Is South Ossetia Another Kosovo?
Originally @ Stanford Progressive Two principal tenets of democratic government in the modern era are the justification and the consistency of official policy. In the realm of international relations, these ideals are paramount in maintaining the appearance of legitimacy when policy regarding foreign states is formulated. The juxtaposition of the South Ossetian War with the Kosovo War, however, exposes the willingness of governments to forego these democratic principles. It showcases the hypocrisy of Russian and American foreign policy towards new nation-states proclaiming independence. Both governments have firmly established self-contradictory positions between the two situations that hint at underlying self-interested political motives. In August 2008, tensions boiled over between Georgia and South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two northern regions of Georgia bordering Russia. The two provinces, which both declared their independence in 1991 and then recognized each other as independen