COMMENT: Schröder slams McCain on Georgia

By Kanishk Tharoor 19 - 08 - 08

The conventional wisdom has it that this month's eruption of violence between Russia and Georgia played squarely into the hands of John McCain. With pundits and hacks fulminating about a return to the Cold War, McCain has ratcheted up the rhetoric, supposedly sending a muscular to the Kremlin. He demanded that "Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory." McCain, who has in the past called Vladimir Putin a "totalitarian dictator", went on to belittle the more cautious tone struck by the Obama campaign as "bizarrely in sync with Moscow." Such claims amount to preposterous misrepresentations of Obama's position and are calculated to appeal to the cruder, blustering passions of the American people. It's not just the benighted of the developing world, after all, that seek solace in their strongmen.

One of the many misfortunes of the flare up in the Caucasus is that an opportunity to probe more deeply into the roots of the conflict is being lost amidst the rhetoric of overheated Cold War nostalgists. For cooler, informed insight on the Russia-Georgia crisis, there are few better places to turn than to openDemocracy, which has long reported on Georgia's internal problems and the failures of Georgian nationalism on their own terms. Get up to speed with oD's Caucasus archive here.

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Recent:
Abkhazia and South Ossetia: heart of conflict, key to solution

By George Hewitt

The Georgia-Russia war of August 2008 carries a vital lesson: the small territories that broke from Georgia's control in the early 1990s have their own voice, identity, and interest. They must be active participants in deciding their own future, says George Hewitt, the leading scholar of Abkhazian linguistics and history.

The Georgia-Russia conflict: lost territory, found nation

By Donald Rayfield

The new Caucasus war exposes the problem of Georgia - and of western myths about the country

Citizen war-reporter? The Caucasus test

By Evgeny Morozov

The Georgia-Russia war exposes some of the flaws in the idea of citizen journalism.

After the war: recognising reality
By Neal Ascherson

A messy conflict reflects collective forgetting. It's time to recall history, break the cycle, and build the future in Abkhazia and Georgia

Also on Abkhazia in openDemocracy:

Thomas de Waal & Zeyno Baran, "Abkhazia-Georgia, Kosovo-Serbia: parallel worlds?" (2 August 2006)

Thomas de Waal, "Abkhazia's archive: fire of war, ashes of history" (20 October 2006)

Nikolaj Nielsen, "A small bomb in Gali" (8 July 2008).

Among openDemocracy's articles on Georgian politics and the region:

Neal Ascherson, "Tbilisi, Georgia: the rose revolution's rocky road" (15 July 2005)

Donald Rayfield, "Georgia and Russia: with you, without you" (3 October 2006)

Robert Parsons, "Russia and Georgia: a lover's revenge" (6 October 2006)

Vicken Cheterian, "Georgia's arms race" (4 July 2007)

Donald Rayfield, "Russia and Georgia: a war of perceptions" (24 August 2007)

Alexander Rondeli, "Georgia: politics after revolution" (14 November 2007)

Robert Parsons, "Georgia's race to the summit" (4 January 2008)

Robert Parsons,"Mikheil Saakashvili's bitter victory" (11 January 2008)

Jonathan Wheatley, "Georgia's democratic stalemate" (14 April 2008)

Robert Parsons, "Georgia, Abkhazia, Russia: the war option" (13 May 2008)

Thomas de Waal, "The Russia-Georgia tinderbox" (16 May 2008)

Robert Parsons, "Georgia's dangerous gulf" (30 May 2008)

Alexander Rondeli, "Georgia's search for itself" (8 July 2008)

Thomas de Waal, "South Ossetia: the avoidable tragedy" (11 August 2008)

Ghia Nodia, "The war for Georgia: Russia, the west, the future" (12 August 2008)

Donald Rayfield, "The Georgia-Russia conflict: lost territory, found nation" (13 August 2008).