Читаем Putin's Wars полностью

The Kremlin’s passport offensive, practiced since 2002, by which Russia “created” its own citizens in a neighboring country, was not only an aggressive and clearly hostile act, it was already in itself a violation of international law and a preparation for the armed attack that would follow some years later. On August 8, 2008, President Medvedev said: “I must protect the life and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they are.”^[23] And RIA Novosti wrote that “Russia had repeatedly warned Georgia that it would resort to force to protect its citizens, which most South Ossetian residents are.”^[24] Several authors have made comparisons with 1938. In 1994 Zbigniew Brzezinski had already written: “The outspoken president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbaev, went as far as to state publicly . . . that “any talk about the protection of Russians living in Kazakhstan reminds one of the times of Hitler, who also started off with the question of protecting Sudeten Germans.”^[25] Comparisons with the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, might, on first sight, seem exaggerated. Unfortunately, they are not. There are so many similarities that the Czechoslovak case could almost have functioned as a blueprint for the events in Georgia. Germany also started by considering a group of inhabitants of a neighboring country as its own citizens. It financed the political party of the Sudeten Germans, the Sudeten German Party (SdP) led by Konrad Henlein, and supported local militias that committed terrorist acts. “The Sudeten Germans kept 40,000 men, in the shape of free corps, on a war footing.”^[26] The Abkhazian army, led by Russian officers, included up to ten thousand soldiers. Additionally there were Abkhazian and South Ossetian private militias of ten thousand to fifteen thousand men. This brought the armed militias inside Georgia to a total of up to twenty-five thousand men.^[27] In Czechoslovakia the militias caused trouble and made mischief and asked to be incorporated into the Reich. In the end Germany annexed the Sudetenland. This annexation was only the first step in the further dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. In Georgia a similar scenario took place. Russia trained and armed the militias, let them provoke and attack Georgia, and when there came a Georgian response, Russia came to the rescue of “its own citizens.” Andrey Illarionov, a former Putin aide, called the Russian war against Georgia “one of the most serious international crises for at least the last 30 years.” According to him,

This crisis has brought:

The first massive use of the military forces by Russia or the former Soviet Union outside its borders since the Soviet Union’s intervention against Afghanistan . . . ;

The first intervention against an independent country in Europe since the Soviet Union’s intervention against Czechoslovakia in 1968;

The first intervention against an independent country in Europe that led to unilateral changes in internationally recognized borders in Europe since the late 1930s and early 1940s. Particular similarities of these events and the roles being played this year by some international players with the events and roles played by some international players in 1938 are especially troubling.”^[28]

The role of the players in 1938 is well-known. One of the leading dramatis personae in this period was Neville Chamberlain. “On 27 September 1938 he openly confessed to his horror at the idea of going to war ‘because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.’”^[29] Europeans had to pay a heavy toll for their disregard of the interests of a new, small, and faraway country. At that time they did not realize that not only the interests of this small country were at stake, but also the foundations of the existing international order of their time. For many Europeans the war in 2008 in Georgia was equally “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.” After the war Russia was only symbolically sanctioned. Even the most obvious measures were not taken. “But why has Russia not been suspended from the Council of Europe, an organisation based on respect for human rights?” asked the Financial Times.^[30] Indeed, why not? As in 1938, Europeans could—later—regret their lukewarm response.^[31]