I promised music. But then the Georgians and Russians decided to lob high explosives at one another. In mass quantities.
A more serious Georgia-Russia confrontation had been brewing for awhile, but I hadn't foreseen it playing out in the form of full-on mechanized warfare. I'm not sure what Georgian president Saakashvili is thinking, and namely why he thought escalating hostilities to this level would be a wise decision (that is, if he actually was the first mover in the flare-up). The Georgian military doesn't stand much chance against a serious Russian counterattack, which appears to be what is taking place.
There are quite a few moving parts associated with this event, beyond a simple disagreement over separatist rights. Among the more interesting dynamics at play:
- Georgia has moved towards the U.S./European camp in recent years, and is seeking NATO membership. The Russian regime has, needless to say, been less than impressed.
- The United States has provided Georgia with significant military aid and has a number of "advisers" in-country. As part of the ubiquitous "Coalition of the Willing," Georgia has contributed a couple thousand soldiers to operations in Iraq.
- Unpleasantness vis-a-vis the Russians had also been transpiring in Georgia's other separatist enclave of Abkhazia, which initially seemed like the more likely locus of conflict.
- Putin and his chronies are schizophrenic (though no doubt Machiavellian) in their stances on separatism. Kosovars or Chechens have no reasonable right, but apparently Abkhazians and Ossetians are somehow entitled.
- Georgia sits astride major Asian fossil fuel transit routes.
Georgia is not the only post-Soviet Caucasus state with unresolved separatist conflicts. Chechnya is still simmering, only stabilized (if one can call it that) through a heavy-handed (to put it mildly) Russian security presence, and the status of the Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan remains unresolved and exceedingly volatile. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands (mostly civilians) died when these wars first played out in the 1990s. The arrangements that ended the violence were tenuous at best, but by the 21st century, the international community seemed to lose interest in more durable peace settlements (all while the opposing parties rearmed and retrenched). Now it appears as though we're gearing up towards Part II.
But at least we have the Olympics. Sport can save these people.
3 comments:
It's fascinating how successfully Georgia has adopted the role of an innocent victim, despite having pretty clearly initiated a full-scale assault that may have done spectacular damage to South Ossetia (not to mention the Russians stationed there). President Saakashvili seems to have gambled his entire nation on his ability to retake Ossetia and then call on NATO to sue for peace before the Russians could react.
I just sat through a CNN report detailing the "brutal Russian onslaught" and higlighting devastation of Georgian troops in Tskhinvali without mentioning the destruction of the city itself. They paraphrased an interview with a South Ossetian refugee decrying the violence, but heavily implied that the source of this refugee's misery was Russia's invasion, when every interview I've read with Ossetian's blames the Georgian military for most of the damage. Apparently, according to AFP as of Monday, Georgian forces are still shelling the city even as they claim to have stood down for a cease-fire.
Russia clearly has aggressively retaliated and is using the situation to cripple the neighbor that wanted to bring NATO to Russia's doorstep, but the extent to which the American media and politicians have gone to present Russian actions as the ominous spreading inkblot from Nazi-era newsreels is pretty stunning.
Any further thoughts on your end?
Indeed.
The Russian response may have been disproportionate and clearly directed towards an outcome well beyond "peacekeeping," but the initial Georgian assault defies all reason. And that's not to mention the completely indiscriminate bombardment of a civilian-populated urban center (a war crime by any conventional definition). I'm not sure where the NATO bloc gets off pinning this one on Russian aggression. It's as if they want to keep turning the screw and ratcheting up the tension level vis-a-vis Russia (as if NATO is any position of leverage).
The whole situation is really rather disturbing, as its implications go well beyond the Georgian situation. Between this, the NATO expansion process, Russian rearmament, and US/European missile defense plans, it seems like the strategic situation in the region has regressed about thirty years.
Yeah, at this point the Russian objectives - beyond punitively beating down the Georgians - are probably geared toward crippling Saakashvili's government and pulling Georgia as far out of the West's orbit as possible.
We're all lucky they didn't shoot down those planes shipping the Georgians back from Iraq (which they probably had the right to do). Can you imagine if Russia had done something similar during the Iraq war?
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