A Georgian friend of mine had this to say about it.
I could not disagree more strongly about her approach.
Here is my response:
This persistent anti-Russianess has to stop. It's not doing you or your country and people any good.
Some facts: countries fly planes around and into other countries airspaces all the time. It may not be perfectly right, but it does happen all the time.
A few years ago an American spy plane was alongside or inside Chinese airspace and collided with one of the Chinese fighters that were sent to intercept it. Where is America, where is China? What was that spy plane doing there? The fighter plane crashed (the pilot died if memory serves me right). The American spy plane limped to a Chinese airport and when the Chinese released the airplane it was transported back to America in a Russian transport plane as a favor to America (the Americans it turned out had no way to get the aircraft back to America).
Was what the Americans did right? Of course not. May I ask where your outraged blog post about that was?
In the months leading up to the Russian Georgian war, Georgia started to fly (unmanned) spy planes over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. You may say that Abkhazia and South Ossetia is part of Georgia, but that's irrelevant. The cease fire agreements prohibited those flights. I've read those cease fire agreements and their very specific on this matter.
May I ask you where your protests were about that?
When the matter was brought to the UN by the Russians (despite American backing of the Georgians) Georgia agreed to stop the flights (which in my mind is a admission of guilt).
Are there any Georgian overflights today? Is that even thinkable? No. It was a stupid thing to do, and Georgia has paid the price.
Again, where were your protests about that?
This of course doesn't make the Russians right (though to be honest with you, this is a nuanced issue: the northern border of Canada with Russia is disputed territory and the UN is in the process of settling the issue). But the point is Russia is not acting outside normal international standards here.
Another point is that the perpetual anti-Russianess isn't helpful. If we keep painting Russia as an evil belligerent state, Russia will end up that way. As a matter of fact, that process is well underway: two decades of treating Russia like garbage has gotten us a Russia that is rightfully suspicious and resentful of our intentions. If we are going to be biased and hateful we're going to get (are getting) the Russia we deserve.
So let's not send our musicians to Moscow to mock the Russians. Let's seek to understand and deal with the Russians on fair terms.
President Obama seems to have understood how important this is.
Finally you talk about how Russia takes more liberties with Georgia than with Canada because we're so big and powerful and Georgia is so weak. This will come as a shock to you, but Georgia's military is more capable than Canada's. Russia pressures Canada less than Georgia, because the Americans protect us.
You should ask yourself a different question: why does does the US protect Canadian interests so well, while Russia is interested in destroying Georgia? It's clearly not because the US is a nicer country: the US has done (and is doing) the exact same kind of thing in other countries that Russia is doing in Georgia. Amnesty international places the death toll in Iraq as a result of the war at 500,000. That's about 10% of the population of Georgia. In Afghanistan the death toll is also horrific. And that's just right now: read about the US in Vietnam, central America, Iran and so on.
The reason the US treats us like gold, is the same reason why Russia treats Armenia like gold: we manage our relationship better.
I hope you'll rise above the painful past that Georgia has had with Russia to see the necessity of this.
Continually looking at Russia from a one-sided, biased view is only making things worse.
