From Kosovo To Georgia

A reader makes an important point:

It is true that, by their actions in Iraq, Bush and Cheney have ceded any claim to the moral high ground as far as a response to Russia's involvement in Georgia is concerned, but I think that the difficulty of the US position goes back farther than that -- to the policies of NATO expansion in general, and our policies regarding Kosovo in particular, that began with Bush I and Clinton.

Kosovo, like South Ossetia, is a minority province in a state that resulted from the breakup of a communist "confederation" of states.

Its inhabitants, like those of South Ossetia, sought independence. When the armed forces of the "sovereign" country of Serbia took steps to assert control over the breakaway province, NATO stepped in to protect the citizens of Kosovo and restore the peace, largely by trying to obliterate the capacity of the Serbian army to retain the province. NATO's previous expansion into the Balkans made this possible, because, by the time of that conflict, Kosovo was more in NATO's backyard/sphere of influence than Russia's.

But that being the case, how is Georgia's claim of sovereignty over South Ossetia entitled to any more respect than Serbia's claim of sovereignty over Kosovo?

Why aren't the ethnic Russians who form the majority in South Ossetia just as entitled to independence and self-determination as the ethnic Albanians who form the majority in Kosovo?

It should be recalled the Russia has bitterly opposed NATO's policy with respect to the defense, and now recognition, of Kosovo, and NATO's expansion into former Soviet Republics.  It should come as no surprise that Russia would invoke the same principles of "peacekeeping" and rights of self determination to protect its turf in the Caucusus and challenge the whole idea of NATO expansion into Georgia.  (Aren't we glad we don't have a treaty obligation to defend Georgia now?)

I think the whole issue of NATO expansion, which started in the first Bush administration, has gotten out of hand, and that GWB's support of Georgia's inclusion in NATO was foolishly overambitious.  Americans need to be more patient.  In 20 years, most of eastern Europe has become, to an amazing extent, part of the "West."  The former Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia aren't going to be pried away from the Russians quite so easily, or in the same manner.