Georgia's Former President Warns That Putin Won't Stop at Crimea

Vladimir Putin has sent Russian troops — albeit ones who refuse to admit they're Russian — into a democratic, autonomous former Soviet republic in order to take control of a portion of the country that has strong Russian ties. He has done so under the guise of protecting ethnic Russians, Russian citizens, and Russian speakers, and he appears poised to effectively annex parts of the country for Russia — assuming, of course, that he can be convinced to stop short of conquering the entire nation.

Everyone knows Putin has done this. What many people seem to forget, however, is that Putin has done this twice.

That is one of the points made in a Guardian op-ed written by former Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili. He seeks not only to remind the world that Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 in remarkably similar circumstances, but also to warn the world that, in Saakashvili's estimation, Putin will go on to invade more of Ukraine — and perhaps even other countries altogether — if his aggression goes unpunished yet again.

Six years ago, South Ossetia was an autonomous region of Georgia that resembled Crimea in several ways; Russian soldiers maintained a presence there, and many citizens felt a stronger kinship to Russia than they did to Georgia. Fighting broke out on the evening of August 7 — there is disagreement about who or what started it — and after Russia took control of South Ossetia, the military proceeded to advance further into Georgia. Five days after the first shots were fired, the Russians appeared poised to storm the capital, Tbilisi. Diplomats from the EU then helped broker a peace deal, and Russian troops pulled back. South Ossetia and another former region of Georgia, Abkhazia, are now frozen states recognized by only a handful of other countries.

When Russia invaded Georgia, both Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush said, "Russian aggression must not go unanswered." But it did. The EU formed the Tagliavini Commission to investigate what happened, and about nine months later the commission issued a report in which it concluded little more than that an armed conflict had occurred in Georgia in August of 2008. The world moved on.

In his op-ed, Saakashvili used the hot-button word appeasement. This was surely no accident; there have been many comparisons to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis made by both sides in the Crimean conflict about both sides in the Crimean conflict. And British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement — ceding part of Czechoslovakia to the invading Germans in 1938 — has long been considered not only one of Britain's less-proud moments, but also a figurative red carpet laid out for Hitler to invade other countries in Europe, which led to World War II.

Today, it appears the West is prepared to cede Crimea to Putin, just as it did South Ossetia and Abkhazia. "Looking back," Saakashvili writes of the 2008 invasion and its aftermath, "this gave Putin the sense he could get away with a similar adventure closer to Europe's heartland, in a country whose population is 10 times greater than Georgia's…. I have no doubt that in Ukraine, Russia's goal is the same as in Georgia. It is not limited to the restive regions, and I am fully convinced that Putin is as eager to take over Kiev in 2014 as he was to take Tbilisi in 2008."