The 'Kosovo Precedent'

Writing in the National Interest, Ted Galen Carpenter suggests that America's recognition of Kosovo's independence set the table for Putin:

When the United States and its key European allies ignored Russia’s protests and recognized Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice blithely insisted that the Kosovo situation was unique and set no international precedent whatsoever. Prominent members of the foreign policy communities in Europe and the United States echoed her argument.

Moscow’s August 26 decision to recognize the independence of Georgia’s separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia demonstrates the arrogant folly of that position. In just a matter of months, the Kosovo precedent has backfired on the United States and generated dangerous tensions between Russia and the West.

Christopher Hitchens demurs in Slate, plausibly arguing that the Russians are merely using Kosovo as a handy excuse. I think Hitchens gets the better of this specific argument, but I think he's far too glib in over-looking the precedents the U.S. established in Kosovo.

Out-going editor of the National Interest, Nikolas K. Gvosdev, reviews some of the reasons proffered by Russia for their action in Georgia:

1) Russia had a right under "responsibility to protect" (R2P) to intervene to defend a civilian population and could intervene without the permission of the Georgian government or of any international body

2) Russia had a right as the "guarantor" of regional security

3) Russia had a right under prior agreements that created the cease-fire and peacekeeping missions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia

Gvosdev goes on to note that these rationales originated echo those made by the U.S., "at a time when the power of the U.S. individually and of the West collectively seemed to dwarf possible challengers and when the only real initiator of military action might be the United States. Will, in the future, proponents of R2P, for instance, want to see China use this as a rationale for action?"

This cuts to the question of whether international norms really do restrain nations. You heard a lot of concern several years ago that America's use of preventative war in Iraq would open the door to any number of countries taking similar actions under the rubric of self defense. That didn't happen. Not to say that preventative war was a good idea on the merits, but it does suggest that a lot more goes into the calculations of war and peace than the handy availability of fig leaves.

However, to the extent that international norms do exercise some kind of restraint on a nation's behavior, it seems to me that you would want to set the baselines as modestly and objectively as possible. That would mean abandoning subjective notions like R2P and preventative war and resetting to a position that rejects the acquisition of territory by military force.

Gvosdev goes on to wonder if "in the next several years we may see a return to enhancing the position that the international system should be defined by sovereignty and territorial integrity of states and the importance of the imprimatur of the Security Council for any military action other than self-defense, or perhaps the international system will become more anarchic. But I do think that some of the notions about an "international community" which were fashionable earlier may be coming in for some serious re-examination."

Put me down in the "anarchic" camp.

Is there any evidence, in either the McCain or Obama campaigns, that they pine for a return to an "international system... defined by sovereignty and territorial integrity of states and the importance of the imprimatur of the Security Council for any military action."

If anything, they seem to go out of their way to repudiate that system. Senator McCain has proposed a "League of Democracies" precisely because he wants to circumvent the veto-wielding autocracies on the Security Council. In the Obama camp, you have a number of people - including his top foreign policy adviser Susan Rice and now his VP pick, Joe Biden - who have urged the use of military force against the regime in Sudan for their internal crimes.