[Marxism] Lessons of the Caucasus war: Imperial ambitions need to be blocked | Links

[glparramatta <glparramatta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

By *Andrey Kolganov* and *Aleksandr Buzgalin, *translated by /Links 
International Journal of Socialist Renewal’/s *Renfrey Clarke*

Moscow, September 2, 2008 -- To most Russians, it was obvious from the 
beginning that the latest war in the Caucasus began with an attack by 
Georgian forces on South Ossetia, and that ultimately, it was unleashed 
on the initiative of the United States. To the West, meanwhile, it was 
just as clear from the outset that the August war in the Caucasus 
represented an assault on small, defenceless and democratic Georgia by 
huge, aggressive and authoritarian Russia. This is what almost all the 
world media have asserted, and continue to assert. To a significant 
degree, this is even believed by a significant section of world civil 
society, including by anti-globalisation activists who for the most part 
have little sympathy for the US establishment.
Why was this? Why are there such directly counterposed versions of the 
same events? Why, after nearly 20 years of warm post-Soviet 
“friendship”, have Russia and the US so rapidly, and in such radical 
fashion, taken up positions on the opposite sides of the barricades? Are 
the politics of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Russian 
President Dmitry Medvedev so different from those of Russia;s first 
post-Soviet President Boris Yeltsin? Has Russia really become either an 
“enemy of democracy” (from the point of view of the West), or the 
“defender and hope of the anti-imperial forces” (from the point of view 
of Russian state officials)?What does the conflict in the Caucasus 
signify? Is it the prologue to a new worldwide confrontation between the 
“democratic” empire of the West (with its centre in the US) and Russia’s 
mini-empire on the periphery? Or is it “merely” one in a series of local 
wars?

Full article at http://links.org.au/node/611

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