Sir, Once again, a British Foreign Secretary falls into line behind the American lead, no matter how misplaced the latter is. Oh, for some independent thinking in Whitehall.

A massive — and misguided — Georgian attack on the South Ossetian capital becomes a “Georgian military response” to “South Ossetian provocation”. Capture the language, of course, and you capture the argument. Except in this case, the Foreign Secretary makes the mistake of egregious comparisons with Chechnya and Zimbabwe.

Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation; and to my knowledge, there are no secessionist areas threatening the territorial integrity of Zimbabwe. In both these instances, despite our horror at human rights abuses, there is an argument that their respective governments are responsible for internal affairs. That has never been agreed between South Ossetia and Georgia.

It is a fact that this small ethnically homogenous area is split from its natural home with the larger North Ossetia, part of the Russian Federation. There is no doubt that the people concerned are far more inclined to the Russians than to the Georgians. That is the core of the problem — the Ossetian determination to be free of Georgian rule.

Mr Miliband disingenuously calls upon Russia to follow international law, setting its future “as part of a rules-based international system”. I wish he had said as much at the time of the Iraq invasion, or, more recently, the Israeli attack on Lebanon.

I fear that, once again the Anglo-American axis is overplaying its hand with potentially disastrous results.

Peter Kilfoyle, MP
Walton, Liverpool

Sir, It is astonishing that the British media have so wholeheartedly swallowed the default position of hostility towards Moscow expressed by the Western security establishment, without critiquing this stance, or analysing the Russian perspective. Any survey of Western coverage will show the paucity of balance on an issue which is self-evidently not clear-cut. Western journalists (and politicians) seem to take the view that Russia has no right to influence the Caucasus, or exploit its own mineral wealth, while the West has every right to intervene in the Balkans or influence (and even occupy on occasion) countries in the Middle East in pursuit of its political and economic interests. Such hypocrisy is no basis for a reasoned argument with a country that is an increasingly important power in the multipolar international system we are moving towards.

John Slinger
Rugby

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