80% of learning...

There's an old axiom that says most of learning at college takes place outside the classroom. It doesn't take very long to figure out how true that is, and we're fortunate at Dartmouth to have a lot of really great opportunities for extending our education beyond the classroom walls.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking about the crisis in Georgia with my fellow blogger and intern Jeff. I remember saying to him "Man, I wish I were taking classes now so I could actually have a discussion about what is going on." Sure enough, about a week later I got an email from the government department administrative assistant about a panel discussion that was taking place on that very subject. Turns out that Dartmouth has three of the most qualified people in the country to have this discussion.

The panel was led and organized by Ken Yalowitz, the Director of the Dickey Center for International Understanding here at Dartmouth. Now, I'd always known that Mr. Yalowitz was a former US Ambassador. I'd no idea that his assignment happened to be Georgia (1998-2001). The next panelist was Professor William Wohlforth, chair of the Government Department here at Dartmouth. Again, I knew that Prof Wohlforth was one of the top international relations scholars - particularly concerning big-power politics - in the country; I didn't know he's also an expert on Russian foreign policy. Finally, the last panelist was Professor Bridget Coggins, a heavy hitter when it comes to state creation and succession. So between the three of them, we had pretty much every perspective covered.

The discussion began at 4 last Thursday and the panelists spoke for about half an hour before opening it up for questions. Their perspectives were fascinating. Professor Wohlforth basically said that there wasn't anything particularly "Russian" about Russia's response to Georgia's action in South Ossetia. He said that it was responding like any other great power would. For example, he said, if 16 American peacekeepers were killed in a state in Mexico, one wouldn't have to look back to Manifest Destiny to explain how and why America would react. Similarly, Russia doesn't want Ukraine, Georgia, and the other Caucasian states to join NATO for the same reasons that the U.S. wouldn't want Canada or Mexico to join a hostile alliance: basically, and for a lot of reasons, it wouldn't be prudent. Since NATO denied Russia's request to join the organization twice in the 1990s, the Kremlin has every reason to treat NATO as a hostile alliance. The final important point I took away from Wohlforth is that the only difference between Yeltsin and Putin/Medvedev is Russia's capability to achieve their goals - that is, their foreign policy goals were and are largely the same; the only difference is that Russia was broke in the early 90s, and that's no longer the case today.

Meanwhile, Yalowitz seemed to imply that Georgia was baited here - that it was provoked by South Ossetian rebels (who would have had tacit Russian support) - and Russia actually wanted it to attack Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. If Russia was indeed the provocateur, then Wohlforth's argument is essentially irrelevant. At any rate, Yalowitz's familiarity with Georgian history and insight into its government was incredibly helpful and informative.

Finally, Coggins used her knowledge of separatist movements around the world to put South Ossetia and Abkhazia into context for the rest of us. By comparison (to the Tamil Tiger Rebels in Sri Lanka, for example) the movements in these two Georgian enclaves are relatively small and non-violent. She also explained the number of ways that Ossetia and Abkhazia are different from Kosovo.

Then it was time for questions, and lo and behold the audience members turned out to be as impressive as the panelists. More than a few people had very intimate knowledge or, barring that, were very passionate about the situation. One man, for example, had just come back after spending ten years in Georgia living with friends and was obviously very emotional as he asked, toward the end of the session, "How is this going to end?" Another woman who, it should be noted, had an Eastern-European accent, had a different opinion, lambasting President of Georgia Saakashvili's administration and stopping just short of calling him a criminal. Once again, one got the feeling that Hanover is much larger and more cosmopolitan than the almanac would suggest.

As for me, I'm not sure where this is heading. As Wohlforth pointed out, I like we're likely to see the majority of players (including the NATO nations and NATO hopefuls) in this conflict break into two camps once the conflict ends. On one hand, there will be countries (France and Germany, probably), that will be reluctant to let states like Ukraine and Georgia join NATO because they will fear being pulled into another conflict with Russia. 40% of natural gas in Europe comes from Russia, and our European NATO allies will have very little room to negotiate when it comes to an issue that Russia sees as a direct threat to its security. On the other hand, the United States will feel a strong need to protect the fragile (and relatively successful) Georgian democracy, not to mention its oil pipeline - the only one in the Causasus that does not go through Russia. The Causasian states themselves seem to be torn - the silence of Azerbaijan and Armenia has been deafening, but Viktor Yushchenko, the western-leaning President of Ukraine, has pledged his staunch support to Georgia and is trying to use his leverage over Russia's Black Sea fleet, which is stationed at the Ukrainian port at Sevastopol, to put pressure on the Kremlin. Meanwhile, he's reiterated his country's need to join NATO, even while the tensions in Georgia show no signs of easing.

And in fact, they keep getting worse. Today, Russia announced its official recognition of South Ossetia and Abhkazia as free independent states and in doing so has upped the ante considerably. I really don't know what the next move is. But I'm definitely looking forward to the start of the fall term when the '09s will be back and classes will be in session and I can try to figure this all out with some of the best international relations scholars in the country.