The EU has just released a report concluding that Georgia was unjustified in international law in starting the short 2008 war with Russia over South Ossetia.
Here’s what baffles me. The EU recognizes South Ossetia as part of Georgia. And the EU report is quoted as saying that Russia was engaged in a “surreptitious military build-up” in South Ossetia in the build-up to the war. If we are talking about jus ad bellum and not jus in bello–when it’s permissible to go to war, not what it’s permissible to do in war–then I just don’t see how it can be correct from the legal, moral, or political perspective to hold Georgia at fault if South Ossetia is indeed part of Georgia.
On the other hand, the case for insisting on South Ossetia remaining part of Georgia, apparently against the wishes of its people, is murky. From the perspective of a state’s internal law, it’s easy to see that secession can be illegal. Look at our own Civil War. But by what right does the international community deprive the South Ossetians of “the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them”?
I think that public international war has become hopelessly muddled. It seeks to delegitimize the use of force even in cases that seem clearly to call for force. (That’s not to say that Georgia was wise to attack the Russians–one of the classic blunders is: “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”, after all). On the other hand, is seeks, in the name, I suppose, of stability, to make what should be political questions–the relationship of South Ossetia to Georgia, for example–into legal questions.
TedF
My guess is the EU doesn’t want to offend Russia and since Georgia is not an EU member they don’t have to back it up.