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| Author: | Michael Moran, Executive Editor, CFR.org |
|---|
August 17, 2008
The Star-Ledger
So many of the scars history has left on the societies of the West have a common and often overlooked origin: The improbable rise, from the ethnic outlands of multiethnic empire, of a super-nationalist, a man whose roots in an ethnic group other than the dominant one seems to ensure that, once in power, he transforms himself into something more than just another patriot. This kind of man, thankfully in short supply these days, redefines loyalty to the state in terms of as a cult of personality orbiting himself, leaving whatever loyalty he once owed to the region of his birth. A short list of such figures would include a Corsican (Napoleon Bonaparte), an Austrian (Adolf Hitler), a Croat (Josip Broz Tito), an Alawite (the late Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad), and a Georgian (Iosef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili). This last figure, Dzhugashvili, of course, is better known as Stalin, and the conflict which flared this week between Russia and Georgia had much more than coincidental connection to him.
Stalin, who murderously ruled the Soviet Union between 1924 and his death in 1953, was born in Gori, a Georgian city located just south of the South Ossetian district that was the focus of fighting over the past week. A significant debate is underway as to whether Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili overreached when he tried to dislodge ethnic Russian separatists who have prevented his country's rule of law from holding sway in South Ossetia. Saakashvili could claim, with some credence, that the Bush administration had encouraged his boldness. But political partisans will argue this case one way and another, likely with no real verdict. An alternative analysis - that preferred by Washington right now - is that Saakashvili felll into a carefully laid trap by the separatist's main ally in Moscow, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, allowing the Russian leader to send a warning shot across the bow of any so-called "independent" state that once made up part of the Soviet Union which dares challenge Moscow's writ. Either way, Russia has asserted itself convincingly, and an old wound reopened in dramatic fashion.
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