The End of American Hegemony

I have been following the current war between Russia and Georgia with great interest. If you are aware, Georgia, under the leadership of the foolhardy Mikheil Saakashvili, launched a sneak attack on its breakaway province of South Ossetia on the 8th of August. Now, South Ossetia is under the protection of Russia (see cartoon above) who then retaliated by hitting the Georgian armed forces sideways with overwhelming force.

You might be wondering what is the significance of this and why you should not go back to watching the Olympics. Well, firstly, Georgia is a client state of the USA under the expansionist policies of the current neoconservative G.W. Bush. Even Georgia’s President Saakashvili was educated in the USA and supposedly that makes him the Icarus of democracy to the Caucasus. The USA, under the guise of “spreading democracy” actively fostered military and political tutelage of Georgia in order to encircle Russia and more importantly, secure a route to pump oil (yes, its always about oil) that bypasses Russia and Iran.

If you look at the map above, Georgia is right in Russia’s backyard and naturally, it resents the increasing American influence in a state that used to be part of the USSR. Georgia’s sneak attack on its wayward province of South Ossetia gave Moscow the pretext that it needed to steam roll the Georgian military and teach an abject lesson to other Balkan states about collaborating with the West.

What began as a “peacekeeping” action quickly escalated into all out war with Russian bombers striking military and civilian targets while the Russian Navy sunk a Georgian missile boat and blockaded the coast. All this while, Saakashvili pleaded with West through a slick propaganda campaign to come and help him but (significantly) to no avail. Europe is too dependent on Russian oil and gas to risk war while the US is spread too thinly in their misadventure in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now the Georgian leader and his people are subjected to humiliation by the Russians who, in an ironic parallel to Kosovo and Serbia now labels Saakashvili as a “war criminal”.

From the tone of my article, I don’t blame you for calling me Pro-Russia and anti-West/USA. The truth is I don’t like both of them; Russia for their support of the Serbs and their brutality in Chechnya and the USA for their war in Iraq, Afghanistan and their version of the gulag, Guantanamo Bay. From the perspective of someone who is from a “Third World Nation”, a resurgent Russia (and China) is good. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR, the US have claimed sole supremacy of the planet. Now, the US have to stop acting like they own the world and tip toe around international affairs to avoid provoking Russia and China. In chemistry, a chemical reaction will always eventually come to an equilibrium and the same it is with geopolitics. It will be a return to early 20th century Realpolitik and I like it. History will remember the 8th of August, 2008 not as an auspicious date for the Olympics, but the date marking the end of the era of total American hegemony. It is never a good thing to have just one bully in the playground.