Caucasians behaving badly: Saturday news aggregation

16 August 2008, 2143 EDT

I have to say that the latest news is not encouraging. Forced labor in South Ossetia? The Georgians claiming, among other accusations that Abkhazians have seized 13 villages and a hydroelectric plant in Georgia proper?

In other words, it ain’t over until the Red Army Choir sings.

On a lighter note, Pravda reports that Saakashvili “clearly” had a nervous breakdown on TV because he “ate his tie.”

Ahh, the influence of YouTube.

(Video below the fold; warning, you may need to manually advance the time slider.)

Despite such efforts, as Vadim Nikitin writes at the Russian Foreign Policy Blog, the Russians clearly “lost” the public-relations war (via Global Voices Online).

Whitmore Brian sums up the case for Russian having planned the conflict. I still think we don’t have enough to evidence to say one way or another, but it is worth a read.

The larger theme for this week is clearly “the Return of Great Power Politics.” But most of the people pushing this line are thinking about the Cold War, not the Concert of Europe or even the old “Great Game.”

The video (he appears to briefly munch on his tie at 1:00)

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.