From the editor’s desk

Russia draws the line

The current armed conflict in the Caucasus has a long history. The province of South Ossetia is sovereign Georgian territory, but it is also a Russian ethnic enclave where many Russian citizens live under the tacit protection of their mother country next door. When Georgia moved to reassert its sovereignty by what was in effect a military invasion, Russia's reply was in kind, and devastating. So Western dismay at Russia's willingness to bully its neighbour is partly qualified by the perception that Georgia was to an extent the author of its own misfortune. It swept aside arrangements that had kept the peace for nearly 20 years. President Mikheil Saakashvili utterly misjudged Russia's likely response; but if he thought he could expect Washington's support for his adventure beyond mere words, he misjudged that too.

The seeds of this conflict, however, are not only regional and ethnic. Russia's strategic overview is that since the end of the Cold War, Washington has orchestrated its gradual encirclement by unfriendly governments. The central European and Baltic countries of the old Soviet empire were drawn into Nato and European Union membership. Promises of the same were held out to Georgia and Ukraine, while pro-Western governments were encouraged and supported there. In Washington this was presented as the advancement of capitalism, democracy and human rights in place of the previous Communist regimes; from Moscow this simply looked threatening. Nostalgia for Russia's status as a rival superpower to America has added to the sense that Russian national pride is at stake.

The two European countries most sensitive to Russian anxieties are Germany and France, incidentally the only countries to have sent their armies marching to Moscow in the last two centuries. They have resisted applications for Nato membership from Georgia and Ukraine, while Britain has followed America's line. The overall strategic intentions are the same - to dissuade Russia from throwing its weight about and encourage it to live in peace with its neighbours. But the spirit of the Cold War has not completely died, and relations between Russia and the West have a tendency to become adversarial, as if each still embodied all the values the other most disliked - black and white, as on a chess board. Such situations easily degenerate into a vicious circle of mutual recrimination. The Franco-German understanding is that some of Russia's suspicions are better grounded than others, and that the sense of hostile encirclement is real and deeply felt. Britain could be more sympathetic to those fears. A bipolar Europe, Russia against the rest, does nobody any favours. Given Russia's powerful hold over European fuel supplies, even self-interest should indicate some accommodation.

Russia is a great nation that demands and deserves respect. It is a mistake to treat it as a defeated enemy which "lost the Cold War", rather than as a civilised country which liberated itself from tyranny by its own efforts. It has made progress towards democracy and human rights even if it is still some way from attaining the ideal. It also has a propensity for troublemaking and meddling in other countries' affairs, as Tsarist Russia did in the nineteenth century. But if Russia is treated like a bear - the national stereotype beloved by Victorian cartoonists - it will act like a bear, grumpy all the time and ferocious when cornered.