Cold War Reignited?

Cold War Reignited?
By: Alex Jallot

On August 8, 2008, it wasn’t just the Olympics in Beijing that caused a spectacle. On that day, under the guise of the Olympic fervor that caught the world, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia decided to ‘make-good’ on his campaign promise, and attempt to bring South Ossetia and Abkhazia back under the control of the central government. President Saakashvili sent in his troops and began a siege of the capital of South Ossetia with artillery fire.

Perhaps he thought the world would be too distracted by the Olympics to notice his brazen foray into South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Unfortunately for him, not much gets past the watchful eyes of Prime Minister Putin of Russia, who promptly left the Olympics to address the situation in Georgia.

In response to the attacks on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia sent in its own troops to the two disputed areas to protect its citizens and to lend support to Russian peacekeepers who were already stationed there. South Ossetia and Abkhazia are under dispute between Russia and Georgia, because Georgia claims to have territorial rights to both areas, while Russia made claims on the areas thanks to the fact that it issued Russian passports to the citizens of South Ossetia and Abkhazia effectively making them Russian citizens.

Russia is obligated to protect its citizens no matter where they are. Georgia is a pro-western nation that has close ties to the United States and Europe. Under the leadership of Mr. Saakashvili, Georgia sought admittance into the European Union and into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which in turn, has caused alarm in Russia. Russia is suspicious of its former republics becoming cozy with the west, as Georgia and other countries such as Ukraine and Poland were once, under the sphere of influence in Russia.

The position of the United States in this conflict is that Russia should eventually withdraw all its troops and allow a neutral nation to install peacekeepers and respect Georgia’s territorial integrity. The problem is that that can be likened to telling the United States to drop the Monroe Doctrine and give up its sphere of influence in Latin America and the Caribbean. The position of the United States and its backing of Georgia have significantly strained relations with Russia to a point that it hasn’t been since the fall of the Soviet Union. Will this conflict mean a return to hostilities between the United States and Russia? Only time and the decisions of the leaders of both countries will be able to tell.

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