Anti-Climacus

LINK: On the large-scale theoretical and political issues coming from the Russia-Georgia conflict, I haven't yet seen better than Henry Farrell (though I also recommend Kenneth Anderson's recounting of his early 90s experience in Georgia and Chris Borgen on discourses of international law):

This is where we are at the moment. Obviously, this is in part a fight about territory. But it also, more importantly, a fight about the rules that should shape international politics in the region surrounding Russia. And here, John McCain is at least partly right (although the mutterings about going to war over this seem to me to be completely off base). Russia sees the spread of democratization as a threat to its control of the ‘Near Abroad.’ It has been pushing quite deliberately for a redefinition of the norms of territorial integrity and intervention that would legitimate its continued presence in Georgia and elsewhere, and allow it to reconsolidate control over what it perceives as its rightful sphere of influence. What it would like to see is tacit or active recognition by other great powers of its right to intervene in countries such as Georgia, the Ukraine, Moldova etc. The Western powers have their own economic interests in the region, which they have been pushing assiduously, but also would quite genuinely would prefer to see democracies consolidate themselves in this band of countries, if for no other reason than because democracies over the longer term tend to be more stable, and chaos in these countries could easily spill over in nasty ways in Europe and elsewhere...

Matt’s acquiescence to this line seems to me to be a real mistake for a liberal internationalist who believes that the gradual diffusion of democracy is a good thing for international politics. It is tantamount to saying that a large chunk of Europe, which isn’t wonderfully democratic but is surely more democratic than it used to be, should be subject to the effective authority of a state that doesn’t welcome the spread of democracy. This seems to me to set a terrible long term precedent. I don’t have specific policy recommendations for how the US and Europe should respond to the Georgia-Russia war – I am neither an area expert nor a guns’n’bombs specialist. But I’m going to stick my neck out and say that the key objective here isn’t to support Georgia – it’s to prevent this becoming a precedent for the recreation of Russian local hegemony across the wider region.

I'm not sure I agree on his position on Kosovo: keeping them of uncertain legal status was clearly good for the US and the West more broadly, but I'm not sure it was best for the Kosovars.