This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: August 12, 2008 - The brutal military conflict in Georgia over this past week has left many people puzzled and dismayed. How could this happen? Who was responsible? It turns out to be an old story of fear, miscalculation, hubris and tragedy, with the United States playing a significant role.
On Tuesday, Russia ordered its forces to stop fighting, saying that Russia had achieved its military aims. Yet, there were no orders to pull out, and reports of sporadic fighting were still coming in. Click here to read about the latest developments. (The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting is posting field reports from Georgia written by reporters funded by the center.)
After Georgia's bloodless "Rose Revolution" in 2003, the Bush administration enthusiastically encouraged President Mikheil Saakashvili to create an outpost of democracy in the "tough neighborhood" surrounding his small country. America also was a major supporter of a new pipeline to transport Caspian Sea oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to a Turkish port on the Mediterranean Sea. This pipeline provides the only major Western route outside of Russia and Iran for transporting oil and gas in the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia. But in pursuing its agenda in the region, the U.S. government, especially the State Department, may have created false expectations about how much we were prepared to go to the mat for Georgia.
At the same time Russia's reaction to increased support for Georgia was steadily rising apprehension. In its view, America and others were encroaching on Russia's natural sphere of influence -- what they have long called the "near abroad." Russians resisted the idea that Georgia, Azerbaijan and other regions on the periphery of Russia were no longer part of the Soviet Union or the Russian empire that had existed long before.
Russian ideas about its near abroad are part of a geopolitical vision that we might not like, but it rests on a logic that we can at least understand. What is more difficult to appreciate is the sort of visceral reaction of Russian leaders to the suggestion that Georgia has a right to be a free sovereign state. This reaction reflects what appears to be a non-negotiable stance that is tied to something we don't generally fathom, namely underlying claims of Russian national identity.
Repeated brutal historical experiences have given rise to a Russian world view that can detect alarming dangers of invasion where others see only small states going about their peaceful business. And in the case of Georgia, it is not just a small state that is at issue. Russians view it as an outpost of NATO and the United States, as part of yet another historical effort to invade and destroy Russia. American talk about creating democracy in the region is simply taken to be an attempt to veil true intentions. In the years immediately following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Moscow was too poor and too weak to do much about this, but a massive influx of petrodollars has given rise to a new assertiveness, if not nostalgia for a lost empire.
For outsiders it is hard to appreciate the emotional power of the Russian national narrative behind this world view. Indeed, Russia is often viewed as an aggressive expansionist power rather than a victim. To try to understand this Russian national narrative is not to excuse dangerous nationalism or the suffering that it inflicts on others, as in Russia's recent overreaction in Georgia. But it is to understand the very deep-seated collective memory that guides Russia's reaction to perceived threats.
The enthusiastic support from the U.S. government for Georgia's democratic revolution and for the build-up of its armed forces may have sent the wrong signals to Georgia's president, who is known for his bold, if not impulsive action. Did these signals give rise to an overconfidence that resulted in the fiasco in South Ossetia and the resulting disaster for the Georgian army? Did other Georgians interpret America's words in the same way? The widespread Georgian outrage at American inaction after their defeat suggests that they did.
Experienced foreign policy hands have long recognized the dangers of overpromising U.S. commitment, but somehow this message was not made clear in Georgia. Furthermore, U.S. support for Georgia may have played into the deep-seated fears of Russia's national narrative and the likely reactions it would produce. The result has been a disaster, above all for Georgia, but also for America's credibility. Instead of following Theodore Roosevelt's dictum "Speak softly and carry a bit stick," we may have been doing just the opposite.
James V. Wertsch is the Marshall S. Snow professor in Arts and Sciences and the director of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy at Washington University in St. Louis.