Totten on South Ossetian Independence

Michael Totten has a dispatch out describing the differences between the South Ossetia independence movement and the Kosovo equivalent.

South Ossetia is more ambiguous. Unlike Abkhazia, that district did begin in the post-Soviet era with an ethnic Ossetian majority, but ethnic Georgians made up nearly a third of its population until most were driven out by Russia’s invasion last month.

Kosovo was not created by ethnic cleansing. Ethnic Albanians did not need to drive out Serbs in order to create a space where they were a majority with the plausible ability to secede. They made up the overwhelming majority before a single shot was fired in the 1999 war, just as they make up the overwhelming majority now.