Taunting the Bear ( Regarding the War over South Ossetia )

New York Times ^ | August 9, 2008 | JAMES TRAUB

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The hostilities between Russia and Georgia that erupted on Friday over the breakaway province of South Ossetia look, in retrospect, almost absurdly over-determined. For years, the Russians have claimed that Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has been preparing to retake the disputed regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and have warned that they would use force to block such a bid. Mr. Saakashvili, for his part, describes today’s Russia as a belligerent power ruthlessly pressing at its borders, implacably hostile to democratic neighbors like Georgia and Ukraine. He has thrown in his lot with the West, and has campaigned ardently for membership in NATO. Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s former president and current prime minister, has said Russia could never accept a NATO presence in the Caucasus.

The border between Georgia and Russia, in short, has been the driest of tinder; the only question was where the fire would start.

It’s scarcely clear yet how things will stand between the two when the smoke clears. But it’s safe to say that while Russia has a massive advantage in firepower, Georgia, an open, free-market, more-or-less-democratic nation that sees itself as a distant outpost of Europe, enjoys a decisive rhetorical and political edge. In recent conversations there, President Saakashvili compared Georgia to Czechoslovakia in 1938, trusting the West to save it from a ravenous neighbor. “If Georgia fails,” he said to me darkly two months ago, “it will send a message to everyone that this path doesn’t work.”

During a 10-day visit to Georgia in June, I heard the 1938 analogy again and again, as well as another to 1921, when Bolshevik troops crushed Georgia’s thrilling, and brief, first experiment with liberal rule.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[BenLurkin]

Saakashvili compared Georgia to Czechoslovakia in 1938, trusting the West to save it from a ravenous neighbor.

Nobody saved Czechoslovakia from Hitler.

[redstateconfidential]

This is about establishing Russia as the major energy broker in the east and providing a check for its ally Iran. If America hits Iran, with Russia controlling so much of the energy, it will send the oil prices back to the stratosphere.

[JasonC]

"a decisive rhetorical and political edge"

Leave it to the idiots at the Times to bet that heavy oratory will beat heavy artillery. Just blind stupid...

[JasonC]

Not if Ahmadinejad gets his dirt nap on the first day it won't. All it will take is a whiff of actual decisiveness from the west, and all this weak opposition will evaporate like a puff of smoke. Moral cowardice in the west is their only card.

[BenLurkin]

I admit I don't understand why Russia is allying itself with the Mullahs in Iran — is it appeasement? — is this why there haven't been any recent Muslim attacks on them or their schools?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From deep in the article:

************************EXCERPT*************************

People of all political persuasion now seem to get it about Russia. In “The Return of History and The End of Dreams,” Robert Kagan, the neoconservative foreign policy expert who is advising John McCain, writes of Mr. Putin and his coterie: “Their grand ambition is to undo the post-cold war settlement and to re-establish Russia as a dominant power in Eurasia.” Michael McFaul, a Russia expert at Stanford who is advising Barack Obama, also views Russia as a premodern, sphere-of-influence power. He attributes Russia’s hostility to further NATO expansion less to geostrategic calculations than to what he says is Mr. Putin’s cold war mentality. The essential Russian calculus, he says, is, “Anything we can do to weaken the U.S. is good for Russia.”

[E. Cartman]

Leave it to the idiots at the Times to bet that heavy oratory will beat heavy artillery. Just blind stupid...

I dislike like the NYT as much as anyone, but on this, I think they got it right. It's always better for people to recognize the rightness of your position. Maggie Thatcher knew that when she took Britain to war against Argentina over The Falklands. She not only recognized the importance of Britich Artillery toward achieving victory but also understood the importance of the world recognizing that Argentina had been the aggressor.

[JasonC]

You are so wrong. Russia will smash Georgia to atoms. And the US will stand around looking sheepish. If we elect Obama, Russia will invade Ukraine before the end of his first term. And clobber it effortlessly, too. In the 30s, men dreamed of stopping fascist aggression with the moral force of world opinion. It killed 50 million people. It is mortally stupid, all the way down.

[John123]

men dreamed of stopping fascist aggression with the moral force of world opinion

Yeah... it worked really well for the Republicans in the Spanish War too...

[TLI]

The hostilities between Russia and Georgia that erupted on Friday over the breakaway province of South Ossetia look, in retrospect, almost absurdly over-determined.

Actually it might be just what it appears to be, an outbreak of long standing pizzin contest. U.S. Army Europe's 18th Military Police Brigade and 21st Theater Sustainment Command and Georgian Soldiers from the 4th Infantry Brigade have been engaged in a joint FX since 7 July. Looks like somebody finally got a belly full...

"not yet mobilized its population following border incidents allegedly provoked by Georgia"

At least that was the initial response on the first day, 8-2-08. If this was a planned event the Russians would have been arriving in formation at sunrise on the 3rd.

Plus, they have been there about a month and NOW all of a sudden the Georgian troops (with Americans right by them) decide to start busting caps across the fence? Na, I ain't buying that one.

Perhaps a deliberate attempt to jack the price of oil back up? Just doesn’t look like it. They (Russia) has had plenty of chance to do that and the Georgia/South Ossetia thing would be much more believable if it broke out as soon as the Americans showed up with the Georgians back on July 7, not a month later. So I don't really believe it is coming from the Russians. At least not as a planned event.

Will they take advantage of it now? Putin is after the money and knows he can shut this down and everyone makes money. Or he can roll the dice and go for king of the hill. He seems to make the smart move more often than not.

This one looks like a typical case of a bottle of vodka, middle of the night, pizzed off at watching the Americans hanging with the Georgians kind of thing and someone decided to take a pot shot.

Wham, instant escalation.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

If you read the whole article, its pretty good and informative. I think the idea that Russia is provoking this conflict along Georgia’s border to cause instability and keep them from being in NATO is pretty plausible. As the article was quoting someone, Russia can only have enemies and vassals at its borders.

[Leisler]

The Russian military is in shambles. Enslaved, dragooned enlisted. Bloated, drunk, fat NCO corps. An officer corps more fitting of the Zimbabwe postal department. Lousy weapons systems, short in numbers, spare parts, depot and maintenance personal.

On the other side, you have a tied up American and supine, effeminate, lip wrist Europe that couldn't manage a car drive into Yugoslavia to give the boot to a midget megalomaniac.

So, maybe the Russians prevail.

[ETL]

Blowing up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror
by Alexander Litvinenko, Yuri Felshtinsky, Geoffrey Andrews and Co (Translator), Geoffrey Andrews and Co. (Translator)

Synopsis: Blowing Up Russia contains the allegations of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko against his former spymasters in Moscow which led to his being murdered in London in November 2006. In the book he and historian Yuri Felshtinsky detail how since 1999 the Russian secret service has been hatching a plot to return to the terror that was the hallmark of the KGB. Vividly written and based on Litvinenko's 20 years of insider knowledge of Russian spy campaigns, Blowing Up Russia describes how the successor of the KGB fabricated terrorist attacks and launched a war. Writing about Litvinenko, the surviving co-author recounts how the banning of the book in Russia led to three earlier deaths.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Blowing-up-Russia/Alexander-Litvinenko/e/9781594032011

_______________________________________________________

Putin's Poison?
by Peter Brookes
November 27, 2006

The death of former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, last week from radioactive Polonium-210 poisoning is the latest in a series of politically motivated attacks on the outspoken opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed112706a.cfm

______________________________________________________

Radioactive Link To Dead Spy
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/200828513553599

______________________________________________________

"The crisis was sparked earlier this week when Georgia sent troops into the breakaway province of South Ossetia to quell a Russian-backed separatist uprising."
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Russia-On-Verge-Of-All-Out-War-As-Troops-Clash-In-Georgias-South-Ossetia/Article/200808215074261?lpos=World%2BNews_4&lid=ARTICLE_15074261_Russia%2BOn%2BVerge%2BOf%2BAll-Out%2BWar%2BAs%2BTroops%2BClash%2BIn%2BGeo

Putin on "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century":
"World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin's State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'
http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html

From the Sino-Russian Joint Statement of April 23, 1997:
"The two sides [China and Russia] shall, in the spirit of partnership, strive to promote the multipolarization of the world and the establishment of a new international order."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HI29Ag01.html

Russia, China flex muscles in joint war games
Reuters: Aug 17, 2007
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-29030120070817?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

U.S. Navy Intercepts Russian Bombers Flying Near Ships
Monday, February 11, 2008
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330362,00.html

"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century"???

"'The Black Book of Communism,' a scholarly accounting of communism’s crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low."
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmY0MjI1MDgyYjg1M2UwNDMzMTk2Mjk5YTk0ZTdlMWE=

[piytar]

The problem is that Democraps and other assorted libscum believe that "Anything we can do to weaken the U.S. is good for the Democrap Party Russia."

[chaos_5]

[E. Cartman]

JasonC: I was not trying to minimize the danger Russia poses to Georgia. Far from it. I was only trying to point out that good weaponry and a moral high ground are a great combination. No less than Maggie Thatcher recognized this when Britain engaged Argentina in The Falklands.

BTW, I am seriously wondering if there wasn't a secret tit-for-tat: "We'll let you have South Ossetia, Vlad, if you give us Iran." Call me cynical, but this is often how the game is played. The coming weeks should reveal a lot.

[JasonC]

Georgia doesn't have good weaponry. It has about 20000 men under arms, all of it old Soviet era equipment.

The coming weeks are going to reveal whether idiots elect a defeatist communist president of the US.

[Karliner]

One step closer to the valley of Megiddo...in other news Hanoi Jane is looking for a Russian tank to sit on after the pedicure and the face lift....seems oddly( not) interesting there's more words from Putin than what's his name the USSR Russian Rezident Czar.