Stop the War with Russia!

War with Russia is not what we need

Russia recognizes South Ossetia; We do not; Inconsistency in foreign policy betrays the buried agendas

Flags: Kosovo & USA

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev (whose name nobody gets right: “Med -vee-Ed – yeff) just announced that he accepts the Duma’a (parliment’s) recommendation that Russia recognize both South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent republics.  Meaning: “Georgia, let your claim on them go. “

So, the rule is this: if a distinct people-group (an ethnic group in a contiguous region, such as the South Ossetians) all want independence, they should have it.  Let them go.

Good.  So that’s why Russia let Chechenya go, right?.  That’s why Russia wants independence for Kosovoovo from Serbia, right?  Or not.  Russia is hypocritical on this point.

The US stands by our new ally, Georgia, according to two policy rules:
1)  the territorial integrity of a country (like Georgia) must be respected and maintained (meaning: Russians: go a way and stop meddling);
2) Ethnically distinct (or nearly so) regions which are currently contained in a nation-state should stay there and not splinter off.

Good.  That’s why:
1) we respected the territorial integrity of Iraq and did not invade; and
2) the US does not want Chechnya or Kosovo to be independent, right?

Or not;  the USA is hypocritical on this point.

The total inconsistency of the policy-arguments of both sides shows that the real issues are beneath the surface.  After all, the United States embraced the “Monroe doctrine” which assumed the legitimacy of “spheres of influence” (we named the policy after a president) but if anyone else wants a sphere of influence, we do not accept it as legitimate.   Double standards are what we do best.  We had a Cuban missile crisis and now the Russians have a Polish missile crisis.

Whose “sphere of influence” is Iraq in?  They are a Shi’s majority contry and have a Shi’a neigbor next door: Iran, so presumably they are in the Iranian sphere of influence.  No way, right?  This policy works for the USA, but we are special; an exception.

The Kurds of Iraq want to be independent from their Arab neighbors, just as the Kosovars of Serbia do, so they should be allowed to go their own way, right?  Don’t tell Turkey or Iran that: the Kurds of Turkey and Iran – and the PKK – the armed and dangerous military arm of the  Kurds will just try harder – as the people of South Ossetia do, right?

I am being facetious here: I know that each of these locations have hugely complex issues (like mixed populations, for a start) driving the debate, and that access and control of natural resources is playing a huge part of this game, but I’m making a point: we (the USA) does not need to start another war over a policy that has no meaning.  We are getting ready to get into a conflict with Russia over policies which neither of us are truthful about.  It’s not about South Ossetia’s rights, or Georgia’s rights, or Russia’s rights, or America’s rights; it’s about domination and control – on both sides.

Georgia, because they want to have for themselves what they deny the South Ossetian’s – independence from a powerful overlord, gives us a chance to stick it in Russia’ eye (“gotcha! the people who gave us Lenin do not want to be dominated by Russia!  Take that!”).  We get the opportunity to make it harder for the Russians to get what they have always needed: a dependable Black Sea port.  So it has nothing to do with whether or not the South Ossetians should stay in Georgia – a state they want to be independent of.

America does not need a war over this.  But if events follow their current course, we could easily get into a war with Russia.

We must demand that our political leaders do what we elect them and pay them to do: keep us safe!  There is no threat to America at stake here.  Maybe pride.  I will never sacrifice my sons to a war for pride; nothing could be less ethical; it has no justification.

We must demand that they stop giving this issue global importance.  By the very same measure, Russia could start a legitimate war with us for backing the independence of Kosovo from Serbia.  This is not 1389, there is no Ottoman empire, and there is no Kurdistan.  There is a Serbia, an Iran, an Iraq, a Georgia and a Russia: let’s deal with facts.  We do not need another cold war nor another world war.  This would be completely ridiculous if it were not so dangerous.

I am not naive to the fact that many of the current residents of South Ossetia are actually Russian, not native South Ossetian (nor that there are many Serbs in Kosovo and Turkmen in Kirkuk, Iraq [Kurdistan?]).  That makes no difference in the main argument: we have no business making this a reason for our involvement in a new, huge war with Russia!

We must not allow Georgia to draw us in to a conflict of their choosing.  They want us to get engaged – why else would they suggest we off load supplies (humanitarian?) at Poti, a port where we could easily have a direct conflict with Russians who control it?  A new US armed conflict with Russia may be in their interests: it is not in ours.

Georgia, South Ossetia, ethnic conflict and Jesus

According to Wikipedia,

South Ossetians nearly unanimously approved a referendum on November 12, 2006 opting for independence from Georgia. The referendum was hugely popular, winning between 98 and 99 percent of the ballots, flag waving and celebration marked were seen across South Ossetia, but elsewhere observers were less enthusiastic. International critics claimed that the move could worsen regional tensions, and the Tblisi government thoroughly discounted the results.

Neither the government of the United States nor the EU accept that 2006 vote as legitimate.  Nonetheless, the region of South Ossetia is called a “break away” region because a substantial number of its inhabitants want to be free of Georgian state control.

People (we) want to govern themselves.  We do not want “them” to rule “us.”  It’s true for Coats and Serbs, it’s true for Hutu and Tootsie, it’s true for Kurds, Kosovars – everybody.

So the most important question is who is “them”?  This is solved by defining “us.”

All over the world “us” is defined by ethnicity.  Ethnic Ossetians want to govern themselves, and they do not want to be governed by ethnic Georgians – or Russians or Ottomans or anybody else.  They want what everybody wants.

Sometimes ethnicity is too blunt, and so the division needs to be cut by a finer blade: religion is often at hand to be the instrument.  Sunni and Shi’a are both Arabs, but “need” to distinguish themselves, so religion – down to the level of sect-of-the-same-religion helps.  It helped Serbs (Orthodox Christians) and Croats (Roman Catholic Christians) where ethnic differences between Serbs and Croats are not visible to the naked eye.

Ossetians know who they are; they have defined “us”.  They have their own language, their own alphabet, and a long history of fighting for independence.

Ethnic boundaries are frequently in conflict with national boundaries; ask the Hungarians who, after Trianon in 1919 found themselves in Romania.  Ask the Serbs, Croats, Solvenes (and more Hungarians)  and others who were collectively tied together in Yugoslavia.

But the modern nation state of Georgia, now free of the Soviet Union, wants the territory of the South Ossetians (currently inside the borders of Georgia) to  be and stay part of Georgia.  Regardless of the reasons (oil piplines for example) the conflict is about who gets to call it their own.

The Georgians look at South Ossetia and see that almost a third (28%) of it’s population is actually ethnically Georgian.  Some say the number is as high as 35% – but it is complicated.  The Russians, over the course of decades, moved a number of Russians into the region – and many now identify as Ossetians; should they be counted?

Anyway,  the population is now mixed.  It’s mixed down to the village level – just like Bosnia where a Serb village is just over the hill from a Bosnian-Muslim village (like Srebrenica – hence, the target of “ethnic cleansing”).

So what everybody wants  – to rule “themselves” becomes impossible in practice – unless we go back to city states (village states?) like ancient Greece.  Too many eggs have been scrambled, too many populations have been shoved around over time; the cry of nationalists (foreigners go home) is an impossible wish (home?).

So what about Jesus on this issue?

Ethnicity and boundary markers like religion were a huge part of Jesus’ agenda.  He wanted the “us” definition for the “people of God” to no longer include ethnicity.  He intentionally journeyed into non-Jewish territory, engaged ethnically non-Jews, and commended them for their faith.   That’s what is going on in the setting of the text this week in Matthew 15.  Jesus, in the region of Tyre and Sidon, engages a local woman, specifically identified by her non-Jewish ethnicity, a “Canaanite” in repartee, allows himself to be bested by her, and grants her wish to have her daughter healed.

Jesus’ location and action were “in your face” to people with the purity-agenda (which of course included ethnic purity).  Collectively represented as the “Scribes and Pharisees” these spokespersons for the “tradition of the elders” (Matt 15:2) are the subject of Jesus’ de-construction.  N.T. Wright is particularly good on this issue (Jesus and the Victory of God, pp. 195-197, 309 & ff).  Though Jesus understood the unique place of Israel in God’s plan to bless all the nations of the earth (chronologically first), he anticipated the spread of the ethnically-open-ended Kingdom of God (or Heaven) to the world.  The Canaanite lady was one of the first, though not the only nor the last non-Jew to experience the blessings of the coming kingdom.

So what do we do with this vis a vis South Ossetia and Georgia?  Well, for me, it starts like every moral question: with the ideal end.  Just as all moral standards represent an ideal of perfection (do not kill, do not steal) which are often broken in practice, nevertheless, the ideal is the goal; the vision.

So for me, the vision is of a world in which people may know themselves as “us” defined by some handy criteria (ethnicity), but do not use that criteria in a way that excludes or dominates others.  That’s the vision.

Therefore, the first project is always peaceful settlement, not automatic acceptance of either separatist movements (the South Ossetian’s agenda) nor of naton-state control-claims (Georgia’s agenda).  Rather, the first project should be to find a way in which the legitimate interests of the South Ossetians can be protected without the need for ethnic-based conflict and the enormous loss of life and population-dislocation that always follows, and the genocide that often does as well.  That’s how I read Jesus.