frogblog » Mikheil Saakashvili http://blog.greens.org.nz hopping along the corridors of power Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:50:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 South Ossetia http://blog.greens.org.nz/2008/08/11/south-ossetia/ http://blog.greens.org.nz/2008/08/11/south-ossetia/#comments Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:48:07 +0000 frog http://blog.greens.org.nz/2008/08/11/south-ossetia/ You have to wonder who Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili had in his ear to think that attacking the separatists in South Ossetia was going to work.  Maybe he mistakenly thought the support he got from the US in recent years was cavalry rather than show ponies?  Maybe he though that nearly belonging to NATO was close enough?  If so it won’t be the first time that NATO has played a negative role in promoting international conflict. Maybe, as The Hive has suggested, this is less about nationalism than it is about gas and oil? (Nice work from The Hive by the way covering this conflict.  No Right Turn has a good analysis too.)

Georgia has had the bulk of the good will in the international media to date – probably because people in the West remember fondly Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003.  But that does not fairly reflect the shared desire by both sides to warmonger.

On the other side Russia has again shown that the five permanent members of the Security Council do not have the necessary balance and lack of bias to be exercising the role that they do.  Russia’s involvement in this conflict means that we cannot expect the United Nations to respond in the way that will save the most lives and lead to long term peace.  This is a shame because compromises like that give bodies with less democratic ideals, such as NATO, added legitimacy.  Which possibly brings us back to where we started?

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