Svante Cornell of John's Hopkins Central Asian-Caucasus Institute does a far better job of tearing into Russia, possibly because he's not interested in exculpating failed neoconservative adventurism.
See: <link>
But on to Hitchens:
"Russia had never expressed any interest in Ossetian or Abkhazian micronationalisms, while Georgia was an integral part of the Soviet Union. It is thus impossible to avoid the suspicion that these small peoples are being used as "strategic minorities" ..."
Circumstances change interests and priorities.
It well may be impossible to avoid a suspicion - if it is one of the premises with which you begin.
My suspicion is that Bush pissed off Putin and Georgia provided a convenient opportunity to respond.
"Kosovo, which was legally part of Yugoslavia but not of Serbia was never manipulated as part of the partition or intervention plan of another country—the United States, in fact, spent far too long on the pretense that the Yugoslav federation could be saved—and, for a lengthy period, pursued its majority-rule claims by passive resistance and other nonviolent means."
The KLA maybe didn't have the military power at the disposal of Milosevic regime, but they were guilty of their share of brutality.
"Does anybody remember the speeches in which the Russian ambassador to the United Nations asked the General Assembly or Security Council to endorse his country's plan .... I look at the newspaper editorials every day, waiting to see who will be the first to use the word unilateral in the same sentence as the name Russia. .... Yet U.N. Resolution 1441, warning Saddam Hussein of serious consequences, was the fruit of years of thwarted diplomacy and was passed without a dissenting vote."
Russia didn't try to pretend that it had UN backing. Hussein responded to UN resolutions by allowing inspections. 1441 didn't authorize invasion and occupation.
"Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia ever even remotely intends to sponsor any statehood claims for the tiny local populations of Ossetia and Abkhazia? On the contrary, these peoples will be reassimilated into the Russian empire."
I sat next to an immigrant from Armenia at an outdoor concert in Passadena just two weeks ago. She is a psychologist, who used to have a secure professional career. She lamented the break up of the USSR, because the economy went to hell and now she has to work as a retail clerk in the US to put her kids through college. How many Ossetians and Abkhazians have asked for statehood? Kosovo's 1.8 M is substantially bigger than Abkhazia's 350,000 or S. Osasetia'a 70,000.
"... the whole emphasis of Western policy in the Balkans has been on de-emphasizing ethnic divisions; ... Russian behavior in the Caucasus (and indeed the Balkans) ... is explicitly based on an outright appeal to sectarianism, nationalism, and—even worse—confessionalism.
Wanting to keep Kosovo part of Serbia is about creating nationalist divisions?
"The fans of moral equivalence may or may not have noticed this,..."
Criticizing flawed geopolitical analysis and policies is not to make an argument for moral equivalence; apparently Hitchens is such a moralist he can't tell the difference.
