Behind the conflict between Russia and Georgia is the long reach of Uncle Sam

By Megan Cornish

ccun.org, October 15, 2008

Freedom Socialist newspaper, Vol. 29, No. 5, October-November 2008

In the brief war between Georgia and Russia that broke out on the eve of the Olympics in August, hundreds were killed and as many as 150,000 people displaced. Both sides attacked civilians. The clash is a disaster for the people of the region that may yet have global consequences.

Neither Russia nor Georgia, both of them profit-driven countries jockeying for power, is a good guy in the conflict. But the most camouflaged villain, and therefore the most important to unmask, is the U.S., as ever bent on world domination — especially of energy resources. While the struggles of two small nationalities in Georgia were the pretext for war, the real fight is over U.S. attempts to dominate the region through control of oil routes and military encirclement of Russia.

The post-Cold War fight for oil and spheres of influence.

Georgia is part of the Caucasus, a crossroads region between Europe and Asia and the Black and Caspian seas that is home to many of the large and small nationalities of the former Soviet Union. The Caspian Sea region is also rich in oil.

The fundamental question underlying the recent conflict is: who will control this region and its oil?

In its first decade after the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the new Russian Federation experienced economic and political chaos, as a budding capitalist class struggled to dismantle the nationalized economy and consolidate itself. This task was compounded by the breaking away of several of the former USSR’s republics, including Georgia.

The U.S. took the opportunity to expand its sphere of influence. It bankrolled foundations and orchestrated media campaigns to install regimes friendly to U.S. economic policies and military bases in Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere through­out the former Soviet bloc.

Many former Soviet bloc countries, such as Poland and the Czech Republic, entered NATO, the military alliance dominated by the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. is now pushing NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia.

Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s nationalist current president, came to power in 2004. From the beginning, he was propped up by the U.S. and Israel with generous economic assistance, arms deals, and military training. In return, Georgia is a compliant U.S. client state that sent some 2,000 soldiers to Iraq — the third-largest contingent after those of the U.S. and Britain.

Georgia now boasts the only existing pipeline that carries oil westward while bypassing Russia to the north and Iran to the south. BP (formerly British Petroleum) operates the pipeline, completed in 2005, and heads a consortium of owners that includes Chevron and ConocoPhillips.

Small national minorities caught in the middle.

Saakashvili’s ambitions extend to squashing the autonomy of two regions of national minorities within Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. These regions gained autonomy after the Russian revolution of 1917 — maintaining their own cultures and languages and a degree of self-government — and had managed to largely remain so after the USSR’s collapse, although tensions with Georgia were more or less constant.

But Saakashvili launched a serious assault on their rights as nationalities, which included making Georgian the official language of South Ossetia and its schools. South Ossetia and Abkhazia began fighting for independence.

Meanwhile, the Russian capitalists had gained their footing over the past decade and were ready to challenge Western inroads in the Caucasus. This is the reason for their support for the independence of the Ossetians and Abkhazians against Georgia — including their military intervention in August after Georgia invaded South Ossetia.

Russia was certainly not acting out of respect for national rights, given the ruthlessness with which it smashed Chechnya’s bid for independence from the Russian Federation! The rights of small nations and nationalities can never be a priority for great capitalist world powers, or aspiring powers. They will always be only territory to be gained and resources to be claimed.

A different state of affairs was true in the early days of the Soviet Union. V.I. Lenin pioneered the right of self-determination for oppressed nations on which the early USSR was actually pulled together. Stalin grossly violated that norm. Nevertheless, the socialized economy, with its full employment, universal health­care and social services, and granting of cultural and language freedom, allowed many nationalities to live in relative harmony in the Soviet era.

But as soon as capitalism was restored, national hostilities flared up, resulting in the Balkan wars and other conflicts.

The Abkhazians and the Ossetians (whose population is split between Georgia to the south and Russia to the north) have the right to self-determination — to separate statehood if they choose it, or to equal treatment as part of another state. The sad fact is that neither of these two scenarios is imaginable in the middle of the desperate recarving of world territory that they are now caught up in.

Stopping the madness.

And never doubt that where there is trouble and turmoil, the U.S. is in the thick of it.

Georgia would never have moved against South Ossetia in August without a nudge from Washington. Despite U.S. claims that it urged Georgian restraint, NATO held military exercises in Georgia right before the war started — with U.S. troops — simulating an invasion of South Ossetia!

This has the earmarks of a maneuver to deflect criticism from a new U.S. agreement with Poland to install ballistic missiles on Polish soil, which was signed on Aug. 20, shortly after Georgia initiated the conflict. The U.S. avowal that the target is Iran is ludicrous. Iran has neither nuclear arms nor the means to deliver them. The Polish missiles and a related radar installation in the Czech Republic are clearly aimed at Russia.

This provocative move can only ignite a new nuclear arms race at best, and World War III at worst.

The era of capitalist globalization saw a massive transfer of wealth from neocolonial countries to big powers. But, with a world economic crash in the wings, the major players will soon have to attack each other to steal resources and markets. This is the scenario unless workers unite to change the rules of the game.

To gain their rights, the nationalities of the Caucasus region must be a part of this struggle. Their fight, like the fight of working and oppressed people everywhere, is against capitalism — and its deadly thirst for oil profits.

Nationalize oil globally under workers’ control!

End U.S. military and economic aid to Georgia!

No U.S. missiles or radar in Eastern Europe. Disband NATO!