by Petr Janda

Created on: September 16, 2009   Last Updated: September 21, 2009

Georgia and Iraq hostilities are different issues

Or are they really?

Unable to learn their lesson from the blood-soaked 20thcentury, mankind launched some new wars in the first decade of the new millennium. Arguably the three that captured the greatest deal of Western attention and filled headlines were war in Afghanistan, war in Iraq, and war in Georgia. While the war in Afghanistan can be considered a punishment for terrorist attacks on American soil, events and reasons leading to the latter two are much more complex.

As much as there are differences, there are also several striking similarities that go well beyond the first-sight image of a military superpower (the USA and Russia) crushing a significantly inferior country.

Official reasons

Both wars had a noble official reason - or a set of reasons - that justified the war if not in the eyes of world public, then definitely in the eyes of domestic population. In Iraq there was a whole set of reasons - first, removal of a threat to domestic security, i.e. destruction of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the hands of incalculable dictator Saddam Hussein. Leaving alone the fact, that no WMD have ever been found and intelligence was presented in a very peculiar way to the public, it remains a mystery, how the public was made to believe Saddam could actually attack the US. When flaws of the original reasoning became too obvious, Bush administration shifted focus to democracy and human rights issues.

Prevention of genocide was also an excuse for Russian intervention in Georgia. Georgian president Saakashvili, who is a very controversial figure to say the least, surely provided enough worries to ethnic minorities in the extremely sensitive Caucasus region. As if his inflammatory nationalistic remarks were not enough, he launched a military attack on the separatist region of Ossetia, thus providing a perfect excuse for Russian military to enter the country to protect Russian citizens and other minorities from oppression.

Power games

Yet, democracy and human rights, though noble causes, seldom make governments launch costly wars in some god-forsaken region. Protection of country's power sphere is something quite different, though. In the nineties Russia had to swallow a bitter pill of losing its superpower status, losing parts of the Soviet empire, and seeing some of its former states join the ranks of its arch rival NATO. With president Putin and regained confidence, Russia would not allow further encroachment

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