1. "Russia had never expressed any interest in Ossetian or Abkhazian micronationalisms, while Georgia was an integral part of the Soviet Union."
The assumption here is that Russia needed to "want S. Ossetia and Abkhazia", not the other way around. In fact, in monitored elections and voting, over 90% of S. Ossetians said that they wanted to belong to Russia, not Georgia. But the wishes of the S. Ossetian people has been completely ignored in order to male the case against Russia.
2.Kosovo, which was legally part of Yugoslavia but not of Serbia was never manipulated as part of the partition or intervention plan of another country"
That is just plain stupid. Kosovo was part of Serbia before there was a Yugoslavia, which is why Kosovo and all the major cities in it bear Serbian, not Albanian, names. Kosovo never had the legal right to secede from Yugoslavia that the other republics did, nor were "Albanians" ever considered a constituent people of Yugoslavia when Yugoslavia existed -- "Yugoslavia" translates to land of the South Slavs and Albanians are not Slavs, they were aliens and in many cases, illegal aliens.
3.Does anybody remember the speeches in which the Russian ambassador to the United Nations asked the General Assembly or Security Council to endorse his country's plan to send land, air, and sea forces deep into the territory and waters of a former colony that is now a U.N. member state?"
Does anyone remember the UN GRANTING that permission to us? No, we went ahead without it, so who the point is?
4.The six former constituent republics of Yugoslavia, which all exercised their pre-existing constitutional right to secede from rule by Belgrade, are seated as members of the United Nations, as, indeed, is Georgia. Twenty out of 27 states of the European Union have also recognized the government of Kosovo as an entity de jure as well as de facto. The Kosovar population is estimated at 1.8 million, which makes it larger than that of some existing E.U. member states. Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia ever even remotely intends to sponsor any statehood claims for the tiny local populations of Ossetia and Abkhazia?"
The S. Ossetian and Abkhazians are small numbers of people who seem to recognize that they are too small to survive on their own so they aren't asking for "independence" from anyone other than to be free of Georgia. And this is our business, how?
5. Heartbreakingly difficult though the task has been, and remains, the whole emphasis of Western policy in the Balkans has been on de-emphasizing ethnic divisions; subsidizing cities and communities that practice reconciliation; and encouraging, for example, Serbs and Albanians to cooperate in Kosovo."
This is too stupid for words. We let the Albanians drive out virtually every non-Albanian including Serbs, Roma and Gorani, destroy hundreds of Christian churches, and sell Serbs for body parts, and this is what Hitchens calls "reconciliation and cooperation between Serbs and Albanians"? What an idiot!
6. Those who like to describe Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev as reacting to an "encirclement" of Russia may wish to spill some geopolitical ink on explaining how Kosovo forms part of this menacing ring of steel
Irrelevant. Kosovo set the precedent that the US could do anything it wants, irrespective of international law, thousands of miles from its borders. That alone was enough of a threat to Russia to bring someone like Putin to power to overcome the sense of shame Russia felt over Kosovo.
Hitchens is a bitter old drunk, whose chief claim to fame is a book called "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything", a tribute to nihilistic atheism. This has made Hitchens a useful tool for Islam, as he thinks that most Christians are morons and as such, Hitchens could never even begin to understand Kosovo.
I'm glad that NATO - not Russia - is in control of Kosovo, and I look forward to Georgia and Ukraine joining the alliance.
You may be right about Kosovo but you are indulging in a little selective history of your own about South Ossetia aren't you?
The May 1920 operation launched by Georgian forces was in response to an uprising staged largely by Ossetians living in the region of Shida Kartli, the historic Georgian name for what is now South Ossetia. It was the third such uprising in as many years.Historian Bondo Kupatadze says the uprisings were the work of the Bolsheviks, who harnessed the Ossetians' separatist leanings in an attempt to reabsorb Georgian territory and restore the former borders of the Russian Empire.
(snip)
Within years, however, Georgia had been incorporated into the USSR -- complete with an autonomous District of South Ossetia, created by the Soviets in appreciation for the Ossetians' role in destabilizing Georgia.
You conveniently leave out the purposeful manipulation of the Ossetian population by the Russian Bolsheviks, which included moving Russians in to the Ossetian region to alter the makeup of the population, to bring about the submission of Georgia to the Soviets.