Grant:
Which would be terrible; but can't you see the irony of defending this kind of policy when Moscow does it in Chechyna and attacking it when Tbilisi does it to it's minorities? (Yes, I know there are lots of ethnic groups in Russia and Georgia, but that doesn't explain why some engage in tenacious secessionist campaigns and others do not.)
--- PS. One of the breakaway areas in Georgia is largely ethnic Georgian (the others I think are Ossetian and Armenian. Then there's Abkhazia, which is both ethnically different and Muslim rather than Orthodox.).
Actually it is an interesting question why the Chechens have been so gung-ho and the Ingush have not. Their history and culture are almost identical. In any case, the issue with Chechnya is not independence per se, which it received de facto in 1996 (and if the Second Chechen War hadn't broken out, a moratorium on full independence would have taken place in 2000). The issue is the effect of that independence on the surrounding peoples due to the inability of the Chechen clans to form a functional state: the kidnap/hostage industry, daily raids into Dagestan for livestock, the attempt to "liberate" Dagestan by mujaheedin, various bombings (some of which may not have been orchestrated by Chechen gangs, but some of which certainly were), the attempt to propagate radical Islam throughout Muslim Russia. I am not that familiar with the situation in Georgia, but I do not believe that Tbilisi faces a similar problem with the breakaway areas.
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Sure. (By the same token, except for unusual cases like India, it's pretty hard to show how the ex-British colonies are more independent of foreign influence and/or are better off economically, than they were 50 years ago. However, most nationalisms seem to be such strong ideologies that they are hard to satisfy, except by (formal) political independence. As empty as that may be.)
--- As far as I can tell, there has a been a severe disillusionment with nationalism in the fSU (except for Russian, Ukrainian and Baltic nationalism). Oh, for the good old days when everybody got along, at least on the surface...