Russia, Georgia & the U.S.: A Double Standard in Action

A second and closely related point is that the Western arming of Georgia and U.S. effort to get it into NATO has been part of a larger program that has seriously jeopardized Russian national security. In allowing East Germany to join West Germany in 1990, Soviet President Gorbachev had received an assurance from U.S. Secretary of State James Baker that NATO would not expand "one inch" eastward, let alone incorporate all former Soviet clients into a Western military alliance. Not only was this promise violated, but the United States has aggressively intervened in the political affairs of a number of ex-Soviet states on Russia's southern flank and established bases in several of them, again posing a national security threat to Russia. More recently, the United States has even negotiated for the establishment of anti-missile bases in the Czech Republic and Poland, purportedly to protect against Iranian nuclear missiles that don't exist and would not threaten the host countries even if they did exist. Again, by contrast, Iraq did not have any anti-U.S. program and was not part of an alliance that posed any national security threat to the United States.

A further point of great relevance is that the recent serious escalation of violence between Georgia and Russia began on the evening of August 7 with Georgia bombarding Tskhinvali, the capital city of South Ossetia, and sending a substantial military force into the province. Given that Georgia was a U.S. client, that the United States (along with Israel) had armed and trained Georgian forces, that only days before the Georgian attack it had participated in joint maneuvers with Georgian forces, and that U.S. and Israeli personnel were present in Georgia at the time of the attack, it is very possible—even very likely—that the Georgian attack was not a foolish mistake by the Georgian leadership, but rather a proxy action carried out on behalf of the United States. Its design is not clear, but might have been to further humiliate Russia, which had failed to act in the long series of other hostile Western moves. Or perhaps it was meant to provoke it into action to test its response capability, or to push the new Cold War to a higher level for political advantage (helping the war party and John McCain—the expected "October surprise" one month early).

In any case, Russia responded 24 hours after the opening large-scale Georgian bombardment of Tskhinvali, drove out the Georgians, and attacked and occupied part of Georgia proper in the next few days. For some years South Ossetia had been quasi-independent, though legally part of Georgia. Peace had been maintained previously by a status quo agreement that left South Ossetia independent and with a number of Russian and other peacekeepers present. The Georgian attack of August 7-8 targeted, along with the civilian population of Tskhinvali, the residences of the Russian peacekeepers who suffered a score or more deaths and many wounded. Once again, the contrast with the U.S. attack on Iraq is clear: Iraq had not attacked or threatened the United States; it was attacked on the basis of false claims about Iraq to help market an invasion-occupation. (In May 2003 Wolfowitz famously acknowledged that "weapons of mass destruction" was featured for bureaucratic and political reasons.)

The way in which U.S. officials and the media handled the Russian response to the Georgian assault has been a lesson in bias, misrepresentation, decontextualization, and the applied double standard. It has also often been funny.

There is nothing new in this ultra self-deception or hypocrisy. In 1965 James Reston, the top journalist of the New York Times, asserted that we were in Vietnam to establish the principle that force doesn't pay and that "no state shall use military force or the threat of military force to achieve its political objectives." He said this in face of the fact that all knowledgeable officials and analysts recognized that the "enemy," the National Liberation Front, had mass support in South Vietnam, that our minority clique had very little and would not survive for a month without U.S. military support, and that the entire rationale of U.S. policy rested on the idea that the enemy would surrender as we escalated and put into play our massive force. (See Gareth Porter's The Perils of Dominance for a study of the genocidal U.S. use of force in Indochina.)

We and our "defense department" are protecting U.S. "national security," according to the cliché-myth. That the electoral intervention, political capture, arming, and proposed absorption of Georgia into NATO posed a security threat to Russia was barely recognized in the West. If the Russians (or Chinese) had entered into a military alliance with Mexico, supplied it with arms and military advisors, used a Russian or Chinese version of the "National Endowment for Democracy" and other agents to bring about political change in Mexico (recall that Mexico has had a series of elections won by fraud), and perhaps put some ABMs in place to protect Mexico against a possible threat from Colombia, can you imagine the frenzy of U.S. politicos and the "free press?"

For the imperialist establishment only this country and its clients have "national security" threats. Certainly the Russians don't, even as we encircle them and arrange for ABMs on their very borders.

When it is occasionally recognized that the NATO expansion and U.S.-client status and arming of Georgia does worry Russia, this wasn't accompanied by suggestions that maybe we should lay off, withdraw, and stop trying to bully Russia (or China) into subservience. No, it was used to explain that this gave Russia an excuse to resume its expansionist ways, that is, it "gave Putin an easy excuse to exercise his iron fist" (Friedman, "What Did We Expect?", August 20).

Only Russia has bad motives. Georgia's President Saakashvili merely made a "mistake" or foolishly "baited" the Russians or the United States was careless or not very observant in failing to constrain him—but neither of them was guilty of aggression, brutality, blackmail, or expansionism.

It is also interesting that the U.S. and EU have been completely unconcerned over Georgia's use of powerful and indiscriminate Grad missiles in the initial attack on what seems to have been strictly civilian sites in Tskinvali. In 1996 the Yugoslav Tribunal found the Croatian Serb leader Milan Martic guilty of war crimes for having used a similarly indiscriminate weapon in attacking Zagreb, a densely populated area, although he claimed to be aiming at the Ministry of Defense and Airport. But the Tribunal concluded that he was trying to terrorize the population (whereas prosecutor Carla Del Ponte found that while NATO also used cluster bombs, "There is no indication cluster bombs were used in such a fashion by NATO.") Martic was given a 35-year sentence for using cluster bombs. I think we can safely conclude that Saakashvili's use of cluster bombs will be treated like NATO's rather than Milan Martic's.

As regards Russia and Georgia, the media haven't focused explicitly on the UN Charter, but have repeatedly charged Russia with aggression, which is a fundamental UN Charter violation, as well as disproportionate violence, and failure to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. Russia's action was "brazen" aggression, but the U.S. invasion of Iraq or Israel's attack on Lebanon in 2006 were in a different category altogether, certainly not "brazen," "unacceptable," or calling for an international response. Georgia's territorial integrity "must be respected," but Yugoslavia's and Serbia's were a "special case," based on the rule of the double standard.

The first Washington Post editorial assailing Russia on Georgia stressed how wonderful that "victim" state Georgia is, one of its accomplishments being its support for "the mission in Iraq" (ed., "Stopping Russia," August 9, 2008). But the mission in Iraq to which the worthy Georgia contributed 2,000 troops was and remains a major act of aggression, which makes the Russian attack on Georgia puny by comparison, and arguably an act of self-defense, which the U.S. aggression was not. The editors of an ideological institution like the Washington Post are, of course, completely oblivious to the irony in their pat on the back for aggression-victim Georgia's support of the more massive aggression.

Practically every article and editorial on the Russian-Georgian conflict refers to Georgia as an "elected democratic state," sometimes also a "market oriented" democracy, sometimes "allied with the Western democracies," and also "independent." And President Saakashvili is "Western educated." Also democratically elected, although his first electoral victory got him 96 percent of the vote, a number that would arouse suspicions if not won by a Western-educated leader. His electoral victory in 2004 was one of those Western-Soros-NED-CIA supported operations that would be wildly illegal if carried out from abroad in the United States. It is not Western "expansionism," however, and Russian hostility to this interventionism and the establishing of a hostile client on its border shows Russia's attempt to establish "hegemony" in the Caucasus.

A number of observers have pointed out that Saakashvili has displayed marked authoritarian tendencies. His popularity decline from 2004's 96 percent favorable vote to the present has been dramatic. In the election of 2007-2008 tens of thousands of protesters who assembled in the streets of Tbilisi demanding democratic reforms were dispersed on November 7, 2007 with tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannon, and truncheons, with over 600 needing medical attention. A dissident broadcasting station was raided, its equipment disabled, journalists beaten, and its operations suspended, leaving only a state-controlled TV station functioning. Two opposition leaders were accused of treason and of plotting with Russia, while two other potential contestants were eliminated from the election by legal trickery. Election observers from the OSCE raised questions about election integrity based on claims of Saakashvili's use of state money, blackmail, and vote-buying.

But none of this affects the Western media, who were enthused about the hugely corrupt Russian election of 1996 which "reformer" Yeltsin won, and even about the 1982 and 1984 elections in El Salvador, won by U.S.-approved leaders under conditions of extreme state terror. So why not enthuse about Saakashvili, a "Western-educated" and eager client and servant of a global expansionist state playing like a defender of democracy?