The Kremlin’s passport offensive, practiced since 2002, by which Russia “created”
its own citizens in a neighboring country, was not only an aggressive and clearly
hostile act, it was already in itself a violation of international law and a preparation
for the armed attack that would follow some years later. On August 8, 2008, President
Medvedev said: “I must protect the life and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they
are.”[23] And RIA Novosti wrote that “Russia had repeatedly warned Georgia that it would
resort to force to protect its citizens, which most South Ossetian residents are.”[24] Several authors have made comparisons with 1938. In 1994 Zbigniew Brzezinski had
already written: “The outspoken president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbaev, went
as far as to state publicly . . . that “any talk about the protection of Russians
living in Kazakhstan reminds one of the times of Hitler, who also started off with
the question of protecting Sudeten Germans.”[25] Comparisons with the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, might, on first
sight, seem exaggerated. Unfortunately, they are not. There are so many similarities
that the Czechoslovak case could almost have functioned as a blueprint for the events
in Georgia. Germany also started by considering a group of inhabitants of a neighboring
country as its own citizens. It financed the political party of the Sudeten Germans,
the Sudeten German Party (SdP) led by Konrad Henlein, and supported local militias
that committed terrorist acts. “The Sudeten Germans kept 40,000 men, in the shape
of free corps, on a war footing.”[26] The Abkhazian army, led by Russian officers, included up to ten thousand soldiers.
Additionally there were Abkhazian and South Ossetian private militias of ten thousand
to fifteen thousand men. This brought the armed militias inside Georgia to a total
of up to twenty-five thousand men.[27] In Czechoslovakia the militias caused trouble and made mischief and asked to be
incorporated into the Reich
This crisis has brought:
The first massive use of the military forces by Russia or the former Soviet Union outside its borders since the Soviet Union’s intervention against Afghanistan . . . ;
The first intervention against an independent country in Europe since the Soviet Union’s intervention against Czechoslovakia in 1968;
The first intervention against an independent country in Europe that led to unilateral changes in internationally recognized borders in Europe since the late 1930s and early 1940s. Particular similarities of these events and the roles being played this year by some international players with the events and roles played by some international players in 1938 are especially troubling.”[28]
The role of the players in 1938 is well-known. One of the leading
