War in Georgia

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Of course they can improve their ties. However what Russia is doing is not improving ties it's bullying these countries. They bullied Estonia over the statue issue, sent even their own hooligans there to protest and later staged a large scale electornic attack towards that country. That is not improving ties, that's threatening them to yield to the will of Russia or else. Now is that the sort of influence you want in Bulgaria? Didn't think so. I certainly do not want it in Finland and I'd prefer it not to exist in the Baltics, Ukraine or Georgia.

But now I think I'm repeating myself somewhat. I think what we have here is a slight problem with communication. Russia has its interests, yes and will be expected to guard them naturally. However their interests are not ours nor are they often the interests of smaller countries on their border that they wish to influence or control. While it might seem a nice touch of realpolitik to divide europe in to spheres of interests and respect those, I'm somewhat more ideological than that and symapthetic to people neighbouring Russia (being myself one) and would rather see them within the western sphere than the ever diminishing eastern one. I also feel that it should be done rather swiftly before Russia is capable of tightening its grasp over these countries. Of course if the people democratically don't wish to have anything to do with use it's fine, it's their choice. I'm certainly not making any decicions for them.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,405242,00.html

So, according to Fox News, the Russians, after signing a cease-fire and withdrawl treaty with Georgia, are now moving missles into South Ossetia. A CNN report mentioned Russian troops demolishing every bit of Georgian military infrastructure they could find, and another mentioned looting by Russian troops. Now, I may be reading from a different dictionary than the Russians (in fact, I'm sure I am since I'm speaking English and they speak Russian ), but I don't see how these actions qualify as pulling troop positions and levels back to a pre-hostility situation. I also don't see looting and destroying infrastructure as anything short of continued aggression. Georgia may have really stuck it's foot in it on this one, but Russia seems to be grabbing all the rope it can find and making a nice, tight noose around it's own neck. Or is that just me?

 

No, I tend to agree with you NOG. I don't fully understand what Russia is gaming at here (though I have a pretty good idea). Their actions are alarmingly brash. I guess we deserve to be surprised. We (as in the US) have had our attention so narrowly focused on the Middle East that we were dropping the ball on events farther north.

It becomes all the more unfortunate when McCain goes on TV and says, without a hint of irony, "In the 21st Century, nations don't invade other nations," and the Russians couldn't care less, while the rest of the world laughs. This is the kind of damage Iraq has done to our standing in the world in terms of soft power.

 

This is the time for all the democrats to yell "it's all about the oil!" & this time they would(probably) be right. Georgia is/was an important check/hindrance to russia being the major supplier to th EU. As posted by Eric Reguly-UK globe & mail(not sure if this is a newspaper or what but the article is pretty convincing:

"Russia’s adventure in Georgia has been described as a “warlet,” a contained firing spree that wound up and down within a week. But to Europe’s energy markets, it was the equivalent of wide-scale carpet bombing. With the North Sea oil and natural gas fields running out of puff, Europe, in particular the European Union, is more dependent than ever on imported energy. The biggest single supplier is Russia, whose pipelines snake across Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova before poking into central and western Europe.

Russia’s energy supplies are cherished. Germany, France and Italy have almost no oil and gas of their own. Russia’s Gazprom, the world’s biggest gas company, supplies 40 per cent or more of Europe’s gas imports. The company, controlled by the Russian state and led by Dmitry Medvedev before he became Russia’s President, is the equivalent of a one-country gas OPEC.

By 2020, Gazprom’s exports to the EU are expected to rise by more than 50 per cent. The company is unafraid to wield its mighty power. For four days in 2006, it stopped supplying gas to the Ukrainian market because of a contract dispute. Since keeping the lights on is the minimum requirement to stay elected, Europe’s governments were doing two things. They were buying every molecule of Russian energy available and were working hard to ensure that Russia alone did not control the entire show.

Enter Georgia. The pro-Western country became a convenient bit of non-Russian real estate on which to plunk pipelines to funnel non-Russian (and non-OPEC) oil and gas to the outside world. No fewer than three pipelines originating in Azerbaijan cross Georgian territory. One of the trio, called BTE, was due for a massively enlarged role in the future. The BTE pipeline currently takes gas from Azerbaijan through Georgia and into central Turkey. An extension, known as the Nabucco project, would take the gas from there on to Austria, making it a hefty counterweight to Russian gas exports. Nabucco is backed by the EU and the United States and counts German power utility RWE among it biggest shareholders.

Thanks to Russia’s invasion of Georgia on Aug. 8, Georgia’s role as a secure energy transit point to Europe has been shattered. Russia has made clear it can make Georgia a puppet state if it wishes, and will almost certainly recognize the independence of the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Suddenly the risk premiums on oil and gas pipelines that pass through Georgian soil went through the roof. Some analysts are already predicting the death of the Nabucco project, whose construction was to begin in 2010. So much for Europe’s energy diversification plans. New, independent pipelines from Central Asia seem like a lost cause. With Georgia reined in, Moscow’s grip on energy supplies to Europe must be close to complete. You have to wonder whether a Kremlin filing cabinet contains a plan that had laid out this very scenario a decade ago"

If he is correct than russias motives have become just a little clearer.

 

Probably a part of it but I think the main thing is a show of force. Russia has been retreating for 20 years and it seems like they feel strong enough now to stop doing it. I don't know, I have always felt the Russians seems more honest in their warmongering. They do not cover their actions in too many flowery words. They act like jerks but in some way they do not pretend to act like knights in shining armour while they are at it, at least not to the same extent the US does.

 

I think that they may be relying on just that image to cover some of their motives. Who looks for the jab when you have always thrown hooks or a diagonal when you have always used circular? They seem to have been reinventing themselves over the last couple of decades & we may be falling into a bad trap by trying to judge their actions by what they USED to do.

 

Excellent Op_Ed by David Ignatius:

The Russians and the United States both still possess many thousands of deliverable warheads. A nuclear exchange between the two would result in something like one hundred million dead. That is the elephant in the living room, as far as US-Russian relations are concerned, that is usually being ignored. The possibility of such a thing happening to me suggests a degree of caution that I today see totally absent. The avoidance of escalation between the US and Russia must be the principal concern of any sane politician, or so might one think.

If US foreign policy reminds you of a game of chicken where the one who first blinks get's bombed that's no accident. The neo-cons and their man, McCain, just as their co-afflicted in the Bush administration, are addicted to idea of the 'power of the will'. That means they are relying on bravado and bluff as their basic operating principle in policy. When confronted with unyielding resistance and overwhelming brute force, their reaction seems to be to 'up the ante' with more and more hostile rhetoric and gestures. One can observe that on Iraq, Syria, North Korea and more recently Iran as much as on Russia. The missile shield in Poland, now, and now just because of Georgia, is just about that.

This is a very dangerous game, especially so when played against a country with a thermonuclear capability. States, movements and coalitions have emotionally laden trigger wires, red lines, that can initiate processes impossible to halt. Often these processes work themselves out in irrational ways. The US invasion of Iraq was just such an irrational thing that came into being after Al Qaeda hit one of America's trigger wires - their national pride.

It is one thing to help a country or cause. So you want help a country - do it quietly, and shut up about it. The more covert that assistance is offered, the less the danger of general war because of it. When the risk of escalation and war is too great you quietly abandon the effort. That is not appeasing evil. It is to act responsible in face of the inevitable consequence Ignatius so clearly spells out: Don't make threats the country can't deliver or promises it isn't prepared to keep. The rhetoric of confrontation may make us feel good, but other people end up getting killed. For what? So Bush Jr. and McCain can jerk off on how 'tough' they are on Russia and score a few points in their ratings?

Ah yes, I forgot - their deaths remind us of the price of freedom.


* in the pre-cold-war world, Serbia, rightly counting on Russia's intervention when provoking Hungaro-Austria, triggered the first World War. But that's ancient history, and there are no lessons from European history for the US other than 'Appeasement! 1939! Munich! Hitler! err ... Freedom!'.

 

As this topic is relatively heated I have avoided posting in it so far, however I feel I have to reply to Ragusa's last post.

No, their deaths are an unfortunate consequence of a very necessary war that was needed to prevent a leader who, due to his feelings of inadequacy and failure was fully prepared to attempt to conquer most of the world.

Yes there was a horrendous level of deaths (72 million, both military and civilian) and atrocities committed by both sides, however the consequences of not going to war were significantly worse.

It is best summed up by a quote:

 

Tarrasque,
I edited my post before I read your reply
It now expresses what I wanted to write.

 

Well, yes, by the time Germany was rolling into Poland it was a necessary war. By the time Japan was pillaging Manchuria it was a necessary war. What's overlooked is that if we--meaning the folks who eventually fought the Axis--had been smarter in the decades prior to the war (potentially going back to Commodore Perry, in the case of Japan), there would never have been a war. Or at least not a Second World War.

 

It's about the void between talk and reality

Tarrasque,
what you state is something that is easily said. I want to suggest here that that historical analogy is overused to the extent that it has become meaningless. How many Hitlers did we have the last couple of years alone? Saddam, Ahmedinejad, Putin, Kim? Did I forget another one? And how many Munichs? It has become a mere slogan (eminently popular with the neo-cons), emotionally laden, but devoid of meaning (it has imo much more to do with 'memetics', neuromarketing, branding, permanent campaign and domestic policy).

That said, apparently you miss my point entirely, so let me repeat it: States and groups are struggling with the other, have ever been. Their conflicts they fight with their hands and with their minds. Gestures and attitudes do matter. Posturing and swagger, foreign and domestic, as a means of foreign policy is not devoid of a price only because it is just talk. Talk and rhetoric influence people's minds. It is an error to assume that talk is cheap. It does come at a price. If such talk then encourages darn fools like Shaakashvili to enter into hopeless wars against a vastly superior enemy (q.e.d.), in the expectation that Uncle Sam and NATO come to the rescue, then talking that way is a highly reckless and ultimately immoral thing to do because it gets other people killed, needlessly and pointlessly. Unrealistic slogans get unrealistic people unrealistic ideas. Of course, blaming Russia, or any surrogate 'evil other', is the easiest way to avoid thinking about that moral dilemma.

The neo-kooks are, judging by their babble, apparently incapable of (or indifferent to) differentiating between Syria, Saddam's Iraq, Iran, North Korea or Russia. That is quite a dreadful thing. It is unwise in the extreme to play brinkmanship games with a nuclear armed opponent. You can get away doing that with Iraq or perhaps Iran, but with Russia and North Korea you play with the lives of many a bystander. The world is not a high school locker room, where you in worst case end up with a bruised eye or a broken nose if you miscalculate. A foreign policy reduced to a staring contest usually results in war.

When you are truly willing and able to fight for your 'just cause' that might be something else, but it is not the case here: The Bush administration in case of Georgia is neither willing nor able. What did Georgia get from the US? An airlift out of Iraq, medical supplies, and a lot of hot air.

When one utters threats one can't or won't deliver on and makes promises one can't or won't keep it is the exact moral opposite of that 'just cause'. It is playing just cause in Kindergarten. Babbling in the absence of any realistic prospect to act on that talk is playing with the lighter at the brush of a bomb - just for the feel good factor, or to play to a domestic 'base'. The (global) audience might just take one at his word.
'Upping the ante' out of principle because one won't compromise on 'what's right' with 'evil' is simplistic, moralizing, jingoistic and narcissistic - basically an exercise in political masturbation - worse, it increases the risk of accidental war. It is cavalier, knee-jerk rhetoric, and, I have said that before, it expresses a disturbing unwillingness to address the world as it is, and a troubling unwillingness to make the tough calls, hold your nose and make the tough deals necessary in the real world.

 

I'm sorry to resurrect this thread, but it would appear that martaug and some others are discussing it in the thread about the election, so rather than further de-rail that thread, I thought I'd bring this one back.

I have to say, martaug, that I am a little confused on your position. Do you think we should have Georgia in NATO? Or that we shouldn't?

As near as I can tell, Georgia was being unduly provocative with its neighbour, and Russia slapped them down. IIRC, Russia did not proceed to annex Georgia, though it did advocate the creation of a new state (somewhat similar to the situation in the Balkans). It doesn't do to take on an ally who will likely get you into unnecessary fights.

I say that Georgia is a helluva long way from the North Atlantic, which makes it an odd choice for a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Association. I can imagine Western consternation if Russia tried to resurrect the old Warsaw Pact and offered membership to Venezuela -- the U.S. would go batpoop!

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I've lost my moral focus and am now a Commie Moonbat. But I don't think so.

 

I am rather ambivalent about georgia. I kinda think they should be allowed in nato however as ragusa has well stated that may be just a little too much provocation for russia. Also i think russia is going to do whatever they have to maintain their oil supremecy in the area. I really think that the georgia incursion was just what they were looking for to delay the new pipelines in georgia. Putin & company may be a KGB brutes but they are very calculating.