After the recognition of the independence of Kosovo by the United States and a minority of world states (45 for now), Russia replied by exposing what it perceived as the inconsistency and hypocrisy of their position. Why not grant independence of the Georgian breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, since their populations also claim to fear majority rule in their larger country?
Russia's threat to support the independences of those territories contributed to push Georgia into its war on South Ossetia. But most importantly, the dangerous precedent of Kosovo – both the NATO military intervention and the recognition of its independence – discarded principles of international law and revealed the West's double standards in its condemnation of Russia's very similar intervention in South Ossetia.
Georgia's Propensity for the Use of Force
From 1990 – even before the end of the Soviet Union – South Ossetians have requested their attachment to North Ossetia, which is part of Russia. They have many reasons to fear Georgian rule and Tbilissi has showed on many occasions its propensity for the use of force on its dissident minorities instead of dialog.
In the early 1990s, Russia sent peacekeeping troops to end violent clashes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia – wars that Tbilissi lost in both cases. Moscow willingly “froze” these conflicts, so as to keep a lever of influence on Georgia, and offered Russian citizenship to any resident of the two provinces that desired it. In 2006, South Ossetians voted at 99% in favor of separation from Georgia and inclusion into the Russian Federation. A result that everyone ignored, even Moscow.
Given the very complicated situation, Russia proposed a “Taiwan style” settlement, in which Moscow would officially recognize Georgian sovereignty on the two provinces and in exchange Georgia would refrain from the use of force and respect their political autonomy as well as Russian interests. Even if this offer was very similar to what the United States had proposed China – which it accepted as the only short-term peaceful solution to Taiwan – both Washington and Tbilissi rejected it as unacceptable.
Georgian Nationalism and Minorities
In the last years, the Saakashvili administration in Georgia has rapidly fallen into authoritarianism and corruption. The President's large unpopularity contributed to drive him into its disastrous campaign in South Ossetia, so as to rally the population around the perception of a great Russian threat and fire up Georgian nationalism – a nationalism that has often expressed itself to the detriment of Abkhazian and Ossetian minorities.
As a result, Western capitals have tried to present as a victim a leader that bombed the South Ossetian capital's civilian population at night and without warning – a war crime under any standard. In fact, for Russian public opinion, its army's military intervention was necessary to prevent a genocide – on a population of which over 90% possess a Russian passport – and is thus not really different from NATO's intervention in Kosovo. Actually, there was one major difference Russians would say: its military did not bomb Georgia's entire territory so as bring the country to its knees like NATO did to Serbia in 1999. So why Kosovo and not South Ossetia? The answer seems only to reveal Western double standards.
