If it is taken seriously, R2P obviously constrains the traditional supremacy of state sovereignty when it comes to gross violations of human rights. I think there is growing international sympathy with this view, though most scholars would rely on the consensus of the international community, as expressed through the UN Security Council, to define when such a gross violation has taken place. Russia's decision to intervene unilaterally helps us to focus on the question of when states might be justified in acting unilaterally, citing the need to preserve human life, even in the absence of such a consensus.
There are tentative criteria, set forth in UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 on the "Definition of Aggression" that establish some guidelines for legitimate intervention. These include: (1) no territorial or other advantage gained; and (2) intervention proportionate and sufficient to end the aggression and preserve the peace. This resolution also stipulates a positive obligation on the part of states to assist in the defense against aggression. Interestingly, although written more than thirty years ago, these criteria do not differ substantially from the "Principles of International Law on the use of Force by States in Self-Defence" set out by a conference of legal scholars at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, in late 2005.
6. What is your perception of the grounds for Russia to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia?
Here, again, we have two principles of international law that are in direct conflict. One is that the territorial integrity of a state should be sacrosanct; the other is the right of people to self-determination. For seventeen years Russia defended the territorial integrity of Georgia, losing more than 120 soldiers as peacekeepers in the region. After the attack of August 2008, and the Saakashvili's vows to continue his campaign to reconquer Abkhazia and South Ossetia by any means at his disposal, Russia reluctantly came to the conclusion (on August 26, President Medvedev described it as "a matter of choosing the lesser evil") that the only way to guarantee the survival of the Abkhaz and Ossetians populations on their own lands was to sign a military defense treaty with them. Recognition of their independence became a prerequisite, since such a treaty can only be signed with a sovereign state. Western recognition of Kosovo's independence without Serbia's approval, which took place in February 2008, merely established a convenient precedent for Russia's actions.
7. What is your take on what people in the US think of the conflict and Russia's part in it one year on?
Western media coverage has definitely become more balanced since last November, after it was revealed that the two senior Western military officers stationed in Georgia by the OSCE, former British Army captain Ryan Grist and former RAF wing commander Stephen Young, both confirmed that Russian version of events - that Georgian armed forces had conducted an indiscriminate and unprovoked attack on the South Ossetian capital of Tsinkhval.
Studies of the impact of media on public opinion, however, suggest that the initial impressions conveyed by respected news outlets tend to linger on, even if the story later changes radically. It is therefore not surprising that American pundits and politicians continue to refer to the events of last August as "Russian aggression," even though subsequent reporting has debunked this as a myth.
The overall perceptions Americans have of Russia is far less judgmental than that of the media or policy making elite, since most Americans see little connection between Russia's problems in the Caucasus, and their own lives.
8. In your view, was the information provided to the people at the time of the conflict biased in any manner biased? Has it changed?
Balanced information on the August conflict was available from the very outset, to those who wanted it. Most Western media outlets chose Gori or Tbilisi as their base of operations, and naturally their reporting reflects that. Those few who undertook the perilous journey to Tsinkhval during the first few days of the conflict (Piotr Smolar for Le Monde, Kim Sengupta and Shaun Walker for The Independent), or who, like Douglas Birch of the Associated Press, travelled to Vladikavkaz to interview Ossetian refugees, were able to observe and tell the Ossetian side of this tragedy.
By-and-large, however, the mainstream Western media had no frame of reference within which to deal with Ossetians or Abkhaz, and was therefore unable to explain why they felt aggrieved by the Georgian government. As a result, this vital side of the story was simply folded into the "Russian" narrative, which the media had already instinctively labeled as the aggressors. Sadly, while the facts regarding Georgia's aggression are somewhat better known today, Western pundits and politicians remain ignorant of the history of the region and it peoples, and hence of the deeper roots of the conflict.
Although it is very unusual for a storyline to shift as dramatically as it did at the end of 2008, this does not appear to have led Western journalists and editors to any greater awareness of their own biases against Russia, or how these taint their reporting.
As recently as March 12th of this year, for example, Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth wrote to ITAR-Tass correspondent Andrei Sitov that she sees no "bias against the Russian government in our editorial pages." A remarkable statement, given that the paper regularly features commentary by Jackson Diehl, Anne Applebaum, Charles Krauthammer, Fred Hiatt, Peter Baker, Susan B. Glasser, Robert Kagan, Bruce P. Jackson, Jim Hoagland, David Ignatius, David Hoffmann, and Masha Lipman, all of whom have been unabashedly hostile to Vladimir Putin, but one is hard pressed to name even a single editorial commentator who has been sympathetic to Putin or his policies.
Paul Saunders of the Nixon Center, himself a former journalist for CBS news, describes the Washington Post as "an editorial echo-chamber in which its staff, columnists and others sympathetic to their views revel in their collective self-delusion," (NationalInterest.org, June 6, 2008), while Jack Matlock, the last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union has termed several Washington Post editorials simply "outrageous" (Letter to Johnson's Russian List #47, March 2, 2008. Given its blatant editorial bias, and its portrayal of Saakashvili's regime as "a kind of Camelot in the Caucasus," to use Oxford historian Mark Almond's description (Markalmondoxford.blogspot.com, November 3, 2007), it is scarcely surprising that it continues to portray the events of last August in stereotypically Russophobic fashion.
I hasten to add that there is no particular reason to single out the Washington Post. Among American newspapers, its reporting and commentary about Russia are typically regarded as both reasonable and balanced.
9. Do you think there is any potential for the US and other Western countries to accept the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
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