HERBERT ZWEIBON
As Russia exerts its military power at will over Georgia, there are lessons for Israel—and the West.
For Israel the lesson is obvious. To expect others to save you in an existential crisis is folly. The United States makes strong statements of disapproval and sends humanitarian aid. The EU can’t muster that much resolve: France and Germany are not even willing to blame Russia. “I don’t think we should lose ourselves in long discussions about responsibility and blame” said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeir.
Moreover there is no comparison between the threat Russia poses to Georgia and that the Islamic world poses to Israel. Putin’s goal is not to liquidate the Georgians or end Georgia as a state. He wants to send a message to Georgia (and other breakaway states of the former Soviet empire) that they are not free to align themselves with the West, but must remain within the Russian sphere of influence. Contrast this with the determination of Israel’s Arab neighbors to end the “scandal” of a Jewish state in the heart of the Moslem Arab world and Ahmadinejad’s vow to annihilate Israel and its Jewish population.
But if what is happening in Georgia illustrates yet again that Israel must rely on itself, the feckless Kadima government has totally shattered Israel’s deterrent power, first by leaving the Gaza communities (to become rocket bases for Hamas) and then by losing the Lebanon war to Hezbollah. Now Defense Minister Barak even abandons the rhetoric of deterrence. While he has previously threatened repeatedly that an IDF operation in Gaza was close, he now says that a large scale invasion would not stop Hamas attacks and he preferred the existing truce (which had reduced their number). What about the strengthening of Hamas through rampant arms smuggling of explosives and rockets under cover of the truce? Incredibly, Barak airily dismisses this as “not a problem for Israel.”
But there are also lessons for the West. As long as Kosovo remained part of Serbia, Russia was barred from recognizing the “independence” of Georgia’s breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia because in opposing Kosovo’s independence Russia was relying on the entrenched international principle that the country being partitioned must consent to the separation. In the March 2008 Outpost we warned that in recognizing Kosovo’s independence despite the fact that Kosovo was legally part of Serbia and the cradle of its civilization, “the Bush administration is taking a step profoundly inimical to the interests of the U.S., the West and international stability.” We noted that while the EU drafted a statement decreeing that Kosovo’s independence was a “one-off” which shouldn’t set a precedent elsewhere, it would in fact constitute a potent precedent. And indeed, as Walid Phares points out In The American Thinker, on the very day Kosovo declared independence Russia issued a statement declaring it would recognize the efforts by South Ossetia and Abkhazia to secede from Georgia. Phares points out that this clear eye for an eye declaration went unnoticed in the West.
Russia now rubs in the Kosovo precedent. Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the upper house of Russia’s Parliament, in a letter to U.S. Senators, wrote: “The desire of South Ossetia and Abkhazia for independence is historically and actually much more legitimate than the Kosovars [claims].”
Yes, Russia was looking for a way to punish Georgia for its effort to join NATO. But if the U.S. and the West wanted international legality on their side, they made a terrible mistake in opting for “outreach” to Islam at the expense of international principles.
Neither Israel nor the United States seems prepared to think ahead to the implications of their actions. But, as events in Georgia—and Gaza—show, the consequences are not long in coming.
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on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 and is filed under news.
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