Now Georgians are Americans

This viewpoint by Russian soldiers and the Russian volunteers that rushed to S. Ossetia to fight is a curious viewpoint. Georgia is a new republic and has been encouraged by the Bush Administration to integrate into the Western world. However Georgia is not so Americanized but rather becoming integrated into Europe and the European Union. Most of the trade and investment in Georgian businesses and natural resource development has been from Europe not America.

America’s input has been basically training and upgrading it’s military. Primarily for America’s own interest in building foreign sources that can help in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The BTC pipeline was encouraged by the Clinton Administration as an alternative to Russian dominance as a supplier to Europe’s oil and gas demands. BP (Britain) is the dominant partner in this venture and Chevron (USA) is a minor partner.

However the culture of Freedom is American and America has managed to dominate popular culture in Europe for decades. The institutions WTO, NATO, UN were all created by America. Curiously these institutions were basically a gift to the western world so that economic prosperity could increase and conflicts between nations could be soothed to decrease the chance of devastation on the European continent.

America really did not need NATO, UN and WTO since America was a self-sufficient country and had limited risk of war happening within its own borders. However after fighting two major wars because of European conflicts, America decided no more if we could help it and decided it was better to remold European institutions. The major countries Germany and Japan had total makeovers, since they were the aggressors.

Russians have been accustom to thinking that USA is the enemy since the end of WWII. So it not surprising that it is easy to slip back in that thinking. USA has led in the effort to seduce the former Soviet Republics to the west and enjoy the prosperity and peace the west has enjoyed. This is a seductive vision. But to leave government security to the risk of free enterprise is frightening and difficult.

Americans had over 100 years of self-rule with very limited oversight to develop the culture and rules that governed themselves. The colonists were risk takers and decided to carve out of the wilderness farms and towns and face possibly hostile native populations. Capitalist economic system was normal for centuries in England so that was normal, but America just eliminated the class system that restricted a person’s ability to rise to his potential. This bred self-confidence and self-reliance into the American people and taking risks is an accepted part of life.

Americans take that for granted but other cultures that have been used to authoritarian rule like Czarist Russia and the USSR do not have the culture that one has to take care of them selves and not expect to be taken care of by their overlord or government. The USSR devolved into criminal oligarchs that took control of the major means of productions again shutting out the private entrepreneur. Russia did not have the code of justice (common law) that helped equalize the parties in disputes. Russians are more comfortable with a strong ruler to take care of them and their interests and have a lot of pride in country. The move to a capitalist economy was very difficult and without centuries of common law that American had inherited from England, did quickly devolve to the strongest people win and the weakest lose in the capital economy. Putin did break up that dominance by oligarchs and just substituted his own people like Medevev at Gazprom

So in the Russian mindset the border republics belong to either Russia or America. When Georgia challenged Russia then they must be America and this was an American idea.
So Cossacks and other volunteers and even the Russian soldiers think they are getting a chance to fight America since Georgia is our proxy.

Iraq was an attraction to all those jihadists to get a chance to kill Americans. Most were not from Iraq but from all other countries that took the chance, Iraq was the flypaper that brought all those to a location where they could be killed and observers could learn that fighting Americans is a losing proposition.

Probably a lot of Russians were thinking the same. After all under the feudal system an overlord protects his subject countries like Russia did to S. Ossetia, it is normal for them to think that Georgia’s overlord, the USA would do the same. Certainly Georgia’s president thought the same way. Georgia provided troops to its overlord in Iraq and thus under feudal rules the overlord will protect them when they are attacked.

The Russian asking if the Georgian man was going to the Americans makes perfect sense in this cultural viewpoint.