My past two posts have focused on the importance of the metaphors used to describe the Russia/Georgia conflict. In this post I look at the larger story that the metaphors help tell.
In “Framing the Wars in the Gulf and Bosnia: The Rhetorical Definitions of the Western Power Leaders in Action” in The Journal of Peace Research Riikka Kuusisto argues that a handful of stories explain and therefore determine U.S. foreign policy. These stories put the events into a context or narrative, explain the motives of the actors and ultimately determine the appropriate response.
Borrowing heavily from Hayward Alker, Kenneth Burke and others, Kuusisto writes that two common stories are heroic tales and tragic plots. A heroic tale has a white knight rushing in to rescue a maiden, while a tragic plot has inevitable demise to it, it is a nightmare from which the characters cannot escape. A heroic tale has a victim, a victor and a vanquished – there is a maiden who is pure, a dragon that is evil, a tower in which the maiden is kept, and a kingdom to which she can return. The motives are easily understood, the lines clear and action obvious. The first Gulf War provided an example of a heroic tale with Kuwait playing the role of the maiden and Hussein the role of the dragon. The U.S., of course, was the White Knight that drove the dragon back into its lair and then rode into the sunset. Conflicts in Eastern Europe often get defined as tragic plots. There are decades old – sometimes centuries old – ethnic and religious divisions, with countries cobbled together by various treaties pulling apart at their artificial seams. There may be evil-doers, but it is unclear who the good guys are and there is no clear order to restore.
Seen in this framework, the implications for the definition of the Georgia/Russia conflict are clear. (As an aside, does it matter if the conflict is Russia/Georgia or Georgia/Russia?) If this is Cold War II: Return of the Kremlin then Georgia is the innocent victim being mercilessly marauded by Moscow. We know the role the US and West play in this movie – we’re heroes protecting outposts of civilization. If on the other hand there are break-away republics, a Krazy Kremlin and a power hungry local leader in Georgia trying to cobble together his own kingdom by forcing innocent ethnic minorities to join his own little empire, then there is no clear role for the U.S. or other western powers, it is unclear who needs to be rescued from whom, and once rescued precisely where they should go. We’ve seen this movie as well, and it ends badly.
How Russia/Georgia conflict gets defined, the narrative into which it gets placed, will determine in large part how the presidential candidates talk about it and how Western leaders respond to it.
