Mick Hartley

Michael J. Totten continues his analysis of the Georgian crisis (earlier here), and explains why South Ossetia or Abkhazia aren't Kosovo:

Kosovo is a viable nation state of more than two million people, greater in size than its neighbors Montenegro and Macedonia which also broke free of Yugoslavia recently. (Montenegro’s secession from the Yugoslavian rump state of Serbia-Montenegro in 2006 somehow didn’t produce any hand-wringing about a “Montenegro precedent” in Russia or anywhere else.)

South Ossetia, meanwhile, has a population of around 60,000 people, the size of a small American suburb. Abkhazia’s population is less than 200,000, around the size of a large American suburb. These are not viable nation states.

Nevertheless, last week Russia recognized them as independent. Unlike Kosovo – which is formally recognized by 46 counties, including all of the G7 – no country in the world other than Russia recognizes the “independence” of Abkhazia or South Ossetia. That’s partly because what really just happened is de facto Russian annexation. Before the invasion and dismemberment of Georgia, Russia made the majority in South Ossetia and Abkhazia citizens of Russia and gave passports to anybody who asked. I just returned from a trip to Georgia, and the Russian military wouldn’t let me enter South Ossetia or even the central Georgian city of Gori because I did not have a Russian visa.

Nobody annexed Kosovo. In theory Kosovo may have been suited for annexation by Albania since around 90 percent of Kosovars are ethnic Albanians. But few Kosovars want to be part of Albania. Albania remains a dysfunctional post-communist mess of a place, though one that at least is less corrupt, authoritarian, and dysfunctional than Russia.

The biggest difference, though, is how South Ossetia and, especially, Abkhazia managed to forge themselves as autonomous regions of Georgia in the first place.

Read on…