#1
HMMMMM, compare wid VARIOUS FREEREPUBLIC/MIL FORUM Posters > argue that twas RUSSIA = PUTIN [now VLADVEDEV] which induced South Ossetian separatists to take action, knowing full well that Georgia may or will respond wid potent milforce to protect Georgian national/territorial integrity, against which Russia will PC respond wid own milfors to protect pro-Russ Ossetian Muslim proxies - PUTIN IS REPORTEDLY IN IN PER SE CHARGE OF ALL RUSS MILOPS AGZ GEORGIA, A VENUE WHICH PROPERLY BELONGS TO MEDVEDEV???
#2
Indeed, JosephM, it looks like President Putin is also de facto War Minister Putin, and Prime Minister Medvedev is left to greet the French president Sarkozy. It also appears, based on the enthusiastic new posters here, that the Russian people support Putin's adventuring thus far.
Tskhinvali is not Sarejevo in 1914. South Ossetia will not be the start-line of the Third World War. But it is a ghastly mess, all the more depressing because the West is partly to blame. In diplomacy, strategy and geopolitics, our political leaders have been guilty of multiple failures over many years.
First, diplomacy. President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia is a headstrong fellow. Reference has been made to his Harvard education as if that should ensure sound judgement. Alas, however, the President's tutor was not the greatest of Harvard diplomatists, Henry Kissinger -- but Anthony Eden at Suez. Mr Saakashvili has only one defence against the charge of criminal irresponsibility: a plea of insanity.
So where were the Western diplomats with straitjackets and hard words? It may be that the President was so headstrong as to be beyond counsel, but it would have been worth trying: pointing out to him that his intended actions would have inevitable consequences and that Georgia would be facing them on its own. Even if it might not have worked, it should have been tried. Yet just when the game was in a crucial phase, British and American diplomats took their eye off the ball.
Sez who? Unless you were privy to the e-mails and cables, and were present at all the meetings, you wouldn't know what the diplomats were doing. This is just blame-shifting; the progressives would prefer to blame 'us' (the Western power structure and especially the evil Bush) so as to absolve themselves of blame, and more importantly, from having to look into the mirror to see where their own ideology has taken them.
There is a further diplomatic problem. Georgia would like to join Nato, for obvious if naive reasons.
Not so naive today, is it?
Most Georgians have persuaded themselves that if they were Nato members, we would defend our freedoms shoulder to shoulder with theirs, on the Georgian-Russian frontier. That is nonsense. The moment Nato extended guarantees to Georgia or the Ukraine would be the moment Nato either ceased to exist as a credible defensive alliance or -- more likely -- turned into an organised hypocrisy. It would become a two-tier structure, in which new members were invited to contribute troops but not offered protection when they most needed it.
Again, how do you know that? Had Georgia been a member of NATO there would have been, at a minimum, a NATO airbase and some security forces in Tbilsi. That alone would have deterred the Russians -- and the Georgians.
Alas, however, all the talk about Nato encouraged Georgian adventurism. It helped President Saakashvili to think that he could behave like a founder member. He concluded that he could provoke Russia with impunity. The Russians concluded that it was time to teach him a lesson.
That should not have been necessary. Rather than waiting for the Russians to instil the fear of death, the West should have taught Georgia the facts of life. We ought to have reminded them that they were living in a dangerous neighbourhood. A small nation that has only recently become independent from a neighbouring superpower still resentful at many of the changes which have overtaken it must tread warily. Eighty per cent of Georgians would like to join Nato. One suspects that a similar percentage of Taiwanese would like to become fully independent. Neither country is in the position to conduct its foreign affairs by writing letters to Santa Claus.
Over time, the Taiwanese have come to accept this; the Georgians should have been helped to do so.
The West's diplomatic weakness rests on the shoulders of a longer-term strategic incompetence. We failed to think through the consequences of our victory in the Cold War. As a result, we have not done enough to consolidate our gains. We failed to build on the geo-strategic triumphs of the Reagan-Thatcher era. In 1979, Mrs Thatcher was threatened by socialism at home -- abetted by Soviet fellow-travellers -- and by Finlandisation on the Continent. That latter contest was equally important to the Americans. The West won, and our victory was even more impressive for costing so little in blood.
But that was not the sole diplomatic achievement of the great Reagan-Thatcher era. Both the President and the Prime Minister were alert to changing circumstances. They recognised Mr Gorbachev as a bridge to a new era, even before he had decided to cross it. They understood the Churchillian maxim: "In victory, magnanimity."
By 1990, there was a powerful case for scrapping the West's Cold War concepts while keeping our weapons systems, just in case. Despite their reputation for intransigence, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher would have been ready to exploit new opportunities. They would have understood the need to move beyond Nato, now that it had served its original purposes. By the early 1990s, there was a need for a new system of collective security in Europe, embracing the Russians. Once Moscow had renounced the ill-gotten gains of 1944-45, we should have welcomed the Russians back to a Europe which had been spiritually impoverished by their absence.
On a practical level, we should have pressed on with Mr Reagan's offer to share anti-ballistic missile technology with the Russians: why not employ some of their scientists in the research work? Once the Communist threat was lifted and the Soviet Empire dismantled, we had no quarrel with Russia. A sustained peace-making effort over the past 15 years would have created a diplomatic means of solving the Georgian question before it became one.
Instead, we have a sullen and truculent Russia demanding respect with menaces. It is possible to make some excuses for all this. The Russian version of history moves from the sacrifices of the Great Patriotic War to the voluntary renunciation of Empire, neither of them receiving adequate gratitude from the West. More recently, on a smaller scale, there is the independence of Kosovo. If Kosovo, why not South Ossetia or Abkhazia? Most Russians do not accept that they have done anything wrong. The Putin-Medvedev administration has a higher popularity score than George Bush and Gordon Brown put together.
The excuses only go so far. The Russians are not fighting Georgia to defend the rights of small nations. They also want to remind Europe where much of its energy comes from. A secure pipeline through Georgia would enable the West to receive oil supplies from Azerbaijan which did not pass through Russian territory. That pipeline is no longer secure, which is why Georgia is more than a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.
This brings us to the failure of geopolitical thinking. Whichever brute or blaggard made the world, he has a black sense of humour. Much of the oil on which the West depends is located in countries upon whom no one would wish to depend. But this is not a new problem. It has been apparent for two decades, which is why the French in particular have moved so heavily into nuclear power.
We in Britain, less far-sighted, have a choice between clapped-out power stations, fantasies about renewable energy and the vagaries of the international oil market. Our failure to find a nuclear alternative is comparable to our failure to rearm in the late 1930s. Now, as then, it could open us to blackmail and condemn us to appeasement.
Those are longer-term questions, which is no excuse for not addressing them as a matter of urgency. In the short-run, Britain, the EU and above all the US will have the task of bringing some relief to the battered people of Georgia. There is little that we can do beyond calling for restraint, urging a ceasefire, begging all men of goodwill etc. The Georgians will have to give up the struggle to hold on to South Ossetia and they may as well prepare themselves to lose Abkhazia as well. If only that were the end of the problem.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/11/2008 07:40 ||
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#1
...because being blamed for everything is what the West does best!
#2
The excuses only go so far. The Russians are not fighting Georgia to defend the rights of small nations. They also want to remind Europe where much of its energy comes from.
Spot on! Thats why Sarko can denounce the RU's so boldly. France is less dependent on Russian energy due to their nuclear power. Excellent article. Once again, it IS all about oil.
#5
Then let it fly. I'm sick and tired of watching my country bend over and grab its ankles in front of the Russians, Chinese, and even small time players like Venezuela. Embargo the hell out of Russian energy and tough it out for a year while they go broke. There is no solution that will let everyone continue to live a comfortable, profitable life. Even appeasement will fall through when Russia gets a strong enough stranglehold on UK and EU energy supplies. They will eventually make you get down on your knees and service the king in front of the whole world.
#7
#4 There is going to be another World War, soon, and it will be doozy. From a historical perspective, I'd say it is 1935. Maybe a little later.
The brown smelly stuff is going to be hitting the rotating air circulation device real soon.
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Why wait for Pearl Harbor Day #2.
Posted by: Full Bosomed1072 ||
08/11/2008 11:53 Comments ||
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#8
" By the early 1990s, there was a need for a new system of collective security in Europe, embracing the Russians. Once Moscow had renounced the ill-gotten gains of 1944-45, we should have welcomed the Russians back to a Europe which had been spiritually impoverished by their absence."
We tried that. We invited the Russians to a partnership for peace, we invited them to the G8. We TRIED to make them partners, but even under Yeltsin they took stands on Yugoslavia, Iraq, the FSU states, etc that were threatening. And Yeltsin betrayed the Russian liberals already in the mid-90s. Had we abandoned NATO, or refused the Visograd states entry, we would be in a worse position now. Surely we would not have averted the rise of a Putin, which was driven by internal russian considerations.
#10
Our failure to find a nuclear alternative is comparable to our failure to rearm in the late 1930s. Now, as then, it could open us to blackmail and condemn us to appeasement.
WARSAW -- Polish analysts and a part of the political scene are linking the South Ossetia crisis to that in Kosovo, Beta says.
The current armed conflict in the breakaway Georgian region is seen as the Russian answer to the western recognition of Kosovo Albanians' unilateral declaration of independence, the Polish media are saying.
"This is the Russian answer to the recognition of Kosovo. That recognition was in fact a gift to Russia," Polish People's Party European MP Janusz Wojciechowski told TVN24.
Wojciechowski, whose party is a partner in Donald Tusk's cabinet, warned that the case of Kosovo, where a part of the international community accepted the declaration of secession, "shows that it cannot be counted on double standards to pass".
"Russia is using it now", he concluded.
Warnings that the recognition of Kosovo will serve to the detriment of Georgia were heard in Poland as early as February this year.
Bearing in mind the risks for Poland's allies in the Caucasus, Georgia above all, Warsaw's recognition of the Kosovo Albanians' secession was described as an irresponsible move by the legendary anti-communist leader and former Polish president, Lech Walesa.
"Recognizing Kosovo will bring nothing but trouble. No one can be denied the right to self-determination, but only within the bounds of common sense," he was quoted as saying at the time.
Walesa stressed in his statements to the Polish media that Kosovo was "with its irresponsible behavior, causing new divisions in Europe and globally and undermining international relations".
#2
This is what happens when "self determination" meets tribal sensibilities.
Wilson really jumped the shark with his self determination rhetoric.
How do you define self? Every two bit ethnic group (aka tribe) demands it's own postage stamp country.
At least the Paki-wakis are honest and call it the FATA. We should have allowed / encouraged the UN to take over the old Yugoslavia and run it as an Administered Tribal Area until all the tribes agreed that they were a country first. (Whimsical ain't I?)
This is what Iraq is struggling to overcome and they look as though they migh make it someday. We'll see.
They would be equivalent if Russia gave a unified Ossetia its independence, and arranged for its admission to the UN, while keeping Russian troops in country to protect the south from Georgia. Otherwise, it's just another Russian land grab in a centuries-long tradition of such land grabs.
#4
I think there is little doubt Kosovo is the justification. From the start Russian was putting out the Kosovo rhetoric of ethnic cleansing, genocide, etc.
The media is remarkably quiet on the fact Russian will now control access to Caspian Basin oil and gas (along with Iran) with all that implies for European energy supplies.
#5
AlanC, I disagree and think Wilson was right. So we'll end up with a few Palestine basket-cases for every Austria and Hungary that is created. We can deal with it.
#3
Armies can not march in minutes, tipover. It takes months, even with a logistical organization like the U.S.'s. How much longer when Russian logistics are involved?
#4
Some good material. The linkage to Kosovo is undeniable. We don't need another Cold War. We don't need to pretend that we are at war with every oppressive entity on earth.
#5
Russia has been behaving very oddly the last few years, McZoid. Very much like the KGB of old with regard to those who left their fold, eg that reporter and the man they killed with sushi and radioactive dust. And very clearly Russia is not an innocent in this one -- a non-expert like me would even think they deliberately provoked the situation, no matter how imperfect the Georgians might be.
#1
While the Soviet politicians pulled off an astonishing feat by dissolving the empire without bloodshed (and creating fourteen new countries from portions of the empire that decided not to stay with the new Russia), there were lots of smaller groups that still had separatist grievances. Two of these groups were in Georgia, and occupied the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The populations rebelled against the Georgian government and drove out Georgian officials, troops and ethnic Georgians. Thousands of ethnic Abkhazians and Ossetians fled to the new statelets. Since both of these areas were on the Russian border, Russia saw an opportunity to quiet things down (they did not want an ethnic based guerilla war going on along their border). So Russia offered its services as mediator and peacekeeper in the early 1990s, and peace was restored. The UN agreed all this, and a reluctant Georgia went along. But after that, the Russians refused to leave, or encourage the Abkhazians and Ossetians to work out a deal to become part of Georgia once more. Abkhazians and Ossetians wanted to be independent, and declared themselves so. No one else recognized this. In 2004, Georgia began cracking down on the smuggling and other criminal activity that was keeping the economy in South Ossetia going. This led to more and more gunfire along the border between Georgia and South Ossetia.
Two years ago, Georgia began a major expansion of its armed forces. Officially, the active forces were then about 26,000 troops, already up from about 12,000-14,000 just a couple few years before that. Unofficially, the government has raised strength to about 28,000. This was done by adding more professional troops and increasing the order-of-battle by two battalions of conscripts. The government goal is to increase the active force to about 35,000. In addition, Georgia began building a reserve force.
The principal reason for the military build-up is the secessionist regimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Georgians wanted the option of trying for a military solution. There are also some Russian troops, leftovers from Soviet Union era garrisons, still in the country. Georgia has been trying get all the Russian soldiers out since the Soviet Union collapsed (and Georgia became independent once more) in 1991. But the Russians have come up with a long string of excuses for delaying a final pullout. To make matters worse, several thousand of those troops are "peacekeepers" in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. To most Georgians, the Russian peacekeepers are there mainly to keep the rebel regions free of Georgian control.
It's not yet clear what the Georgian government was thinking when they allowed the border skirmishing to escalate to a military effort to restore government control over South Ossetia. It didn't work, as the Russians promptly counterattacked and drove the Georgian troops out of South Ossetia. The Georgians can try a guerilla war, and hope that their new relationship with the United States and the European Union will add some measure of protection. That's a false hope. The Russians have made it clear during the last few years that any real, or imagined, Western influence or interference in nations that border Russia (what the Russians call the "near-abroad") will be opposed with lots of noise, followed by some firepower. The recent events in Georgia are an example of that, an example the Russians hope the West takes seriously, even if the Georgians don't.
Russian politicians have been playing the nationalism card, catering to widespread feelings that the Soviet Union should be restored. Most Russians never cared for the communist dictatorship, but they did like being a superpower. The Russians also feel that those fourteen nations that split off when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, left Russia surrounded by a lot of unstable and vulnerable nations. This sounds paternalistic and paranoid to Westerners, but not to Russians. And the Russians are willing to use force to back up these attitudes, as the Georgians just discovered. Russia still has nukes, and some Cold War attitudes that make for a potentially very dangerous situation.
#2
I agree that it was an overreach by Georgia. But the Russian response was away over the top in terms of bombing civilians outside the area, and demolishing (with artillery) the very cities they were claiming to "protect".
The viciousness and overly blunt application of force (including the illegal naval blockade) are lesons the West should take to heart.
If the Russians want to play an imperialistic militaristic power again, then we will have to treat them as an adversary, treat them like the Soviet Union in locking them out of world markets and economies as much as possible.
#4
No, OldSpook, I respectfully disagree. Russia's response was not way over the top: it was exactly what it should be if the goal is to teach your small neighbors to never, ever tug on Superman's cape.
"Just War" and "proportionate response" are western, moral responses to the problem of war. Russia has never adopted these ideas and never will. As far as Putin is concerned (best I can tell, I'm no mind reader), squishing the Georgians sends a message to all others around the New Russian Empire as to how to behave. And that's why he's bombing the snot out of Georgia.
Georgia was downright foolish: they thought that they could use their modernizing military to whack the Ossetians and hold off the Russian bear. Ooops. They should have known better, and the fools running that country are going to be chastised and likely removed from power.
Proportionate response is something the progressive Left pushes. But war isn't won by proportionate response, it's won by overwhelming your enemy and making him bend to your will. Putin understands this.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/11/2008 11:46 Comments ||
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#5
Proportionate response IS part of the way we have tried to rebuild the world since 1945, and with some hope since 1989.
BUT it can only become part of the world IF those who believe in it are willing to stand behind it.
BTW, did Russia deny the principle of proportionate response when discussing the war in Lebanon? If you have a quote to that effect, an official russian one, Id like to see it. The hypocrisy, the dishonesty, the naked cynicism is overwhelming.
There are many countries around the world that have an INTEREST in a legal regime at least loosely based on teh UN charter. Contrary to local opinion here, that stuff is NOT based on loopy headed lefties in academia - it is ITSELF a response to international conditions, and an attempt (esp by smaller countries) to attain int rule more in keeping with their interests - and from time to time big powers find those rules in their interests as well.
I think the US continues to have an interest in those rules (and no, Lebanon is NOT a counterexample - Israel was trying to destroy Hezbollah, NOT to subordinate the govt of LebanoN- indeed the very notion of Israel aspiring to the kind of hegemony that Russia is now asserting is laughable)
We did not win the Cold War to create a world of spheres of interest and naked cynicism. Call me a democratic messianist (in the neocon sense, not the Obama sense) if you like, but I think we had loftier goals, AND I beleive, we can push toward them. We live in a world of nuclear weapons, and technology will give us worse. If we perpetaute the law of the jungle, it will be a sad future for our children (needless to say far worse if we let our adversaries pursue the law of the jungle while we cower)
#6
"But war isn't won by proportionate response, it's won by overwhelming your enemy and making him bend to your will. Putin understands this."
As the Russians found in Afghanistan. War must have ends, and the means must be selected RATIONALLY to meet the ends, or its a failure.
Is it worth losing Ukraine completely to get the Caucasian oil? maybe, but lets make Putin pay. He is COUNTING on us to be cautious and realistic while he expands. When we show his aggression is costly, he will reconsider. And yes, we CAN make his aggression costly. Especially IF we unite with our european allies. For some folks uniting with the social democratics and "tranzis" of europe is too big a price to pay for stopping Putin.
#7
Russia's response was not way over the top: it was exactly what it should be if the goal is to teach your small neighbors to never, ever tug on Superman's cape.
Russia isnt superman. Russia is probably #3 power on the planet, and its declining (despite the short term rise in oil prices). Their goal is to show the west is a paper tiger and to increase their own perceived power accordingly.
#8
Russias response is unjustified, and thay have bascially comitted full invasion and naval blockade agains a western oriented, freely elected democracy, a free nation, in order to subjugate it.
Where is the jsutification for that?
No amount of equivocating can justify the actions fo the Russins invading Georgia proper, boimbing civilians, detroying prot facilties outside the disputed areas, ocuping (after extensive shelling) a major Georgian city (Gori).
These are clear acts of unjutified and unprovoke naked agression.
If we do NOT act agains the Russian, we will allow Putin to have coimmitted criminal acts, and get away with it. Do you supposed that woudl encoruage or discourage him from further similar actions?
#9
Only answer I have for you, OS, is that when a country is invaded, or sees an ally invaded, they have the right to respond, and that response need not be limited or proportionate.
I don't like what's happening in Georgia, either, but in the end the international community is going to shrug its collective shoulders and say, "after all, the Georgians started it." And they're going to cite the Kosovo precedent to justify the South Ossetians wanting to go their own way.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/11/2008 16:38 Comments ||
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#10
Russia came in a few days ago with 10 tanks, troops, air force bombers (or whatever they are), and the navy steaming in to blockade the Georgian port. That kind of force is not prepared overnight. How long has Russia been waiting for an excuse to take over the two provinces where it already had troops, and charge over the border to flatten Georgia proper, Dr. Steve? What was the reason they chose to line everything up on the border, waiting to go in? Let's not talk as if this were Georgia's decision, alone.
#12
"Only answer I have for you, OS, is that when a country is invaded, or sees an ally invaded, they have the right to respond, and that response need not be limited or proportionate."
So ossetia isnt a country, damn it. It cant be anyones ally. If Israel sends troops into the arab villages of the Gallilee can the arab states respond with force? and if they do, will that effect the world view of the conflict?
"I don't like what's happening in Georgia, either, but in the end the international community is going to shrug its collective shoulders and say, "after all, the Georgians started it." And they're going to cite the Kosovo precedent to justify the South Ossetians wanting to go their own way."
The international community isnt homogeneous, will respond diversely. South Africa wont respond the same way as Poland, say. Most of them KNOW the difference between Kosovo and Ossetia, thats just Russian pablum, no one really takes it seriously as a point of international law. The usual antiwestern third worlders will wink cause the just do, unless they are really freaked about precedents. US and UK and France and the eastern euros are clearly not going to accept this, the only question is what they think they can do about it. The biggest obvious case where the fact of Russian aggression may change minds is Germany, and they are the target audience for a lot of the propaganda, as they have been for several years (and their polity is quite split - the CDU is pro-Georgian, more so than the govt). China, as others have noted, is also interesting. They did not like the Kosovo precedent, but adding more weight to it, this time humanitarian intervention as an obvious fig leaf, cant please them too much either. I think it boils down to their weighign continued resentment of the US position on Taiwan, vs possibly growing discomfort with a reckless USSR.
#13
BBC: Mr Bildt, a veteran of the diplomatic realities of the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, could only shrug in the fierce Georgian sun, look across to the French jet waiting to take off, then turn away for his own mission.
He already told me on the plane that the diplomatic challenge to restrain Russian intentions was "immense in every respect".
The widespread diplomatic concern in the EU and Nato is that after South Ossetia and probably Abkhazia, next Moscow will have its eyes set on the Crimea region of Ukraine and then Ukraine itself.
No programme
It is the first time in the Council of Europe's 60-year history that two member nations who have pledged to resolve disputes peacefully have instead resorted to war. Turkey's invasion of northern Cyprus in 1974 does not qualify.
Along with the Council of Europe's Secretary-General, Terri Davis, Mr Bildt is here to make an assessment ahead of an emergency EU meeting in Brussels on Wednesday.
"This is unprecedented," said Mr Davis. "There is no international right to go into a country to protect the right of your citizens." South Ossetia is thought to have 70,000 Russian passport holders.
"It is against what Russia signed up to - to settle disputes by peaceful means."
I asked Mr Bildt whether it is too late before his first meeting with Georgia's foreign minister.
"Evidently, since the war is ongoing," he said, with Swedish understatement.
What should have happened?
"Perhaps to have acted more forcefully earlier and dealt with the activities that we saw," he added.
"There has been escalation over some time, over weeks and over months."
Mr Bildt and Mr Davis will have 36 hours here.
There is no programme, no list of appointments - just a determination to be well informed before difficult decisions have to be taken by the EU and Nato to underscore the warning of US Vice President Dick Cheney that Russian aggression "must not go unanswered".
The US and the EU are united on this as never before. That will not only anger the Russians, but all on right and left who hate the idea of US-Euro cooperation.
#15
I doubt its important. or if it is, its a peace deal. if it was coming down hard on the Russians, President "world hates him and hes a lame duck anyway" wouldnt be giving the speech, one of the euros would.
#16
'Only answer I have for you, OS, is that when a country is invaded, or sees an ally invaded, they have the right to respond, and that response need not be limited or proportionate.'
so if China declares a blockade of their province of Taiwan, and a US ship interferes with that blockade, and China responds by nuking Los Angeles, you woulnt consider that a disproportionate response, that should impact the views and actions of those US allies who did not share our original view of Taiwan?
Without the notion of proportionate response, thered be effectively no world law. Theres ALWAYS some minor incidents between nations.
#17
It is intersting. I remember reading somewhere of a theory that Al Queda attacked because they were weak and knew it and war was a way to galvanize the Islamic world slouching towards secularism.
We pretty much all know Russia is in demographic decline. I have to wonder if the same sort of thing isn't at work here, to some extent. Giving the Russian people something to rally around and restore pride and all.
WASHINGTON — The image of President Bush smiling and chatting with Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia from the stands of the Beijing Olympics even as Russian aircraft were shelling Georgia outlines the reality of America’s Russia policy. While America considers Georgia its strongest ally in the bloc of former Soviet countries, Washington needs Russia too much on big issues like Iran to risk it all to defend Georgia.
And State Department officials made it clear on Saturday that there was no chance the United States would intervene militarily.
Mr. Bush did use tough language, demanding that Russia stop bombing. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded that Russia “respect Georgia’s territorial integrity.”
What did Mr. Putin do? First, he repudiated President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in Beijing, refusing to budge when Mr. Sarkozy tried to dissuade Russia from its military operation. “It was a very, very tough meeting,” a senior Western official said afterward. “Putin was saying, ‘We are going to make them pay. We are going to make justice.’ ”
Then, Mr. Putin flew from Beijing to a region that borders South Ossetia, arriving after an announcement that Georgia was pulling its troops out of the capital of the breakaway region. He appeared ostensibly to coordinate assistance to refugees who had fled South Ossetia into Russia, but the Russian message was clear: This is our sphere of influence; others stay out.
“What the Russians just did is, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, they have taken a decisive military action and imposed a military reality,” said George Friedman, chief executive of Stratfor, a geopolitical analysis and intelligence company. “They’ve done it unilaterally, and all of the countries that have been looking to the West to intimidate the Russians are now forced into a position to consider what just happened.”
And Bush administration officials acknowledged that the outside world, and the United States in particular, had little leverage over Russian actions.
“There is no possibility of drawing NATO or the international community into this,” said a senior State Department official in a conference call with reporters.
The unfolding conflict in Georgia set off a flurry of diplomacy. Ms. Rice and other officials at the State Department and the Pentagon have been on the telephone with RussiaÂ’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, and other Russian counterparts, as well as with officials in Georgia, urging both sides to return to peace talks.
The European Union — and Germany, in particular, with its strong ties to Russia — called on both sides to stand down and scheduled meetings to press their concerns. At the United Nations, members of the Security Council met informally to discuss a possible response, but one Security Council diplomat said it remained uncertain whether much could be done.
“Strategically, the Russians have been sending signals that they really wanted to flex their muscles, and they’re upset about Kosovo,” the diplomat said. He was alluding to Russia’s anger at the West for recognizing Kosovo’s independence from Serbia.
Indeed, the decision by the United States and Europe to recognize Kosovo may well have paved the way for RussiaÂ’s lightning-fast decision to send troops to back the separatists in South Ossetia. During one meeting on Kosovo in Brussels this year, Mr. Lavrov, the foreign minister, warned Ms. Rice and European diplomats that if they recognized Kosovo, they would be setting a precedent for South Ossetia and other breakaway provinces.
For the Bush administration, the choice now becomes whether backing Georgia — which, more than any other former Soviet republic has allied with the United States — on the South Ossetia issue is worth alienating Russia at a time when getting Russia’s help to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions is at the top of the United States’ foreign policy agenda.
One United Nations diplomat joked on Saturday that “if someone went to the Russians and said, ‘OK, Kosovo for Iran,’ we’d have a deal.”
That might be hyperbole, but there is a growing feeling among some officials in the Bush administration that perhaps the United States cannot have it all, and may have to choose its priorities, particularly when it comes to Russia.
The Bush administration’s strong support for Georgia — including the training of Georgia’s military and arms support — came, in part, as a reward for its support of the United States in Iraq. The United States has held Georgia up as a beacon of democracy in the former Soviet Union; it was supposed to be an example to other former Soviet republics of the benefits of tilting to the West.
But that, along with America and EuropeÂ’s actions on Kosovo, left Russia feeling threatened, encircled and more convinced that it had to take aggressive measures to restore its power, dignity and influence in a region it considers its strategic back yard, foreign policy experts said.
RussiaÂ’s emerging aggressiveness is now also timed with AmericaÂ’s preoccupation with Iraq and Afghanistan, and the looming confrontation with Iran. These counterbalancing considerations mean that Moscow is in the driverÂ’s seat, administration officials acknowledged.
“We’ve placed ourselves in a position that globally we don’t have the wherewithal to do anything,” Mr. Friedman of Stratfor said. “One would think under those circumstances, we’d shut up.”
One senior administration official, when told of that quote, laughed. “Well, maybe we’re learning to shut up now,” he said. He asked that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/11/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
We don't need another Cold War, with surrogate battles throughout the world. We need to take a second look at the word "freedom." The Saudis are free to behead starving thieves. Pashtos are free to peddle heroin. Georgians are free to worship Stalin. Kosovans are free to control the Euro drug trade. Turkey is free to suppress teaching of evolution. Mexico is free to control elections and put elected officials and bureaucrats above the law. Iran is free to call for the annihilation of the US. Somalia is free to indulge sea piracy. Maybe US, China and Russia should create a tripartite security apparatus, in regard to Euro moral depravity and Third World tribalist warlordism.
#3
McZoid, the last time I checked, you're the one overlooking fifteen years or so of the "ex" Soviets supplying nuclear technology to the government of Iran.
China, aside from its problems in Xinjiang, has also been a major conduit for nuclear technology to Pakistan; guess where their nuclear bomb designs came from.
Now the question that comes to mind to me is, are you really that stupid and willfully blind, or do you think we are?
Are you a useful idiot or do you read this site and see nothing but potential useful idiots?
#4
McZerobrain is a fuckwit that apparently knows nothing, and proves it daily here.
McDickhead I am getting completely tired of your stupid idotic racist bigoted harted fiulled diateribes here evfery time you post.
You always have something hateful and race-based to say about Saudis, et al. And 99.9% of the time its not germane tothe topic, and its nto soruce, not credible and not true.
You are a lying pice of bigoted shit. You've shown it in your posts and I'm calling you out everywhere you go here. You are my personal punk. I'm going to verbally whip your ass everywhere your putrid posts show up here.
"Georgians are free to worship Stalin"
Thats a fucking LIE boy (one among the multitudes you spew here) - either retract it and apologize or I'll continue to hound you, you bigoted ignorant asshole.
#5
In Georgia Clash, a Lesson on U.S. Need for Russia
Should read.... a "Need to keep an closer eye on Putin and Russia." Once again, where were are our Russian experts? Who was monitoring the RU order of battle in the border areas? Where is the predictive analysis from the intelligence community (IC). What happened to the coms links btwn the IC and the State Department. When the shooting stops I hope somebody on our end publishes some lessons learned on this one and our leadership comes up with a new way to deal with an ever present threat.
#7
Persona non grata. There aren't many of them left. The focus shifted away from Russia.
Yah, among other things we disbanded the ASA because the Cold War Was Over! and we wouldn't need experts in Russian or in such cold war concepts as Traffic Analysis ever again. It was time for the Peace Dividend!
#8
Secretary of State Rice was a Russia expert, although I imagine she's not been keeping personal track of Russian troop movements in its near abroad lately.
#10
I can't believe that Oil and Gold aren't going through the F-ing roof this morning. The pirates on Wall street must really have their eye on the next big swindle to miss an opportunity like this.
#11
Not a swindle. What did you THINK was gonna happen to the price of oil, since we've exported the industry to the likes of the House of Saud and Tsar Pooty?
#12
if we're going to give Russia a pass cause of their help in Iran, shouldnt they actually, you know, help us on Iran? Have they? Does Friedman think they have, or that they will? Does the nameless DoS official?
If they ARE trying to get us to go along and make a deal with them, their rhetoric has been rather on the odd side. As have their actions in going BEYOND S Ossetia, and shoving what they are doing in our noses.
Maybe it would be better to let Iran have nukes, and let the Russians stand surety for them - IE if Iran uses nuke, Moscow gets bombed.
#15
big jim: I can't believe that Oil and Gold aren't going through the F-ing roof this morning. The pirates on Wall street must really have their eye on the next big swindle to miss an opportunity like this.
Demand is down. Stratospheric commodity prices have lowered demand.
#16
The National Security Agency is a forum for shortsighted jackasses. Their work product is: garbage. Too bad it trickles into the minds of Rantburg liberals. Or should I say: Obamites.
#17
First rule for NYT "analysis" - assume it's completely wrong, read all conclusions in reverse, question all "facts", challenge all the assumptions no matter how well hidden or wispily implied.
#18
The Georgia move is a response to NATO's move into the Warsaw Pact pull out. We asked for it. Putin is laughing at our touchy-feely, Alice in Wonderland rhetoric about civilians dying in air raids. Knee jerkism and historical myopia are in season.
Re. oil price crises. In the Fall session, the US Congress will have the Oil Futures market on the front burner. Pig farmers, etc need a future's market because it guarantees revenue should there be a producer' supply crisis. There is no such need in the oil business. Clinton bragged about not having an energy policy. It was in that context that the NYMEX sought to sandbag Chicago, with that market from hell. I am optimist that realism will prevail.
How are oil prices set? Platts Group - and other related firms - gather price and pay data from oil vendors, and post trends. Vendor costs are now closely tied to NYMEX. Any excuse to raise the price of Futures is jumped on. Supply and Demand have little to do with what we pay at the pumps. Note: half of Gulf of Mexico rigs are capped; prospective yield estimates are NOT recorded in cumulative oil reserves.
Re #4: the use of profanity and pseudo authority - 'you lie because I say you lie' - takes your blog beyond opinionated rant. Everyone else merely states disagreements; that character insults for its own sake. Even if he does have an intelligence background, that hardly means he gets it right. I read each and every report of the Federation of American Scientists. A lack of objectivity is apparent in much of same. Knee jerkism is in season.
I'll put up a post on the Gamsakhurdia-Shevardnadze feud this evening. The material should diminish all the shouting here.
TALLAHASSEE -- Herbert Pompey had gone through rehab, stayed sober, held a job, married and started a landscaping business in the two years since he walked out of Taylor Correctional Institution. But what Pompey hadn't done -- and what he assumed a string of felony drug and DUI convictions would keep him from ever doing again -- was vote.
So his pulse quickened when civil rights lawyer Reggie Mitchell called to tell him that his rights had been restored. "You're eligible to vote now, Mr. Pompey," Mitchell said, calmly relaying the news. "Can I bring you a voter-registration card?" Pompey whispered, "Lord, you was listening." Mitchell smiled -- he had gotten another felon back on the rolls.
Mitchell is a leader of a disparate group of grass-roots Democrats and civil rights activists who are trying to register tens of thousands of newly eligible felons. They have taken up the cause on their own, motivated by the belief that former offenders have been unfairly disenfranchised for decades.
Despite massive registration efforts, the presidential campaigns of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have not designated anyone to go after the group. In Alabama, Al Sharpton's younger brother, the Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, will take his "Prodigal Son" ministry into state prisons with voter-registration cards for the first time.
The American Civil Liberties Union recently filed suit there and in Tennessee to make it possible for an even larger class of felons to register. In Ohio, the NAACP will hold a voter-registration day at the Justice Center in downtown Cleveland this month to register "people caught up in the criminal justice system," a local official said.
In California, a team will stand in front of jails on Aug. 16 to register people visiting prisoners and encourage them to take registration cards to their incarcerated friends or family members, some of whom can legally vote. "This is a voting block that has never been open before, and it has opened up at such a time as this," said Glasgow, who was a felon himself. In Florida, a law change last year made more than 115,000 felons eligible to vote, according to the state Parole Commission.
In other states, civil rights and criminal justice groups estimate there are similar numbers who have not registered. All but two states -- Maine and Vermont -- limit voting rights for people with felony convictions. Some felons are banned from voting until they have completed parole and paid restitution, others for life. Kentucky and Virginia have the most restrictive laws, denying all felons the right to vote, though Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) has encouraged nonviolent offenders to apply to have their rights restored. Generally, though restoring voting rights has hit resistance from all directions.
Not wanting to appear soft on crime, Democratic and Republican leaders have not aggressively pursued the issue. In Florida, black state legislators led the fight for a decade before populist Republican Gov. Charlie Crist pushed through the change shortly after being elected in 2006. The legislation permits many nonviolent felons to vote as long as they have no charges pending, have paid restitution and have completed probation.
But getting the ex-offenders registered has been a slow process. Mitchell, 43, a Democrat and Obama backer, is leading the effort in Tallahassee and has created an "Ex-Felon Targets" database to search for potential voters. He calls getting voter-registration cards to them a "passionate hobby." "The majority of people to get their rights restored are Democrats, and if we get them registered, [we] might overtake the state," he said.
The Obama campaign isn't so sure. Mark Bubriski, the candidate's spokesman in Florida, said the felon vote "could certainly swing an election, but there are millions and millions of voters." Bubriski added that finding ex-offenders can be hard to do, and that "there's also the perception, for some reason, that they are all black and all Democrats, and that's certainly not the case."
For Mitchell, his effort to sign up felons is political and personal. Florida's ban was written into the state constitution after the Civil War, and regaining the right was nearly impossible for decades. Hundreds of thousands of clemency applicants were rejected, leaving nearly 1 million Floridians unable to vote in the 2004 presidential election, according to the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group.
The majority of felons in the state are white, and there are no studies on ex-offenders' party affiliation. Yet black men are disproportionately incarcerated and disproportionately disenfranchised, which Mitchell sees as a civil rights issue. Before the law changed, nearly a third of the state's black men were banned from voting, according to the Florida chapter of the ACLU. "It kind of offended my notion of justice. You can serve your time and still have your rights taken away," said Mitchell, who is black. "I studied the history of black disenfranchisement in the state. We had the grandfather laws and the tissue-paper ballots. When a black man came to vote, they gave him a tissue-paper ballot that was later thrown out. There were lynchings and riots. We've got a long history of depriving people of the right to vote in Florida." Mitchell left a personal-injury practice in 2004 to become Florida legal director for the nonprofit People for the American Way Foundation.
Leading the liberal advocacy group's state voting rights project, he sent out news releases, lobbied politicians and, in 2006, marched to the statehouse with the ACLU and others, demanding that ex-offenders be allowed to vote. Since the law was changed, the ACLU and People for the American Way have been reaching out to ex-offenders through Web sites that help people figure out whether the state has acted on their cases. Mitchell oversaw the project that helped build the foundation's Restore My Vote site
Elizabeth Rhoden, 57, went to the site late last year, punched in her name and sat in her office crying with her dog Lopsy when she read that she had been cleared to vote. Rhoden, who is white, lost her right to vote when she was convicted of a drug charge in 1979. The things she did when she was "young and stupid" have hung like a cloud over her life, she said, and for years she has been the lone Democrat in her family, complaining about the Bush administrations that have run the country and her state.
In 2000, she volunteered for Al Gore's presidential campaign. In 2004, she worked on a committee to draft Gen. Wesley K. Clark. This year, she cast the first vote of her life -- for Obama in the Democratic primary. "This has been a major, major thing in my heart," she said. But visits to the Web sites have been inconsistent, and Mitchell thinks too much of the onus for getting the vote back has been on the felons. He feels called to help. One hot Thursday, he folded his 6-foot-3 frame into his black Dodge Durango with the white Obama 'o8 bumper sticker. He had his salt-and-pepper goatee trimmed and wore a suit and leather shoes, as he does every day even though he is unemployed after losing his job in a downsizing at the end of June. Mitchell was on his way to meet with Ion Sancho, election supervisor in Leon County, which includes Tallahassee. Sancho, who starred in an HBO documentary that questioned the reliability of electronic voting machines, is something of a local celebrity.
Mitchell considers him an ally and told him about a St. Petersburg Times finding that only 8,200 ex-offenders have registered since the policy was changed, less than 10 percent of the number eligible. "The information is not filtering to the people who need it," said Sancho, who worries that the governor's rule change has been stymied by a slow-moving, underfunded bureaucracy. "It's catch as catch can as people learn about it," said Mitchell, who attended the historically black Florida A&M University on the city's south side. "If this country lawyer could figure this out, you mean the government couldn't do it?" Next month, he and his Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity brothers will use his "Ex-Felon Targets" list to go door to door as part of its "a voteless people is a hopeless people campaign." Until then, he is on his own. It was on his sixth call of a recent morning that Pompey picked up the phone.
Pompey drank and drugged for long stretches and cannot remember the last ballot he cast, but he and his wife, Carolyn, are Democrats and admirers of Obama's campaign because of its historic nature. Several months ago she told him, "We've got to get you registered to vote." Even so, Pompey procrastinated after he received a letter from the state this summer telling him he now had his "rights restored." "Not knowing what to do makes people not want to go do it," said Pompey, who is taking night classes at a community college and dreams of opening a Christian halfway house for ex-offenders. "You don't realize how far behind you are until you get back in the mainstream. Maybe fear, maybe procrastination just kind of paralyzed me, and I just didn't go forward with it."
Pompey came by Mitchell's nondescript office straight from work wearing mud-covered boots. He silently filled out the registration form, printing each word with care. Done, he said he felt free. "Sometimes society has a way of wanting to continue to punish you," Pompey told Mitchell. "For me, [voting] is about coming full circle. For me, it's big."
#2
Herbert Pompey had gone through rehab, stayed sober, held a job, married and started a landscaping business in the two years since he walked out of Taylor Correctional Institution.
If the story is straight [big caveat there MSM] then he's taken responsibility for his own actions and is a budding entrepreneur. Somehow that doesn't scream Donk on it. I take it, as the lead in, that its MSM's way of three card monty trying to avoid the greater number of unrepentant who'll join the Donk mindset of 'victimization' and dependency crowd that is the real target of the Donks.
One day I will publish my entire collection of upside-down Iraq headlines, where the true purport of the story is the inverse of the intended one. (Top billing thus far would go to the greatest downer of them all: the tale of Iraq's unemployed gravediggers, their always-insecure standard of living newly imperiled by the falling murder rate.
You don't believe me? Wait for the forthcoming anthology.) While you wait, you might consider last week's astonishing report about the Iraqi budget surplus and the way in which the report was reported.
Largely attributable to the bonanza in oil prices, to new discoveries of oil since the eviction of Saddam Hussein, and to the increasing success of Iraqi exports via the pipelines to Turkey, this surplus could amount to as much as $79 billion by the end of this year.
A good chunk of that money is sitting safely in a bank in New York. I would call this good news by any standard, though of course I understand the annoyance of Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and others involved in the auditing of Iraq, who complain that all the unspent wealth is a bit much, given the heavy outlay from the U.S. treasury for the rebuilding of Mesopotamia.
Sen. Levin, who with Sen. John Warner, R-Va., requested the original report from the Government Accountability Office on Iraq's finances, was the ranking Democrat on the Senate subcommittee investigating the "oil for food" outrage.
He knows perfectly well what used to happen to Iraq's oil wealth, which was prostituted through a U.N. program and diverted to such noble causes as the subsidy of suicide bombers in Gaza and the financing of pro-Saddam and "anti-war" politicians in London, Paris, and Moscow. While this criminal enrichment of Iraqi and overseas elites was taking place, the population of the country was living on garbage and drinking tainted water as a result of the U.N.-mandated international sanctions.
He ends with this:
So, yes, major combat operations appear to be over, and to that extent one can belatedly say, "Mission accomplished." If there is any Iraqi nostalgia for the old party and the old army, it is remarkably well-concealed.
Iraq no longer plays deceptive games with weapons of mass destruction or plays host to international terrorist groups. It is no longer subject to sanctions that punish its people and enrich its rulers. Its religious and ethnic minorities—together a majority—are no longer treated like disposable trash. Its most bitter internal argument is about the timing of the next provincial and national elections.
Surely it is those who opposed every step of this emancipation, rather than those who advocated it, who should be asked to explain and justify themselves.
#1
Iraq is becoming more of a challenge for creative reporters. Maybe, they should move on to other cesspools. This one isn't stinky enough anymore. I could name a few easy ones, like Zimbabwa, Burma, and Russia would be a good start.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
08/11/2008 15:43 Comments ||
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#2
Given the history of the Donks to cut funding to S.Vietnam, the Iraqis are wise banking what they can with many Surrender Party(c) members preaching immediate pull out when the Donks take power in the White House. The Iraqis are just reacting like many here to the unrelenting propaganda that the O'man will win.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
