Security Council Fails To Adopt Resolution Extending Mandate Of Georgia

A lot of people are pretty upset about the fact that Russia vetoed resolution S/2009/310.

Here is a fairly typical reaction: Russia Used Its Right To Veto.

You may be interested to read the text of the resolution: Security Council Fails To Adopt Resolution Extending Mandate Of Georgia.

What you may not know is that Russia's only requirement to extend the mission was that removal of references to previous resolutions which afermed Georgia's territorial integrity.

Regardless of how (or how strongly) you feel about Georgia's territorial integrity, it's hard to escape the fact that it was Georgia that tied the UN mandate to the territorial integrity not the Russians. The Russians did not asked for any kind of recognition to extend the UN mandate, they just wanted it not mentioned.

Here's a graph of how often Security Council members have used their veto powers:

Since the fall of the Soviet Union (the bit marked in red on the graph), it looks to me that Russia has used it's veto one tenth as often as the US. The US seems to have used it's veto powers more than all the other members combined.

Not having the UN in Abkhazia will only push it closer to Russia (it's pretty close already, but still). In my view Georgia's inflexibility is doing it more harm than good.