Thursday, August 21, 2008
World gives Russia an unfair rap
The Russians are right to use the Kosovo example as a proof of Western hypocrisy
Russian Translation by Andre Fesyun
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is an intelligent woman. So how can she possibly want to tell the world that Russia's response to the Georgian attack on South Ossetia resembled the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
The comparisons should be the reverse. The Russian willingness to go to the aid of a small region under brutal attack contrasts greatly with the empty Western rhetoric back in the days when Czechoslovakia or other regions were under Moscow attack. And the knee-jerk anti-Russian reactions of the media and other commentators too biased or lazy to question the official U.S. version of events parallels the Russian media's knee-jerk acceptance of Moscow's distorted explanations for past misdemeanors such as Chechnya.
Let's begin with the facts. On the morning of Aug. 8 we woke to reports of a fierce Georgian Army attack on the small town of Tskhinvali, the capital of the small South Ossetia autonomous district within Georgia. Civilian casualties were put in the thousands. As well, 10 or more Russian "peacekeepers," stationed after a previous Georgian attack on South Ossetia in 1991-1992, were killed.
Russian troops then intervened, first to drive the Georgian troops out of Ossetia and then to neutralize Georgian military bases elsewhere. Without that intervention it is quite certain that the Georgians would have stripped the area of its autonomous status, with those Ossetians not killed or cowed being forced to move to North Ossetia on the other side of the Caucasus ranges.
But for the Western media none of this was relevant. For them, everything seems to have begun with the Russian intervention, portrayed as a crime of aggression and even ethnic cleansing (somehow the Georgian attack on the small Ossetian minority is not ethnic cleansing).
U.S. President George W. Bush condemns the Russian attack as a violation of Georgian sovereignty. Did sovereignty concerns ever bother the United States during its attacks on various nations? Besides, we now have doctrines that say nations have moral obligations to intervene to defend peoples under immoral attack, regardless of sovereignty concerns. The Russians could easily claim that in Ossetia.
The Russians are right to use the Kosovo example as a proof of Western hypocrisy. There, too, the Serbian minority population was under attack from Western-backed Albanian guerrillas. Serbian attempts to stop the attacks were amazingly described as Serbian ethnic cleansing.
This in turn was used to justify prolonged U.S.-NATO bombardment of civilian and military targets in Serbia, in a bid to make Belgrade abandon its internationally recognized sovereignty over Kosovo.
And once again most of the Western media were too lazy or spineless to challenge the official versions justifying Western behavior. Few wanted to do the homework needed to find what the dispute was about, and not just in Kosovo but earlier in Croatia and Bosnia too. Even today we get little mention of continuing ethnic cleansing efforts by ethnic Albanians to drive out all minorities, including Jews and Gypsies.
I visited Ossetia back in the Soviet days, to check out the existence of this 400,000- member ethnic minority that speaks a unique language of Iranian origins and is divided into two autonomous areas on either side of 5,000 meter Caucuses ranges. But to get there in those primitive days you had to take a local bus on bad roads crossing the 3,000 meter passes from North Ossetia. (Today there is a large tunnel. Some say the Georgian failure to close that tunnel was proof they were sure U.S. support would prevent a Russian intervention.)
It was a rough trip, wedged in with earthy Ossetian farmers clutching their chickens and bags of farm produce. But there was one consolation — you could easily spot the KGB types trailing you. They were the ones without the chickens. Soviet concern to keep the many Caucasus peoples under its control was strong and we were followed relentlessly wherever we went. Eventually we reached Tskhinvali, the small rustic capital of South Ossetia and hardly the kind of place where you could expect an East-West confrontation to be triggered.
It was only after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union that Ossetia began to hit the headlines. It had tried to use its autonomous status to claim independence from Georgia. But with their 1991-92 attacks the Georgian authorities made it clear they had other ideas and the pro-Russian Ossetians had to settle for autonomy with Russian peacekeepers. The attack on the night of Aug. 7-8 made it clear the Georgians would not accept even autonomy, just as earlier they had tried to challenge the autonomy of pro-Russian Abkhazia in Western Georgia.
Yet none of this seems to make much impression on the allegedly impartial Western media. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev tried on a CNN program to point out the need to look at the Aug. 7-8 events before passing any other judgments. But his questioner seemed unable to grasp the point. Established wisdoms have few doubters in the West once their propaganda agencies go to work. In Darfur the talk turns easily to war crimes, despite the civil war reality there. But when Georgia attacks innocent South Ossetian towns and villages it is those who defend the towns and villages who are said to be guilty of war crimes.
The media accept it when the U.S. says it needs to stay on Iraq to guarantee security. When the Russians say they need to linger longer in Georgia for the same reasons we get more Western talk about sovereignty violation and Czechoslovakia.
Cambodia was the classic example of the hypocritical way Western policymakers and propagandists distort events. The U.S. and others at first recognized the brutal Khmer Rouge regime there simply because it was anti-Vietnam. They even condemned as aggression the Vietnamese attacks needed to put an end to the killing fields there. Then when they decided the Khmer Rouge were evil after all, the talk turned to Khmer Rouge war crimes, forgetting the fact that much of the killing field brutality had been due to the remorseless and secret U.S. B-52 bombings on innocent villages and civilians for much of the early '70s — war crimes by any definition.
The Sino-Indian frontier dispute had strong Ossetia parallels. In 1962 India had made a foolishly adventurous attack into territory that even Western maps recognized as Chinese. Even so, the Chinese counterattack was fiercely condemned by the West as aggression aimed at annexing Indian territory, discrediting the Indian government and so on.
Almost no one bothered to look at the material proving where the original attack had occurred. Heavy support for India was promised. Western propaganda agencies set out to demonize Beijing. Even after the Chinese went back to their original positions six weeks later, returning even the weapons they had captured, the myth of innate Chinese aggressiveness was set in motion, with the tragic results we were to see in Indochina just a few years later.
If the extraordinary efforts to demonize Moscow over South Ossetia succeed, the results could be equally tragic.
Discuss this Article
World gives Russia an unfair rap
The Russians are right to use the Kosovo example as a proof of Western hypocrisy
Russian Translation by Andre Fesyun
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is an intelligent woman. So how can she possibly want to tell the world that Russia's response to the Georgian attack on South Ossetia resembled the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
The comparisons should be the reverse. The Russian willingness to go to the aid of a small region under brutal attack contrasts greatly with the empty Western rhetoric back in the days when Czechoslovakia or other regions were under Moscow attack. And the knee-jerk anti-Russian reactions of the media and other commentators too biased or lazy to question the official U.S. version of events parallels the Russian media's knee-jerk acceptance of Moscow's distorted explanations for past misdemeanors such as Chechnya.
Let's begin with the facts. On the morning of Aug. 8 we woke to reports of a fierce Georgian Army attack on the small town of Tskhinvali, the capital of the small South Ossetia autonomous district within Georgia. Civilian casualties were put in the thousands. As well, 10 or more Russian "peacekeepers," stationed after a previous Georgian attack on South Ossetia in 1991-1992, were killed.
Russian troops then intervened, first to drive the Georgian troops out of Ossetia and then to neutralize Georgian military bases elsewhere. Without that intervention it is quite certain that the Georgians would have stripped the area of its autonomous status, with those Ossetians not killed or cowed being forced to move to North Ossetia on the other side of the Caucasus ranges.
But for the Western media none of this was relevant. For them, everything seems to have begun with the Russian intervention, portrayed as a crime of aggression and even ethnic cleansing (somehow the Georgian attack on the small Ossetian minority is not ethnic cleansing).
U.S. President George W. Bush condemns the Russian attack as a violation of Georgian sovereignty. Did sovereignty concerns ever bother the United States during its attacks on various nations? Besides, we now have doctrines that say nations have moral obligations to intervene to defend peoples under immoral attack, regardless of sovereignty concerns. The Russians could easily claim that in Ossetia.
The Russians are right to use the Kosovo example as a proof of Western hypocrisy. There, too, the Serbian minority population was under attack from Western-backed Albanian guerrillas. Serbian attempts to stop the attacks were amazingly described as Serbian ethnic cleansing.
This in turn was used to justify prolonged U.S.-NATO bombardment of civilian and military targets in Serbia, in a bid to make Belgrade abandon its internationally recognized sovereignty over Kosovo.
And once again most of the Western media were too lazy or spineless to challenge the official versions justifying Western behavior. Few wanted to do the homework needed to find what the dispute was about, and not just in Kosovo but earlier in Croatia and Bosnia too. Even today we get little mention of continuing ethnic cleansing efforts by ethnic Albanians to drive out all minorities, including Jews and Gypsies.
I visited Ossetia back in the Soviet days, to check out the existence of this 400,000- member ethnic minority that speaks a unique language of Iranian origins and is divided into two autonomous areas on either side of 5,000 meter Caucuses ranges. But to get there in those primitive days you had to take a local bus on bad roads crossing the 3,000 meter passes from North Ossetia. (Today there is a large tunnel. Some say the Georgian failure to close that tunnel was proof they were sure U.S. support would prevent a Russian intervention.)
It was a rough trip, wedged in with earthy Ossetian farmers clutching their chickens and bags of farm produce. But there was one consolation — you could easily spot the KGB types trailing you. They were the ones without the chickens. Soviet concern to keep the many Caucasus peoples under its control was strong and we were followed relentlessly wherever we went. Eventually we reached Tskhinvali, the small rustic capital of South Ossetia and hardly the kind of place where you could expect an East-West confrontation to be triggered.
It was only after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union that Ossetia began to hit the headlines. It had tried to use its autonomous status to claim independence from Georgia. But with their 1991-92 attacks the Georgian authorities made it clear they had other ideas and the pro-Russian Ossetians had to settle for autonomy with Russian peacekeepers. The attack on the night of Aug. 7-8 made it clear the Georgians would not accept even autonomy, just as earlier they had tried to challenge the autonomy of pro-Russian Abkhazia in Western Georgia.
Yet none of this seems to make much impression on the allegedly impartial Western media. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev tried on a CNN program to point out the need to look at the Aug. 7-8 events before passing any other judgments. But his questioner seemed unable to grasp the point. Established wisdoms have few doubters in the West once their propaganda agencies go to work. In Darfur the talk turns easily to war crimes, despite the civil war reality there. But when Georgia attacks innocent South Ossetian towns and villages it is those who defend the towns and villages who are said to be guilty of war crimes.
The media accept it when the U.S. says it needs to stay on Iraq to guarantee security. When the Russians say they need to linger longer in Georgia for the same reasons we get more Western talk about sovereignty violation and Czechoslovakia.
Cambodia was the classic example of the hypocritical way Western policymakers and propagandists distort events. The U.S. and others at first recognized the brutal Khmer Rouge regime there simply because it was anti-Vietnam. They even condemned as aggression the Vietnamese attacks needed to put an end to the killing fields there. Then when they decided the Khmer Rouge were evil after all, the talk turned to Khmer Rouge war crimes, forgetting the fact that much of the killing field brutality had been due to the remorseless and secret U.S. B-52 bombings on innocent villages and civilians for much of the early '70s — war crimes by any definition.
The Sino-Indian frontier dispute had strong Ossetia parallels. In 1962 India had made a foolishly adventurous attack into territory that even Western maps recognized as Chinese. Even so, the Chinese counterattack was fiercely condemned by the West as aggression aimed at annexing Indian territory, discrediting the Indian government and so on.
Almost no one bothered to look at the material proving where the original attack had occurred. Heavy support for India was promised. Western propaganda agencies set out to demonize Beijing. Even after the Chinese went back to their original positions six weeks later, returning even the weapons they had captured, the myth of innate Chinese aggressiveness was set in motion, with the tragic results we were to see in Indochina just a few years later.
If the extraordinary efforts to demonize Moscow over South Ossetia succeed, the results could be equally tragic.
Discuss this Article
世界は不公平なロシア叩き
ロシアがコソボを西側の偽善の証拠として使うのは正しい
米国務長官コンドレ－ザ・ライスは頭のいい女性だ。ならば、一体なぜ、グルジアによる南オセチア攻撃に対するロシアの対応が1968年のソ連によるチェコ侵攻に似ているなどと、世界に対して言えるのか。
この比較は逆であるべきだ。暴力的攻撃を受けている小さな地域へ救いの手をさし伸ばそうとするロシアの姿勢は、かつてチェコほかの地域がモスクワによる攻撃下にあったあの時の西側の空虚なレトリックとは全く対照的なものだ。また、アメリカ版の公式発表を鵜呑みにしたメディアやその他コメンテーターのあまりに偏向した、あまりに怠惰な、鸚鵡返しの反ロシア的リアクッションは、チェチェンなど過去の不祥事に関するモスクワの歪曲した説明を鵜呑みに受け入れたロシアのメディアと、いい勝負だ。
まず、真実の事実経過を見てみよう。8月8日の朝起きるとわれわれは、グルジア軍がグルジア内の小さな南オセチア自治州の州都ツヒンバリの町に猛攻を加えているというニュースを知った。民間人の負傷者数千人と報道された。また、先頃1991－92年のグルジアによる南オセチア攻撃以後駐留していたロシア“平和維持隊”十数人が殺害されたとのことだ。
そこで、まずオセチアからグルジア軍隊を排除するため、その後その他の地域のグルジア軍基地を無効力化するために、ロシア軍の介入となった。この介入がなかったならば、グルジアがその地域の自治ステータスを剥奪し、生き残った又は従順でなかったオセチア人は強制的にコーカサス山脈の反対側の北オセチアへ移動させられることは、目に見えていた。
ところが西側のメディアには、こうしたことは何ら関係なかった。彼らにとっては、ロシアの介入からすべてが始まったようであり、それを暴虐的犯行として、さらには民族浄化行為とまで表現した。（なぜか、グルジア人によるオセチア人少数民族への攻撃は民族浄化とはいわれない。）
米大統領ジョージ・ｗ・ブッシュは、ロシアの攻撃を、グルジア主権の侵害だと糾弾している。それをいうなら、アメリカが諸々の国を攻撃していた間、少しでも主権というものに頭を悩ませたことがあったか。その上、今では各国は、不道義的な攻撃を受けている人々を守るために、主権の問題は無視して、介入する道義的責任があるというドクトリンが存在している。ロシア当局がこのドクトリンをオセチアに関して主張するのはかんたんだろう。
ロシアは、西側の偽善の証拠としてコソボを使うのは正しい。あそこでもまた、西側が支援するアルバニア人ゲリラがセルビア人少数派を攻撃していた。その攻撃を止めようとするセルビア人の努力は、驚くべきことに、セルビア人による民族浄化と定義された。
この定義が、次には、国際的に認められているコソボの主権をベｵグラードが放棄することを迫って、アメリカやNATOによる長期的なセルビア民間人・軍事施設爆撃を正当化するために使われた。
そして、この時もまた、西側のほとんどのメディアは、西側行動を正当化した公式版発表を疑ってみるにはあまりに怠惰にまた骨抜きにされていた。何が争点なのかを知るのに必要な調査をやろうとしたものは少なかった。― コソボに限らず、遡ればクロアチアやボスニアの場合も同じだ。今なおユダヤ人やジプシーを含め全少数民族排斥を目指すアルバニア系住民の民族浄化努力が続いていることの報道は、ほとんどわれわれの元に届かない。
私は以前ソビエト時代にオセチアを訪問し、そこにイラン語起源のユニークな言語を話す40万人の住民がおリ、それが5000メートル級のコーカサス山脈の両側地域に二つの自治区を形成していることを、この目で確かめた。だがあの不便な時代にそこへ行くには、北オセチアから3000メートル級の峠越えの悪路を地元バスに乗って行かねばならなかった。（現在は大きなトンネルができている。グルジアがこのトンネル閉鎖の労をとらなかったことは、アメリカが必ずロシア介入を阻止するとの確信が彼らにあった証拠だと聞いた）
鶏や農作物の袋を抱え込んだ土臭いオセチア農民の間に挟まれての、それは大変な旅だった。ただ一つ慰めがあった。― 君を追い回しているKGBの姿が一目で見分けられることだった。つまり、鶏を抱えていない奴が彼らというわけだ。多彩なコーカサスの民族を自らの支配化に置こうとするソビエトの腐心は並々ならず、われわれはどこへ行くにも追跡されていた。やがて皆、ツヒンバリに着いた。南オセチアの小さな田舎町首都で、東西の対立が火を噴くなどとは考えられないような場所だった。
オセチアがマスコミの見出しに登場するようになったのはソ連邦が解体した1991年以降からだ。オセチアは自治州という資格を基盤としてグルジアからの独立を要求しようとした。だがグルジア当局は、1991～91年の攻撃でもって、そうはさせないという意志をはっきり示した。そして親ロシア的なオセチア人たちは自治的状態の維持についてロシアの平和維持隊と話を付けるほかなかった。8月7-8日の夜の攻撃はグルジア側は自治さえ認めない態度をはっきり示した。以前に西グルジアで親ロシア的なアブカジアの自治に対しても拒否しようとしたのと同じである。
けれども、こうしたことどれ一つとして、西側のいわゆる“偏らない”メディアに影響力を持たなかったようだ。元ソ連大統領ミハイル・ゴルバチョフは、CNNのある番組で、今後どんな判断を下すときでもその前に、あの8月7-８日事件を考慮する必要があると強調しようとした。だが彼のインタビューアーはその発言の核心がつかめなかったと思われる。西側でひとたび宣伝機構が仕事に着手すると、パターン化した知識に対して懐疑派は少なくなるようだ。ダルフールでは実際は内戦状態にあるにもかかわらず、話が簡単に戦争犯罪のことに行く。ところがグルジアが罪のない南オセチアの町や村を攻撃しても、戦争犯罪の罪を着せられるのは、町や村を守ろうとする人たちの方だ。
アメリカが、安全を保つためにイラクに駐留を続ける必要があるといえば、メディアはそれを受け入れる。だが、ロシアが,それと同じ理由で、グルジアにもう少し長く留まる必要があるといえば、またまた主権の侵害だとかチェコスロバキアだとかの話が興る。
西側の政策当局やプロパガンディストが偽善的なやり方で事実を歪曲した典型的な例がカンボジアだ。最初アメリカその他の国が暴虐的クメール・ルージュ政権を認めたのは、単にそれが反ベトナムだったからだ。ベトナムがその地の虐殺行為をやめさせるために必要だった行動さえアメリカほかは侵略だと糾弾した。そして、彼らがクメール・ルージュはやっぱり悪質だったと後になって認めた時でも、戦争犯罪の暴虐の多くが、70年代後半の大半に及んだ罪意識なき秘密のアメリカB52による罪のない村や民間人の爆撃― いかなる定義でも、これは戦争犯罪である― のせいで起こったことはきれいさっぱりと忘れて、議論はクメール・ルージュの戦争犯罪の方に集中した。
中印国境紛争は、オセチアと強い類似性を持っている。1962年インドは、西側の地図でさえ中国領と書いてある地域内へ、愚かにも冒険主義的攻撃を行った。にもかかわらず、中国による反撃は西側から、インド領合併を目指す、インド政府の顔に泥を塗る、等々のための侵略的暴挙といわれた。
もともとの攻撃がどこから発生したのかを証明している資料を調べる努力は、ほとんど誰もしなかった。インド側への手厚い支援が約束された。西側の宣伝機構は中国を悪者に仕立てる作業に着手した。中国軍が6週間後に、捕獲した武器さえ返して、元の位置まで後退した後になっても、中国の本質的な攻撃性に関する神話は働き出した。その悲劇的な結果は、わずか数年後、われわれはインドシナにおいて見ることになる。
もし、南オセチアに関して、モスクワを悪者にする異常な努力が成功するようなことになれば、ベトナムと同じような悲劇が生まれる可能性がある。
（筆者は元オーストラリア外交官 現秋田国際教養大学副学長）