Having recently written about Russia's legal case for intervention in Georgia in the Fordham International Law Journal (volume 32, #5, May 2009), I would like to share some thoughts I have on the recently released Tagliavini Commission's report on last year's conflict in Georgia.
(1) "According to the overwhelmingly accepted uti possidetis principle, only former constituent republics such as Georgia but not territorial sub-units such as South Ossetia or Abkhazia are granted independence in case of dismemberment of a larger entity such as the former Soviet Union.
Russia did, in fact, apply this principle, in the face of multiple efforts by the regions of South Ossetia and Abkahzia to secede, as well as throughout the regional military conflicts that have lasted the better part of the past two decades. In 2004, then Russian president Putin certainly followed this principle when he helped the newly minted president Saakashvili peacefully reintegrate the rebellious region of Adjaria.
But, in light of the persistent demands by South Ossetia and Abkahzia for full independence, it behooves us to ask at what point we begin to take Georgian sovereignty seriously; i.e., when ute possidetis begins to apply to the rebellious provinces vis-Ã -vis Georgia, as the larger sovereign entity, rather than to the USSR, which has been defunct for nearly two decades?
(2) "Among major powers, Russia in particular has consistently and persistently objected to any justification of the NATO Kosovo intervention as a humanitarian intervention. It can therefore not rely on this putative title to justify its own intervention on Georgian territory. And as a directly neighboring state, Russia has important political and other interests of its own in South Ossetia and the region. In such a constellation, a humanitarian intervention is not recognized at all.
Both of these arguments, that Russia should not have intervened because (1) it does not acknowledge such a justification in Kosovo; and (2), it has significant other interests in the region, strike me as weak.
Surely, it is not hard to conceive of circumstances where a state might advocate humanitarian action in one region, while opposing it in another. This is so commonplace as to be considered intrinsic to the behavior of states, and therefore hardly a viable criterion.
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