Responding to Russian aggression

Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman:

In the wake of Russia's invasion of Georgia, the United States and its trans-Atlantic allies have rightly focused on two urgent and immediate tasks: getting Russian soldiers out, and humanitarian aid in.

But having just returned from Georgia, Ukraine and Poland, where we met with leaders of these countries, we believe it is imperative for the West to look beyond the day-to-day management of this crisis. The longer-term strategic consequences, some of which are already being felt far beyond the Caucasus, have to be addressed.

Russia's aggression is not just a threat to a tiny democracy on the edge of Europe. It is a challenge to the political order and values at the heart of the continent.

For more than 60 years, from World War II through the Cold War to our intervention in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the U.S. has fostered and fought for the creation of a Europe that is whole, free and at peace. This stands as one of the greatest strategic achievements of the 20th century: the gradual transformation of a continent, once the scene of the most violent and destructive wars ever waged, into an oasis of peace and prosperity where borders are open and uncontested and aggression unthinkable.

Russia's invasion of Georgia represents the most serious challenge to this political order since Slobodan Milosevic unleashed the demons of ethnic nationalism in the Balkans. What is happening in Georgia today, therefore, is not simply a territorial dispute. It is a struggle about whether a new dividing line is drawn across Europe: between nations that are free to determine their own destinies, and nations that are consigned to the Kremlin's autocratic orbit.

That is the reason countries like Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic States are watching what happens in the Caucasus so closely. We heard that last week in Warsaw, Kiev and Tbilisi. There is no doubt in the minds of leaders in Ukraine and Poland -- if Moscow succeeds in Georgia, they may be next.

There is disturbing evidence Russia is already laying the groundwork to apply the same arguments used to justify its intervention in Georgia to other parts of its near abroad -- most ominously in Crimea. This strategically important peninsula is part of Ukraine, but with a large ethnic Russian population and the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.

The first priority of America and Europe must be to prevent the Kremlin from achieving its strategic objectives in Georgia. Having been deterred from marching on Tbilisi and militarily overthrowing the democratically elected government there, Russian forces spent last week destroying the country's infrastructure, including roads, bridges, port and security facilities. This was more than random looting. It was a deliberate campaign to collapse the economy of Georgia, in the hope of taking the government down with it.

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The concerns stem from the lack of logic and the jingoism of the Russians in their attack on Georgia. South Ossetia is not worth the grief that Russia has reap from the exercise. It is a small area with 70,000 people. That is a very small prize for such a major effort that has been so counterproductive to Russian interests. This is what worries people about the Russian strategic objectives elsewhere.

Will anyone else ever accept Russian "peacekeepers" in their country? I wouldn't. They did not keep the peace. They protected only one side in the conflict in South Ossetia and were apparently protecting the thugs when Georgia responded to the abuses. While Georgia would have been wiser to challenge the logic of having Russian "peacekeepers" who were not doing their job, the response of the Russians was illogical.

The jingoist of Russia still claim that Georgian "massacred" peacekeepers and South Ossetians, but the facts on the ground suggest a much smaller skirmish in which at most 50 people were killed. The exaggeration of this skirmish into a casus belli has hurt Russian credibility. It is the fraud of the Russian propaganda that has caused many to doubt the Russian rationale. It raises concern about what future frauds will be perpetrated for future aggression.