The Phone Call Tells Me So

The New York Times tells us this morning (Sept. 16) that Georgian diplomats have been passing around phone intercepts (a Georgian NSA? Does that mean a Georgian FISA debate? A Georgian Echelon?) showing Russian troop movements a day before Saakashvili's mortar attack on South Ossetia. So this is a surprise? The Russians were waiting for the "Pleikus are like streetcars" moment, and Saakashvili gave it to them. It's no surprise that Putin and Medvedev are acting like the proud, wounded nation who will give no quarter. What's more surprising is that both of them talk not like tough-minded realists, but like drunks at a bar who want to goad NATO and the U.S. as much as they want their version of justice in the Caucus republics. Maybe they learned their winning diplomatic style from Saakashvili.

Imperialism and Seven-League Boots

At the end of the day, Georgia's "ownership" of South Ossetia or Russia's "dominance" of Georgia doesn't matter, except insofar as citizens of any nation respond best to home-grown jingoism that makes their dominance of others feel good. Certainly works for us, eh? But now we have open war in Georgia at the start of the Olympics in Beijing. (Notice how the Soviet Union waited until the Suez Crisis of 1956 to invade Hungary, and global student protests in 1968 to invade Czechoslovakia? The Kremlin loves diversionary tactics, whether under socialist or authoritarian management.)
Yes, Saakashvili is a jerk. So are Medvedev and Putin. All three are popular precisely because they go to war in the name of the Motherland. The numerous stories at antiwar.com can help you sort out the claims from both sides.
There are some rather stupid progressive groups in the U.S. and Europe who would like to see the U.S. as the primary hand in all this, because the Pentagon wants to expand bases in Georgia. As Bob Anderson from Stop the War Machine points out, the U.S. is becoming such a minor player, such a paper tiger, that other nations can take the role of lead imperialist without consulting us one way or another. And it is our job in the peace community to say that Russians and Georgians are equally wrong in exploiting each others' territority, and that it is time to call in the UN to resolve border disputes before this spirals further out of control.

Putin Says He's Got a Mandate; Chavez Says "Mellow Out, Dudes"

Two questionable elections Dec. 2 reached opposite conclusions. Vladimir Putin claimed to no great surprise that a rigged electoral process had given him a "mandate" to do whatever the hell he wanted. Meanwhile, after losing a narrow squeaker on changing the constitution, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela did not blame the CIA and cancel the results, but accepted them with dignity. For now at least.

Is it fair to even lump these two events together? Yes, because of the process of mobilizing the grass roots. Putin's Russia remains capitalist, but he's been convinced for some time that the Russian people have a soft spot for authoritarianism and the personality cult - witness Stalin's continued popularity. Why waste time with messy democracy when Putin gets adorned on T-shirts whenever he cracks heads? The results say as much about Russian people not being very appreciative of democracy or multiculturalism (witness the crackdown on gays and foreigners) as it does about Putin's siloviki friends from the KGB and FSB.

Chavez knows he can mobilize similar forces, since the urban poor he relies on would rather be whipped up into violence than follow the nonviolent land-seizure methods of Bolivia and other Latin American countries. (It was funny to see some left-bloggers who were so anxious to see a Chavez victory, they gave us some "Dewey Defeats Truman" headlines Sunday night.) My gripe with Hugo all along has not been his Bolivarian economic models, but his demagogic tendencies and his intention to whip up violence. Maybe his response to his electoral loss indicates he's realizing the price he pays for being a provocative loudmouth. The first test will be to see if he can restrain Chavistas seeking revenge. The second test will be whether he avoids the temptation to slowly adopt centralized socialist models through what Matyas Rakosi of Hungary used to call "salami tactics" during the Cold War. Venezuela would do a lot better following the Evo Morales model of radical alternative economics.