Putin's Wars
Page 36
Does a Lie Told Often Enough Become a Truth?
The Victim as Aggressor
There are two opposing conceptions concerning lies. The first is attributed to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who is reputed to have said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” There is another one, attributed to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who said: “Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.” It is clear that the Russian leadership has a preference for Lenin’s approach. Even faced with unequivocal evidence it continues to deny the facts. Apart from unfounded accusations against Georgia of genocide and the denial of its own use of cluster bombs, the war in Georgia was preceded and accompanied by open lies, misinformation (for instance, about “uncontrollable” South Ossetian militias), and active disinformation,[22] all reminiscent of the old Soviet style. In this way Russia almost succeeded in hiding the most important fact: that this was not a “Russian-Georgian war,” but a Russian war against Georgia in Georgia. There was not a single Georgian soldier that crossed the Russian frontier at any point. The Georgian troops that went into South Ossetia did not cross international frontiers, but intervened in their own country, no different from Russian troops intervening in Chechnya. It was Russian and not Georgian troops that crossed the border of another, sovereign country, in breach of the principles of international law.
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]
As could be expected, after the war Russia got the support of Kremlin-friendly Western experts. One of them was Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, doyenne of the French Kremlin watchers (although more a specialist on tsarist history than on modern Russian politics). Over the years Carrère d’Encausse has developed a warm personal relationship with the Russian leadership. As a regular participant in the seminars of the Valdai Club—sometimes referred to as Putin’s fan club—she received on November 4, 2009, from the hands of President Medvedev the Russian Order of Honor. She was also a prominent guest at the State Dinner, organized on March 2, 2010, on the occasion of Medvedev’s official visit to France. In her book La Russie entre deux mondes (Russia between Two Worlds), she wrote that the rebellion of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, when it started, certainly was “illegitimate and should have been ended.” However, she continued, “the military defeat calls this pretention into question and modifies slightly the geography of the lost territories, still reducing that [part] which is controlled by Tbilisi.”[32] Why the military defeat of Georgia against an aggressor would call into question Georgia’s right to have its national integrity restored is not indicated. Further in the text she refers to “the two separatist States.” The word “States” is written with a capital S in the text.[33] According to their status in international law the correct title would have been: the two separatist “entities” or “provinces.” Apparently the author had no principal objections to the “independence” of the two provinces, but, on the contrary, fully condoned the Russian land grab.[34]
The Real Reasons for Moscow’s Land Grab
On November 21, 2011, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited the headquarters of the 58th Army in Vladikavkaz. This was the army that led the invasion of Georgia in August 2008. He gave a speech in which the official Kremlin version of the war—that it was “a humanitarian intervention to prevent genocide in South Ossetia”—was put into a broader context. While emphasizing that the intervention was a necessary “peace-enforcement operation,” he mentioned a second and quite different objective: “to curb the threat which was coming at the time from the territory of Georgia.” “If we had faltered in 2008,” Medvedev said, “[the] geopolitical arrangement would be different now and a number of countries in respect of which attempts were made to artificially drag them into the North Atlantic Alliance, would have probably been there [in NATO] now.”[35] It took the Kremlin three years to unveil the real reason for its intervention: to stop Georgia’s eventual NATO membership. Stopping NATO membership necessitated, however, for the Kremlin a second objective: a regime change in Tbilisi. In her memoirs the former US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, revealed how the Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, called her in August 2008 and shamelessly proposed a regime change in Tbilisi as a condition for a Russian troop withdrawal. “The other demand,” said Lavrov to Rice, “is just between us. Misha Saakashvili has to go.”[36] “I couldn’t believe my ears,” wrote Rice, “and I reacted out of instinct, not analysis.”[37] Condoleezza Rice refused to negotiate the removal of a democratically elected president. When Lavrov repeated that it was “just between us” and asked her not to talk to others about his demand, this was similarly rejected by her. It was clear that the objective of regime change was not something that just popped up during the negotiations. It had been prepared months, and probably years, before. It was, apparently, apart from the dismemberment of Georgia, the real reason for the Russian invasion.
In his memoirs Tony Blair wrote about a visit to Russia at the end of April 2003. “Vladimir Putin launched into a vitriolic attack at the press conference,” wrote Blair, “really using the British as surrogates for the U.S., and then afterwards at dinner we had a tense, and at times heated, discussion [on the Iraq war]. He was convinced the U.S. was set on a unilateralist course, not for a good practical purpose but as a matter of principle. Time and again, he would say, ‘Suppose we act against Georgia, which is a base for terrorism against Russia—what would you say if we took Georgia out?’”[38] It is telling that Putin at that time gave exactly this example. The project was, apparently, already in 2003 on the mind of the Kremlin’s master. There are other facts that support this interpretation. On August 7, 2013, on the evening of the fifth anniversary of the war, Georgian President Mikheil Saakasvili, in a prerecorded interview on Georgia’s Rustavi-2 TV, told that he had met Putin in Moscow in February 2008 at an informal summit of the CIS. During the summit he told Putin that he was ready to say no to NATO in exchange for Russian help with the reintegration of the two breakaway territories. Saakashvili claimed “that ‘Putin did not even think for a minute” about his proposal. “[Putin] smiled and said, ‘We do not exchange your territories for your geopolitical orientation . . . . And it meant ‘we will chop off your territories anyway.’”[39] Saakashvili asked him to talk about the growing tensions along the borders with South Ossetia, saying, “It could not be worse than now.” “That’s when he [Putin] looked at me and said: ‘And here you are very wrong. You will see that very soon it will be much, much, much worse.’”[40]
This information came in the summer of 2012, a year after, quite unexpectedly, we were allowed already a glimpse inside the Kremlin’s kitchen. On August 5, 2012, a few days before the fourth anniversary of the war, a forty-seven-minute Russian documentary film “8 Avgusta 2008. Poteryannyy den” (8 August 2008. The Lost Day) was posted on YouTube.[41] In the film retired and active service generals accused former President Medvedev of indecisiveness and even cowardice during the conflict. They praised Putin, on the other hand, for his bold and vigorous action. According to one of Medvedev’s critics, retired Army General Yury Baluevsky, a former First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff, “a decision to invade Georgia was made by Putin before Medvedev was inaugurated President and Commander-in-Chief in May 2008. A detailed plan of military action was arranged and unit commanders were given specific orders in advance.”[42] It is clear that these new facts support the interpretation, defended in this book, that, far from being a spontaneous Russian reaction to rescue its peacekeepers and “prevent a genocide,” the Russian invasion of August 2008 was a carefully planned operation. After the release of the documentary film Putin confirmed that the Army General Staff had, indeed, prepared a plan of military action against Georgia. It was prepared “at the end of 2006, and I authorized it in 2007,” he said.[43] Interestingly, Putin also said “that the decision to ‘use the armed forces’ had been considered for three days—from around 5 August,”[44] which clearly contradicts the official Russian version that the Russian army only reacted to a Georgian attack that started on August 7. According to this plan not only heavy weaponry and troops were prepared for the invasion, but also South Ossetian paramilitary units were trained to support the Russian invading troops. Pavel Felgenhauer commented:
The “Lost Day” film and the comments by Putin and Medvedev have revealed a great deal: that the invasion of Georgia in August 2008 was indeed a preplanned aggression and that so-called “Russian peacekeepers” in South Ossetia and Abkhazia were in fact the vanguard of the invading forces that were in blatant violation of Russia’s international obligations and were training and arming the separatist forces. The admission by Putin that Ossetian separatist militias acted as an integral part of the Russian military plan transfers legal responsibility for acts of ethnic cleansing of Georgian civilians and mass marauding inside and outside of South Ossetia to the Russian military and political leadership. Putin’s admission of the prewar integration of the Ossetian separatist militias into the Russian General Staff war plans puts into question the integrity of the independent European Union war report, written by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini that accused the Georgians of starting the war and attacking Russian “peacekeepers,” which, according to Tagliavini, warranted a Russian military response.[45]
Notes
1. “Georgia Conflict: Key Statements,” BBC News (August 19, 2008).
2. “The Georgian War: Minute by Minute, August 9,” Russia Today (August 9, 2008). http://rt.com/news/the-georgian-war-minute-by-minute-august-9/.
3. “South Ossetia Conflict FAQs,” RIA Novosti (September 17, 2008). http://en.ria.ru/russia/20080917/.
4. Charles Clover, “Civilian Deaths Put at 133,” Financial Times (August 21, 2008).
5. “Ustanovlenyy lichnosti 162 pogibshikh zhiteley Yuzhnoy Osetii: SKP RF,” RIA Novosti (December 23, 2008). http://www.rian.ru/society/20081223/157895855.html.
6. Another example of such a prepared attack was the accusation made immediately after the fighting that Georgia had destroyed protected historical buildings in Tskhinvali. “For Russia’s part, which until now showed little interest in South Ossetia’s cultural heritage, acts of destruction are [used] particularly as an argument to denounce Georgia as a war criminal,” wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. (Holm, Kerstin. “Brüder als Barbaren: Russland empört sich über die Zerstörung von Kulturdenkmälern in Südossetien,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (August 16, 2008).)
7. Quoted in “Put Out Even More Flags,” The Economist (August 30, 2008).
8. Robert Amsterdam, “Andrei Piontkovsky and the Doppelgänger Theory” (September 26, 2007). http://www.robertamsterdam.com.
9. Zhirinovsky, Poslednyy brosok na yug, 132.
10. Kovalev, “Putin’s War.”
11. Luke Harding, “Russia’s Cruel Intention,” The Guardian (September 1, 2008).
12. “Eduard Kokoity: My tam prakticheski vyrovnyali vse,” Kommersant (August 15, 2008).
13. “Russian Invasion of Georgia: The Facts on Ethnic Cleansing of Georgians during the Russian Invasion and Occupation,” Georgia Update website (October 8, 2008). http://georgiaupdate.gov.ge/.
14. “Georgia: Russian Cluster Bombs Kill Civilians,” Human Rights Watch (August 15, 2008).
15. The Russian Ministry of Defense denied in a news release on August 16, 2008, that it had used the Iskander missile in South Ossetia. Because the missile landed in Gori, which is situated outside South Ossetia, the Iskander missile may well have been used there. (Cf. “Up In Flames: Humanitarian Law Violations and Civilian Victims in the Conflict over South Ossetia,” Human Rights Watch, New York (January 2009) 113).
16. Latynina, “200 km. tankov. O rossiysko-gruzinskoy voyne. Chast 2.”
17. “Verslag onderzoeksmissie Storimans,” Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, The Hague (October 20, 2008).
18. “Kamerbrief inzake het verslag van de onderzoekscommissie Storimans,” Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, The Hague (October 20, 2008).
19. “Up In Flames: Humanitarian Law Violations and Civilian Victims in the Conflict over South Ossetia,” 113.
20. Quoted in Nico Hines, “Russia Accused of Dropping Cluster Bombs on Georgian Civilians,” The Times (August 15, 2008).
21. “Georgia: More Cluster Bomb Damage Than Reported,” Human Rights Watch, (November 4, 2008). Georgia also used cluster bombs in the conflict, but, unlike Russia, it did not deny this. In the same report Human Rights Watch wrote that in the case of Georgia there was probably no intent to hit the civilian population. Georgian Israeli-made M85 cluster bombs did not land in villages as a result of an intentional strike, but probably due to a failure of the (equally Israeli- supplied) Mk-4 rockets that fell down before reaching their goal.
22. Paul A. Goble makes a useful difference between misinfomation and disinformation. “Misinformation,” he wrote, “the spread of complete false reports is the less serious threat. Typically, reportage that is completely false is not only easily identified but quickly challenged. But disinformation is another matter. . . disinformation almost always involves the careful mixing of obvious truths with falsehoods in a way that many will either find plausible or, at the very least, impossible to check.” (Paul A. Goble, “Defining Victory and Defeat: The Information War Between Russia and Georgia,” in The Guns of August 2008: Russia’s War in Georgia, eds. Cornell and Starr, 189–90.)