Wednesday,
August 13, 2008
“War
prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.”
“War...is harmful, not only to the conquered
but to the conqueror.”
“To defeat the aggressors is
not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology
that generates war.”
“The root of the evil is not
the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of
conquest.”
Ludwig von Mises
(1881-1973)
There are people in charge who think that
provocation and aggression can be acceptable government policy. The sudden
conflict between the former Soviet province of Georgia and Russia in the Caucasus
in Eurasia is a good case in point.
What's behind this
conflict that erupted last Friday at the outset of the Beijing Olympic Games?
First and foremost, let us keep in mind that the real and first aggressors in this
conflict is the belligerent government of Georgia,
led by an impulsive politician named Mikhail Saakashvili,
who is openly supported by the governments of the U.S. and of Israel. Early
Friday, August 8, Georgian tanks and infantry, assisted by American and Israeli
military advisers, launched an early morning massive artillery and rocket
barrage on the capital of breakaway South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, thus directly provoking
Russia, which had soldiers in that province.
At first blush,
most people could easily arrive at the conclusion that Saakashvili is
completely out of his mind for having declared war against its neighbor Russia,
a country more than 50 times larger, with the goal of reoccupying the
Russian-speaking province of South Ossetia, de facto independent since 1992. The only logical
explanation would seem to be that the Georgia President believed, or had some
form of assurance, that the Bush-Cheney administration would side militarily
with him. Did he really believe that the Bush-Cheney administration, already
deeply involved in two military conflicts in Iraq and in Afghanistan, would
risk a world war to salvage an oil pipeline
and a newly acquired colony in that far away part of the world? This would seem
to be another insane idea.
It is a little
known fact that the U.S. and
Israel
have been training and arming the Georgian military since 2002. This situation
is tantamount to risking a restart of the Cold War with Russia. It has also
sown the seeds of a much larger conflict in that part of the world by
encouraging Georgia to embark on military manoeuvres. Little Georgia (4.5 m.
inhabitants) even has 2,000 troops in Iraq, soldiers that the U.S. is now
quickly flying back to Georgia. This goes a long way towards explaining how
involved the Bush-Cheney administration and its Israeli surrogates have been in
sticking it in the eyes of Russia. And now, the Russian bear is reacting. This
is brinkmanship at a high level.
In the summer of
1914, a similar miscalculation resulted in igniting World War I.
This was a
conflict that started with a single death (the assassination of Archduke
Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914) but which resulted, in the
end, in 40 million deaths. The catastrophe was the result of a chain reaction of war
declarations by various countries involved in the affairs of other countries.
This remains an example of how relatively minor regional conflicts can escalate
into conflagrations when hotheads are in command.
The Georgia-Russia
spat represents a good opportunity for the U.N. Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, to show
leadership and not to let things degenerate. Indeed, there is always the
possibility that one politician after another will try not to lose face by
escalating things. For example, the U.N Secretary-General should obtain from
the Security Council the mandate to visit immediately the two capitals directly
involved, and he should attempt to broker an immediate face-saving end to the
hostilities. He should persuade the Russian leaders not to overreact to the
Georgian President's provocations. As for the latter, he has demonstrated that
he is not worthy of occupying his functions.
Time is of the
essence in such circumstances, because there are always some interests that
stand to profit from a worsening situation.
For one, the
presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain,
who never met a war he didn't like, has already tried to stoke the fire of
conflict by calling for the 26-country NATO to get involved in what is
essentially a local ethnic conflict. On the campaign trail, John McCain
said: "We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic
Council to assess Georgia's security and review measures NATO can take to
contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation."
Incredibly, the
republican candidate is attempting to profit politically from this faraway
crisis by advancing the frightening prospect of turning a small regional
conflict into a world war. This could have something to do with the fact that
Mr. McCain's main foreign policy adviser is a former lobbyist
for the government of Georgia and is a former neocon lobbyist for the U.S.
military invasion of Iraq. This would seem to be a direct conflict of interests
and reason enough for Mr. McCain to refrain from throwing oil on the fire.
I have said it before,
and this incident confirms it; this man would seem to be unfit to be in charge
of a heavily armed country.
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of
economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
He is the author of the book 'The
New American Empire'
Visit his blog site at: www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com/
Check Dr.
Tremblay's coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/
Posted,
Wednesday, August 13, 2008, at 5:30 am
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http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1092
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