Independence for Abkhazia and South Ossetia?

A reliable source sends me a flash message at this early hour: the Russians have recognized them. Quite a silly think to do for a rampaging imperial power that could easily have just absorbed the little territories. Though I’m sure the reaction in the US will be this is absorption in all but name. I wonder what the reaction will be in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Wait, no I don’t.

These two statelets are problems Georgia has never been able to resolve, and we must remember going forward that they are not the mere creations of Moscow. They have had a few colorable claims to sovereignty as it is — probably Abkhazia’s being the stronger one — and from a plain perspective, if the model of defusing conflict by breaking up states containing very restive enclaves was right in Yugoslavia, it is probably right in Georgia, too — and was before the Russians came. Debacliciously, had the West pressed Georgia to let those statelets go, we’d be in a far different and better situation today.

So for reasons like those I think Western recognition of the pair should be swift, accompanied with a statement making it clear HOW and WHY recognition can be conferred for reasons other than the force situation on the ground. Indeed, recognition affords the West a powerful opportunity to explain to Russia that once you play this game, you must play it fair, i.e. both statelets must not become mere Russian garrison states. Sure, there will be bases. But we know how this works; we know the difference between Qatar and Kosovo. Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been stubborn obstacles to the normalization of the international system in Georgia, in a way that makes it extraordinarily difficult and even moot to ascribe fault. The main obstacle to integration, in my view, was our alliance with Georgia, and our desire to bolster Saakashvili’s regime. Now it strikes me that that obstacle, too, is pretty moot: the best way to keep Saakashvili in power (as shaky as he is, the alternative is probably worse) is to help a consolidated Georgia, free of fiercely independent ‘autonomous’ regions that it never could recapture, press the Russians back to internationally recognized borders, new and old, through a series of intense diplomatic moves (i.e. more sticks than carrots. But please use sticks the Russians care about, and not ones that will damage our own institutions, like the G8).

UPDATE: the wire report.