RUSSO-GEORGIAN WAR OF AUGUST 2008: CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES AND NATIONAL PROJECTS IN THE ERA OF HYBRID WARFARE

Abstract

The article purports that the underlying reasons behind the Russo- Georgian War that erupted in August 2008 were Georgia’s aspirations to join the Western security institutions and Russia’s strong opposition to such developments. The conflict is largely regarded as Russia’s aggression against a neighbouring sovereign country, although flavoured with intra-Georgian ethno-political cleavages. For years, the discussion has focused on the midnight attack on August 7, executed by Georgian forces on the town of Tskhinvali, a stronghold of Ossetian separatists, violating peace keeping accords signed back in the 1990s. The following article attempts to analyse the logic behind that risky military action taken by the Georgian government. The article applies the concept of hybrid warfare that is generally understood as a combination of actions, blurring the lines between war and peace, through the engagement of special and irregular military units, diplomatic, economic and informational measures, and support for radical anti-governmental forces operating within the borders of the targeted country, creating fertile ground for conventional military intervention under the guise of peace enforcement. The author retrospectively applies this recently acknowledged concept and argues that Georgia has been under Russia’s hybrid attack at least since 2006. Thus, it could be argued that then President Mikheil Saakashvili ordered the attack on Tskhinvali under the stress of the dire circumstances described in the article. The international community, either unaware of or simply reluctant to acknowledge Russia’s hybrid warfare approach, regarded Georgia’s actions as disproportionate. However, today, when this form of aggression is increasingly deemed as the beginning of conventional military intervention against sovereign countries, new analytical light can be shed on the Russo-Georgian war in general, and on the events of August 7 in particular. The author purports that in that moment an all-out war could have been avoided if a) the Georgian government had surrendered; or b) if the international community had intervened in a decisive manner. However, neither was feasible.