The cover of Ronald D. Asmus's book on the 2008 Georgia-Russia war features a queen casting a shadow behind a pawn. Two years after both the pawn and the queen put down their guns, Georgian officials say that their chess game with Russia continues.
To make that point, Georgia’s public television on August 7 interviewed two key government figures as they sat in front of a large chessboard. “A pawn can be promoted to a queen,” commented State Minister for Reintegration Temur Iakobashvili. That move happened for five days in August 2008 as other players on the world chessboard watched Georgia's struggle with Russia, he asserted. The "so-called little" war "had much meaning for the system of international relations," said Parliamentary Chairperson Davit Bakradze.
Asmus, as well as many other observers, indeed sees the Tbilisi-Moscow showdown as a manifestation of wider West vs. Russia turf wars. But as longtime Caucasus analyst Thomas de Waal noted, the book is a “satellite photograph” that fails to zoom in on the on-the-ground reality; a picture not as black-and-white as a chessboard.
Nonetheless, in remembering the war that cost them the remaining strips of Georgian-controlled territory in breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the government prefers a straight-forward message. On August 7, Georgia honored victims of the war and Internally Displaced Persons by holding concerts and lighting 5,000 candles in Gori, a town near South Ossetia that was occupied briefly by Russian troops. The ceremonies held a single message --- the battle with Russia will not be over until the queen retreats.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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