Oddly enough talking about police retaining their command structures I was looking up – as one does – Transnistria today. A most interesting couple of wiki pages gave amazing detail on the War of Transnistria and how the police forces were centrally involved. That said, am I wrong in thinking that we’re talking about fairly militarised police forces in these contexts?

Don’t get me wrong Mark P, I’m aware of how contingent such things are… but… it’s fascinating to see the theory bend under the pressure of the real. Incidentally I’m not sure that international law is entirely meaningless, even if only to hold up as an aspirational standard. And work it does on that level, although imperfectly.

Basis for this comment?

“Self determination and sovereignty” have only ever existed to the extent that it suits great powers to play word games, or to the extent that they can be enforced with guns. There are no rules or principles beyond that and there never has been. It’s like anything else connected to that meaningless term “international law”, meaningless.

“democracy promotion”

An Orwellian euphemism if ever there was one. It means funding Western stooges, both on the political scene and amongst the plethora of useless NGOs this part of the world seems to be overflowing with.

“And no doubt a similar process is in train inside Georgia proper against those identified with South Ossetia.”

I get the impression that part of the Russian activity btween Gori and South Ossetia has been to let loose Ossetian irregulars to loot Georgian villages. All under the guise of “peace-keeping” and even better “restoring law and order”.

The BBC News were saying “the ceasefire appears fragile”. Hmm. Perhaps “the ceasefire is having an existential crisis”.

The Russian troops who’d started driving round in circles when they left Gori did seem a bit like the Wolfe Tones song
# We’re on the one road, sharing the one load
We’re on the road to God Knows where
It may be the right road, it may be the wrong road
But we’re together now who cares? #

I don’t think enough attention has been paid to the ethnic national claims of the Ossetians? They don’t seem too enamoured with the Russians either.

As for the Abkhaz, is it tenable to give a nation state status to a territory which doesn’t even have an ethnic majority in its own zone? Before the 1990 war, only 18% of Abkhazia was Abkhaz, and today its still a mere 45%. And still, this is only 45% of 200,000 people! Abkhazian identity seems weak to be honest. I mean, of course there is no perfect standard to judge the merits of a nations claims to self-determination, but I don’t think Abkhazia warrants the humiliation of Georgian sovereignty.