The outbreak of war in Georgia is a disaster for the people of the Caucasus, creating thousands of casualties and refugees and further destabilising a region already beset with tensions.

Much of the blame for this conflict has been attributed to Russia. Gordon Brown and David Miliband have endorsed US assertions that ‘Russia’s aggression must not go unanswered’. But what of NATO aggression? The question as to the wider issues of this conflict have been completely disregarded. The western media attributes the conflict in Georgia to ‘ethnic hatreds’ and ‘historical grudges’. In doing so, it forgets the long experience of great power rivalry in the locality where Europe and Asia meet, which is now the hub of an important energy transit route.

Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s pro-western president is an important ally of the US in the region. Saakashvili took US support for Georgia’s membership of NATO as direct encouragement of its conflict with Russia. NATO’s eastward expansion to Russia’s borders, together with the siting of US Missile defence bases in Poland and the Czech Republic and the new US bases established in Central Asia, is seen by Russia as a direct threat to its interests.

Russia has its own imperialist ambitions. And it is still effectively run by its prime minister, Vladimir Putin, the former KGB colonel and the butcher of Chechnya. But Putin can teach the US little when it comes to invasion and war.

Fundamentally, despite portrayals in the Western media, this is not just a “little local difficulty” between Russia and Georgia. It is part of a drive to war across the globe that has characterised the eight years of George Bush’s US presidency.

Few people can have failed to register the breath-taking hypocrisy of George Bush’s denunciation of Russia for ‘invading a sovereign neighbouring state’ The originator of the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq already bears responsibility for the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and the daily misery and suffering of the peoples of those countries.

It is under this hypocrisy and spread of violence that Cambridge Stop the War Coalition have called a meeting to discuss the wider implications of this outbreak of conflict in yet another area of the globe.

Guest speakers Kate Hudson (Chair of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) and Lindsey German (National Stop the War Coalition Officer) will join the public meeting on Thursday 11th September at 7.30pm Friends Meeting House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge


*Join the protest, bring the troops home - Manchester 20 September*

War in the Caucasus has highlighted the growing danger of war spreading. Seven years after the start of the war on terror, occupation continues to bring misery to Iraq and Afghanistan but the consequences of the war are spreading.

Protestors will be demonstrating at the Labour Party conference to demand troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Coaches from Cambridge will leave at 8am from Victoria Avenue (next to Midsummer Common). £10 student/ unwaged, £15 working, £20 solidarity.
Call 07817 196042 or email  cambridge@stopwar.org.uk to book a seat on the coach.