Seriously, we are totally going to comply with the whole cease-fire thing tomorrow

I’m sitting here trying to find the right analogy for the current Russia-Georgia conflict. At first I thought that it was like those two people who are consistently at odds with each other, but you know they just want to sleep together.

Or maybe it’s like the classic divorce case, where the parents are fighting over the only child because they have nothing else that proves their time together was worthwhile, or because they just want to be loved, or because they don’t want to pay child support.

Maybe it’s like the bully and the nerd, where the—oh no wait! I’ve got it. It’s like the older sister and the little brother who are sitting in the back seat of the family car on a long trip. The little brother is slowly spreading his body out so that it is just barely touching the disputed imitation leather ridge in the backseat, and the older sister is sitting there on her half of the back seat going “I’m not touching you… I’m not touching you.” But the car is an old Lada, and, despite not overtly admitting to it, she’s actually paying a middle sister to hover her finger next to the little brother’s ear while she’s saying this. So then, Mom says that she thinks the boy is being very good, and will get ice cream at the next exit. At this point, the oldest sister tells everyone in the car that she is going to NOW start paying the middle sister to tacitly threaten her brother. Then the older sister coldly nods at the middle sister who pulls out a gun. The little brother then sees the gun and pokes the eye of the mercenary sister. So the oldest sister gets another gun out, and gives it to the middle sister to use with her free hand. When the little brother tells mom that he is going to have a temper tantrum if he sees any more guns, the older sister tells everyone in the car that the little brother is getting a little hot headed, and orders fighter jets to buzz the car in an attempt to calm him down. Then the little brother leans into the guns and goes, “SEE? You ARE touching me!” and then fires a rock from a slingshot at the middle sister’s knee. Then the older sister pulls out her own guns, and she and the middle sister empty a couple of clips into the little brother’s arm. So the little brother gets on the phone with Wolf Blitzer and is like, “are you for real? What the hell did I do?” And Wolf goes, “Do you think Dad should lean back there and threaten to turn the car around?” Except that Dad, despite favoring the little brother, is REALLY sick of all the crap that goes on in the back seat. He never really understands what their problem is, and, to be honest, he’s a little saddle sore from fighting with this Arab dude who is, at this moment, standing on the hood of the car and kicking the windshield in (though, admittedly, the Arab guy is getting tired).

As of this writing (8/14/2008), there have been, I believe, fifteen cease-fires called for in the conflict over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (of course, the Russian version of a cease-fire is demanding that the other side be crushed without complaining). The actual one that was supposedly signed and breached by both sides nearly simultaneously is the one that some early reports were calling “the French Brokered” cease-fire. This annoys me to no end, because it is “EU brokered”. The only reason Sarkozy is handling this is because it’s his turn to be the head of the EU. Otherwise, he would probably just be on the phone.

(Do you remember when Sarkozy was first in office and he was attending that G8 summit in Heiligendamm, and for some reason or the other, the press caught a ton of pictures of him with his cell phone? Now, no matter what I do, whenever I see him in a picture talking to someone, I always imagine him saying “lemme just scoop this call up real quick,” in kind of a Uralic, neo-suave way.)

So peace is apparently on the way. Actually, that’s the funniest part. Peace has been aggressively targeted for a few months. Quite a few months ago, Russia was busy building up its peacekeeping force in Abkhazia, and being accused of threatening war. But hey, c’mon. Russia is a peace-loving nation. Why would they want anything to do with some screwy, local police action? The more peacekeepers they deploy, the more peace there will be, eh?

Besides the fact that the two “breakaway regions” both share the Russian border (and Abkhazia has a nice, little coast on the Black Sea, where I’m sure the vacation housing market is very reasonable), and besides the fact that Emperor Putin has been trying to help Russia regain its old git-up-‘n’-go since the fall of the USSR (with plenty of help from local mafias) and is likely pleased that Mr Medvedev is continuing the brand, it seems that a lot of this conflict just comes down to the old oil racket. The pipeline that spans along this region pumps out about 1% of the world’s oil output a day. The grand majority of this goes to Europe, so it doesn’t affect us directly, but protecting it keeps it out of the hands of someone who is a little too happy to assert his power with a Snidely Whiplash-esque flair.

So, we want to protect our buddies who run god-fearing democracies, and we want to protect oil, and any time a MiG flies or an AK discharges, the bat signal goes up over DC because, as we all know, Russia is the Legion of Doom. Makes sense. But do we need to help out? Well, we’ve already sent over and promised further humanitarian aid, and that’s our role with friends. Our diplomatic efforts have included threatening to throw Russia out of the G8 coffee club (that Mr Putin treated like his mom signed him up for it), and cancelling a cute military party that Russia was going to co-host with NATO.

I am certain that the news of these threats sent Russia’s borscht futures through the floor, but that might not be enough. Inquiring minds really want to know if we are going to respond with our military. I figure since we probably had a hand in the arms that were bulking up Georgia’s military, we have probably done our part on that front. So what do we do? WHAT DO WE DO?!

One thing that it appears no one is considering is that Abkhazia and South Ossetia want to get the hell out of Georgia. They have wanted complete independence since the breakup of the USSR. They have elected their own parliaments that have said this and asked to be recognized by the world community.They have had their own referendums that have said this and asked to be recognized by the world community. They might be trying to leave a “democracy”, but it seems to be something that the people there have wanted for a long time, and have felt very hopeful about since the quasi-break of Kosovo in February. We supported that, but this is different. This is a country that is trying to become sovereign when it is already part of a western-style democracy. But it has hoped and pleaded to break off using diplomatic means, aggressive means, and likely taking money from Russia to do so, so that just doesn’t compute. Why would anyone want to leave a democracy when it’s the best type of government in the world?

To be honest, that doesn’t matter. President Bush is using the old standard of Protecting Democratic Interests when talking about returning the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Georgian control and it is just plain embarrassing. If we really wanted to protect democracy, we would have supported the breakaway regions from the beginning, and we would have tried to negotiate agreements between Saakashvili and those regions to move towards independence separately. We would have implanted ourselves there, despite all the money and all the people that Russia has been dumping over the border for decades, and we would have made them all allies. And then—and THEN—imagine how pissed off Russia would have been if we had turned their whole border project right around on them and had three happily trading, and economically burgeoning sovereign states who were all friends of the USA.

I mean, isn’t pissing off Russia the point?

I realize, of course, that it’s not nearly that simple. But it certainly comports with our supposed beliefs as a torch bearer for freedom. Democracy by fiat seems like something that we would fight against. If we want to go in there and fight for the pipeline and push Russia back for no reason other than money and hubris, fine. But we are not going to because 1) those are all losing military scenarios, and 2) we just don’t have the power to do that right now without starting a world war. Instead, we throw words at it that we think bear the standards of our beliefs as a nation.

If we were real diplomats, we would support what we are actually supposed to believe in, and not just what we want.