ConservativeHome's Platform

Carl Thomson: We should be wary about jumping to Mikheil Saakashvili’s defence

Carl Thomson is a commentator on Russian and East European affairs and was the Conservative Party candidate for Glasgow East at the 2005 General Election. Writing a year after the beginning of the Russia-Georgia War, he takes a somewhat different viewpoint than Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox, who wrote this article yesterday on the subject.

While the world’s attention was distracted by events in Iran, another country with a record of human rights abuses and rigged elections sent in the riot police to beat and arrest democracy protestors.  Masked policemen attacked dozens of demonstrators in Georgia early in the summer as they held a rally calling for the release of six opposition activists who had been detained on charges of spying for Russia.  The police arrested 39 demonstrators and warned of further reprisals should the protests that have swept the Georgian capital in recent months continue.

The violence follows similar attacks against opponents of Mikheil Saakashvili’s regime earlier in the summer.  A prominent opposition spokesman suffered a broken rib after being attacked by police who chanted the name “Saakashvili” as they held him down and beat him with truncheons.  Other critics of the Georgian president have been arrested or found their families on the receiving end of state harassment.  A recent report by the Organisation for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights into last year’s parliamentary elections in Georgia found “widespread and significant” irregularities, including ballot-box stuffing, the kidnapping and beating of opposition activists, biased news coverage from the state media, and government officials campaigning openly for Saakashvili’s United National Movement party.

Carl Thomson: How myths and half-truths led to one of post-war Europe’s bloodiest conflicts

Carl Thomson is a commentator on Russian and East European affairs and was the Conservative candidate for Glasgow East at the 2005 General Election.

It was ten years ago last month that NATO launched a massive 81 day bombing campaign against the rump Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, causing the deaths of more than 480 civilians and the displacement of some 800,000 refugees from the Serbian province of Kosovo.  This was only the second time NATO had engaged in military operations in its then fifty year history.  It was the first time the alliance had used force against a sovereign state without approval from the United Nations, and remains the largest military operation undertaken in Europe since the end of the Second World War. 

The bombing campaign was carried out ostensibly to protect the Albanian population in Kosovo from what was deemed to be acts of genocide at the hands of the Yugoslav military, and to bring about the removal of all Serbian police and paramilitary forces from the region.  A more detailed analysis of NATO's war aims at the time, however, suggests that concerns about genocide and human rights were only a partial factor in the decision to go to war.  Amongst the demands presented to Yugoslavia at the commencement of the bombing were the establishment of a market economy, the imposition of democracy in Serbia, self-government for the Kosovo Albanians, and the integration of Yugoslavia into the "mainstream" of Europe.

There can be no argument that Kosovo in late 1998 and early 1999 was a very dangerous place, and that many Kosovo Albanians suffered greatly as a result of attacks by the Kosovo Liberation Army and reprisals by the Yugoslav security forces.  One of the bloodiest single episodes took place in January 1999, when 45 Albanians were killed following clashes in the village of Reçak.  The Reçak incident formed the main pretext for NATO military involvement in Kosovo.  The Yugoslav government asserted that the casualties were members of the KLA who had been killed in a shootout with state security forces.  NATO, the EU and the OSCE disagreed, characterising the killings as the deliberate massacre of civilians by Serbian forces.

Carl Thomson: We should not view Saakashvili’s Georgia through rose-tinted glasses

Carl Thomson is a commentator on Russian and East European affairs and was the Conservative Party candidate for Glasgow East at the 2005 General Election.  He recently travelled to Georgia, Armenia and the breakaway republic of Nagorno Karabakh.

The Russians may have won the war for South Ossetia, but the long-term victory belongs to the Georgians.  Even though it was Mikhail Saakashvili who ignited the conflict by ordering the shelling of Tskhinvali, his government won the battle for Western public opinion.  Russia was clearly identified as the aggressor.  By issuing a joint statement condemning Russia in much stronger language than other EU member states did, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, along with Poland, moved from being suspicious and distrustful of Moscow to outright hostility, and demonstrated their ability to adopt a common stance against Moscow while the rest of Europe dithered.  The Kremlin has put a lot of diplomatic effort into trying to obtain a visa-facilitation programme with the EU and gain access to the World Trade Organisation over the last ten years.  These aspirations may have suffered a fatal blow.  The idea of expelling Russia from the G8, once shrugged off as unrealistic and impractical, is being taken a lot more seriously in Europe’s capitals following the events of the last few weeks.

Russia is a country which always makes for exciting headlines, and Georgia is sufficiently obscure to be portrayed as exotic, even romantic.  However, the ease with which the British press made broad-sweeping statements about both countries during the four day conflict is deeply unsettling.  It seems that, faced with a quarrel in a far away country about which they knew little, our media fell for the narrative the Georgians were trying to sell them: that this war was about a small, democratic country that was being bullied by its larger, imperialist, authoritarian neighbour; a simple case of good guys versus bad guys.  Sadly, most of the experts and commentators that appeared on our television screens and opined in the pages of our newspapers failed to ask the questions they should have been asking, such as whether Georgia under Mikhail Saakashvili really can be described as a democracy.

Carl Thomson: The Conservative Party should welcome Dmitry Medvedev's election as Russian president

Carl Thomson is a commentator on Russian and East European affairs and a former Conservative Party Parliamentary Candidate.

When Vladimir Putin was elected president of Russia in March 2000, Tony Blair hailed him as “a moderniser, with a focused view of what he wants to achieve”.  Eight years later, Britain harbours as political refugees those who call for the violent overthrow of the Russian government, and the Kremlin is blamed for the assassination of FSB defectors on the streets of London.  A range of disagreements between Russia and the West on issues such as Kosovo, missile defence, and Iran’s nuclear ambitions have prompted many to argue that we are now in the midst of a new Cold War.

Tomorrow marks the end of the Putin era and the dawn of Dmitry Medvedev.  Mr. Putin may stick around for a few more years as prime minister, but real power in Russia lies with the presidency, and we should expect Medvedev to assert his authority quickly.  He would be wise to do so.  Elements of the influential siloviki, a term used to describe former KGB agents and politicians with a military background, remain ill disposed towards him and suspicious of his apparent liberal sympathies.