OSINFO - Open Sources Information

August this year was a hot month and not just in terms of the weather.  Within a single week, two parallel wars began and ended.  One was an intra-state war between Georgia and South Ossetia which Tbilisi won quickly and decisively.  The other was an international war between Russia andGeorgia, which Tbilisi lost equally decisively.  This second war was the second time (after the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict) that two former Soviet republics have fought. 

But if this was a military defeat in which Georgia lost many of its people and much of its key infrastructure, it was not a complete loss because NATO countries have pledged to rebuilt and improve on what was there before.  And if this was a military victory for Russia, it was truly the pyrrhic one because it entailed a diplomatic loss of enormous proportions.  Yes the Russian army triumphed in the field.  But never in its history had Moscow been as isolated after a military victory.  Except for Cuba and Venezuela, not one country came out in support of what Moscow had done.

Most analysts and governments around the world dismissed Moscow's claims about defending its citizens and Georgian aggression and identified actions of the Russian Federation as an invasion of a sovereign country.  Indeed, Moscow's isolation has been so complete that in Sochi on August 15, President Dmitry Medvedev complained about how the world was covering and treating what Russia had done without asking the question, “who started this war?”  

But even if it is the case that Georgia's moves in South Ossetia provided Moscow with a pretext for action, it certainly did not justify Moscow's drive deep into parts of Georgia which have never been in dispute.  And consequently, both people in the West and people in Russia itself soon recognized thatMoscow had gone to war primarily to overthrow the pro-Western government of Mikheil Saakashvili, prevent Georgia from joining NATO, and re-establish Russian control over oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian basin to the West. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov admitted that Moscow wanted Saakashvili out during a telephone call with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a desire that no Russian official has contradicted. [1] And Lavrov added that Moscow will not negotiate with Saakashvili whom he called “part of a special US project” and whose actions the foreign minister said prove that “he cannot be our partner.” [2] The US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice immediately dismissed this argument by pointing out that “Georgia is a democratic government in the Caucasus that has elected its leaders. To call it a project of anyplace, of anybody, perhaps belies more about the way Russia thinks about its neighbors than the way it thinks about US policy.” [3]