Summary
The war had its roots in a whole number of issues: continued fallout from the Soviet collapse; Russia's failure as a peacekeeper - the result of a deliberate Kremlin policy to maintain the Caucasus as a black hole providing Russia with pretexts for intervention; the emergence of corrupt separatist regimes feeding parasitically on loyalty to Moscow; personal animosity between the leaders in Moscow and Tbilisi; the fight to control energy transit routes; and Tbilisi's inability to give the Abkhazians and South Ossetians broad autonomy within Georgia. Ironically, the west, above all the US, has broadened the Kremlin's field for manoeuvre: slogans of 'regime change', 'humanitarian intervention', 'pre-emptive strikes', 'genocide', and the proclamation of Kosovo's independence are now being used to legitimise Russia's war in the Caucasus and its new trajectory.
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Extract
Russian Roulette
tHE WAR BETWEEN RUSSIA AND GEORGIA IN August marked the end of the Perestroika experiment begun by former President Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s. Georgia was a whipping boy in this conflict between post-Communist Russia and the west - primarily the United States - which ended Russia's attempts to build itself a place within western civilisation.
The war had its roots in a whole ...See the full content of this document
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