Bobbitt . . . or 'Spengler' on Russia's role in the Caucasus?

Our Contemporary 'Spengler'
"of the boudoir eyes"
(Image from Asia Times)

I had wondered what Philip Bobbitt might have to say about the scenario in Georgia and how it fits his views on the current trajectory of states from nation states to market states. Here, in "Russia's aggression in Georgia is a portent of perils to come," Spectator.co.uk (August 13, 2008), is his take on things in the Caucasus:

[In the wake of the USSR's collapse,] developed states began to move from the constitutional order of nation states, which had fought the Cold War, to market states. In Europe, the EU began to evolve away from a super-nation state toward a more flexible congeries of national enclaves: Scots, Lombards, Catalonians and others found a constitutional umbrella within which they could develop. In America, deregulation of everything from industrial practices to women's reproduction, the replacement of conscription by an all-volunteer force, the substitution of job retraining for unemployment compensation -- were all heralds of this change. In China, the embrace of free trade, private investment and market pricing were similar events. Elsewhere, sovereign wealth funds created further harbingers of this new order. A global system of human rights norms was given martial effect in the former state of Yugoslavia, another event that reflected this dramatic evolution of states.

But not in Russia. There political and economic leaders -- and their Western advisers -- confused the market with the market state, creating a vast criminal enterprise that more resembled the Mafia than the multinational corporation. In such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the nation state has come roaring back. It was Vladimir Putin who described the end of the USSR as 'the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century'. He will not be able to reverse the ultimate trend toward market states; this new constitutional order is too formidable an innovation meekly to give way. Indeed the Russian tactic of granting vast numbers of Ossetians Russian citizenship -- which gave it the legal pretext that it used to intervene -- is at bottom a market state manoeuvre which encourages multiple juridical identities. But the hope that the transition away from nation states could be done without bloodshed in Europe has been dashed. The end of the first era of globalised constitutional transformation has come with unpredictable consequences because war, as Clausewitz told us, has its own momentum. I should be surprised if there were no further violence in Georgia.

But this leads us again to the question of Bobbitt's distinction between a nation state and a market state, which I thumbnailed as:

The former promises to protect and increase its citizens' material well-being, whereas the latter promises to guarantee and maximize its citizens' opportunities (cf. Bobbitt, Terror and Consent, pages 11-12)

I was citing Bobbitt's recent Terror and Consent, but he made the same distinction in his earlier tome, The Shield of Achilles, which I haven't read but which some contributor to Wikipedia has, for we find there in the entry on Shield of Achilles a summary of Book 1, Part 3 that provides a more expansive explanation than my brief one:

The constitutional order of the 21st century . . . market state will supersede the 20th century nation state as a consequence of the end of the Long War [i.e., the 'war' lasting from 1914 to 1989]. A constitutional order is distinguished by its unique claim for legitimacy. Give us power, the nation state said, and we will improve your material well-being. But whereas the nation state, with its mass free public education, universal franchise, and social security policies promised to guarantee the welfare of the nation, the market state promises to maximize the opportunity of the people and thus tends to privatize many state activities and to make voting and representative government less influential and more responsive to the market. This does not mean that market states cease to be interested in the well-being of their peoples or that nationalism is any less potent but that the State no longer claims legitimacy on that unique basis.

That's well-put by some anonymous commentor on Bobbitt's Shield of Achilles. Now, bringing us back to Bobbitt's take on the Georgian crisis, we can better see what Bobbitt means in stating that for Vladimir Putin's Russia, "the nation state has come roaring back." Putin, as we know if we've been reading the papers, has reversed some of the market and political freedoms achieved by Russia in the 1990s and has promised more security for Russians in exchange for restrictions on freedom. Bobbitt thinks that this retrograde move by Russia will not be possible in the longer run, and he notes the irony that even "the Russian tactic of granting vast numbers of Ossetians Russian citizenship . . . is at bottom a market state manoeuvre which encourages multiple juridical identities."

But Russians always take a circuitous route toward the future. Last time, they detoured through the 20th century, taking 70 years to reach a future that they'd promised to leap over. This time, they're appealing to the Old Russia from before the Bolshevik Revolution and attempting to restore the old Czarist empire -- but now, as with the Czars, an empire in the interests of the Russian nation. This implies "nation" state in an even stronger sense than Bobbitt means, for we're really talking about an ethnic nationalism in which Russia uses minorities within its empire to further the power of Russians.

For this, they don't have much time.

In one of his many lunacies of great insight, "Americans play Monopoly, Russians chess," Asia Times (August 19, 2008), our current-day 'Spengler' writes:

Russia is fighting for its survival, against a catastrophic decline in population and the likelihood of a Muslim majority by mid-century. The Russian Federation's scarcest resource is people. It cannot ignore the 22 million Russians stranded outside its borders after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, nor, for that matter, small but loyal ethnicities such as the Ossetians. Strategic encirclement, in Russian eyes, prefigures the ethnic disintegration of Russia, which was a political and cultural entity, not an ethnic state, from its first origins.

The Russians, argues Spengler, are inviting loyal ethnic groups to become 'Russian' by joining its declining Russian majority -- not precisely an ethnic state, but an ethnically dominated one. If Spengler is right, then Putin's Russia is engaged in some long-term planning to ensure that ethnic Russians come out on top in the changing demographics of an uncertain future.

Who's right? Spengler or Bobbitt? I'd prefer to think that Bobbitt has his finger on the measured pulse of a rational history, but Spengler reminds us that in history, there will be blood.

Conflict in Georgia, and NATO's interests

Georgian Nation
Caucasus Region
(Image from Wikipedia)

Although my blog has given no indications of my awareness that Russia has invaded Georgia, I have been paying attention to events there. I've written nothing here because I lack sufficient information and don't know the history of that region well nor the validity of conflicting claims made by various ethnic groups.

I have also been aware that the US has pressed its reluctant NATO allies to accept Georgia as a member of that military organization, partly as reward for contributing troops to the effort in Iraq, but I have wondered if that's a good idea, strategically. In the first place, for several nearly two hundred years Georgia was part of the Russian empire (if we include Soviet domination), and for even longer has been within Russia's immediate sphere of influence. In the second place, ethnic tensions within Georgia make it an unstable state and thus not clearly a proper candidate for inclusion within Nato. Both of these points -- Russian interests and ethnic tensions -- are interrelated, for ethnic minorities in Georgia look to Russia as their champion and Russia legitimates its policies there on that basis.

As William Pfaff points out in a recent article for the International Herald Tribune, "NATO membership for Georgia has war with Russia built into it" ("Why Georgia Does Not Belong in NATO," IHT, August 12, 2008):

In Georgia . . . [the intrinsic conflict] is between the linguistically distinct enclaves that in the past were Russian and wish again to be Russian, and the majority of Georgians who want to be part of the West, but are also determined to dominate their rebellious territories.

If they would peacefully renounce those territories, an ethnically and culturally united Georgia would have every right to demand NATO membership. But as things are now (or were, until the last few days), [Georgian president] Mikheil Saakashvili wants his country inside NATO to protect him from the consequences of forcing those dissident territories to remain under Georgian domination. NATO has no business doing such a thing, and as Russia supports the rebel enclaves, NATO membership for Georgia has war with Russia built into it. As we have just seen.

Right. Ethnic tensions. Russian interests. NATO membership? Why should NATO involve itself in such a region that is traditionally part of neither Europe's nor America's sphere of influence if that region is plausibly within Russia's sphere of influence and clearly so unstable? A reasonable, positive answer might exist for this question, but I've not yet seen a persuasive one.

Moreover, assuming that reports are correct, then as events have recently shown, Saakashvili cannot be relied upon to show wise restraint, for he provoked this current conflict on "Aug. 7 when Georgia launched a barrage targeting South Ossetia, which claims independence and close ties to Russia," or so states the ordinarily reputable International Herald Tribune in an Associated Press article of August 23, 2008, "South Ossetians happily loot village in Georgia." And nearly every other report that I've heard has stated the same point, namely, that Georgia's central government started the conflict by sending its military to bring South Ossetia back under its control, overunning Russian peacekeepers in the process and thereby making inevitable a Russian military response.

However, some dissenting voices have been raised about this chronology. Michael J. Totten, whose reports from Iraq over the past couple of years have been exceptionally informative, was in the Caucasus region when the conflict began, and he presents a heterodox view in "The Truth About Russia in Georgia" (Middle East Journal, August 26, 2008):

Virtually everyone believes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili foolishly provoked a Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, when he sent troops into the breakaway district of South Ossetia. "The warfare began Aug. 7 when Georgia launched a barrage targeting South Ossetia," the Associated Press reported over the weekend in typical fashion.

Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn't start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war.

If this is correct, then this war was more likely provoked by Russia as a step toward enforcing its interests in the Caucasus, an interpretation of events that I find reasonable -- whether or not this happens to be the case. Totten relies for his information on two individuals knowledgeable about the region, the German Patrick Worms, a former European Commission official (but currently a public relations advisor to Georgia), and the American Thomas Goltz, an author and academic (and an expert on the Caucasus). Totten's report is worth reading in its entirety for a different view of what has happened.

Yet be that as it may, the question remains: Why should NATO invite into its military coalition an unstable country in such a conflicted region?

I'm willing to listen to reasonable suggestions.