Whose imperialism is worse?
By seeing a narrative of western imperialism in the Caucasus, Seumas Milne tramples on the principle of democratic self-determination

David Clark

David Clark

guardian.co.uk, Friday August 15 2008 18:00 BST

Article history

Anyone familiar with my writings over the last few years will know that I share many of the premises behind the argument set out by Seumas Milne yesterday. America's conduct of the war on terror, enthusiastically abetted by the United Kingdom, has degraded the moral authority of the west. The Iraq war was a self-interested geopolitical misadventure dishonestly presented as a security or humanitarian imperative. The willingness of Washington and London to tolerate Israel's disproportionate military action against Lebanon in 2006 has left them wide open to the charge of hypocrisy in their response to the war in Georgia.

This is where agreement ends, for I can't let Milne's argument go without pointing out a couple of important errors of fact and one major error of analysis.

His first error of fact is the assertion that Georgia was part of the invasion of Iraq and therefore scarcely in a position to complain about the violation of its own sovereignty. This is plain wrong. Georgia did not deploy troops in Iraq until after the war, in August 2003, and did so under the mandate of UN Security Council Resolution 1483 (pdf), passed in May 2003 by 14 votes to nil. Its troops were also part of a force operating with the agreement of the elected government of Iraq. I opposed the war as much as anyone, but there is no basis for arguing that Georgia's military presence in Iraq was a violation either of international law or Iraq's sovereignty.

Milne's second error was to repeat as fact Russia's assertion that Georgian troops killed hundreds of civilians in their assault on Tskhinvali. There is no independent support for this claim, or for the bogus claims being made by both sides about genocide. The only authoritative independent assessment so far comes from Human Rights Watch and states the following:

    A doctor at Tskhinvali Regional Hospital who was on duty from the afternoon of August 7 told Human Rights Watch that between August 6 to 12 the hospital treated 273 wounded, both military and civilians. She said her hospital was the only clinic treating the wounded in Tskhinvali. The doctor said there were more military personnel than civilians among the wounded and added that all of the wounded were later transferred to the Russian Ministry of Emergencies mobile hospitals in South and North Ossetia. As of August 13, there were no wounded left in the Tskhinvali hospital.

    The doctor also said that 44 bodies had been brought to the hospital since the fighting began, of both military and civilians. The figure reflects only those killed in the city of Tskhinvali. But the doctor was adamant that the majority of people killed in the city had been brought to the hospital before being buried, because the city morgue was not functioning due to the lack of electricity in the city.

Everyone who cares about human rights – as opposed to those who use them as partisan debating points – has a responsibility to be objective and consistent in assessing claims of atrocities committed in war. It may transpire that crimes more serious than those so far unearthed by Human Rights Watch have been committed, but our conclusions should follow the evidence, not the dictates of political preference. There now needs to be a full investigation into what has happened in Georgia, and we should therefore welcome the announcement of the prosecutor of International Criminal Court that he is considering an inquiry. Anyone found guilty of violating international humanitarian law should be punished regardless of which side they belong to.

My complaint about Milne's error of analysis concerns his attempt to make the Georgia conflict fit the anti-imperialist paradigm, which posits Georgia as a "pro-western, anti-Russian forward base" functioning at the behest of a rapacious and domineering America. The reality is that US policy towards Russia and the countries around it has been much more ambivalent and confused than Milne's picture allows. At their first meeting, President Bush claims to have looked Vladimir Putin in the eye and the seen the soul of a man he could trust. Sources claim Bush swallowed a lot of blather from Putin about his commitment to the Russian Orthodox Church, showing what a canny manipulator of people the ex-KGB colonel is. Between Bush's gullible religious mysticism and Dick Cheney's admittedly hawkish instincts, the administration's policy towards Russia has never really recovered a clear sense of direction.

In each particular detail, Milne misreads or misrepresents the evidence of a grand American plan to undermine Russia. Missile defence is a strategic error for all sorts of reasons, but it is not directed at Russia. It stems, in the short term, from an obsession with the threat of small rogue states and the misguided belief that technology can provide the solution. In the unlikely event that missile defence works, other delivery systems will evolve to counter it. Underlying this is the unipolar imperative that the US should dominate the process of military-technological change across the spectrum. They are doing it because they can – or, at least, think they can – but there is no specifically anti-Russian objective involved.

The role of the US in the so-called "colour revolutions" has been hugely exaggerated. In the case of Ukraine, for example, there was outside "interference" from both east and west. In the case of assistance form America and Europe, this involved training political parties and NGOs in the latest techniques of open and democratic campaigning. In the case of Russia, assistance came in the form of an attempt to rig the ballot, to say nothing of the suspicion that they also tried to murder the opposition candidate. You be the judge of what is legitimate here. The fact is that Saakashvili and Yushchenko came to power because the people of Georgia and Ukraine wanted them.

Finally, on Nato enlargement, the running on this has been made predominantly by countries that want to join, with the US and other Nato members following behind at variable rates of hesitancy. Until last week, many US policy makers were unsure that incorporating Georgia and Ukraine would be worth the bother. The fact that they are both still outside is a consequence of precisely the deference towards Russian concerns Milne says is lacking.

Missing from all of this is any hint that the views of the people of Georgia or other post-Soviet countries, apart from Russia, count for anything. Integration into western institutions is not being foisted on anyone; it is being chosen willingly in almost every country that enjoys the freedom to decide for itself. I understand why many Russians resent that fact, but that cannot be an excuse for imposing their will by force. It must be the apex principle of a democratic Europe that every country has the right to decide its own external relations in accordance with its own interests. Without that, we are back to the Europe of Metternich and Bismarck, if not Ribbentrop and Molotov.

Milne concludes by advancing the bizarre notion that Georgia's independence can only be guaranteed by accepting a status of neutrality; in other words, by subordinating its own will to that of Russia. Funny kind of independence. Funny kind of anti-imperialism.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/15/russia.georgia1