¿Somos todos georgianos u osetios?

Un equilibrado artículo de Michael Dobbs en el Washington Post sobre la crisis en el Cáucaso: 'We Are All Georgians'? Not So Fast.

[T]he events of the past week in Georgia have little in common with either Hitler's dismemberment of Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II or Soviet policies in Eastern Europe. They are better understood against the backdrop of the complica ted ethnic politics of the Caucasus, a part of the world where historical grudges run deep and oppressed can become oppressors in the bat of an eye. (...)

It soon became clear to me that the Ossetians viewed Georgians in much the same way that Georgians view Russians: as aggressive bullies bent on taking away their independence. "We are much more worried by Georgian imperialism than Russian imperialism," an Ossetian leader, Gerasim Khugaev, told me then. "It is closer to us, and we feel its pressure all the time."

Como ya han venido apuntando otros comentaristas, las credenciales demócratas de Saakashvili dejan bastante que desear.

Saakashvili's image in the West, and particularly in the United States, is that of the great "democrat," the leader of the "Rose Revolution" who spearheaded a popular uprising against former American favorite Eduard Shevardnadze in November 2003. It is true that he has won two reasonably free elections, but he has also displayed some autocratic tendencies: He sent riot police to crush an opposition protest in Tbilisi last November and shuttered an opposition television station.

Las "razones humanitarias" que alega Putin para intervenir en Georgia no tienen demasiada credibilidad a la luz de su campaña en Chechenia.

Putin and Medvedev have defended their incursion into Georgia as motivated by a desire to stop the "genocide" of Ossetians by Georgians. It is difficult to take their moral outrage very seriously. There is a striking contrast between Russian support for the right of Ossetian self-determination in Georgia and the brutal suppression of Chechens who were trying to exercise that very same right within the boundaries of Russia.

Vale la pena leer el artículo entero. La política exterior neocón de Estados Unidos tampoco se salva de la crítica.

Por cierto, me sorprenden algunos comentarios en el blog de Fonseca sobre el status oficial de Osetia del Sur. Se arguye que Osetia no es un país independiente reconocido, y al parecer eso otorga a Georgia legitimidad para bombardear la región e intervenir en ella a placer. Al fin y al cabo se trata de un gobierno resolviendo problemas internos. Pero no creo que estos mismos comentaristas fueran igual de comprensivos con Serbia cuando resolvía sus problemas internos en Kosovo, o con Rusia cuando pulverizaba Chechenia, o con Iraq cuando masacraba a los kurdos. Lo que quiero decir con esta serie de analogías es que si la región afectada es oficialmente independiente o no es lo de menos desde un punto de vista liberal. Lo que importa es el comportamiento del Estado (de cualquier Estado) en esa región.