Robin Fabbro.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine five weeks ago, emotions are understandably running high.
For many, the scale of the injustices unfolding before them has led to a quest to find any way to weaken Russia; any way to help Ukraine prevail. This has led to calls from Ukrainian officials, foreign commentators, and social-media-users-cum-security-experts to expand the war to new fronts, including in the Caucasus.
Such calls are both irresponsible and morally indefensible. Not everything that is bad for Russia, or which might distract Russia from its assault on Ukraine, is a good thing.
In an interview with the Ukrayinska Pravda newspaper, the Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, said that the resumption of war in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh (as well as in the Kurils, Kaliningrad, and Transnistria) would greatly help Ukraine.
The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, celebrated the recent outbreak of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh in a since-deleted tweet stating that: ‘👍 Azerbaijani forces went on the offensive in Karabakh’.
The clashes in question have already led to the deaths of three soldiers from the Nagorno-Karabakh defence forces and forced residents of one village to flee their homes.
While these statements are irresponsible, they are perhaps somewhat understandable given the immense pressure Ukraine is facing. What is less so, is the armchair generals in the West preaching the same dangerous rhetoric, out of either ignorance or a malicious contempt for human life.
Such rhetoric extends to American congresspeople. In response to the violence in Nagorno-Karabakh, Republican congressperson Adam Kinzinger tweeted that some countries ‘realize now maybe [sic] a good time to get your land back from Russia’.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a former president of Estonia, also chimed in asking ‘what happens if the Georgians decide they want their Russian occupied territories back?🤔’
Similarly, Paul Miller, a former Whitehouse staffer and Professor at Georgetown University believes that ‘now would be a good time for Georgia to retake South Ossetia and Abkhazia.’
No, now would not be a good time for war to break out once again in the Caucasus. There is no good time for the level of human suffering that would bring.
The conflicts in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh have already led to countless deaths and the displacement of over a million people. The brutality seen in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War (which in the face of Western indifference, Russian mediation brought to an end) serves as a vivid example of their cost.
I have no doubt that many such calls for war are largely born of ignorance of what it is they are advocating, and ignorance of the long history of these conflicts going back to the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond.
Though Russian imperialism can be seen as playing some part in Russia’s role in them, these conflicts are not black and white and they cannot be transposed onto the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
One of OC Media’s five core values that inform our reporting (which you can support here) is that of peace.
This does not mean surrendering in the face of aggression and injustice; it does not mean we believe Ukraine should cave to Russia’s outrageous demands just to get a ceasefire.
It is a belief that the conflicts that have wracked the Caucasus for decades leaving untold suffering in their wake can and should be resolved through dialogue, compromise, and a common understanding of humanity.
Yours truly,