I happen to agree with Andrea. How the analogy is framed leads to preconceptions that influence the response.
I see an analogy here, The first is related to Quantum Mechanics; When the question was framed in terms of “Light” then the researchers “discovered” the properties of light. when they framed the question in terms of “matter” the researchers then discovered the properties of matter.
Similarly, framing the analogy then may potentially influence an inappropriate or unintentional response.
I agree with Andrea and Terry that care must be taken with historical analogy. However, as Prof. G points out, proper/balanced analysis can lead to understanding. Plus, its kinda fun.
Here’s an analogy that the Georgians would love. How about the War of 1812? A former colony, about 2 decades after gaining their freedom, struggling to make democracy work, reaches too far strategically against the the former Empire and gets spanked for it.
Where the situation goes from here dictates how well this analogy goes. Do the Georgians play their hand in the media and international community well or do the Russians end up absorbing them again?
BJ,
Interesting.
I think that a proper and balanced analysis is crucial to the “context” in which we intend to employ the lessons learned. Are we “what ifing” potential scenarios for an MDMP analysis? Are we attempting to gain strategic insight and its implications for FP? Are we learning generalized macro lessons in history? I like to have fun as well. I failed to mention this because I took it for granted that the “Context” would be framed with the introduction in terms of what we are looking for.
Rob Citino wrote:
“But in “the world as we would like it to be” (the place I try to inhabit as much as possible), the Georgians had every right to put down threats to their authority in their own sovereign territory, without having to worry about the Wrath of Putin. Here, Saakashvili appears not so much as a tyrant, but as Pres. Eduard Benes in 1938. ”
IIRC, South Ossetia had been effectively independent since the early 1990’s, when the USSR broke up.
So perhaps the correct analogy would be if, after a successful War of Seccession, Virginia invades West Virginia, and gets smacked down by the USA, which had been looking for an opportunity to teach the world that the USA was not to be trifled with.