The first interpretation of the Russian-Georgian war sees Russia’s intervention not only as an answer to Georgia’s NATO aspirations, but also as a response to a long series of unilateral moves taken by the United States. The US had marginalized Russia in decisions concerning the war against Iraq in 2003 and the provocative deployment of a missile shield close to Russia’s borders.

Russia’s war against Georgia was thus part of Russia’s opposition to what it perceives as a “single-pole” world order. The Russian-Georgian war and Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states may be interpreted as a result of a global confrontation between great powers. Such a reading of events describes the recognition of Georgia’s breakaway regions as a direct response to the West’s recognition of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence.

Such a global perspective is fully in line with the Georgian view that the August war stems from a confrontation between Russian and Western interests. Tbilisi has described Moscow’s action against Georgia’s territorial integrity as a clear sign that Russia is likely to take similar steps against other European democracies, foremost Ukraine. Georgia has thus requested NATO’s full support.

One does not have to share this particular interpretation of events to agree on the need to situate the conflict between Georgia and Russia within a broader framework. The failure of both the West and Russia to compromise on a wide range of security issues largely explains the type of escalation exhibited in the August war.

But we have also to look at this conflict from the perspective of smaller actors such as Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia and assess the consequences of confrontational policies.

The escalation of unresolved conflicts

The August war resulted from the escalation of two closely intertwined conflicts, which, in terms of status and security issues, have been frozen for more than a decade. The confrontation between the ethnic communities in Georgia has led progressively to a radicalization of Russia’s involvement and the West’s increased willingness to involve itself in resolving the frozen conflicts.

Small and marginal actors entangled in an intrastate conflict and unable to resolve the conflicts on their own have tried to use the contradictions among world powers to strengthen their position. Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been most successful in this regard.

The two breakaway territories’ confrontational policies have led to their recognition by Russia as independent states. Georgia has also tried to use the opposition between Russia and the West for its own interest, but has so far failed to achieve the reunification of its territory using this strategy. Unlike Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which received full security guarantees from Moscow, Georgia received only limited support from Western capitals.

A number of elements must to be taken into account when analyzing the escalation of the secessionist conflicts in Georgia to a full-blown inter-state war between Georgia and Russia. Georgia’s policies towards its breakaway regions have traditionally been based on both threats and actual use of force.

The Chechnya, Bosnia and Kosovo Models

In the first Russian-Chechen war of 1994, then Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze justified the large scale bombing of the Chechen capital Grozny as a legitimate response to secession. He opposed Western governments that condemned such an operation as contrary to international humanitarian law.

Shevardnadze expected at the time that Russia would help Tbilisi crush the de facto Abkhaz state, but Georgia failed to convince Russia that the reunification of Georgia against the will of the secessionist leaderships would be in its interest.

The Georgian president perceived NATO’s 1995 military intervention against breakaway Bosnian Serbs as a feasible model of a violent suppression of a secessionist conflict. He emphasized that both the Bosnian Serbs and the Abkhaz had based their separatist policies on ethnic cleansing.

After the Bosnia model came the Kosovo model. NATO’s military intervention against Yugoslavia in 1999 was of course not directed against secession, but it was in favor of restoring human rights, which Shevardnadze stated was also the main problem in Abkhazia. In both cases, Shevardnadze failed to convince the West that it had a military role to play in the reunification of Georgia. NATO officials denied that they were ready to intervene elsewhere based on the Bosnia or Kosovo models.

Georgia’s attempts to mobilize external military support were meant to force the secessionist leaderships to compromise. But the effect of these threats was quite the reverse.

How could the secessionist leaders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia trust the federal proposals of a government that was threatening them with the use of military force? Abkhazia made a clear choice in favor of a confrontational policy in 1999, by organizing a referendum on independence. This put an end to all conflict resolution efforts based on the principle of power sharing.

After the Rose Revolution

Confrontation was characteristic not only of Georgian policies towards the breakaway republics, but also of the relations between the government and the opposition within Georgia.

Mikheil Saakashvili led the opposition against Shevardnadze in the Rose Revolution of 2003. His confrontational policies were successful in reestablishing Tbilisi’s control of Adjara, an autonomous republic on the Black Sea, where a local potentate named Aslan Abashidze acted quite independently from the central government.

Saakashvili was convinced that he would be no less successful in achieving regime change in South Ossetia than he had been in Tbilisi and Adjara. In 2004, he tried to overthrow the Tskhinvali leadership by using coercive means against the trade privileges of the local elites, expecting that the South Ossetian population would support him. But the confrontational policies did not work this time. The local population turned against Tbilisi, and the conflict hardened.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia’s refusal to enter into status negotiations with Georgia made conflict resolution impossible. Under these circumstances the tranformation of the conflict actors’ ideas and interests could have been an option to create a better basis for status negotiations.

Georgia, however, refused such an approach. Tbilisi preferred to isolate the two territories, cutting them off from any profits resulting from cooperation with the outside world.

The Georgian government branded the leaders of each of the two breakaway territories as either criminals or as instruments of Russia. Such descriptions of course have direct consequences on conflict transformation and more particularly on attempts at conflict resolution.

Why strive to build up confidence with criminals? If your counterpart is a pawn in the hands of an outside power such as Russia, there is no point either in establishing confidence or in changing the perceptions and interests of secessionist leaders. Conflict transformation is a long term process and given that there is no full guarantee for a positive outcome, such an approach was not acceptable to the Georgian government.

Western and Russian Responses to Confrontational Policies

The confrontational policies of both Georgia and the breakaway republics resulted in negative conflict transformation and the gap between the various parties’ positions only widened.

The US and a number of EU countries failed to produce an adequate response to this problem. They supported Georgia’s military build-up, which they perceived as a crucial part of their nation building efforts. The hope was to avoid a regression to the pre-1995 period, where an unruly Georgia had been dominated by paramilitary organizations. Western countries also viewed military cooperation as an instrument of military reform, in line with NATO’s democratic doctrine.

But Georgia’s military reinforcement also lent support to the option of using force to reunify Georgia. Western governments, however, were not convinced that the military option of addressing the question of secession was feasible or desirable, and accordingly, they placed several constraints on the Georgian government.

One of the strongest arguments used against the use of force in Abkhazia or South Ossetia was that such a move would jeopardize Georgia’s aspirations for NATO membership. American officials, however, had great difficulty in convincing Saakashvili that military confrontation would be detrimental to the country’s interests.

As far as NATO expansion was concerned, there was a significant divergence of interests between Abkhazia and South Ossetia on the one hand and Russia on the other. These breakaway entities had an interest in pursuing confrontational policies with Tbilisi, and consequently considered that Georgia’s NATO aspirations could strengthen their own alliance with Moscow. But they also had to secure Russia’s military support in case of a military conflict.

Without such support, Georgia’s use of force could have led to their downfall. The secessionist leaders had never before received full security guarantees from Russia and they had never been fully confident that Russia would intervene in a military conflict with Tbilisi. In the past, Russia had taken an apparently tactical position towards the conflict, and Abkhazians and Ossetians were concerned that Moscow might betray the secessionist cause.

With NATO’s expansion, however, the alliance between Russia and the secessionist entities was transformed from a tactical position to a strategic partnership. Russia increased its general presence in both territories, demonstrating a greater readiness to protect them using military means.

Failure to control confrontation

Georgia’s policies were based on the assumption that Russia would not go beyond a limited form of confrontation. It was in Georgia’s interest that a military conflict in South Ossetia or Abkhazia would lead to the greater involvement of Western countries in both secessionist conflicts, both on the negotiations level and in terms of peace-keeping forces. Even a military defeat against Russia would not be detrimental to Georgian interests, as long as it led to the internationalization of the conflict management process.

Russia, however, had a clear interest in countering such a strategy. Its overwhelming – or “disproportionate” - response went far beyond Georgia’s expectations when Tbilisi began military operations against South Ossetia.

The deployment of the Russian army in the two entities, the eviction of Georgian troops from the Kodori gorge in Abkhazia, the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, and the creation of buffer zones around them all served to quash any further discussions on the need to internationalize peace-keeping operations in the territories.

The West’s support for Saakashvili’s government, particularly in terms of military cooperation, has unintentionally encouraged Georgian confrontationalism. Both the secessionist entities of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Russia have subsequently managed to use Tbilisi’s confrontational policies to their advantage, jeopardizing Georgia’s attempt to control the confrontation process.