So what is the libertarian-american view on events in Georgia? I did not quite get it from the windy article above. Everyone agrees wars are bad, what do we do to countries whose leaders lie, engage in war and rely on good old propaganda to sustain favorable public opinion internally?
Well, the comment is quite off topic, as this is a discussion of the recent events in Malaysia, in which good libertarians should find reason for joy.
But I’ll answer the question about Russia and Georgia quickly: the “libertarian” view (I’m not sure that there is an “American” view per se) is complicated. War is a bad thing, as you point out. But it still matters which side initiated aggression and which side responded. A “windy” discussion is one, it seems, that acknowledges complexity and uncertainty, and there is a some of both in this case.. “Georgians Good, Russians Bad,” or “Georgians Bad, Russians Good” would certainly be a simple and “non-windy” approach, but not a good match for the actual situation.
The general consensus is that American military involvement is a very bad idea. Moreover, if the Georgians were relying on US backing, they were misled. It’s simply wrong to give assurances of support when there is no serious intention of following through. The graves in Srbenica are testimony to that.
An odd fringe seems to conclude in such cases that, if the US should not intervene, then the side against whom the US should not intervene must, therefore, be on the right side. Thus, if the US should not intervene in Darfour, the Janjaweed militias that are murdering innocent villagers must be justified in doing so. Such people don’t understand that the point of a principle of non-intervention by the US is that policy recommendations do not rest on the justice or injustice of cases abroad, but on whether they represent threats to the US. Small minds cannot grasp such matters, and conclude that we should first determine the conclusion and then the facts should be made to conform to the conclusion, which is precisely to deny the basic premises underlying a non-interventionist policy. It is not an argument for peaceful non-intervention, but offering a hostage to interventionism, for it concedes that if the facts on the ground abroad were different, it would justify intervention.
I think it’s pretty clear that the Kremlin laid a trap and the Georgian government stepped into it. The artillery shelling of Georgian villages (i.e., entirely civilian areas) within South Ossetia and outside of South Ossetia in the days prior to the outbreak of open hostilities and the movement of the Georgian army into South Ossetia, combined with the massing of Russian armored columns at the internationally recognized (including by Russia) Georgian border and the statement by Eduard Kokoity (the head of the South Ossetian separatist statelet’s government) in Moscow that South Ossetia was to be “cleared” of all Georgians (i.e., ethnic cleansing, which had already started) have been cited by the Georgian government as the reasons for their moves, as they believed that they had to stop the movement of Russian armored forces into their country. If true, it certainly didn’t work. The Kremlin claimed that the Georgians were undertaking “genocide” and stated that between 1,500 and 2,000 Ossetian civilians had been massacred by Georgian forces. That did not turn out to be true and the Kremlin later backed down from those numbers (without acknowledging it; just recently the Kremlin announced that they were investigating allegations of killings of 133 Ossetians by Georgian forces), although Medvedev and Putin continue to use the term genocide to describe the actions of the Georgian government. In the meantime, Human Rights Watch has documented ethnic cleansing of Georgians in South Ossetia, including burnings of Georgian villages( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7588473.stm ) and there have been documented cases of door-to-door killings of Georgian civilians and of the capture of “hostages” by the Kremlin-backed and armed militias.
So what would a libertarian think? First, I oppose US military involvement in the region. No US leader will or should risk war with Russia. Second, I think that other states that have stood with the Georgian leadership (Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, for examples) have an understanding of the region based on experience. They may have a legitimately different policy than the US, as they may also be in danger of military attack, occupation, and annexation, which is effectively what the Kremlin has been doing in the cases of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Finally, with regard to rights to secession, I support movements that secede for reasons of freedom. The Abkhaz and the Ossetians, after the experience withe first post-Soviet government of Georgia under the nationalist Zviad Gamsakurdia, had reasons to fear unification with Georgia. The current government is quite different and had offered autonomy and federalism in negotiations. But after years of Russian occupation and effective annexation, that was not an easy thing to negotiate, as the leaders of the regions have long been in the pay of and beholden to the Kremlin. (That’s not an attack, but a simple statement of fact.) But if South Ossetia’s leaders, installed by the Kremlin, can direct a secession of Ossetian-occupied regions, can others in other parts of South Ossetia (which had a major Georgian population, until they were expelled and burned out in the past weeks) secede from South Ossetia? And what of the hundreds of thousands of Georgians who had already been ethnically cleansed by Russian and Russian-backed forces from South Ossetia and from Abkhazia? (In Abkhazia, Georgians had formed the largest ethnic group, at about 45 percent of the population, much larger than the Abkhaz population, but they have been completely cleansed from the territory, with the last groups being expelled in recent days.) Sorting out the rights and wrongs of such cases is not easy, and merely invoking the right to secession does not solve those issues. If, say, people of Cuban origin in Florida were to wage war and succeeded in forcing out other ethnic groups, and were then to say “the people of Florida have the right to secede from the US,” one might ask whether first the people who were driven out should be consulted, and whether the populations of the non-Cuban regions of northern Florida might have the right not to be joined in a newly independent, Cuban-dominated Florida. And then add in the occupation of Florida by a foreign power (one might think Cuba, but that’s a stretch, so imagine, say, Russia) that had granted citizenship to part of the remaining population, had a large military occupation force, and supplied the membership of the police and other armed forces. What to think then of the justice of the claim of secession? Is it secession by a victimized minority, or annexation by an aggressive neighbor?
One last thing, as a matter of analysis (and not a matter of policy recommendation). Look at the extensive bombing of the roads and bridges that carried oil and gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey and the ports of Georgia. And then look at the lines of craters that perfectly track the underground pipeline from Azerbaijan, through Georgia, to Turkey. Given the mania of the Kremlin to control 100% of the pipelines from Central Asia to Europe (just look at the events of the past few years), it seems clear that a major target — and a well planned one, too — of the Kremlin’s war was the pipeline. The Kremlin has shown no sympathy with other secessionist movements, and has killed hundreds of thousands (no exaggeration and well documented) of Chechens to ensure that that region remain in the Russian federation. So, especially when one considers that the same leadership that crushed the Chechens (and completely destroyed the city and much of the population of Grozny) now claims to champion rights of minorities to secede, it seems unlikely that the policy of the Kremlin leadership is to support human rights or the right to secession. Of course, the “secessionist leaders” of South Ossetia have already said that the goal is unification with Russia, i.e., annexation.
But thatâ??s the last word here. This is not the post for a discussion, windy or otherwise, of the Russian invasion of Georgia.
I am glad to rediscover this site.
So what is the libertarian-american view on events in Georgia? I did not quite get it from the windy article above. Everyone agrees wars are bad, what do we do to countries whose leaders lie, engage in war and rely on good old propaganda to sustain favorable public opinion internally?
Well, the comment is quite off topic, as this is a discussion of the recent events in Malaysia, in which good libertarians should find reason for joy.
But I’ll answer the question about Russia and Georgia quickly: the “libertarian” view (I’m not sure that there is an “American” view per se) is complicated. War is a bad thing, as you point out. But it still matters which side initiated aggression and which side responded. A “windy” discussion is one, it seems, that acknowledges complexity and uncertainty, and there is a some of both in this case.. “Georgians Good, Russians Bad,” or “Georgians Bad, Russians Good” would certainly be a simple and “non-windy” approach, but not a good match for the actual situation.
The general consensus is that American military involvement is a very bad idea. Moreover, if the Georgians were relying on US backing, they were misled. It’s simply wrong to give assurances of support when there is no serious intention of following through. The graves in Srbenica are testimony to that.
An odd fringe seems to conclude in such cases that, if the US should not intervene, then the side against whom the US should not intervene must, therefore, be on the right side. Thus, if the US should not intervene in Darfour, the Janjaweed militias that are murdering innocent villagers must be justified in doing so. Such people don’t understand that the point of a principle of non-intervention by the US is that policy recommendations do not rest on the justice or injustice of cases abroad, but on whether they represent threats to the US. Small minds cannot grasp such matters, and conclude that we should first determine the conclusion and then the facts should be made to conform to the conclusion, which is precisely to deny the basic premises underlying a non-interventionist policy. It is not an argument for peaceful non-intervention, but offering a hostage to interventionism, for it concedes that if the facts on the ground abroad were different, it would justify intervention.
I think it’s pretty clear that the Kremlin laid a trap and the Georgian government stepped into it. The artillery shelling of Georgian villages (i.e., entirely civilian areas) within South Ossetia and outside of South Ossetia in the days prior to the outbreak of open hostilities and the movement of the Georgian army into South Ossetia, combined with the massing of Russian armored columns at the internationally recognized (including by Russia) Georgian border and the statement by Eduard Kokoity (the head of the South Ossetian separatist statelet’s government) in Moscow that South Ossetia was to be “cleared” of all Georgians (i.e., ethnic cleansing, which had already started) have been cited by the Georgian government as the reasons for their moves, as they believed that they had to stop the movement of Russian armored forces into their country. If true, it certainly didn’t work. The Kremlin claimed that the Georgians were undertaking “genocide” and stated that between 1,500 and 2,000 Ossetian civilians had been massacred by Georgian forces. That did not turn out to be true and the Kremlin later backed down from those numbers (without acknowledging it; just recently the Kremlin announced that they were investigating allegations of killings of 133 Ossetians by Georgian forces), although Medvedev and Putin continue to use the term genocide to describe the actions of the Georgian government. In the meantime, Human Rights Watch has documented ethnic cleansing of Georgians in South Ossetia, including burnings of Georgian villages( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7588473.stm ) and there have been documented cases of door-to-door killings of Georgian civilians and of the capture of “hostages” by the Kremlin-backed and armed militias.
So what would a libertarian think? First, I oppose US military involvement in the region. No US leader will or should risk war with Russia. Second, I think that other states that have stood with the Georgian leadership (Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, for examples) have an understanding of the region based on experience. They may have a legitimately different policy than the US, as they may also be in danger of military attack, occupation, and annexation, which is effectively what the Kremlin has been doing in the cases of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Finally, with regard to rights to secession, I support movements that secede for reasons of freedom. The Abkhaz and the Ossetians, after the experience withe first post-Soviet government of Georgia under the nationalist Zviad Gamsakurdia, had reasons to fear unification with Georgia. The current government is quite different and had offered autonomy and federalism in negotiations. But after years of Russian occupation and effective annexation, that was not an easy thing to negotiate, as the leaders of the regions have long been in the pay of and beholden to the Kremlin. (That’s not an attack, but a simple statement of fact.) But if South Ossetia’s leaders, installed by the Kremlin, can direct a secession of Ossetian-occupied regions, can others in other parts of South Ossetia (which had a major Georgian population, until they were expelled and burned out in the past weeks) secede from South Ossetia? And what of the hundreds of thousands of Georgians who had already been ethnically cleansed by Russian and Russian-backed forces from South Ossetia and from Abkhazia? (In Abkhazia, Georgians had formed the largest ethnic group, at about 45 percent of the population, much larger than the Abkhaz population, but they have been completely cleansed from the territory, with the last groups being expelled in recent days.) Sorting out the rights and wrongs of such cases is not easy, and merely invoking the right to secession does not solve those issues. If, say, people of Cuban origin in Florida were to wage war and succeeded in forcing out other ethnic groups, and were then to say “the people of Florida have the right to secede from the US,” one might ask whether first the people who were driven out should be consulted, and whether the populations of the non-Cuban regions of northern Florida might have the right not to be joined in a newly independent, Cuban-dominated Florida. And then add in the occupation of Florida by a foreign power (one might think Cuba, but that’s a stretch, so imagine, say, Russia) that had granted citizenship to part of the remaining population, had a large military occupation force, and supplied the membership of the police and other armed forces. What to think then of the justice of the claim of secession? Is it secession by a victimized minority, or annexation by an aggressive neighbor?
One last thing, as a matter of analysis (and not a matter of policy recommendation). Look at the extensive bombing of the roads and bridges that carried oil and gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey and the ports of Georgia. And then look at the lines of craters that perfectly track the underground pipeline from Azerbaijan, through Georgia, to Turkey. Given the mania of the Kremlin to control 100% of the pipelines from Central Asia to Europe (just look at the events of the past few years), it seems clear that a major target — and a well planned one, too — of the Kremlin’s war was the pipeline. The Kremlin has shown no sympathy with other secessionist movements, and has killed hundreds of thousands (no exaggeration and well documented) of Chechens to ensure that that region remain in the Russian federation. So, especially when one considers that the same leadership that crushed the Chechens (and completely destroyed the city and much of the population of Grozny) now claims to champion rights of minorities to secede, it seems unlikely that the policy of the Kremlin leadership is to support human rights or the right to secession. Of course, the “secessionist leaders” of South Ossetia have already said that the goal is unification with Russia, i.e., annexation.
But thatâ??s the last word here. This is not the post for a discussion, windy or otherwise, of the Russian invasion of Georgia.