Although analysts may debate how far Putin decides to go in Georgia, its actions are indistinguishable from a campaign that intends to go “all the way”. It’s forces are thrusting deep into Georgian territory and are now menacing the Georgian capital. Clearly, Russia’s ceasefire has turned out to be ‘just another scrap of paper’ and heavily discounts any future or past assurances. Putin’s statements have shown themselves to have a low and possibly negative truth value, and he may have lied about events in Georgia from the beginning. That means that nothing Putin says matters. Only what the West actually does will have any significance.
Russia is in the middle of a Great Game: a multi-front competition with China, India, Iran and the West for resources and influence in Central Asia. It’s long term position is poor. It’s demography is falling and apart from the energy sector — itself a spoil of Russia’s Great Game — its economy is less dynamic than China’s or the West. Russia is therefore engaged in a two-front “war” for resources and the control of communications links that it cannot afford to wage and which it has no good long-term prospects of winning. In this competition, the prizes are rail links, roads and pipelines. That is what Putin wants in Georgia. The Left, always on the lookout for a “war for oil” can’t see Georgia for what it is: Putin’s attempt to control the pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Turkey and thence to the European gas grid.
The US decision to send a military airlift into Tsibilsi and dispatch a naval convoy bringing humanitarian supplies sends a signal eerily reminiscent of the 1948 Berlin Airlift. The use of military and naval assets simultaneously lays the framework for future action with the same vehicles. Like Putin’s cooing threats, the humanitarian effort is intentionally ambiguous. Vladimir Putin has told America to “choose” between Russia and Georgia. He was really asking the United States to choose between conflict and appeasement. By sending a mini-Berlin airlift into Georgia, Bush is giving no answer, only repeating the question: Mr. Putin, choose — choose what comes next.
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474 Comments
1. someone:This comment may belong in the previous thread, but it’s rather huge now.
A lot of our talk has assumed that we (or rather Western opinion organs generally) were the main targets of the propaganda war. But reading Illarionov’s piece today suggests the possibility that our flood of Russophile trolls is just the recycled byproduct of what’s being prepared for mainly domestic consumption — to keep the Russian populace on board.
Note that opposition sites in Russia were cyber-attacked as well.
Aug 13, 2008 - 1:55 pm 2. austin:Looking at the maps for Gerogia, there is a major chokepoint outside of Tbilisi where rivers and two mountain ranges come together and the road network threads through. There are also several key bridges and overpasses. That is where the battle for Tbilisi would be. Pretty interesting.
Follow the roads out of Tbilisi West and you will see that it narrows to a gorge with a RR on the S and a road on the N.
http://www.maplandia.com/georgia/geo…ories/tbilisi/
Aug 13, 2008 - 1:57 pm 3. fred:Wretchard,
The Left in Europe and North America continues to side with Russia on this one, even continuing to show willful credulousness. I see it in some pundits’ and journalists’ interpretations of events. In the weblog world we continue to see a significant showing of people, who we can tell are not Russian disinformation agents, who still say that Georgia deserves this and Russia is right to defend its interests in the region.
The fact of a “cease fire” that never existed matters not a whit to them.
Putin sees how much of this is happening in the West. And he makes the correct assessment that his view of us as “weak” has been borne out by events and our reactions to them.
Aug 13, 2008 - 1:59 pm 4. someone:fred:
Putin can see from what happened in Iraq that it’s what Bush thinks that matters. Transatlantic leftists can flap their gums, but at the end of the day…
Besides, in this case Sarko and France are on the hook thanks to Bush’s cease-fire gambit.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:07 pm 5. whiskey:I think it is quite likely that Putin will order his forces to fire upon American air and sealift activity.
He has to — he’s bet it all on making oil rise, to the point where he can pay his thugs who always need “more” money. Witness his self-defeating looting of direct foreign investment in Russia which is badly needed.
So ends the 1990’s. All of it. Including citizens of the world, assumptions about cheap oil, “end of history” and the rest of the lunatic fantasies of Western Europe and the Left.
Fundamentally, the West and China NEED cheap oil to promote economic activity. Russia and Iran (and Venezuela, and Nigeria, and Saudi) need expensive oil to keep their thugocracy afloat. Putin has no choice but to choose war to keep oil afloat.
I don’t think missiles will fly across continents (thank God!)
But I do think that the US will be forced to rebuild it’s military particularly it’s Navy. Western Europe might even be forced to do the same.
We are looking roughly at the US-China-India allied over cheap oil, vs. Russia-Iran-Saudi, with Europe on the sidelines. Georgia is merely the first point, but others will follow.
As a practical matter, I don’t think we can free Georgia. Too far, Turkey likely to be too intimidated, Russia too good for now in copying how the US fights, close to their supply lines. Long term, though, the US has many advantages.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:14 pm 6. Al:It’s forces are thrusting deep into Georgian territory and are now menacing the Georgian capital. Clearly, Russia’s ceasefire has turned out to be ‘just another scrap of paper’ and heavily discounts any future or past assurances.
Georgia says Russia appears to be leaving 2 towns
4 hours ago
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — Georgia’s deputy defense minister says Russian troops are apparently pulling out of two towns.
Bato Kuteliya said Wednesday the troops had left the western town of Zugdidi — near the breakaway province of Abkhazia — and are expected to leave the city of Gori shortly.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gDNLWfQWKrQc48pITBUg9KT_6oVwD92HGM284
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:19 pm 7. Doug:Snipers Target Civilians
Minutes later, a second cop car screeched to a halt. Inside was the children’s mother, in agony from gunshot wounds in her right shoulder and leg. She was loaded on to a trolley.
After a brief examination all three were put into an ambulance and driven to the capital Tbilisi 40 miles away.
They had been ambushed a few hundred yards from the hospital as they drove through Gori’s almost-deserted streets.
Russian army stragglers were immediately blamed — but separatists from the Moscow-backed enclave of South Ossetia could have been responsible.
South Ossetia, where the war erupted on Friday, wants to break away from Georgia and there are fears gunmen have now left the region on a sick “ethnic cleansing” mission.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:21 pm 8. Lugh Lampfhota:It looks like Russia wants a pliable Georgia. With the country cut in half, the east-west highway/rail/pipeline closed, access to ports shutdown, communications down and the military bottled around Tblisi the Russians have succeeded. Georgia is no longer a viable entity. Nothing the US can do will change the situation short of a military confrontation.
The message to the world is that the US is unwilling and therefore unable to do anything but bluster. This is bad. Nations are recalculating relationships and the US risks becoming irrelevant. All that hardware is useless if you won’t use it.
The US has tried the “love us” gambit without success. All of the trillions of humanitarian aid, disaster relief and nation building has not won us many real friends in the world. Perhaps there just isn’t enough love in the world. Maybe we need to try the “fear us” approach.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:22 pm 9. 49erDweet:GWB probably has less than 15 days to determine the full extent of his response to Putin’s invasion.
Furthermore, I believe his “legacy” will either fish or cut-bait on this issue, and if he thinks the loony left have been hard on him so far, wait till the righteous right wades in if he comes up looking any weaker than he seems today. Imo he’ll end up being even sorrier he ever moved eastward from 1010 Colorado Street, downtown Austin. Crawford must sure look mighty nice about now.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:24 pm 10. NahnCee:If France has aligned with America (for the nonce) where is Germany? And England? Somehow, England seems VERY quiet and hunkered down, hoping not to be noticed by either side.
Be way-cool if a grassroots hacker attack on Russian government (and other) sites could be organized by the West. All the D&D gameplayers who have spent years and years playing war games in their parent’s basement could launch their own strike against the Bear, if the Bear wants to play those sorts of games. I wonder if gameplayers are also KosKids.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:28 pm 11. Marzouq the Redneck Muslim:Folks,
Things are getting interestinger and interestinger.
Whiskey, your assesment is pretty well on the mark. Historically Russia/USSR had been playing Iran and Saudi, they are going great guns in the Great Game.
When I read the news of the humanitarian assistance by USN and USAF it was heartening to see us staying in the Great Game. We are sending our Armed Peace Corps. Europe better get off the sidelines, they as usual have the most to lose.
I hope y’all read John McCain’s speech about Georgia, not a bad piece of work. The Leftist usual idiots and their candidate Obama are parotting the Russian propaganda as usual.
Salaam eleikum Y’all!
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:28 pm 12. NahnCee:I’ve been thinking that Dubya would kick this can down the street for his predecessor to deal with, while he finished up his War on Terror and nuked Iran. That he’d let either McCain or That Person deal with Russia.
He may not be given the opportunity to do that, though, which makes me wonder if God is interceeding (again) to make sure America has the strongest possible President at the worst possible time.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:30 pm 13. Al:<a href=”http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080813.OSSETIASCENE13/TPStory/TPInternational/Europe/”
Shattered capital is now a ghost town
Ruslan Kelekhgaev summoned reporters to a backyard where he buried a pregnant woman who was killed in her kitchen by flying shrapnel. The dead woman, Malvina Tskhovrebova, 45, lay in her house for two days before her husband and neighbours felt safe enough to leave their homes to dispose of her body.
The visiting journalists were the first contact many residents have had with foreigners since the fighting began, apart from the Russian military. Many said they were stunned by Georgia’s surprise predawn attack last Friday.
Vasily Arsoev, 80, said he worked for the transit system in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi for 20 years. He considered Georgians to be his brothers then, he said, but no longer.
“I think that these bandits who did this must be killed. It doesn’t sound nice, but it’s the truth.”
The Russian military’s massive presence here appeared out of proportion with the amount of firepower needed to repel the Georgians. Yet most residents knew the Russian soldiers as liberators.
Journalists were also taken to Tskhinvali’s bullet-scarred hospital, where the wounded were treated in the basement by candlelight on the first two nights of fighting. Hospital staff said they were overwhelmed by the number of wounded that arrived at the hospital last weekend.
Talking to the journalists, Dr. Tina Zaharova blamed westerners for supporting Georgia.
“Why are you supporting a country that spends so much money on this?” she demanded, holding a piece of white metal shrapnel.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:30 pm 14. Lugh Lampfhota:At least Bush is consistent in his policy about borders. The US border is wide open with 43 Mexican military incursions on US soil in the last 10 months. Why would he do anything more than jawbone Russians for their incursion into Georgia? Water stations for Mexican “immigrants” equals blankets for Ossetian “refugees”. What’s the difference? It’s all good.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:32 pm 15. Peter Boston:After watching Putin and the Russian military for the past week one would think that even a US female graduate student would catch on that states, particulalrly authoritarian states, do not operate on the same plane of existence as they imagine should exist for personal relationships.
I am not surprised that the Left is behind Putin. Sashkavilli is US educated, speaks perfect English, and is a personal friend of John McCain.
The Darkness is upon us. If events of the 19th and 20th century mean anything then we will again see an upwelling of popular support for authoritarians who promise to deliver the security and comfort that the weak minded and the purposeless are incapable of attaining for themselves. If we’re half lucky we will not have to deal with the additional complications of a Hugo Chavez wannabe known as Barack Obama.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:36 pm 16. funnymarx:Does the Russian army have any institutional memory of World War II? Is there any modern equivalent to STAVKA when it comes to operational planning?
I wonder, since if there is I would be wary about any response chosen at this point. The Red Army of 1942-43 on seemed very good at strategic double envelopment — often accomplished through operational double envelopment. Witness Operations Saturn and Uranus, or witness what amounted to a defensive double envelopment at Kursk.
Does any of that strategic vision and operational expertise still remain in Russia? I think the USA has done well so far to keep its reserves and avoid over committing at this point.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:37 pm 17. Al:Sashkavilli is US educated, speaks perfect English, and is a personal friend of John McCain.
He also shuts down opposition media, jails/exiles opposition leaders, and is accused (by his own former defense minister!) of murdering political opponents. And let’s not forget that he was first elected by 96%(!) of the vote. No voter fraud here.
Appearances can be deceving.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:41 pm 18. Doug:Lugh,
Been saying it for years:
An estimated 12,000 US Citizens die PER YEAR at the hands of illegals.
700-1,000 lives a year could be saved @ the Border if it were secured by a shoot on sight order.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:42 pm 19. Manny C:Instead the Carnage and heartbreak continues.
Interesting that you only mention US force projection. Why are Europeans not doing more? It’s their energy supplies that russia wants to monopolize. France has airlifted supplies. That’s it I think.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:46 pm 20. neolex:@Al
What’s with Russian propaganda? There was a 26-year old pregnant woman killed in Gori by Russian bombardment recently. Do you expect victims of shelling, with people dying around them to say anything else about the aggressor, regardless of the underlying cause? To claim that Georgians started this is to ignore a week-long Russian-sponsored escalation that preceeded Georgian invasion. Russian methods of waging war, as shown in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and “freeing of hostages” in Beslan, inform a strong opinion that more South Ossetians died under Russian bombs (trying to clear the city of Georgians) than from the Georgian shelling.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:47 pm 21. Fletcher Christian:Everybody here seems to be ignoring the indirect approach to this problem. Everybody agrees that the whole issue is fundamentally about control of oil and gas supply and distribution, right? (Incidentally, that matter makes global terrorism worse as well.) So work around it.
The speech might go something like this:
“Certain countries have proved themselves unreliable and not to be trusted. It is no secret that the industrial countries of the world need energy. Therefore, starting right now, the laws banning exploitation of oil resources in the Alaskan North Slope and the Gulf of Mexico are repealed. Furthermore, there is now on offer a prize of $10 billion for delivery of one million barrels of oil from shale deposits in a one-month period. Furthermore to that, there will be research grants of $500 million for electrostatic-confinement fusion, and further prizes; $1 billion for 1 gigawatt of power from ocean thermal, $1 billion for one million barrels of oil from closed-circuit algae culture equipment, $1 billion for one GW from wave power generation, $10 billion for 1GW of power delivered to Earth from a station in outer space. I have complete faith in the ability of American industry to deliver these things, given the incentive. The starting gun has been fired, ladies and gentlemen. To the victors go the spoils! But the free countries of the world will be winners also, whoever wins the race!”
I just hope that there is someone of vision enough to deliver such a speech.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:48 pm 22. Yashmak:“Appearances can be deceving”
Be that as it may, there’s no denying the deception in Russia’s behavior. Their lies over the past few days have been laid plain for the world to see.
We need to get military assets, albeit in the role of humanitarian assistance, into what’s left of Georgia quickly. . .and thus put Russia in a position where it will be attacking Americans if it chooses to continue gobbling up the remainder of the country.
While our Army is hugely committed elsewhere, large portions of our Air Force are in-theatre, our Navy as well. Russia cannot discount their presence.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:51 pm 23. Cannoneer No. 4:Kremlin Backing of Cossacks Heightens Tensions in the North Caucasus
Cossacks from all over Russia are joining in the sack of Georgia. Just like old times.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:51 pm 24. Cannoneer No. 4:Russia’s Cossacks rush to join fighting with their “brothers”
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:53 pm 25. Doug:Install Czarina Putin!
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:54 pm 26. neolex:@Fletcher
What are you smoking?
- POTUS cannot repeal laws
- Then 1 barrel would cost $10,000
- There is a joint US-EU-Japan project for fusion with $40 billion budget, whats your paltry 500 million going to do?
- $1000 for 1kw of energy, sorry but I pay 11 cents
- $10,000 for 1kw delivered from out space, shouldn’t we just get more of that $1000/kw bargain pricing?
Given the above, I think Bush just might appoint you the new secretary of DOE? Did you ever organize a horse-race event? It might be a good qualification.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:57 pm 27. Cannoneer No. 4:Since the fighting broke out on Thursday night, hundreds and perhaps thousands of upstart fighters from Siberia to Chechnya have flocked to the border with Georgia to sign up to fight in what they describe as the first front in a full-scale war between Russia and the United States.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:59 pm 28. wretchard:What will happen next? The arrival of US military assets will either force the Russians to change their operational planning or they will simply run the risk of killing or engaging Americans. The prospective situation is an incident waiting to happen. If Russians engage a C-17 or a Navy ship then this will go to a whole new level.
But although I don’t know the deployments and wouldn’t want to know if I could, common sense suggests the air and sealift will be covered by distant forces.
Aug 13, 2008 - 2:59 pm 29. Peter Boston:Al
The usual beat up the Westerner rhetoric. Nothing new here.
Compared to Putin, Sashkavilli should be nominated for sainthood. But all that is irrelevant. Russia is making a typical great power move that has been seen hundreds of times before. More interesting is whether or not it will ultimately mean the end of Putin.
Russian hegemony depends more on the weak will of the Europeans than it does any inherent Russian strength. Other than the steppes themselves Russia has no strategic depth. The economy is a one trick pony dependent on an historical anomaly in energy prices. We always assume that trends will continue forever, but they do not. As surely as oil prices reached for the moon they will one day crash to earth taking the Russian economy with them.
Putin will get away with Georgia. Let’s see if he reaches for Ukraine which has 10 times the population and 100 times the military strength, not to mention highways that lead directly from and to Europe.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:00 pm 30. Aether:By insert US forces under the auspices of “Humanitarian Aid”, Bush has triangulated the US response at exactly the right level.
This provides good diplomatic cover, is a relatively non-threatening movement of US forces into the conflict zone, there will likely be some extra “goodies” accompanying the aid, and the Russian’s would be very foolish to attempt to block or stop the US military from accomplishing the Humanitarian mission.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:00 pm 31. Cannoneer No. 4:The Don Cossacks are coming today … We’re trying to co-ordinate the flow. We’ve also got Abkhaz, Kabardins and Dagestanis,” said Nertses Avetisyan, a Cossack working at the recruitment centre, referring to Caucasus ethnic groups.
The chaotic scenes in Vladikavkaz evoked memories of the early 1990s, when similar amateur militias were among the fiercest fighters in conflicts in Georgia as a result of which South Ossetia gained de facto independence.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:03 pm 32. EnerGeoPolitics:Within this crisis lies a great opportunity – bypass NATO and form a Black Sea Alliance with Ukraine and Georgia, along with existing NATO members Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. together, those nations control about 7/8 of the Black Sea and Russia’s southern egress.
http://EnerGeoPolitics.wordpress.com/
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:03 pm 33. neolex:@wretchard
Why wouldn’t US insert military forces under auspices of protecting their humanitarian aid personnel? Distant forces don’t make any sense. Russia is much less likely to engage if there is powerful presence.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:04 pm 34. Goodies2Choose » Blog Archive » Today’s Goodies:[...] Putin’s Choice A new Berlin airlift looms? [...]
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:05 pm 35. Annoy Mouse:Al:
“Bato Kuteliya said Wednesday the troops had left the western town of Zugdidi — near the breakaway province of Abkhazia — and are expected to leave the city of Gori shortly.”
Now that they’re leaving those cities the only question is which cities are they headed to. Moscow or Tbilisi?
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:07 pm 36. NahnCee:Wasn’t WW2 all about poor people killing off Jews so they could ransack their property after they were sent off to the ovens?
Is Russia *REALLY* so poor that they have to pay both their soldiers and their citizens off in whatever they can steal from neighboring (Western) countries?
Pathetic. Worse than a banana republic.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:08 pm 37. sven:Yes, everyone will be reevaluating their positions, but to Russia’s detriment. If you are a nation in the “near abroad” then unless you are willing to accept being a vassel of the Russian state, you will seek allies and alliances that maximize the chances that you can keep your independence.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:08 pm 38. Mark:If you are economically dependent on the Russians, you now have a major motivation to do all you can to cure that weakness. Think nuclear power. Think increased spending on military forces.
The US may not be able to immediately respond with direct military force in Georgia, but that can be fixed in the future, for example, by positioning bases in the near abroad that would deter such Russian adventurism due to the likelihood of immediate engagement with American/NATO military forces. Putin felt free to play his latest game in Georgia because of a lack of such things, but you can bet in the future any nation that wants to maintain its freedom take action to ensure that this could never occur again.
The US is still the big dog on the block, and everyone knows it. Even Putin will not risk open war with the West. Now that he has opened eyes worldwide about Russia’s true nature, everyone will take what action they think they need to to address the Bear,
Fletcher’s ideas may not work, but the sentiments are correct: when we produce cheap energy, the Saudis’ aka Funders to the Taliban) money will dry up and so will their terrorist swamps in Pakistan and elsewhere. Russian thugs might have to get a job or just go back to the old organized crime gigs.
Drill and drill. Create nuclear power for shale oil processing.
And by the way, where is Sen. Obama’s real birth certificate. Still haven’t seen it.
Also, I doubt the Russians tanks have any defense against Predator drones?
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:08 pm 39. wretchard:Why wouldn’t US insert military forces under auspices of protecting their humanitarian aid personnel? Distant forces don’t make any sense. Russia is much less likely to engage if there is powerful presence.
Because the military rarely deploys a force it can’t supply, reinforce or withdraw. Bataan will never fall again. Logistics is the obsession of the US Armed Forces. But small numbers of men with sigint, EW gear and things of that nature may come in. I’m not saying it will but it would be possible. In general, whatever you don’t want Turkey to know about will be on a US asset. The heavier stuff — antitank missiles, smart mortar shells, etc, my guess is that will go via Turkey or is on a Navy ship.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:09 pm 40. Annoy Mouse:LL:
“The message to the world is that the US is unwilling and therefore unable to do anything but bluster. This is bad. Nations are recalculating relationships and the US risks becoming irrelevant. All that hardware is useless if you won’t use it.”
I don’t know how that washes with an “advisors” on the ground and and an active airlift and the fleet engaging in “humanitarian operations”
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:10 pm 41. cjm:once widespread fighting breaks out in the region, any russians outside of russia will be cleansed. sucks to be them.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:11 pm 42. Cannoneer No. 4:What I’d like to see happen first is a Tbilisi Air Lift out of Romania, with cargoes full of needful things, some of which kill tanks and shoot down planes.
And each plane needs a squad or so of Air Force Security Forces, or SEALs and SF wearing ABU’s.
The real action will be the U. S. Navy in the Black Sea. Likely 2 DDG’s and an amphib, possibly reinforced by Romanian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian ships.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:13 pm 43. neolex:The fusion project that’s currently going on should take care of the long-term energy needs (50 years), potentially getting us to the Type I civ level. Thermal depolymerization is already used to generate oil from garbage, however, it is not presently cost-effective (you end up with $4.5 per gallon gasoline and thats with subsidies, and without taxes). It does have a lot of potential though. There are 2 pieces of the puzzle that would completely remove any US dependence on foreign energy: Yucca Mountain and EVs. Both are easily within reach, given even minimal politcal will. By the way, Israel is planning to convert 10% of all its cars into EV within 5 years.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:18 pm 44. art rogue:Could be total crap, but: Russians move 2 SS-21 Medium Range Ballistic Missile Launchers into South Ossetia
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:18 pm 45. wretchard:Nuclear Weapons on the Battlefield in South Ossetia
I think we should hope for the best but plan for the worst. Our policy should be to de-escalate but be ready for escalation. The key to this is access. Negotiating access through Turkey. Legitimizing convoys through the Black Sea and airlifts into Georgia.
What happens next is Putin’s move, but we should be ready for anything, considering his assurances are less than reliable.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:22 pm 46. neolex:@art rogue
This is BS, or they do not have nuclear warheads. There is no reason why nuclear weapons could not stay in North Ossetia, and not be exposed to any potential spec ops by Georgians.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:25 pm 47. Peter Boston:This incident saddens me. The last two decades were a great opportunity for Russia to finally join the West culturally and economically. For the first time in history Ivan had a glimpse at the possibility of some reasonable level of comfort and prosperity.
It almost seemed like it could happen – for a while anyway. I suppose the chance for Putin and his KGB cronies to make a grab at undreamed of personal wealth and power was too much.
Putin has crossed his Rubicon and there is no turning back. I think we could start a clock running on Putin’s time on earth. I don’t know what it would be set at but 10 years seems like a very long time.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:25 pm 48. cjm:putin will be lucky to last out the summer.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:30 pm 49. RAH:Interesting statement from Bush. The C17’s are on the way delivering supplies and will continue to do so. Also those US naval vessels will be used to deliver supplies. This is a message that under the rubric of delivering humanitarian supplies that we are sending air and naval support. Russian forces would be well advised not to contest US navy going to Poti and that port blockage will be lifted. Also with Secretary Rice going to Tbilisi they will stop any drive to the capital since we have the excuse to defend our Secretary of State. These moves are to prevent Russia from completing a drive to Tbilisi and to regain control of the east west highway.
Russia has been advised in this manner to withdraw its forces and not get in the way. This protects the BZC pipeline, which is south of Tbilisi.
Russia uses the excuse of demilitarization to continue its operations and the US will use humanitarian supplies to gain access and prevent Russia domination.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:35 pm 50. Cannoneer No. 4:A very small nuke would wreck the Roki Tunnel for good. Another would drop mountains on to the Mamison Pass.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:36 pm 51. Doug:“Is Russia *REALLY* so poor that they have to pay both their soldiers and their citizens off in whatever they can steal from neighboring (Western) countries?”
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:36 pm 52. RAH:—
It’s a Cultural Tradition.
Reality calling? The Russians stopped the advanced since the Georgians retreated to Mtskheta, which had a good defensive position. Georgians still have tanks and communications probably got better with the new troops delivered.
Russia controls the road to the east but with the leaders of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine and France in Tbilisi it was too political risky to go for the capital.
The Russian expected a small military and Georgia to fold easily. They did not fold. Russia took casualties in Tskhinvali. They wanted reinforcements before going further, which were on the way with another 50 tanks. But they lost the momentum. Russia does not dare try to shoot down a C 17, which is slow and vulnerable because we may react with F 18’s.
Getting a naval vessel under the humanitarian excuse into the Black Sea is a first, I believe. The Russian would be very foolish to attack a US navy vessel doing a humanitarian mission bad mistake both in PR and militarily.
This is classic brinkmanship and Bush does play that game well. He is an excellent poker player. Russia will blink and withdraw and try to win concessions on the diplomatic front, which we will allow.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:39 pm 53. NahnCee:At lunch today, some lady in line was giggling and telling a cutesy story about a Russian lady who couldn’t speak English here in America, and how she needed help.
Somehow I think that Russian ladies who don’t speak English are going to quickly find out they now need much more help here in America than they ever did previously, and it might be better for them to return to the Homeland in the near future than to suffer the same indignities at the hands of rude Americans as our Muslims have been putting up with for the last seven years.
Or relocate to Berkeley where they can live cheek by jowl with our other unpopular non-English-speaking population.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:40 pm 54. Shivermetimbers:This might be a dumb question, but if we destroyed the main tunnel, wouldn’t that prevent supplies from coming in and the existing troops from retreating home?
If we also supplied the Georgians with the right weapons, this could then become a turkey shoot and turn this into a humiliating situation for the trapped Russians.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:42 pm 55. Hope Muntz:Wretchard, can’t you delete comments from obvious Russian operatives like ‘Al’?
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:44 pm 56. ExNavyDoc:I think it is telling in the article cited above, that the U.S. humanitarian effort is being coordinated by SECDEF, not by the State Department. Also note Bush’s choice of words: the effort will be “vigorous and on-going”.
I think Bush might be a little personally PO’d by Putin. As a lame-duck, and by not having a VP as the GOP nominee for President, Bush also has a degree of freedom of action he might not otherwise have. In addition, Congress is in recess, so he has a window of opportunity to avoid the scrutiny of the ankle-biters in Congress (for a while).
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:46 pm 57. Peter Boston:I don’t see a good outcome. Putin took personal control of the operation which places his prestige on the line. Russian spokesmen have been saying publicly that Sashkavilli had to go since the first day so it is not unreasonable to assume that was Putin’s victory flag.
From what I’ve read the Russian troops are feeling pretty good about themselves. It would not go well with them or with the Russian military leadership when (if) they are told they have to back down from the Americans and that they will not be dancing in the streets of Tiblisi.
There is still plenty of opportunity for miscalculation.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:51 pm 58. 3Case:1. Close the tunnel without prior notice.
2. Play “Highway of Death, Vol. II” with any Russian military on the South of the tunnel after it is closed.
Putin is a megalomaniac and will understand nothing else.
Aug 13, 2008 - 3:59 pm 59. Doug:Strategy Page
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:01 pm 60. DanM:American Troops Help Defend Georgia
How soon we forget the impetus behind the Red’s success. Russian Nationalism. Do we think that this Nationalism has been tamped down by a sudden influx of cash? Bah! They have been exhibiting it since the late ’90’s.
Buddy, when did we send over the tech help on their oil exploration and extraction methods? Can’t remember..
They do not believe that this is some small little fiasco. They believe in the long run. Just as the Chinese do. China has tied their economy to ours (including funding the Iraq War, to our detriment). Russia has distanced themselves from the West. As our Eastern Front has moved into the Russian’s former sphere, they have dominated the European energy market. Taking out the EU’rps economy with a few SCADA commands financially cuts their cash, but it won’t take long before they have the EU’rps begging. This effectively neutralizes the new NATO and pre-NATO countries ambitions vis a vis normalization with their EU’rp neighbors.
The economic route to recovery of the Caucasus is alternate pipeline and shipping – only if Russia stays in theater.
The diplomatic route we’ve handed to the EU’rps, headed by a Frenchman. Take what you will of that and look into the future…
Militarily, Wretchard as usual, has tied it into a neat ball for us. Turkey. Without logistics, it’ll never happen.
I still try to look into the near future and see what this does to the inevitable plans for Iran. I can’t get it out of my mind that this is the start of a chess match ending somewhere around Tehran. Too many other “hot spots” for this to not to be interconnected….
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:05 pm 61. Lugh Lampfhota:There is a lot of room for miscalculation. Some Russian conscript or Ossetian rebel could take a shot that changes the world.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:06 pm 62. E. Nigma:Would it be called blackmail, or whitemail?
GWB sends Condi Rice to Tblisi, along with some other European ministers (the coalition of the willing, version 2.0?), “humanitarian” aid via C-17’s and the US Navy. And, for the kick under the table, who knows what kind of intelligence regarding Russian behavior the US Gov. has been sitting on since the start of OIF? Iraq, under Saddam, was most definently a client state of the USSR, then Russia. They have had a long and deep involvement with Iraq, and there were rumors of them supplying “insurgents” with high-powered AT weapons AFTER OIF started. An who knows how much the US knows about how much the Russians have helped the Iranians.
Putin’s been playing with fire for years, and has been indulged for the “larger” reasons of “world peace”. Perhaps this latest adventure has created a tipping point, as it were, with our own intentions of keeping things cordial, perhaps now going out the window.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:06 pm 63. Cannoneer No. 4:I believe the tunnel can be closed until spring with non-nuclear Massive Ordnance Penetrators.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:07 pm 64. Dan:Re: the Roki tunnel…
Seems to me that thing is more of a hindrance to the Georgians than a help. And now Cossacks streaming south? Please.
I doubt there will be much legitimate traffic through that thing anytime in the next few years. Tourism? Trade? Not bloody likely.
Rubble, meet smoke.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:10 pm 65. Shivermetimbers:Rokl Tunnel
Actually, I think I first raised the question (which still might turn into a dumb one). But my point was if the tunnel was closed, how and the russians soon found themselves trapped, how would they get out? By ship? By re-digging the tunnel? how long would that take.
Could this turn embarrassing for Putin?
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:17 pm 66. Lugh Lampfhota:I’m sure we could provide sealift or airlift to the Russians if they wanted to leave if the Roki tunnel or the Abkhazia rialroad was “unavailable”.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:21 pm 67. Dan:I just googled up a few pics of the Roki Pass.
Lordie, I think I could close that thing myself with a shovel and a prybar. It’s not exactly a state-of-the-art type deal.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:21 pm 68. Daniel:The Russians are behaving exactly like the
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:23 pm 69. Eggplant:Nazis did in 1938, with Georgia taking the place of Czechoslovakia.
They seem to expect that the United States, to avoid risk of a nuclear confrontation, will react the way Britain did 1938, demoralizing the West, and forcing the ex-Soviet dominated countries like Poland, Estonia, Latvia, etc to become Russian satellites in fear of getting the same treatment.
The idea here is that Western powers would face the same risk in defending any of these countries, so no alliance will the West will provide any protection to these states.
The West has several possible responses. The humanitarian actions taken by Bush represent one direction. Another is to respond in Iran, whose nuclear efforts have been sponsored and protected by Russia.
The third is for some pro-Western power (be it the United States or Britain or France or Israel or China or India or some combination, to supply the threatened nations with the ability to defend themselves: that would mean hardened silos with many nuclear tipped weapons aimed at Moscow and St.Petersburg.
Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons is mainly aimed at intimidating the oil rich Gulf states, as well as Europe. But two can play at the intimidation game.
In Georgia itself it seems feasible to close the land passages between Russia and Georgia, and keep the sea lanes open.
The United States should certainly announce a program to supply all of Russia’s neighbors with “nuclear reactors” to “help supply them with alternate sources of energy as oil and gas increase in price”.
Peter Boston said:
“I don’t see a good outcome. Putin took personal control of the operation which places his prestige on the line…. From what I’ve read the Russian troops are feeling pretty good about themselves. It would not go well with them or with the Russian military leadership when (if) they are told they have to back down from the Americans and that they will not be dancing in the streets of Tiblisi…. There is still plenty of opportunity for miscalculation.”
This undertaking is dangerous but (in my opinion) President Bush is doing the right thing. The key is to encourage the Russians to leave Georgia with their honor intact, i.e. allow the Russians to “declare victory” and withdraw. The danger is that Putin won’t take the hint and escalates.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:24 pm 70. exhelodrvr:Shiver,
“this could then become a turkey shoot and turn this into a humiliating situation for the trapped Russians.”
We absolutely don’t want that at this point. Give them the opportunity to “graciously leave.”
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:27 pm 71. Al_Batross:“take a deep breather” – cedarford
“it’s almost as if the PRC were paying putin to do this” – cjm
In the past, I did worry that the USA’s dealings with Georgia
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:28 pm 72. steveaz:seemed designed to provoke Russia, but I reasoned that the USA
could not want to provoke Russia, and that it was probably just
neocon tactlessness. Dangerous, but not malicious.
Maybe I was just foolish then, but what really alarms me now is
the seeming yearning for the war we did not have in the 1980s.
Personally, I was glad we missed it, and fighting it now would
benefit who, exactly ? Self-interest demands that we consider
what the shape of the world would be afterwards.
History does not suggest that a war between the USA and Russia
would be short, since endurance has been a Russian characteristic
for many centuries. (It might be short if it were to go nuclear
at an early point, but then all bets would be off).
Therefore, I would expect it to be long enough that even if the
USA emerged militarily victorious, she would be financially
utterly gutshot.
NATO would probably have ceased to function long before that
point, most members, with the exception of Turkey, having neither
the motive nor might to be in the fight. Turkey’s actions would
probably include trying to wipe Armenia off the map, which would
further alienate France and Germany, and make it even harder
to construct a new alliance after the war. “US Prez demands that
Germany reward faithful US ally Turkey etc”
China would only need stay out of the fight to emerge the true
victor. Taiwan would be a temptation, but if China could resist
trying to snatch then it would soon fall into her lap anyway.
What might Iran might do ? Attack Israel during all the confusion ?
Wise heads would be unlikely to prevail there, but the more
thinking Jihadis elsewhere would see the war as a gift from Allah,
like the one between the Byzantine and Persian empires which
fatally weakened them in preparation for the first Jihad.
China would then be content to see the Jihadis preoccupied trying
to finish off the USA, but might “assist” Russia so as not to
left alone with the Jihadis for the end game.
Personally, I just can’t where the fun would be in all that.
E.Nigma,
The timing supports your thesis and the Iraq-Russian connection.
Just as liberal media outlets in America were beginning to acknowledge the gains Bush has achieved in Iraq, the Russians pounced on Georgia.
While I’m wary of post hoc ergo propter hoc rationales, this one in particular appears to have legitimacy.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:31 pm 73. NahnCee:-Steve
Could Bush ask the world’s bank to embargo Russian funds like they’ve embargo’d Arab funds? Take access to their rubels away from Russia’s newly-minted billionaires.
Putin needs to be hearing from the folks back home just what an enormous blunder he’s committed at pissing off the entire rest of the world.
Interesting analysis out of Australia, too:
Cold-war mentality in a warming world: Russia does itself few favours
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24176494-26040,00.html
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:31 pm 74. Lugh Lampfhota:The US has given lots of folks an opportunity to save face and do the right thing. Taliban, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran. Even France, Germany, UK and other “allies”. What’s it got us but a handful of air? Putin seems to be using the same playbook: talk, stall and dare us to show em what we got.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:32 pm 75. Cannoneer No. 4:Ivan’s logistics trains come down from North Ossetia through the tunnel. Drop the tunnel and his logistics must reroute through the passes over the mountains or from Abkhazia.
Bullets and are his biggest worry. Beans he’ll plunder from the Georgian civilians, along with anything else they might have that strikes his fancy. Go juice he’ll just drive his tank up to the pump, slew the main gun at the attendent, and say “fill ‘er, up, comrade” in Russian.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:33 pm 76. Annoy Mouse:I like the mis-info on the SS-21’s in SO. How exactly would that work? Send a missle into space only to come down within a 30-40 miles of the launch site? LOL! They’d have little problem getting artillery into that range.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:36 pm 77. wretchard:The geography of the Black Sea and limited access to Georgia means that the US is unlikely to seek a decisive or sharp confrontation with Russia there. The US ability to project power into the region is limited. It would be like trying to play a game against someone with a broadband conection while you have dialup. Therefore US involvement in Georgia will be economy of force. Being on the defensive has the virtue of typing up 3, 4 or 5 Russians for every Georgian. The Russians have to wear out their armor and airplanes to get stuff over the Caucasus. So my fearless forecast is that US involvement with focus on making the Georgians more effective. Besides, Cold War Rule Number Two says “proxy warfare is OK”.
Once Russia takes the Black Sea ports the Georgians can mine them or fire antiship missiles at whatever is in the harbor. Even if this only does minor damage, it would turn the Eastern Black Sea coast into a warzone and since one third of Russia’s shipping goes via the Black Sea, I think Moscow will soon discover they have just blockaded themselves. As I pointed out from the begining of the crisis, this is an air and naval game.
The USN doesn’t have to control the Black Sea. It simply has to partly deny it to the Russians by making it a doubtful place. Then insurance rates and risk interest premiums will make Putin wish he had never been born.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:38 pm 78. Cannoneer No. 4:First war, now anarchy as Russian militias run riot”>
The conflict in Georgia appeared to be evolving into a vicious new phase yesterday, with killings, burning and looting by irregular militias coming in behind Russian military columns
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:44 pm 79. wretchard:I should add that if China is “paying Russia to do this” then the Chinese have paid the Russians to cut their own throats. The Russians above all fear the absorption of their former Eastern provinces into the Chinese sphere of influence, a project which is going full speed ahead through commercial deals and Han migration. There are places with only a few million ethnic Russians into which Han Chinese are pouring in like water rushing into the hold of the Titanic. And the day after a Chinese arrives he’s got a store, a business or some trading going. And on it goes.
From the strategic point of view the Russian action is pure lunacy. They are uncompetitive with the Chinese, who will steamroller them. They face restive Muslim populations. And now they want to play macho man with Uncle Sam. Oh, they have the EuroLeft and their leftist acolytes. But on the Chinese will come. On and on. Putin should think about that when he finds the money to pay for his Black Sea freight insurance policies.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:45 pm 80. Cannoneer No. 4:South Ossetian irregulars also took advantage of the chaos to commit civilian killings in Georgian villages
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:48 pm 81. fred:Cannoneer No. 4,
If I were the Georgians, as I dig in to a war of guerrilla opposition I would make Georgia a death trap for the Russian Army and especially for the Ossetian pigs (a criminal, gangster enclave in the Caucasus if there ever was one)who carry out this rapine of Georgia. Take no prisoners and make it especially cruel for the Ossetians.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:49 pm 82. Foul Harold:Regarding reports of Russian irregulars in Georgia, I found this goodie which was posted on YouTube just over a month ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJZbYS2iKQ4&feature=related
“Guerillas transported via Roki Tunnel
02.07.07 13:15
It has been reported that in Vladikavkaz, the North Ossetia, a campaign for call out volunteers and reservists has been launched.
According to anonymous source, guerillas have been transported from Vladikavkaz to Tskhinval, the so called capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, via the Roki Tunnel.
Representatives of the Georgian secret services have confirmed released news and they said that in the case of beginning armed conflict it would not be excluded an assistance of guerillas from another breakaway region of Georgia, Abkhazia, and the North Caucasus, to the Kokoity regime.”
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:51 pm 83. Extraneus:An obvious point, but Bush can seem disoriented or slow to act at first, as illustrated immediately following 9/11. Once he gets his bearings and decides to move, however, he moves. Putin may have underestimated him, believing that the polls or Iraq might constrain a US reaction, but he’s got to be worrying now. National pride and muscle-flexing notwithstanding, I doubt Putin intended or would be confident of tangling with the USAF and Navy. We didn’t have very convenient logistics in Afghanistan, either, and look what happened there.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:52 pm 84. Dan:So… tactically, they’re in a real mess. (At least it appears they could be, with the correct- and limited- application of pressure)
Strategically, they’re way beyond being in a mess.
I have to admit… I don’t get it. If they had gone for Tbilisi, or the pipeline, or ANYTHING, I can acknowledge a tangible goal. Something. But now? Lots of Russians and Cossacks wandering aimlessly through Georgia, pillaging and burning. Was that the goal?
As it stands now, I see no upside for Putin here. Was it just a personal vendetta? Was it really just that simple?
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:54 pm 85. Eggplant:Wretchard said:
“Once Russia takes the Black Sea ports the Georgians can mine them or fire antiship missiles at whatever is in the harbor. Even if this only does minor damage, it would turn the Eastern Black Sea coast into a warzone and since one third of Russia’s shipping goes via the Black Sea, I think Moscow will soon discover they have just blockaded themselves.”
This is brilliant. Take them down through economic warfare while avoiding direct confrontation. We don’t even need to wait for the Russians to take the Georgian ports. We could arrange for a couple Russian freighters to have mysterious accidents while in the Black Sea. Better yet, arrange for a couple Russian military transports to have mysterious accidents while in the Black Sea. Of course, the Ukranians wouldn’t be too happy about this since it would put a major dent in the Ukraine’s maritime commerce. I wonder if there is some way we could hurt the Russians economically without hurting the Ukrainians?
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:58 pm 86. Cannoneer No. 4:Russian paramilitaries on the road towards Tbilisi.
Aug 13, 2008 - 4:59 pm 87. Aristide:Here’s a video with some food for thought from February, 2008.
“Ukrainians Choose Russia Over U.S.
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:00 pm 88. Aristide:Not sure what happened…
Here is the url
http://www.gallup.com/video/104350/Ukrainians-Choose-Russia-Over-US.aspx
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:01 pm 89. Cannoneer No. 4:Yesterday morning, as we approached Gori, clouds of black smoke were billowing from villages on the city’s outskirts. A group of armed, masked Ossetian militiamen, alongside Cossacks and Chechens, had raided and pillaged the villages. How much the Russians encouraged them is unknown.
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:05 pm 90. Cannoneer No. 4:There ain’t no forgettin’, Fred.
Georgians are better bushwhackers than Cossacks, Chechens and Ossetes. That’s why there are still Georgians.
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:09 pm 91. whiskey:Wretchard, I don’t think you understand the nature of Putin’s gamble.
He bet it all on oil. Which the Chinese do not have and which he does have. The Chinese won’t be opening stores or doing much of anything with oil above $145 a barrel.
Putin only has one real risk, short term, and that is paying his thugs. If insurance rates go through the roof for the Black Sea, well he has a trump card — just raise the oil prices higher. Maybe even seize Romania, which still has some oil along with Natural Gas. Or give Iran a spare nuke ala his story to Sharansky.
Putin doesn’t care about the suffering of the Russian people, nor the commercial disaster looming — because he’s a thug, pure and simple.
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:10 pm 92. wretchard:Putin has committed the classic two-front blunder. In dealing with two fronts you need a quick knockout on one side so you can turn your attention to the next. If Putin had planned on forcing a Georgian surrender in a week, and installing a tame government in Tbilisi, thereby handing the West a fait accompli it has all gone terribly wrong. Georgia, simply by surviving, is drawing him in. More men, more equipment. More risks.
Every mile the Russians go forward increases the chances of incalculable consequences, now that Americans are coming in to Georgia. And now that he has made a monkey of Sarkozy, the French, though they might not be able to do much, can help by not hindering. That too we may now owe to Putin.
This can still be unwound if Putin pulls back to Ossetia and moves his major units back to Russia. It’s still not hopeless. But right now Georgia is an abyss into which Moscow can fall. There’s no bottom to it. Putin has just dropped a stone into the darkness of what he assumed was a shallow cavern and is waiting to hear it’s fall. He’s still waiting.
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:11 pm 93. RAH:A great power has to move cautiously. Bush as the leader of the US could not react with bellicosity because he needed intelligence while in China. Considering China’s success in infiltrating signals and how they steal all information from cell phones and laptops with sophisticated systems, he was not given intelligence other than what China already knew. It was not until he in the air that he could be totally briefed and so he did the first statement indicating that US patience was ending and Russia better stop its foolish antics. I read his first statement that the situation world not be tolerated. Plus Cheney had already gamed the scenarios and said that Russia’s little war would not be allowed.
A great power must be careful not to challenge an almost great power too directly. An overt direct military challenge is not a good first play. We did send a message by flying in a C17 during the invasion and delivering troops and cargo that was diverted from Iraq.
Probably the trainers and the 1000 US troops in Georgia was advising what the situation was and what was needed. Plus photos it looked like they landed in a field. That was the first challenge that we were returning Georgian personnel and we did not care that we were flying into a combat zone and that it was not a good idea to target the cargo plane.
The Russians blinked, that showed the US that they were not going to challenge us directly with attacks. US message given and received.
BY using the humanitarian excuse that also allowed Turkey the excuse that they were not allowing in a competitive navy to the Russians but only a humanitarian mission. The US uses the navy and military all the time on humanitarian missions.
This allows Russian to withdraw voluntarily and it orders to save their pride and face we will allow them a diplomatic venue on the separatist enclaves. But this time no Russian peacekeepers will be allowed.
After a while Ukraine and Georgia will be fast tracked into NATO and the Russian will have lost exclusive control of the Black Sea.
It took centuries for Russia to get a warm water port and now they lose the playground. But I am sure that American will not try to get naval basing rights in the Black Sea, as that is an obvious insult to Russian pride.
There is an old saying always allow an enemy with a way to retreat with pride unless you want to humiliate them which usually causes future wars.
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:12 pm 94. wretchard:He bet it all on oil. Which the Chinese do not have and which he does have. The Chinese won’t be opening stores or doing much of anything with oil above $145 a barrel.
The Chinese are making their own deals for the Baku oil. Some of Russia’s ex provinces are already devoting 80% of all their trade with China. Look here (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/caspgrph.html) for a snapshot of the plans in 2002. Since then China has made even bigger efforts.
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:17 pm 95. Peter Boston:Georgia cannot be the end game. A tiny country of 5 million pains-in-the-asses is not worth the risk.
My guess is that Ukraine is the prize. Were Putin able to annex Ukraine the dynamics of Russia’s future would shift heavily in favor of Moscow. Ukraine’s endless pool of military conscripts and huge stockpiles of military hardware would put real teeth and claws on the Bear. Enough to keep the Eurps paying whatever tribute Putin demanded of them.
Maybe Putin sees his daring gambit as Russia’s last hope. As Wretchard said the Chinese will soon enough own Siberia from the sheer numbers of migration. Demographic trends within Russia itself mark the end of Russian civilization as a time certain within a couple generations.
If you can’t grow your own chillun’ you take somebody else’s. It worked well for the Romans and not so good for the Sabines. I suspect Putin is dreaming of lots of babies with Russian names growing up in Kyev.
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:25 pm 96. cjm:i have a feeling the u.s. has cut a deal with iran, and that iranian natural gas will soon be replacing the russian stuff.
if demand destruction continues, and there is more supply than customers, who is going to buy the russian stuff.
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:29 pm 97. wretchard:There is another aspect to this. The Pew Polls show McCain level with Obama and significantly, “the base is coming home for McCain. He’s getting the Republicans, white evangelical Protestants, and the white working class voters are coming onboard.” Putin may have cut the ground from under Barack “I will abolish all future Combat Systems” Obama. Just imagine how absolutely stupid Obama’s sophomoric speeches in front of rockstar crowds will start to sound with every passing day.
And to return to China: China will soon be virtually dependent on overseas energy to keep going, so it can keep its economy ramped up to sell to its biggest clients: the USA, Europe, Japan and South Korea. What does Russia buy from China? And China is going to give Russia the handle on the spigot its energy? Give Putin the ability to turn the lights out in Beijing? China is Russia’s rival from Central Asia; it is other big player in the Great Game.
Lastly, Russia slapped China across the face by timing this with the Beijing Olympics. That may not seem like much, but I think it is one more suggestion that Putin has a cheap KGB mind. Clever in his own way but strategically stupid.
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:38 pm 98. JewishOdysseus:Acc to NBC News 2 hours ago, Bush is flying (1) Condi Rice, and (2) MILITARY relief shipments INTO TBILISI. Either of these factors appear sufficient to dissuade any Putinesque attack on Tbilisi, and (2) wd seem to predict a military recovery by the Georgians, as badly-needed materiel flows into the country.
I wd imagine the “Georgian” capacity for anti-aircraft and anti-armor defense got about 1000% more effective as the first of these flights was unloaded. I see Putin backing away towards SO and Abkh from now on.
Well said, RAH!
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:39 pm 99. wretchard:My guess is that Ukraine is the prize.
It is the main object of Putin’s signal. “All ye countries with Russian nationalities, hear the Bear roar!” and that means you, Ukraine. Why do you think Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics have never wavered in their support for Georgia. Because they know they’re next. If they were by themselves, Putin’s gambit may have worked. It worked before. But the world has changed. China and India have a very large percentage of the world’s population and and by 2040 will have more than half of the world’s economic output. And then there’s Europe and of course, let’s not forget, there’s the United States. Therefore Putin can take his posturing some distance, but if he takes it too far and those monsters turn on him in combination it is all over for the Russian economy and for his regime.
Moscow is an unforgiving place. Fortunes are going to be lost over Putin’s Ossetia gamble. Putin has bet his shirt, and maybe his very neck, in the Big Casino.
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:44 pm 100. Dan:An interesting read, FWIW…
“The only thing Russians in the Kremlin understand and respect is superior force and the willingness to use it against them.”
http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/3299/2/
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:50 pm 101. neolex:wretchard and RAH, thank you for your analysis, it’s very logical and educational.
You couldnt be more right about China. Russian actions are of profound stupidity in the long run. It has just alienated the entire Western world and US because of it’s imperial habits and insecure psyche, while Russia’s main concern should be China. As much as its concerned about it’s spheres of influence, that it sees as all but lost to the West (hence to current action), Chinese do not threaten Russian spheres of influence, they threaten Russia itself and Russia has just show them how: go in to “protect their citizens” after starting a small hullaballoo.
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:52 pm 102. Dan:And whoa….
Germany is saying Georgia “MUST” pursue bid to join NATO? Note the source.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=175316
Aug 13, 2008 - 5:55 pm 103. cjm:imo, putin has guranteed that russia will never be allowed back in, will not be getting any third chances. he has for now and forever tainted that country as iredeemable.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:01 pm 104. sigintel:Two days ago we were all postulating that Putin would lay-up for one night and he did last night.
Then when he woke up this morning, he turned on CNN and after watching Wolf Blitzer, decided it was safe to move his tank column south towards Tbilisi. For breakfast, he took out all of the Georgian Coast Guard patrol boats on the Black Sea … (the few ships in the Georgian Navy were sunk yesterday in a sea battle), for lunch he took control of the east-west highway, for dinner, he has the Chechen thugs and Russian “patriots” raping, looting and burning Gori. This is all before the ink is dry on the cease fire. He’s on a roll!
Its my bet that tomorrow he’ll go for the banquet…bypassing Tbilisi,and grab “The Prize” – the B-T-C pipeline. This is looking ugly!
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:01 pm 105. cjm:this is a perfect moment for every country with ethnic russians in their midst to start expelling them by force.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:05 pm 106. Aether:I maintain the belief that the Georgians forced the Russians hand.
The only good rationale for the Georgians to invade Ossetia, is that the Russians were setting up to invade Georgia AFTER hostilities began between the West and Iran, and that this was a spoiling attack by the Western allies.
Timing this thing for China’s Olympic preview was a set-up of Putin.
If Bushes comm’s were compromised, then so were Putins’s, and this damn thing got away from him while he was out of touch with his crony’s.
looks like Putin got Hustled.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:05 pm 107. buddy larsen:aJPost says blockade fleet ‘just a rumor’.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:10 pm 108. wretchard:this is a perfect moment for every country with ethnic russians in their midst to start expelling them by force.
I think this would be tragic, unnecessary and unwise. At a talk on Central Asia I attended yesterday, the ethnic Russians are now coming to terms with the fact that the old times are not coming back. The way forward in this world is to focus our attentions on the bad guys, by which I mean the Hitler wannabees, and to avoid punishing Joe Ivan. Joe Ivan is probably interested in making a buck, going to the banya and getting his shot of vodka. Which is fine by me. We should try and limit this and wind it down because we are going to wind up in the very same maelstrom that Russia is creating. Who is else is Putin going to find down there but us?
The logic of escalation is that people and events are relentlessly, involuntarily and inexorably drawn together into a combustible mess. We should try and live together. But sometimes that means getting rid of troublemakers like Putin, peacefully if possible.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:11 pm 109. neolex:Though I allow such possibility, I highly doubt that timing was on anyone’s terms, but Putin’s. In the week prior, South Ossetians were evaccuating their children by the busloads, saying the action only a summer camp program started by Russia. This by the way, is very much breaking with tradition, as Russia has never valued their children’s lives much, especially Ossetian’s (Beslan).
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:12 pm 110. buddy larsen:oops: try
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1218446196985&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:12 pm 111. zorgFromXeonLight:Russia pressed the United States on Wednesday to choose between “a real partnership” with Moscow or an “illusory” relationship with U.S. ally Georgia. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States is standing by Georgia.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:12 pm 112. Konyok:This conflict has taken a decidedly surreal turn.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:12 pm 113. Big Ed:The well disciplined and flexible mobile tactics that the Russians used for the first five days seem to have been supplanted by traditional Russian slovenly slap dash.
Have the elite tank troops been replaced by ordinary motorized infantry? To what end? Or, is it that the world press have gotten the Russians into sharper focus and we are now seeing what always was there?
Now the narrative has shifted to cossack jihadis raping and pillaging the Georgian countryside. What can Putin possibly gain by unleashing these human wolves with the whole world watching?
Perhaps, this is part of the game. Bush sets the American trip wire and drunken Chechen *volunteers* engage in a fire fight with US troops at Tblisi airport. How can we retaliate against the benign Russian “peacekeepers?”
Some speak of a Georgian insurgency against a Russian occupation, but, the classic COIN strategy, that the US is too squemish to use, is to set insurgents against insurgents.
It was looking like the Russians had taken notes on the American invasion of Iraq, and, maybe they paid close attention to the opportunities presented by our mistakes and what we overlooked. Indeed, maybe it has been the Russian plan to avoid holding ground, deliberately leaving a vacuum for the Ossetians and their brothers to fill with looting.
It has morphed into a war of terror, not maneuver. Russia’s logistics train through the Roki tunnel is today carefully guarded. Putin would not risk clogging it with hundreds of carloads of undisciplined yahoos unless the *volunteers* and the havoc and terror they bring weren’t an essential part of his plan.
Volodya warned Bush in Beijing that he might not be able to restrain their enthusiasm.
We are watching an ancient horror unfold again in Georgia.
What are the chances that the Georgian troops returning from Iraq “borrowed” a few dozen (hundred?)Javelin anti-tank missiles?
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:17 pm 114. art rogue:@wretchard “We should try and live together. But sometimes that means getting rid of troublemakers like Putin, peacefully if possible.”
Very true. It may sound Kumbaya, but the world works like this on every level. Most of society is fine, except for a few jerks that show up to the party, have a couple beers, start fights, break your stuff, and hit on your girlfriend.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:17 pm 115. Langley:“And we are aware that the U.S. is uptight about this project,” Lavrov said in remarks broadcast on Russian television. “But a choice will have to be made someday between considerations of prestige related to an illusory project and a real partnership in matters which indeed require collective efforts.”
That sounds like a plea – not a threat.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:19 pm 116. dla:Thats what I thought. There’s no verification on this blog.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:20 pm 117. cjm:if russians abroad, everywhere, start feeling the pain, it will present moscow with a real dilemma. you say it is unwise, but then follow that with a chorus of kumbya. if it is unwise, then say why in military terms. we let these people off the hook twice, and have paid a steep price each time. whatever it takes, the russian nation has to be dismembered permanently. delenda est ruthenia.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:22 pm 118. buddy larsen:”uptight” ? Odd word.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:25 pm 119. sigintel:The Six-Point Peace Plan
1) Non-use of force.
2) Stop all military action.
3) Free access to humanitarian aid.
4) Georgian troops return to their previous positions before the conflict.
5) Russian troops return to the lines they held before the start of the military operation. Before an international solution is worked out Russian peacekeepers are taking up an additional security role.
6) The start of an international discussion over the future status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
who the hell is the referee here to verify who done what to whom?
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:27 pm 120. whiskey:The choice was easy, since Russia has been an ally of Iran, protecting it at every turn, arming it, and assisting it with nukes. Along with Putin’s “story” to Sharansky, Russia is a threat to the US.
BUT — I don’t think it’s all that bad for Russia, or that bad for the US.
For the US, what matters most is that Russia shows we can be defied and be shown to be relatively impotent in a number of places. This causes “unhealthy” ambitions in Tehran and Islambad and Riyadh and doubtless other places. Georgia free or slave, makes little difference to the national security of the US, but the US viewed with contempt as a paper tiger and the Russians as “unstoppable” is a HUGE security threat to the US.
In an age where apparently one man can distribute “weaponized” anthrax without special training (Ivins was working only on vaccines and had no training or equipment to “weaponize” his anthrax), this is not a trivial threat to the US.
Next, China has little force projection, particularly in Central Asia, and the recent and puzzling uptick in Uighur terrorism during the Olympics may be Russia keeping China occupied, by helping the traditional Russian terror network of Arab/Muslim radicals. While China remains a strategic threat to Russia, Russia retains nukes, important allies in Central Asia, and can “hide” behind a gigantic landmass. As noted, commercial and investment realities bear little to the thug regime in Moscow as in Havana or Zimbabwe.
Finally, timing. While this has been carefully planned for some time, I think the slide in oil prices was the biggest threat to Russia. All those guys shooting journalists in Elevators (who were doubtless digging in to where the graft went, and who did not get their “fair share” of the cut) have to be paid. They don’t work for free.
Russia could certainly call the US’s bluff in Georgia. Which is most dangerous — having the US look even worse to dangerous, unhealthy men.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:28 pm 121. Dan:Referee?
There is none. France bent over, just as they always do.
I think the Navy and Air Force might have a bit of say in this before it’s all over.
And rightfully so.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:29 pm 122. Konyok:Nahncee, cjm,
Putin couldn’t ask for better domestic propaganda than simply to repeat your comments.
His most reliable lever is to convince Russians that there is a vast lynch mob of foreigners out to get them.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:29 pm 123. neolex:@cjm
expelling or opressing an ethnic minority is a page directly from Russian playbook. What would then be the difference between Russia and US (or other civilized nations).
Having said that, I agree that Russia should be broken into pieces. This will not only server Europe and various ethnicities well, it will also be good for Russia, maybe then they will concern themselves more with internal matters than imperial ambitions and insecurities about their country’s stature.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:33 pm 124. Richard Fernandez:I’ve seen an attempt to post here as “Wretchard” instead of the lower case “wretchard”. Please don’t do this. I will delete any comments which may be of confusing origin.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:34 pm 125. Shivermetimbers:exhelodrvr
“We absolutely don’t want that at this point. Give them the opportunity to “graciously leave.””
I don’t disagree. I wasn’t suggesting that we shoot at them – as Wretchard points out with rule #2. Nor even that the Georgians shoot at them.
I just meant that it does not seem to be the wisest position to be in where they could be trapped with few means of getting reinforcements/supplies except by air. And if the Georgians had the equipment to shoot planes down…
I don’t know a whole lot about military planning. But, this did not seem to be too smart unless there are other easy routes to get back home.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:34 pm 126. Cannoneer No. 4:Paramilitary troops secure a Russian military convoy near Gori in Georgia, yesterday. Russian tanks rolled into the strategic Georgian city and then pressed deeper into Georgian territory, breaking an EU-brokered truce designed to end the conflict that has uprooted 100,000 people and scarred the Georgian landscape
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:36 pm 127. cjm:there is, and plenty of rope. moscow is the new carthage. nothing will make them fit for human society and nothing can make them worse than they are. that is the fatal dilemma putin has made so very clear. forget another cold war, either they cease to exist or they take over more and more. this is the time to push them over the edge, force them into more and more extreme actions.
imagine a world without russia, it’s easy if you try.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:37 pm 128. nichevo:the russian diaspora means nothing to putin except as a propaganda point. kill ‘em all, who cares. just good headlines for pravda. possibly just a little more useful to intern them but that gets messy too. largely pointless i suspect.
if putin is the key, then things must be done which a) putin doesn’t like, b) russian people and decision-makers blame putin for.
regrettably i think that means annihilation of russian and 3rd party forces in georgia. simple! with proper light infantry weps in georgian hands, i think, t-72s and 1970s a/c piloted by rookies cannot stand.
oh yeah, and mysterious sinkings of russian ships is good. mines or SOF better than torp/missile attacks, want deniability/low signature.
if possible, the roki tunnel should be saved to drive ossetians north in their skivvies. abkhazia have also proven bad actors and should be targeted. ‘goodbye america,’ eh?
too drastic/evil? need deniability somehow. of course we would never do such a thing. blame it on the georgians? false flag ops? or litvinenko style effrontery?
that is probably extreme, but i now disagree we should make it easy for them. it should be “varus gimme back my legions” time. end game of putin being lynched by his own mobs-turned-mourners, or blown up by angry siloviki.
just remember, putin hasn’t got the balls. we don’t know this for sure because we haven’t kicked him in the crotch yet.
oh, and job one on the outside? forget g8, forget the stabilization fund. find putin’s piggy bank and those of his friends and take them away.
THE MOUJIKS CRAVE THE KNOUT.
THE MOUJIKS CRAVE THE KNOUT.
THE MOUJIKS CRAVE THE KNOUT.
What I tell you three times is true.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:37 pm 129. buddy larsen:eleven time zones, 150 mm people. that’s probably the reason for everything.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:38 pm 130. sigintel:The US has 5 Navy Strike Forces cruising now in the Persian Golf. Imagine the sight of 40 carriers turning into the wind and launching planes? Maybe if Putin saw that on CNN tomorrow when he gets up he’ll reverse engines and bug out. A nice little show of air power right now might go along way.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:42 pm 131. whiskey:I like the Russians, the Russian people, Russian culture. Very many brave men and women died to stop Hitler from Russia. Their accomplishments are considerable. Russia helped save the world and has contributed a lot that has made the world a better place.
Putin is a thug. He is not Russia. Don’t forget a lot of brave critics ended up being shot to death or drinking Polonium 210 tea. He shows that you can’t beat thugs with niceness — you have to answer violence with more violence.
That being said, Putin’s play is guaranteed to make every nation around Russia with a sizeable Russsian minority do everything they can to encourage them to leave, without giving Putin an excuse to intervene. Perhaps buy-outs. It’s tragic but inevitable.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:42 pm 132. Konyok:You don’t even need to imagine a world without Russia, it is coming into being without anyone lifting a finger. Russia is in demographic freefall and will halve in population in 25 years.
How would you suggest accelerating the process? Nuclear war? What will fill the vacuum?
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:45 pm 133. Cannoneer No. 4:Briton risks his life in 1,200 mile journey into hell to rescue his family in Georgia
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:46 pm 134. cjm:why not make it overt; openly sink every ship, openly shoot down every plane, openly blast every tank — that moves one inch past russia. pin them up in a smaller and smaller space. arm every savage that hungers for russian blood. how is that worse than now?
yes they *might* launch their nukes. but why wouldn’t *they* think “this isn’t the time yet” and just take it, step by step. why are they immune from the frog-in-the-pot phenommena?
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:46 pm 135. bobal:this is the time to push them over the edge, force them into more and more extreme actions.
Russian ambassador–Yo my man, chill out, you too uptight.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:47 pm 136. neolex:@cjm
It really is:
- No periodic table
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:48 pm 137. buddy larsen:- No radio
- No space exploration
- No pipelines (yes, Russian invention)
- No fusion (Russia’s invented tokamak)
- No phages (which just might one day save us from bio weapons)
- Germany would happily own the entire Eurasia
- Last, but not least, no vodka
Yushenko of Ukraine must think of Putin every time he shaves his Dioxin-scarred face. But still there is Kiev of three million Russian-speakers, they are Ukrainians too, he can’t be anti-Russian. He can only be anti-Putin.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:50 pm 138. nichevo:i agree – the russian people are not our enemy. this is a good thing. avoid insults to the Rus proper.
but anyone with a russian passport cannot be allowed to have anyone else’s passport. everyone in ossetia/abkhazia with one of these bogus documents should be sent home on it. third class.
others in the near abroad should be offered a chance to remedy any such inconsistencies. by renouncing russian citizenship (or abroadistan citizenship if they prefer), or by leaving, or whatever.
or of course we could issue a hundred million US or Chinese passports inside Russia. Or offer to. Maybe a mass mailing. Or, haha, email spam.
“Look – all you have to do to become Chinese is to open your mail! Wasn’t that easy? Just like your genius crime boss Putin did in Georgia! The Fourteenth Xinjiang Army will be along in six weeks to stamp your visas! Have a nice day!”
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:51 pm 139. cjm:neolex: guffaw. that is precious. i guess that’s why they are the most tecnologically advanced society on earth, with the highest standard of living, and the longest average lifespan. where is BS in the periodic table?
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:53 pm 140. Cannoneer No. 4:Three of those Georgian soldiers just came from Iraq.
Ivan will single them out for special attention.
They won’t be doing much surrendering.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:53 pm 141. DanM:I was watching coverage on CNN International this afternoon (I know, but they have had boots on the ground). The reporter was discussing Russian troop movement In the Gori area. He specifically stated that their was a distinct alcohol smell on the Russian soldiers. Then the camera caught one of them on foot, red-faced and obviously drunk. Interesting force control. Wonder if it was indicative of the Russian troops in theater?
Could have been a single case, but the reporter specifically said soldiers, plural…
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:54 pm 142. Doug:– Russia to U.S. Choose us or Georgia –
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Russia pressed the United States on Wednesday to choose between “a real partnership” with Moscow or an “illusory” relationship with U.S. ally Georgia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday says the United States should choose sides.
Washington said it’s sticking with Georgia.
“As to choosing, the United States has made very clear that it is standing by the democratically elected government of Georgia,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.
She spelled out the Bush administration’s stance after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Georgia’s government “a special project for the United States.”
“And we are aware that the U.S. is uptight about this project,” Lavrov said in remarks broadcast on Russian television. “But a choice will have to be made someday between considerations of prestige related to an illusory project and a real partnership in matters which indeed require collective efforts.”
Rice: Any cease-fire violation would risk Russia’s status as partner
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:55 pm 143. cjm:Russian military action in Georgia “must stop now,”
Rice says Bush warns Russia not to interfere with humanitarian shipments
so i guess it’s russian robots doing all the killing, since the poor russian people are just innocent victims. useful idiots of the world unite! dinner is served and you are it.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:56 pm 144. buddy larsen:bobal, LOL –and 23 skidooo
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:56 pm 145. Rob73:What do people predict as far as next moves, specifically by the Russians?
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:57 pm 146. austin:It was easy for Russia to take S Ossetia because they had room for manuever and could turn the Georgian flank. S Ossetia is a large bowl.
The road to Tbilisi narrows down into a long gorge with commanding hights and a steep-sided river with a road on one side and a RR on the other.
If Russian troops moved down this road, they lose room to maneuver and their column would be held up every time a vehicle was hit or just died. They would also have to resupply down this road. One arty barrage would lead to disaster.
The Russians would have to be stupid to commit anything larger than a BN to this road.
As for the US, it can conduct air operations out of Turkey for a very long time. Its flanks are the med which is controled by NATO. The US has more planes in Theater than Russia has operational in its entire military.
Bush asked his EUCOM and Centcom commanders what they could do and they rightly said “Win”
Putin is the neghborhood 6th grade bully caught beating up a little girl for her lunch money. Her Uncle has just come out of his house and is about to open a can of whoopass.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:01 pm 147. neolex:Russia input into modern technology is huge. Surely, there are more factor’s than technological inventions and know-how that determine a nation’s quality of life. Russia’s biggest enemy is itself, it’s backward insecure psyche with poor work ethic and lack of respect for private or public property (this is what Communism does). Last, but not least, the propensity to drink vodka (it’s not an incorrect stereotype)
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:02 pm 148. elijah:Air Defense Mystery in Georgia
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:05 pm 149. Rob73:Putin is the neghborhood 6th grade bully caught beating up a little girl for her lunch money. Her Uncle has just come out of his house and is about to open a can of whoopass.
_______________________________________
Isn’t US openly killing Russians kind of risky? Or am I still suffering from a Cold War hangover? I say give the Georgians whatever weapons they can use, even openly, but. . . .getting involved directly in fighting may be too risky.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:06 pm 150. neolex:@DanM
It wasn’t a single case. Many are surely piss-drunk. Including some commanding officers.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:06 pm 151. Captain Hate:I like the Russians, the Russian people, Russian culture. Very many brave men and women died to stop Hitler from Russia.
Hell yes; I read “Ivan’s War” earlier in the year, about how unbelievable numbers of people went into the meat grinder for trash like Stalin. And those that returned, the heroes that should’ve been treated like royalty, were either sent off to the gulag or told to get to the back of the line. No wonder their demographics are a disgrace; how could it be otherwise.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:07 pm 152. Konyok:I don’t think that the Russians will assault Tblisi, unless the Georgian army completely collapses.
Their quality units have removed Georgian authority from Gori down to the Black Sea and have withdrawn into the sanctuaries of OS and Abkhazia (complying with the cease fire, dontcha know), leaving the *volunteers* to predate with the support of garbage units.
I understand cjm’s rage, these are caveman tactics, pure atavistic evil. But, apocalypse is serious business, too. (Besides, Ruthenia refers to that portion of Slovakia that was absorbed by Ukraine after WWII.)
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:09 pm 153. E. Nigma:Well, maybe drunken Russian robots, like the one on “Futurama”.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:10 pm 154. bobal:Interesting that there are reports of drunkeness of soldiers in the field. Looters and free booters; Cossacks and Chechens and who knows who else? If it weren’t so tragic, it would sound sort of like “Blazing Saddles!”.
It appears that field discipline has broken down, what little there was to start with. The Russians may have studied the opening phase of OIF, but they are stuck with the same human material they had before. The failure of field discipline and perhaps shoddy noncoms and officers may go a long way to explaining the failure of the Russian “Petro-krieg” in Georgia to deliver the knockout in just a few days. They had the hardware, the numbers, but they just couldn’t deliver.
At this point, the Georgians just have to hang on and maintain an Army “in being”. The Russian effort may self destruct in a few more days.
And yes, Putin is a thug.
You al’ Brainwashed
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:11 pm 155. Rob73:Isn’t enough of the Georgian army still intact that they can move in and wipe out these Cossacks and Ossetian marauders? Esp. now that they’re drunk!!
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:11 pm 156. nichevo:Dear cjm,
As a third generation American whose ancestors come mostly from Russia and Poland (Grandpa’s family left in 1920-21), I must inform or remind you that those people over there are not wogs. Personally, in all modesty, I like to think I come from the deep end of the gene pool. It may be different in my particular case as I am Jewish, but let’s remember that they beat Napoleon, they beat Hitler, and they kept us (the USA) on edge for four or five decades, most of the time with us reacting to them rather than the reverse.
And what is their major export? Hot chicks. This is a bad thing?
If you would just remember that they have been subjected to decades of brainwashing that hasn’t really let up as much as could be hoped, it would be kind of you. I am emphatically not for Russia’s annihilation, only their subdual pending a successful attitude check and full membership in the family of nations.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:12 pm 157. DanM:All,
I wouldn’t count on a CNN International reporters off-hand statement as gospel. But, I thought it was worth mentioning. Consider the source.
(Me included, I just ate Chimese and have an MSG buzz)
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:16 pm 158. DanM:Chimese?
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:20 pm 159. cjm:would they have beat hitler without u.s. aid? and how did that change the way they view the u.s.? the russians didn’t beat anyone, the winter weather did. rome gave carthage a second chance and came to regret it. all this kindness expressed for the russian people is touching; maybe they will kill you guys last. naahhhhh.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:20 pm 160. neolex:This not kindness, it is a balanced dispassionate look at things. World is not black and white and Russians are not evil.
Russia’s campaign was prompted by emotions rather than logical calculation and hence that is why it will suffer terribly long-term. No reason for you to make the same mistake in your statements.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:30 pm 161. RWE:The USA has been sending Russia tens of millions of dollars each year for some time to pay for the decommissioning of old Soviet nuclear weapons and reactors. We also paid some millions to build a facility to dispose of liquid fuels from decommissioned Soviet ICBMs – only to have the Russians use that fuel to power space boosters launching commercial satellites.
When the 2K computer disaster came to our attention, we asked the Russians what they were doing to handle the problem and got back and answer that said “Nothing. We don’t have the money. And you know, it would be too bad if some of these old missiles launched because of that problem.” So more millions went over there to fix that.
Then there is the money Russia has made from launching Western satellites; it basically kept much of their space industry afloat.
That kind of crap has to stop. The Russians have been running what amounts to a protection racket for close to 20 years now.
On the other hand, later this year the USAF will launch the X-37B prototype space maneuvering vehicle on an Atlas V. And that booster will use a Russian-made engine. When the USAF decided – finally – to build a new series of boosters, one of the very few choices of propulsion available was the Russian RD-180 engine. Due to the Shuttle program – itself a desperate attempt to save the NASA Apollo empire – the US had not designed any new rocket engines since the 1970’s. One condition of that engine’s use was that the US manufacture its own version. The Russians reneged on that promise early and we have flown nothing but their engines on the Atlas V.
So our kind of crap has to stop, too. We need to stand on our own two feet and not rely on the Russians for vital military hardware.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:30 pm 162. Doug:ThreatsWatch.Org RapidRecon Did Russia Employ Communist PKK Ahead of Georgia Invasion
Steve links some dramatic video, not sure what’s depicted.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:37 pm 163. sigintel:this is still all about oil and who controls the flow. That’s why Putin has to go all the way south of Tbilisi to the BTC pipeline. That’s strategic for him. The ghosts of the cold war sure haunt this battlefield but in the end this is 2008 and this is a war for control of the central Asian oil supply lines. The “Joe Ivan’s” sitting at home watching RTTV dont have a clue of what this is about.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:38 pm 164. cjm:neolex, i can afford to vent spleen because i am just a nobody
clearly the russians are dying as a nation and as a people; justice served. posting here has been cathartic, and i can now rest. putin has guranteed a mccain victory and for that i am grateful. perhaps one day, if i get some land, i can buy a slow witted pig and name him vladimir, to show my gratitude.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:41 pm 165. TmjUtah:Way back up there, Wretchard said:
“Lastly, Russia slapped China across the face by timing this with the Beijing Olympics. That may not seem like much, but I think it is one more suggestion that Putin has a cheap KGB mind. Clever in his own way but strategically stupid.”
I call it the Lt. Whorf factor. Big guy, insanely proud, physical courage in buckets, dumber than a sack of hammers when confronted with a strategic puzzle.
He ended up an Admiral, you know…
Okay, back to the war.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:44 pm 166. fred:Some day we will again see Russia defeated. This time do not help them up off the matt, like we tried to do in the nineties. No more loans, business investment, and technology transfers for oil companies. If we get them down on the ground again, kick them in their family jewels and sever the jugular. It is a nation of drunks and whores, with a long history of a failed human culture that is drawn towards evil like moths to the flame. Even the Russian Orthodox Church is a whore of the State. A pathetic and sadistic people through and through. For such human detritus there can be no redemption.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:52 pm 167. neolex:I think the pipeline is secondary to restoring USSR through intimidating neighbors into closer ties with Russia. Because of his KGB way of thinking, however, Putin miscalculated reaction this would cause and the long-term harm to Russia. Tactical victory of SO and Abhazia could have been achieved without crossing the border into Georgia. Instead, there will be a huge long-term economic and diplomatic cost. Things would have been very different if he would have captured Tbilisi and the pipeline, but for whatever reasons, it turned out not to be the case.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:52 pm 168. fedya:I’ve only read halfway down this list of comments, but I’m jumping to the end to post this:
It would be insanity to bomb shut the Russian military roads. There is no fiercer enemy than a trapped enemy who believes he is fighting to his death with no hope of escape.
Noew that they have SS22’s (porta-nukes) in South “Ossettia”, itwould be doubly insane.
Fight to win, not to die.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:52 pm 169. fred:I do believes that sometimes collective punishment is the right thing, since some peoples and cultures are intractably evil. Arab Muslim culture is like this. And so is Russia.
The President has said there will be long-term ramifications of this for Russia. He really should think about that and amend the wording to permanent.
Aug 13, 2008 - 7:55 pm 170. Mark:It’s wise of the US to remember that Russia has nukes; we don’t want to see those come into play. If we value Georgia, we don’t show it much respect by fomenting nuclear carelessness on the part of the Russians. Besides, it’s best to keep the nuclear cat in its bag, something that ‘can’t happen.’
Russia having failed to land an immediate knockout, the main option for the US is to change the momentum and the meme. At some point, ripeness will be all, and the tide will turn the other way. Perhaps this will occur when Russians and their proxies panic when cornered. Grozny was a graveyard for many a young Ivan, but Grozny did not have the US as an ally. Putin was willing to sacrifice his soldiers out of sight of media.
The course set by President Bush seems reasonable and likely to occasion a turn in the tide.
(And where, by the way, is Sen. Obama’s birth certificate? Still haven’t seen the real one.)
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:00 pm 171. buddy larsen:Bobal, that ‘brainwashed’ link is bizzaro-world, alright –the writer spins loads of boilerplate, but it is all aimed at making Putin-lovers fear & loath Obama, in order that the American electorate will pick up the meme and think that Obama is a hawk. He wants us to believe he’s afraid of Obama’s foreign policy braintrust? Could he be more obvious? Tho it is very clever, and will work on many heads. Writer is drooling to get Obama elected, clearly.
Ok, here’s one for you –it’s getting a lot of google hits:
Can Putin Save America?
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:02 pm 172. NahnCee:But right now Georgia is an abyss into which Moscow can fall.
You mean that this action of Putin’s might be Moscow’s … quagmire?!
I don’t think that all Russians are evil but I do, definitely, believe in peer group pressure. I think we should immediately halt all visa’s for Russians entering the West so they should know and understand they are persona non grata.
I think it’s perfectly acceptable to make snippy remarks to people in the supermarket you hear with a Russian accent, so they know their homeland has done something outrageous and uncivilized. That will make it back home and I really don’t care if they’re already paranoid in Russia about our intentions. Look at what “why do they hate us?” has got us with the damned Arabs.
I think we’d be damned fools if we didn’t disinvite Russia from all the different trade organizations it belongs to as well as cease immediately all military sharing and training exercises.
Effective immediately we need to somehow find a way to bystep the Security Council in the U.N., too — although events are rushing ahead so quickly that’s already been effectively done.
I agree with Wretchard that China has got to be majorly miffed that Russia stepped on their Olympics. This would be a good opportunity to gang up with the ChiComs against the Bear and apply a little 2 on 1 pressure. BE even better if Bush hadn’t started the Olympics by criticizing their human rights record when then we’re turning around and asking them to be mean to the Russians, but maybe they weren’t listening.
I’m thinking this is a new sort of psychological warfare, and if we play it right it will more devastating than a nuke ever thought of being. We will be applying all the different tactics we have learned in the War on Terror against Russia — the humiliation, the frozen bank accounts, the sanctions and shunning and rejection. (I can’t believe that Russia can out-hack America on the internet, if we can just get a project to return that favor up and going.)
If Ivan is paranoid, depressed, drunk and fearful now, they’ll be a melted little bawling puddle by the time we’re through with them. They have nukes. Big whoop. Do their nukes work any better than their drunken crying soldiers or their hysterical shrieking newspapers or the stiff stilted KGB posters here at Belmont? I raspberry them!
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:05 pm 173. fedya:Comments about genocide of the Russian people are very stupid and immmature as hell, unless you are a KGB troll, then…
Just as we have to defend Far-West Euro-Weenies because allowing them to piss themselves away would be too dangerous for us, I’d think the same goes for “the other end” of Europe.
At least the central portions have many decent governments to go with their exceptionally decent folks.
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:07 pm 174. nichevo:Fedya,
1) the SS-21s are not nuclear. They use them for things like rapidly killing Chechen leaders. This is because nothing else they have works. They’ve dropped fifty bombs on the BTC pipeline and missed. If they want to take that out this is what they’ll use. Meanwhile, I guess we just have to send over some Patriots to protect Sec’y Rice.
1a) They haven’t got the balls.
2) They should feel that way because the correct thing to do is to kill them all. They deserve to know that. I guess they could always surrender. They definitely need to know they lost. That is the classic German problem – they didn’t get pounded enough in WWI. They got plenty in WWII and now they’re docile.
Russia never got a sufficient pounding. At least not that they could comprehend, because we didn’t come and rape ten million of their women. (Instead now the women come and sell themselves, but it doesn’t register.)
Perhaps this could be a message to them – enough’s enough. But that is probably optimistic.
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:07 pm 175. bobal:Our thoughtful writers seem to agree on much, Buddy, and both finger Darth Cheney.
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:09 pm 176. fred:fedya,
I merely meant that a reconciliation with Russia in the future and helping them out should never be entertained again. They will do a good job of bringing about their own extinction, thank you.
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:12 pm 177. TmjUtah:Ever notice how everybody always mutters “Better watch out! They (Russia, China, India, Norks… maybe Iran by now) have NUKES!”
Well, so do we. Funny that, isn’t it?
No way is a nuke a license to do your own thing – especially as a nation. It’s just a club that kills more than one per swing.
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:41 pm 178. buddy larsen:I understand folks need to vent –cjm admits it –but i have to agree, we want to win, and can’t let anger become our mental destination. Genocidal talk even tho it’s just venting is pretty rough –personally it makes me recoil a bit i have to admit.
Our stance ought to be, those folks need a system change.
This isn’t a relapse after post-USSR freedom –Yeltsin never had a chance, what with the Dixie mafia running the USA gov’t that he needed leadership from –USSR just went outside for a quick smoke and came back in with its shirt on inside out. Tony Soprano goes straight, the cops on his case drift off elesewhere, Tony has his freedom back.
anyhoo, I’m worried that we might be following Putin’s script in Georgia. Putin’s actions have been a little too pat. The cease fire hadn’t drawn enough Americans into theater yet so he violates it with a few flying columns raiding for no tactical reason that anywhere near matches the gravity of Big Lie #2 to Bush –the telling of which finally did get the ball rolling of Amis streaming into theater. And the maurauding militias –what? He announced them way back when, with that ‘might not can control them’ statement. Ok, he brought them in, he turned them loose. They’re there for a reason. Is it to terrorize Georgians? Seems so –but look at the cost/benefit of that, for Putin. High cost, no benefit. And this outcome was easy for him to predict. Yet, he did it anyway. What’s he up to?
Look at Bobal’s ‘brainwashed’ link above, and read the last para –the oblique threat that the writer closed with.
I hope we’re staying sharp –
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:46 pm 179. fedya:@wretchard
In your post you pointed ourt the eery parallels with the Berlin Airlift. There is an excellent book I ran across recently:
The Candy Bombers:
The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour
by Andrei Cherny
http://www.amazon.com/Candy-Bombers-Untold-Airlift-Americas/dp/0399154965/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218683403&sr=1-1
The central point of the book is that the overwhelming success of that “impossible” and “miraculous” victory over evil Ivan came down to determined contributions of a few humble, humbled, or simply obscure Americans.
1) The military commander was being kicked out in favor of the State Department. His determined stance that we could not lose Berlin and expect to keep all Europe from going ruddy red kept the window open while the airlift creaked hopelessly into action as a stopgap.
When the blockade began and he was ordered to stay, his wife said, “You can’t, you haven’t any trowsers.” They had just shipped al their possessions off to what was to have been his next billet!
2) The passed-over and mcuh-rejected commander who had engineered the greatest military airlift of all time–our resupply of the Chinese Army “over the hump” during WWII, was remembered by one officer who managed to get him into Berlin. He turned a cowboy’s weekend style operation into an industrial efficiency machine, lofting magnitudes more tonnage than anyone had imagined possible.
3) The greatest hero of the battle was a lonely pilot who volunteered to take a friend’s place so the friend could get married, even though he was not qualified to fly big transports. While flying in and out, in and out, he noticed children gathering at the end of the airfield every day, and, against his own better judgment, made parachutes out of handkerchiefs and “bombed” the kids with his and his crew’s stashes of chocolate bars.
After doing this a few times, the crowds of children became huge. He saw a huge pile of mail in the center of the PX, all addressed to variations of “Dear Mr. Candy Bomber”, and was appalled to realize he was being exposed for doing some very off-regulation things.
Investigating at the end of the field he realized that many of these children, in 1948, HAD NEVER, EVER, TASTED CANDY. He and his crew resolved to continue the “bombing” with parachutes improvised from a “borrowed” parachute.
When he was found out he expected a court martial. Instead he had become a hero and turned a desperate campaign to stave off an inevitable defeat into one of the greatest information warfare victories of all time.
Masses of bitter, defeated and fearful Berliners now poured out thanks and joy that the Americans who had been killing them with munitions, were now giving their poor children a taste of childhood. Have so many hearts ever opened so wide so quickly?
When JFK said “Ich bin eine Berliner” [sp.?], it was believable and believed because, a decade before, our military did not blink at Ivan’s terrible threats, and our guys’ humanity made it plain why.
Great stuff! We are capable of leading an humanitarian empire, a colossus of love that fights if she has to.
God bless America.
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:47 pm 180. DougS:God Bless Georgia and Azerbaijan.
God Bless Russia–even in her looming defeat.
Just catching up with this thread and am nodding in agreement with wretchard and RAH. Even if whiskey is right and Putin is gambling on the oil market (and I don’t disagree), it doesn’t look like a good bet right now. Oil is still around $115/barrel and is not moving much. If there was going to be a big movement in price, it would have happened on Monday, after a backlog of disturbing news piled up over the weekend.
Right now the oil traders aren’t paying Vlad much respect; all they see is global recession and low demand. And guess what? If Vlad continues to roil the waters, the anxiety won’t exactly help the world economy, which in turn will help keep oil prices low. 2 months ago, something like this would have caused a 5% one-day pop in oil; not now.
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:48 pm 181. whiskey:I certainly don’t want the Russians to die as a people. They gave us so much: Yuri Gargarin, the model of the “right stuff,” Tolstoy and Dosteyevsky and Tchaikovsky. It would be a tragedy of the highest order if Russians ceased to exist! Their people are brave and generous. Their leaders, however, have been uniformly horrible and their culture wounded from Czarism and Soviet Czarism. It goes all the way back to the Mongols and the serfdom therein.
However, in one way or another, overall, Putin must be stopped to save the world economy. If not in Georgia, in Iran or some other place.
Is it in the self-interest of the United States to fight over Georgia? No, though we ought to wish the democratically elected government of Georgia well and aid them in what way we can without risk of war with Russia.
Overall, however, it is VERY unhealthy for the US to be seen as weak and easily pushed around. Particularly in an age when one man can apparently weaponize Anthrax, Pakistan has over 100 poorly secured nukes, and Tehran races towards them. Not to mention, you can find Anthrax in a lot of soils, and it’s not that hard with new technology to weaponize it. Stuff that cost billions in the Cold War and required massive cities built around them can now be done in lots of labs around the world at little cost.
Erosion of US technological dominance requires more ruthless action to deter enemies and would-be enemies from attacking. Ironically, that is the arguement that Putin gave the Russian nation in his address after Beslan and the attack on Georgia to destroy it as an independent nation is the logical outgrowth of Beslan.
If the only security is to be seen as ruthless, dangerous, and effective, then all nations at risk must act that way, unless they have a bigger protector. In some ways, the Bush doctrine and larger US reaction to 9/11 mirrors Putin’s argument for ruthlessness.
I doubt there would be much support even among Putin’s thugs if it were not for Beslan. Russia too suffers from erosion of technological dominance and has nasty neighbors who must be dealt with in one way or another: Tehran, Pakistan, etc.
In short, Putin is the problem, not the Russian people. Aside from the petro-thug situation, both the US and Russia (and also, btw, China) face the erosion of technological dominance over enemies, who have no stake in the global status-quo and seek total dominance through will and brutality. Putin argues, raise brutality. Bush argues: micro-targeted brutality (something I agree with for now), a JDAM on Zarqawi. Obama argues (along with Europeans): give a speech as citizen of the world. What China argues is likely to tip the balance.
[Clearly, Georgia is not Russia's enemy, but groups like AQ and Chechen rebels and so on ARE. See: Beslan.]
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:50 pm 182. neolex:“I think it’s perfectly acceptable to make snippy remarks to people in the supermarket you hear with a Russian accent, so they know their homeland has done something outrageous and uncivilized.”
Please, stop with dumb anti-Russian comments, especially pertaining to US Citizens of Russian origin. Russian TV in US (RTVi)has conducted a poll on the situation in Georgia. Approx. 85% supported US using military force to stop Russian invasion of Georgia. There is a reason those Russians are in US. What percentage of “true” Americans would support it?
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:54 pm 183. Derek:I have had a few questions, some answered already.
Can the Russians fight? Will they? Size doesn’t matter, it’s whether they will fight for something. The bane of dictators everywhere.
So far, the answer seems mixed. Discipline held for 5 days.
Bush’s response of putting humanitarian and diplomatic feet on the ground is brilliant. All of a sudden the stakes are elevated. Also, Rice would have a security detail. Secret Service or Marines? Probably her detail would be a force most middle nations would be proud to have. And the boats delivering humanitarian aid in the Black Sea. Very interesting, almost a ‘Go ahead, make my day’ move. Poland, the Baltic states and Ukraine are no doubt watching closely and will sleep a bit better.
Now it’s up to Putin. Did he actually believe that the New York Times represents the political consensus in the US? The US has left a door wide open for him to back down without losing face. In the short term at least. A misunderstanding that got out of hand. Lets focus on helping the people now.
Does he blink?
Derek
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:54 pm 184. Konyok:Thanks for the wake-me-up, buddy. You’re right, we need to keep our heads about us.
It’s quiet out there. Too quiet. Not a peep from Hugo or the rest of the usual suspects.
Volodya Putin has the world’s rapt attention. (Except for the Fox news network, of course.)
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:55 pm 185. DougS:As to buddy larsen’s question about why did Vlad do it and why now, I found myself thinking about something that Spengler wrote not long ago about Iran. Russia is hardly in a position to be a successful imperial power right now. Too many demographic crises that speak of a crumbling society: Low birth rate, low life expectancy, alcoholism and AIDS are awful problems for them. Everything speaks to Russia imploding in the medium-term future. As Wretchard points out, China is much more dynamic and powerful and will soon have Siberia for lunch.
Spengler also described Iran as a similarly crippled society, but added that that doesn’t mean we don’t have to worry about them over the short-term. Because if they’re smart, they’ll realize that there will never be a better time for their adventurism than now. Their position will only worsen over time.
Time is against Russia, and as long as Georgia can hold out, on our side. It sounds like Bush has got us buying time. Keep the Georgians on a lifeline, feed them some weapons and support. No need to go in with M-16s blazing; better to put leeches on the bear and bleed him. Give the Georgians help, and they’ll fight for their own country.
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:58 pm 186. buddy larsen:Are we remembering the 444 days? The melting of jimmy carter, the smashup in the desert rescue, the pure drip drip horror of that time. Putin has already announced that the irregulars ain’t none of his business –they’re our fault, you see, for stirring ‘em up. What do we do if these ‘uncontrollables’ (like the Iranian ’students’) grab a bunch of American soldiers –maybe a med unit or somesuch –and haul ‘em off for a Hostage Crisis II ?
Shit –i hope command keeps it REAL tight over there, on the ground.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:01 pm 187. funnymarx:I really hope that some of the more sanguine-sounding comments regarding possible shooting war between Russian and American troops are the work of agents-provocateurs waiting to link the comments as evidence of “warmongering neo-cons” or some such rot. I myself am worried that any such head-to-head confrontation would indeed be sanguine… rather too much so.
Likewise, I hope those leaving comments recommending annihilation or Russia or Russians are all direct descendants of e.g. Poles killed in 1920 or others who similarly suffered at Soviet hands, who are merely working out personal grief issues.
While utter destruction is one option offered in “The Prince” as a wise fate for a defeated enemy, it’s not one that agrees with the American character. Friendship would be preferable (Note however, putting someone on the dole is not friendship — US policy towards Russia since victory in the Cold War has been utterly without Machiavellian finesse.)
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:04 pm 188. neolex:Russia’s behavior is really baffling in all this. It did not make sense for them to move beyond SO borders without capturing Tbilisi. Lets suppose that their blitzkrieg failed and they did not reach Tbilisi on time, before a reaction by US halted them. The question then becomes why did they break their word twice, thus further undermining their standing in the world (first when speaking to US, then when signing the agreement)? What is the purpose of the marauding around Gori (mostly by SO thugs, but supported by Russian troops)? It seems to me that Russia really has no idea what to do next and its actions are completely improvised at this point, with associated lack of 3C. What does everyone else think?
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:09 pm 189. Konyok:whiskey,
Something that I’ve seen time and again in the Russian justifications for invading Georgia is the statement “This is OUR 911!”
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:15 pm 190. neolex:To my American ears that sounds contrived and melodramatic, and especially bogus considering Beslan. But, I think that you’re right. It almost seems like a kind of perverse projected delay reaction.
Just as so many Americans simply can’t accept that Islamic fanatics actually, really did use box cutters to highjack planes to attack us and prefer elaborate conspiracy theories, so it must be somehow easier for Russians to direct their animus against the comfortable, traditional enemy: Yankee Imperialism.
Volodya Putin knows just how to caress that sore spot for maximum effect.
Maybe he is playing “Crazy Ivan” to cast a longer shadow in the world, or, maybe he is trying to manipulate the price of oil, or, maybe he is tightening his hold on power at home.
(I’m told that Russian TV in NY (RTVi) keeps discussion the situation in terms of a power struggle between Putin and Medvedev. That might just be an element that we here are overlooking … )
Sarkozy was an epic fail:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/world/europe/14document.html?hp
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:17 pm 191. buddy larsen:@neolex 9:09: i think you are asking the right question. The entire Rus general staff & Kremlin leadership is on this small theater of operations with a magnifying glass. That aimless milling around by ”aggrieved” SO irregulars is supposed to look like sloppy C3 but is it?
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:18 pm 192. Konyok:neolex,
Like I said a few hours ago, it’s become surreal.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:19 pm 193. wretchard:buddy larsen just suggested a frighteningly cogent thesis – hostage bait. It will be very difficult for our troops to watch that chaos without acting.
Russia’s behavior is really baffling in all this. It did not make sense for them to move beyond SO borders without capturing Tbilisi. Lets suppose that their blitzkrieg failed and they did not reach Tbilisi on time, before a reaction by US halted them. The question then becomes why did they break their word twice, thus further undermining their standing in the world (first when speaking to US, then when signing the agreement)?
First the game isn’t over. Putin’s motives for stopping under the cover story of a ceasefire may be the simple need to let logistics catch up. Logistics is gravity’s way of bringing military fantasy down to earth. It also may have been aimed at lulling the West into doing nothing. After all if it’s over, why send C-17’s? Why send the Navy? That’s provocative if “it is over”. But GWB made the judgment that Putin was lying about the ceasefire, or at least decided he couldn’t take the chance. After all, Putin lied to him once. If this scenario is true, Putin was playing with a weak hand. He is bluffing. That would also explain the theatrical cossacks. The stone-faced generals. Da. Nyet.
To tell you the truth, the US might be bluffing too. How strong is our hand? Above all how far aboard is Turkey. That’s what most of this hangs on. They control the Bosporus and the air and space routes into Georgia. But that’s for GWB to know and for Putin to find out.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:22 pm 194. Konyok:And, as luck would have it, PM Erdogan is in Moscow now.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:23 pm 195. buddy larsen:@Fedya 8:47 –man that was some post –thank you for that.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:26 pm 196. neolex:“It will be very difficult for our troops to watch that chaos without acting.”
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:29 pm 197. buddy larsen:It seems highly doubtfull that US troops would be put in the position, where direct confrontation with Russians or SO is possible. US moves are designed for force projection. Moreover, unless we are talking about special forces, they would likely be much less effective than Georgians because they would not know the theater, don’t know Russian (unlike most Georgians), and would have come from completely different type of engagement COIN warfare in urban/desert setting, and would have likely have lower morale (Georgians are defending their homeland). All Georgians need are the US weapons. As such, SO “volunteers” or Russians can have very little hope to engage US forces, as they will not be used for offensive operations.
did Erdogan have a planned trip? I wonder?
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:33 pm 198. TmjUtah:Here’s some food for thought, on the options side of the table:
Austin Bay.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:34 pm 199. Konyok:Don’t forget that this is a humanitarian mission. The notion of a medical team being isolated and taken is not so far fetched, the notion of said medical team not wanting to get out and help people is far fetched.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:34 pm 200. exhelodrvr:neolex,
“What is the purpose of the marauding around Gori ”
Simple – centuries old hatred between the groups, with one side presented with an opportunity for a “freebie”.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:36 pm 201. Konyok:Here’s the link that I saw, buddy:
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=12960718&PageNum=0
(Yep, as always, consider the source …)
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:37 pm 202. Dave:wretchard: Remember that Putin is basically
a wannabe. He made the kleptocracy (Russian Mafia????) into the Russian government. He thinks he is running them but they are really running him. Their desire for easy cash flow is the driving force in what Putin will do in order to “keep his job”.
In this regard he is a lot like the fictional Politburo in “Red Storm Rising” and a whole lot like the Japanese militarists of the 1930s. They kept worsening and worsening their fundamentals with their “conquests” until finally it was either resign in disgrace, committ sepuku or attack Pearl Harbor.
Putins conquests are all about oil money as the other rackets just can’t measure up.
Drill, drill, drill and guarantee our/friendly
producers an adequate price and the resulting surplus will hit the bad guys as hard as a mushroom cloud.
And be sure to read Austin Bay’s latest on Texas Hold Em. And John Barnes at National Review has suggested Pussycats With Wings—–AKA Flying Tigers. Both ideas worthy of consideration.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:38 pm 203. Charles:fedya:
@wretchard
In your post you pointed ourt the eery parallels with the Berlin Airlift.
////////////////////////
Its also the case that after the Korean war the chinese turned their attention from the Taiwan/Korea to their northern border.
I don’t want Georgia in Nato and I don’t want Chinese flooding into Siberia followed by Chinese troops. I don’t want Russia in NATO. There is risk in both cases of the USA being pulled into war started by bad actors in bad neighborhoods over matters of little or no interest to the USA.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:38 pm 204. neolex:@wretchard
It seems that Bush’s speech was long after Russia has already broken cease-fire. The fact of sending humanitarian aid wasn’t provocative. The wording of the statement was, which implied more of a military role to the aid. Hence, the aid might have been sent (or planned and ready) while Russia was assumed to be observing cease fire, and it was only after it violated it, that Bush described it in military terms. Contigency plans for military involvement and force projection were likely made long before the cease-fire agreement.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:39 pm 205. neolex:@exhelodrvr
Yes, but what is the purpose of allowing it, from the Russian standpoint, they just dig themselves deeper into the hole.
@Konyok
I’m sure security of US personnel will be assured. All of the humanitarian roles can be fullfilled by Georgian they just need supplies. Why would US endanger its soldiers or med personnel, by sending them to give out packages? Their presence is symbolic. Again, Russia cannot expect to be able to easily act against them, especially by using SO thugs.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:44 pm 206. buddy larsen:Konyok, look at the ways the theater of it could be bent to fit every single anti-American meme.
And publicized by western media. Putin sits back for hundreds of days of saying “I warned you, I told you so, but here, I will negotiate with the irregulars for you, just be patient”. Him large, powerful, serious, we frightened (tv interviews with angry families of hostages, back in Kansas), overconcerned with our own, underconcerned with natives, in media imagery.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:44 pm 207. cjm:it sounds like those irregulars will be dog food pretty quickly. who is providing cover for them, where are they sleeping, how will they get out of the area?
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:45 pm 208. Konyok:exhelodrvr,
They’re recruiting these thugs from the whole Russian Federation. It is a deliberate strategy of terror, pure and simple – something completely alien to the American mind.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:47 pm 209. sarkis:oh and russian press is floating stories about ukrainians and others heading for the region in russian army uniforms to do some false flag rape and pillage. This sort of story seem like an advance move on pillage actually happening, and this was at about the same time or earlier as reports of looting etc. started to come in.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:49 pm 210. buddy larsen:I know –beware taking counsel of one’s fears –the Bard said it best –it’s just late & i gits jumpy.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:49 pm 211. fedya:@funnymarx:
Friendship would be preferable (Note however, putting someone on the dole is not friendship
Oh, you big sadistka, you! Put Russian on Workfare; so that’s what beetles wass meanink “Back to the USSSR? Open an SSI office in every oblast of the old SSR. You, do you have no heart…?
Hmmm. You is very funny guy, funnymarx! And WE know that ALL you funny guys is either Joosh or Georgintz!
Zo DAT explain Putin, him’s designers on Georgia: he wants to seize Georgian comediantz back to work to saving the Russian Film Industry (RIP) …!
Hims, it is all so clear now… except Kossackii, ain’t NUTTIN’ funny ob dem Kossackii…. wait! that’s him’s be it! Putin will fire up Hardcore Action Genre. RussFilm soon 2 ROOL over Bollywood!
==================================
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:50 pm 212. Konyok:You gonna laugh,
you gonna cry,
You gonna love deesez filmz or,
what…chu gonna die?
I grok, buddy.
neolex scoffs, but I can easily see how the *volunteers* offer great cover for Russia’s best spetsnaz teams trained to penetrate even the best security.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:51 pm 213. Andrew:Where’s Putin been since he left China?
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:54 pm 214. neolex:@Konyok
Yes, but the question remains why utilize the strategy, knowing that it just might be the straw that would push some decision-maker to be the swing-vote and take Olympics away from Sochi, or do some other measure against Russia? Again, it appears to indicate a break-down in C3, something that would indicate trouble at home. If that is the case, it would mean things are getting curioser and curioser.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:55 pm 215. Konyok:Fedya,
I just wish “Taras Bulba” starring Yul Brynner was on VHS or DVD. I’d go to Blockbuster, stop at my excellent liquor store and get some more GEORGIAN WINE, and watch a good old horse opera, Cossack style.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:55 pm 216. fred:Is it something about the way the Russians raise their children that makes them so sadistic and attracted to evil? I’m being serious here. Similar tendencies have been observed among the Arab Muslims. If a culture is sick, look at how they raise their children. How a culture treats its children and women says volumes about the basic nature of that culture.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:57 pm 217. Konyok:buddy larsen,
Volodya Putin’s negotiating partners:
http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/repin-cos.html
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:58 pm 218. Konyok:neolex,
Putin’s warning to Bush in Beijing indicates that THIS really is a deliberate strategy.
One conspiratorial corner of my brain suggests that this is a two bird stone for Volodya. He gets to terrorize Georgia, mystify us and identify some of the worst potential trouble makers in Russia. (These characters would be the first to join an uprising against him.)
Fred,
I’m sure that Russian forums are asking the same questions about Americans …
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:03 pm 219. buddy larsen:oh, that’s rich –wot a story –to lighten the thread, here is the answer to the Sultan’s demand for a surrender:
The Kozaks of the Dnieper to the Sultan of Turkey:
Thou Turkish Satan, brother and companion to the accursed Devil, and companion to Lucifer himself, Greetings!
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:10 pm 220. sarkis:What the hell kind of noble knight art thou? The Devil voids, and thy army devours. Never wilt thou be fit to have the sons of Christ under thee: thy army we fear not, and by land and on sea we will do battle against thee.
Thou scullion of Babylon, thou wheelwright of Macedonia, thou beer-brewer of Jerusalem, thou goat-flayer of Alexandria, thou swineherd of Egypt, both the Greater and the Lesser, thou sow of Armenia, thou goat of Tartary, thou hangman of Kamenetz, thou evildoer of Podoliansk, thou grandson of the Devil himself, thou great silly oaf of all the world and of the netherworld and, before our God, a blockhead, a swine’s snout, a mare’s ___, a butcher’s cur, an unbaptized brow, May the Devil take thee! That is what the Kozaks have to say to thee, thou basest-born of runts! Unfit art thou to lord it over true Christians!
The date we write not for no calendar have we got; the moon is in the sky, the year is in a book, and the day is the same with us here as with thee over there, and thou canst kiss us thou knowest where!
fred, it’s different i think. they seem to assimilate to freedom just fine although in the bad old days (and may be still) any wave of russian emigration was spiked with some KGB operatives. They are not too bad with their kids either.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:11 pm 221. cjm:But as a nation they’ve been ruled by organized crime (soviet years and putin), punitive expeditions (mongols and much since) etc.
So in their political thought they long very much for a strongman. If you mean the rape and pillage we are reading about now — if an organized crime group runs the country, they manage to recruit the like from a generally poor and paracriminal society. The army has universal conscription and is a nasty place with nasty hazing etc — can find enough scum for dirty work.
epidemic levels of fragile X chromosome
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:15 pm 222. buddy larsen:Back on the nagging worry, it boils down to, are we doing what Putin wants us to do, or not? Is the weirdness after the truce deal a clue? Wretchard thinks not –just inertia, the stuff flying around in the car when you hit the brakes.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:16 pm 223. sarkis:buddy larsen:
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:17 pm 224. exhelodrvr:is nothing without the famous in russia painting of the kozaks in the process of its composition —
http://www.thescreamonline.com/art/art7-1/repin/repin.html
detail:
http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/repin-cos.html
plus you have to refocus the translation from the prim “thou” of the translation to the rich vulgarity of the original ukrainian.
neolex,
“but what is the purpose of allowing it, from the Russian standpoint”
I think it’s some combination of the following:
1) The fact that this operation happened at all says that the Russians are not concerned about public relations, or about how they are viewed in the west. They probably think that all they have to do is fall back to South Ossetia, and everything else will be ignored/blow over as far as the west is concerned. I think that, if they were to stop now, they would be correct in that view. But they are getting pretty close to crossing the line.
2) They are sending a message to the Georgians and to the people in the other nations on their borders. “Don’t F with us”. I think that this aspect may actually backfire, and tend to drive those nations closer together, more towards the west, etc.
3) Brutality against enemies has been bred into them culturally; combine that with the opportunity this presented to “get even” and this is the result.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:20 pm 225. buddy larsen:sarkis, i read somewhere, it isn’t a conscript army now. I think it was someone explaining (trying to explain) the use of the ‘volunteers’ –as cannon fodder, for fear of the grieving mothers who helped to lose the Afghan adventure.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:22 pm 226. neolex:@ Konyok
LOL! Good one.
@fred
It’s not so much about Russian culture, as history and politics. 400 years of Mongol rule over parts of Russia has left its imprint on the collective psyche. Add to that Tsars, with the practice of nobility “ownership” of peasants being discontinued around the time they launching the Paris subway. After that, come 2 world wars, Stalin’s repressions, and 80 years of Communist rule, with total subjugation to authority and complete lack of open freedom of expression and brainwashing.
A potential turning point was after the revolution, when Provisional Govt was in control of the country, made up of largely liberl bourgois, they might have set Russia on a democratic course. However, it was overthrown by Lenin.
The second potential turning point came when Lenin, seeing negative effects of revolution of the economy created NEP, which has worked very well, and over the long run would have allowed Russians to get used to the concept of private property and earning based on performance. However, it was discontinued by Stalin (Gorgian from Gori, who spent his youth robbing banks) in favor of nationalizing all property and destroying country’s agricultural production.
During Perestroyka by Gorbochev, things seemed to have improved a lot and freedom of speech was slowly introduced. Then, in 1991 an attempted coup by GKChP was stopped by the public, which seemingly gained social awareness. However, opportunist Yeltsin with others did not allow Gorbachev to return. Later on, Yeltsin, with his desire to have greater control over his government in the new system of things would break up the Soviet Union with the help or agreement of the US (which was a mistake on US part). (this is getting long, to be continued)
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:26 pm 227. sarkis:Whiskey tango foxtrot these are different paintings must be photoshop.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:27 pm 228. cedarford:neolex:
@Fletcher
What are you smoking?
- POTUS cannot repeal laws
- Then 1 barrel would cost $10,000
- There is a joint US-EU-Japan project for fusion with $40 billion budget, whats your paltry 500 million going to do?
- $1000 for 1kw of energy, sorry but I pay 11 cents
- $10,000 for 1kw delivered from out space, shouldn’t we just get more of that $1000/kw bargain pricing?
Given the above, I think Bush just might appoint you the new secretary of DOE? Did you ever organize a horse-race event? It might be a good qualification.
A pretty thorough Fisking of the woefully misinformed Fletcher, who is as knowledgable on energy and economics on the Right as Pelosi is on the Left.
===========================
fred:
Cannoneer No. 4,
If I were the Georgians, as I dig in to a war of guerrilla opposition I would make Georgia a death trap for the Russian Army and especially for the Ossetian pigs (a criminal, gangster enclave in the Caucasus if there ever was one)who carry out this rapine of Georgia. Take no prisoners and make it especially cruel for the Ossetians.
More clueless, saber-waving stupidity from “take no prisoners!” Fred. No doubt wearing his little tin helmet and inspired be his bellicose Neocon heroes..Yeah, talk about death traps and how cruel to make it for Ossetians, who haved lived there since the Mongol Invasions and existed as an autonomous Oblast under Russia.
==============================
CJM – cjm:
why not make it overt; openly sink every ship, openly shoot down every plane, openly blast every tank — that moves one inch past russia. pin them up in a smaller and smaller space. arm every savage that hungers for russian blood. how is that worse than now?
yes they *might* launch their nukes.
Another Neocon warmonger dumber than a sack of hammers calling for WWIII to start by America starting direct war against Russia over a small nation that launched a follish attack and is getting bitch-slapped for it by the Big Dog in the region.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:27 pm 229. Konyok:A nation we have no defense treaty with.
Like with Fred, the stupidity of someone calling for WWIII to start over this regional clash is breathtaking.
buddy,
Yeah, it reminds me of the existential angst around invading Iraq. Is this exactly what Osama wants us to do? Thanks to Dubya’s fortitude it looks like standing and doing the right thing creates its own rewards.
***
This turn of events really grieves me. I have always been enthralled with the romantic notion of the Cossacks. No, not the Tsar’s policemen, but the wild men of the steppes. Their very name, kazak, means “free” in Turkish. They took their name and their horseback culture from the Kazakhs of Kazakhstan. They refused to bow down to the Mongols and lost themselves in the sea of grass. One of the best Soviet novels, “And Quiet Flows the Don,” (sadly, but appropriately, plagiarized by Chekist Mikhail Sholokhov from an unknown Don Cossack captain), is the story of the tragedies of a Don Cossack village during the Russian civil war. Great book!
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:31 pm 230. fedya:It breaks my heart to see these degraded Cossack counterfeits as Volodya’s ethnic cleansers.
@Konyok:
identify some of the worst potential trouble makers in Russia.
You may be on to something. The whole Northern Causcasus is said to be disquieted. The Kossacks are still literally dozens of tribal groups (which correspond to fighting units and land occupation units just like they have since [what?] 1100 or something?
Apparently, Russia forced some larger Cossack groupings to absorb historically opposed and differently ethnic-based tribal groups. Ooopsie! The kossakii have already rebelled in some cases, submitted grudgingly in others.
Does Vlad the Inhaler thus have major reason to “externalise” an otherwise unmanageable low grade conflicts in the Northern Kavkaz?
Whoa, this is starting to look really grim. Old Vlad may have more conflict to externalize, beyond issues among the Kossakii, than anyone could have imagined (compare i.e. Muhajid! fight infidel in still-Muslim Waziristan and get blown up by American drone… vs, run around freely chopping off infidel body parts and seizing concubinas while gloriously retaking the land of Islam. )
And now we look good, with our Turkish and Azeri allies, promising to open up the Caspian to the Sunnah…
..my head hurts.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:32 pm 231. Elroy Jetson:The Bush strategy is a good one. He has decided to treat Georgia as an independent country hit by an earthquake or a typhoon. Therefore, we will rush aid to where it is needed by the most effective organization on the planet for such missions- the American military. Backed by UAVs and other technology, I’m sure. We’ve got to keep our eyes out for Russian soldiers, paramilitarys, Cossacks and Chechynans who may want to cause mayhem.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:32 pm 232. neolex:If the Russians or the SOs wish to provide evidence of ethnic cleansing or other crimes, let’s allow journalists to embed and take photos. Of course, if Georgians want to do the same, we shall oblige.
I believe the tide has turned on the war and the Russians are going to wind up losing badly. They didn’t war plan for this move by the US.
Bush warned Putin at the Olympics. The President attending the opening ceremony turned out to be the right move.
@Konyok
Most of the ‘volunteers’ are ultra-nationalistic. They are exactly what Putin hopes to have as a base for any internal conflicts, hence him starting movements like “Nashi”. They are not the people who would rise against him.
If this is a deliberate strategy, it makes no sense whatsover, as damage is great and there is almost no benefit. Even accounting for perversion’s of a Russian KGB mind, this does not make sense.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:34 pm 233. buddy larsen:the point is –i know i’m driving this into the ground and breaking it off –what USA is doing now cannot possibly be a surprise. in fact it was very nearly inevitable, given the profile of the invasion.
So, one can defend this statement: If Putin did not want USA to do what it is doing, he would have done something different than tell sequenced lies to presidents, humiliate Sarkozy, and deliberately inflame western emotions by letting barbarians loose in full view, almost as a featured show, delivered to the best stage available.
If that statement can be defended, then …what? Then that writer of bobal’s ‘brainwashed’ link, hinting a surprise in store for America, knows something more than how to be a shitty jerk?
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:35 pm 234. fedya:@neolex:
400 years of Mongol rule over parts of Russia has left its imprint on the collective psyche.
Yes, you attack a Mongol raiding party only to discover the front line is comprised of all your children and female relatives.
Yes, you find that your own relatives, appointed tax collectors and magistrates over you (home rule) are also an efficient spy system, since any successful act of resistance results in death by torture of their family in front of them.
Left a mark or so…
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:38 pm 235. cjm:c4: you are a classic beta.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:39 pm 236. cjm:occam suggests this was a poorly planned and poorly executed (i.e. typical russian fubar) exercise. don’t make putin into the joker, he’s just another hopped up stooge.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:45 pm 237. CPT. Charles:It’s late and there’s too much to comment over.
A.] while various Euro-nations bordering Russia may get itchy about ethnic Russians amongst them, we should NOT.
B.] let the string play out a little longer; Dubya has ordered the US military increase it’s footprint in the region in the safest manner possible [for the moment...].
C.] Turkey: the AKP has been sawing away at the military for a while now. The details as to WHY the Turkish PM is hot-footing it Moscow are an unknown. This might be the trigger the Turkish General Staff needs to deal with the Wahabi-funded AKP once and for all. After all, this isn’t the first time the Generals have stepped in and ordered ‘everybody out of the pool’.
D.] Keep an eye on the pipeline; it is the golden prize.
E.] The conduct of the Russian troops, and their ‘irregulars’…apparently nothing has changed since I last studied them; some things remain a constant. Don’t worry about them; without air superiority they’d be dog food within a day.
Night, night all.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:45 pm 238. Elroy Jetson:Buddy,
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:45 pm 239. sarkis:I think Putin was surprised by Bush’s move today.
If Putin wanted to force Georgia into submission, he should have fortified his positions in the “breakaway” provinces and launched a full scale invasion the day Obama was sworn in.
neolex, why doesn’t it make sense as a punitive expedition?
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:46 pm 240. whiskey:slap georgia around, make foreign investments and credibility of its pipelines dry up, others small players take notice, fall in line?
Americans will bring their aid, no problem, like Bush The First delivered chicken legs to Russia. It’ll get absorb, they may even stick around, but Georgia will have been punished.
That’s how I see it.
The Russian people have had no historical defenses, no mountains or rivers or other natural barriers to make stands upon, as in Western Europe, and have been historically easy prey for anyone: Mongols, Vikings, Swedes, Germans, etc. sweeping in on the plains.
After Beslan, Russia was in shock. Russian children were brutally murdered, for incomprehensible political goals that were never in play. After a series of atrocities (Moscow Theater, bombings, etc.) designed merely to kill and terrorize.
It is no surprise that they agreed with Putin’s assessment that they were weak, the weak get beaten, and set about proving without a doubt, that Russia was not weak.
If it was not Georgia it would have been someone else. Ukraine, Armenia, Kazahkstan, Someone. Someone to make an explicit example of, so that others would decide NOT to repeat Beslan out of naked fear.
In a very PC-form, GWB had embraced the same doctrine, though with lots of US technology to minimize suffering and casualties, though not eliminating it.
ALL the great powers: Russia, China, the US, are caught in the same trap. Various rabbles, with no great powers of their own, can use modern technology to kill, terrorize, intimidate for no real reason but to kill and intimidate. To kill Russian children, Beijing busriders, or US office workers just because.
Each is responding in their own way. Russia with typical Czarist brutality, because that’s what they know and has worked in the past. Putin promises them no more Beslans through intimidation. Beyond the oil issue which dominates, ordinary Russians are afraid and WANT a brutal intimidator to insure no more Beslans, Nord-Ost theater massacres.
The US adopted the policy of pre-emption along with local ally-building. Not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Horn of Africa and the Sahel. Special forces guys are all over there, training and trying to build institutions capable of snuffing out Beslans aimed at us, and willing to do so to maintain US power/help against rivals. [Something Russia, even with oil/gas prices up, cannot do.] This is the US tradition, think Fort Apache. We do this fairly well.
China has adopted a low-profile policy, followed by much more rigid policing at home (something Russia, too big and empty, cannot do, and that the US is unwilling to do). China avoids exposure whenever possible on Islamic issues, while ruthlessly arresting anyone who might be trouble at home. They don’t come out ever, either. Think of this as the “soft” Kung-Fu master, avoiding blows and using joint locks, throws, and quick strikes in response.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:47 pm 241. Armando:The present Russian leadership reminds me of something I read. “The question is how much more civilized is a cannibal because he eats you with knife and fork.”
Putin is still the same old Soviet cannibal, and we better not let him have any chance at fresh meat.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:48 pm 242. fedya:@neolex:
They are not the people who would rise against him.
Dude, just sayin’, but that makes less sense than saying that Sunni and Shia are too opposed to cooperate militarily. We fight on principle, not sheer love of murder, pillage and rape, right?
What do bands of thugs DO? How many “made guys” got whacked in person by John Gotti? When payoffs start to dry up, gangsters start to eliminate one another. Once loosed, the mad dogs of war often consume the little bastards that sent them out.
It does not really make sense, but there has never been a time when it wasn’t happening lots of places. Gangsters are a problem. They expand until they are beaten back. Nu?
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:49 pm 243. 3days:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk47saogI8o
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:51 pm 244. sarkis:cjm, i suggest regarding the actions of the putin bunch not as land empire builders but as a criminal organization running the place for profit.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:52 pm 245. neolex:then i think russian actions make perfect sense; possibly blind to some longer-term repercussions, but totally in character.
Front-page russian press is seething at yushchenko today more than at the US.
you give the man some dioxin in soup, get no gratitude at all.
@whiskey
In case of Beslan govt is directly responsible for all the deaths, as the operation was conducted with criminal negligence. Freeing hostages was never a concern, the main thing was killing the terrorists. A lot of Russians are angry at the govt for it, but I wouldn’t call it a world-view forming event, as people position fell along the pre-existing lines.
Blowing up homes in Moscow and Volgodonsk was done by FSB to provide a justification and public support for war in Chechnya. Democratic institutions have not been completely eroded back then, an Putin could not do it otherwise. Anna Politkovaskya was killed when she was investigating this.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:56 pm 246. Konyok:neolex,
I think the goal is the same as it ever was: remove Saakashvili. The Russians know that formal occupation would only make him a rallying point for Georgian nationalism. Unleashing the wolves incites more primal fear.
That’s it for now. We’ll all see what surprises our morning/their afternoon will bring us.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:56 pm 247. buddy larsen:hope you is right cjm. the SOB gives me the willies, tho –ice cold technocrat executing master plan is another possibility, you must admit. Caution does three things, makes you tentative (bad), makes you careful (good), and three, it lessens the shock if/when the enemy does the unexpected –and that’s very good.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:58 pm 248. neolex:@sarkis
Rationally, any appearance of violation of cease-fire agreement, makes Russian diplomatic situation worse, which means billions. Hence, allowing marauding and other appearances of violation of cease-fire must be worth to Russia at least that much. Why?
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:58 pm 249. neolex:“I think the goal is the same as it ever was: remove Saakashvili.”
This is plausible. but I dont really see the mechanism.
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:00 pm 250. neolex:Also, any effects on Saakashvili won’t be shown for another 4 years until next elections in Georgia.
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:01 pm 251. Alexis:I suppose it’s not a nice thing for me to ask now, but I’m asking anyway:
Why did Gori continue to keep a statue of Stalin? Sure, Stalin may have been born in Gori, but something about Gori being proud of Joseph Stalin as a hometown hero, something about that bothers me. Keeping the Stalin statue intact may sound like a minor question, but I don’t think it is. Despite my support for the airlift of supplies into Georgia, there is a limit to how far I can support anybody who feels pride in Stalin.
Yes, we need to send a red light to Russia. Yes, we need to support our allies. Yes, we should sent Georgia necessary supplies. I don’t like Stalin. I don’t like how he murdered millions of Russians. I don’t like how he starved millions of Ukrainians. And I don’t like people who regard such a monster as a hero.
I wonder if one reason why Germany vetoed Georgia’s entry into NATO was that statue in Gori. Many Germans have bitter feelings about Stalin.
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:03 pm 252. cjm:bush is pretty unpredictable himself.
it all comes down to faith. i believe in our system and genuinely feel that the russian system is totally non-competitive in comparison. the russians also believe this as they show genuine fear of us, and wouldn’t behave so cravenly if they thought they could match up against us. look at all the trivial things they cheat at — sports, chess, etc — that we just don’t care about.
we are a colosus and they are pygmies running around bare assed. don’t let the msm blind you with their hero worship of thugs, they have also lost out to a superior system.
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:06 pm 253. neolex:@cedarford
What you say about SO is true, Ossetians were protected by Russian from invasions, etc. However, what fred said about it (SO is a criminal, gangster enclave in the Caucasus if there ever was one) is also true. The two are not mutually exclusive. It seems to me that you are as informed about the current state of politics of SO and its various actors as Fletcher is about energy and economics.
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:15 pm 254. buddy larsen:good points all –esp msm thug-loving. Like neolex tho i’m still scratching my head. the term ”president obama” keeps appearing in my mind. ok, off to grab some zzz — nite all –
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:17 pm 255. neolex:@alexis
I don’t know what the Georgian sentiment about Stalin is, but keeping a statue does not mean the person depicted is considered a hero, or people are proud of him.
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:19 pm 256. bobal:This Fellow points out what a dangerous situation we may be in.
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:24 pm 257. whiskey:Neolex, yes the Russian response in Nord-Ost and Beslan was fairly incompetent. But the people who killed all the kids were Chechen terrorists. No conspiracy. Just Chechens. The same kinds of people who flew airplanes into buildings or blew apart Beijing bus riders.
The conspiracy-mongers of 9/11, Beslan, the Moscow Theater, and Moscow apartment bombings (eerily similar to the Blind Sheik “bridge and tunnel” plots btw) all have one thing in common — refusal to acknowledge the reality that terrifies them — that poor rabbles have an ability to kill with impunity citizens of major powers with no comeback.
The only “conspiracy” was that of the terrorists. Incompetence on 9/11, Beslan, Nord-Ost, etc. made things worse, but were not the primary movers.
The killers at Beslan shot children who cried. Wired the place with explosives, shot parents on whims. These were terrorists who planned to die and enjoyed killing people. Same with Nord-Ost. Same with 9/11.
ALL wealthy, modern, “European” style nations (this includes China) are struggling how to deal with mostly Islamic thugs who like killing and think that killing enough people will cause the powerful nations to submit. All this PC stuff has encouraged … Muslims in China to battle it out with police using guns and grenades!!!
No one is immune here. Nor should anyone fool themselves that Putin does not have a lot of support since Russians don’t see much else working. After Putin went ruthless and leveled Grozny, the attacks on Russia stopped. Unlike the Yeltsin years. Broadly speaking, Russians are afraid, they see Putin as the tough guy who will keep the Chechen-types at bay. With Georgia as a useful example. Russians are not Frenchmen nor Italians nor Spaniards nor Britons. They live in a much tougher neighborhood and will choose a John Gotti if he keeps other thugs at bay.
OT: Sarkozy looks the fool now.
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:33 pm 258. Fletcher Christian:Cedarford:
In most cases, I gave possible prize sizes for gigawatts, not gigawatt-hours or even GW-days. Why does this matter? It matters because if the prize is given at a given power level then the facility earning that prize has to be capable of producing it! In other words, for example, the $10 billion dollar prize for 1GW of power from space is for the building of a space power station – which can then continue producing that power indefinitely. And the same applies to all the others.
It probably doesn’t need saying, but the projects producing liquid fuels (I mentioned algae growth and oil shale) wopuld have the prize given for the supply of that million barrels in a specified time span. Therefore, the facility producing it has to be able to produce at least a large fraction of that quantity per month indefinitely.
Finally, on the subject of fusion: My proposed budget has been decried. And I agree – provided, that is, that the current method, Tokamak or magnetic-confinement fusion, continues to be the method pursued. This method appears to need reactors the size of ten-storey buildings and double-digit billion dollar budgets. Lovely for a government and beloved by bureaucrats. However, I was very careful to say “electrostatic-confinement fusion”. This method is currently called by another name also; Polywell. Dr. Bussard, the champion of this route, himself said that $200 million might be adequate for this – simply because the necessary scale of the equipment is MUCH smaller. As somewhat of a side issue, it becomes much easier, by this method, to use a fusion reaction that produces next to no radioactivity and can be tapped directly for power rather than using the reactor as a giant kettle. I believe the reaction concerned is proton/boron-11 producing helium nuclei (only).
It is conceivable that Polywell fusors might be small enough to be fitted into large buildings, ships, locomotives and perhaps large trucks. It is even possible that one could be made small enough for a car – Mr. Fusion anyone?
To sum up, the prizes would not be for a specified amount of energy. They would be for the capacity to produce more. Once the capacity is there – then more will come, and we can finally tell the Arabs (and the Russians) to stick their ****ing oil where the sun don’t shine.
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:36 pm 259. Fletcher Christian:Cedarford and neolex, one more thing; you appear to be unable to distinguish between units of power and units of energy. How’s that for ignorance about energy policy and realities?
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:42 pm 260. sfblue:@ neolex: “Russia’s biggest enemy is itself, it’s backward insecure psyche with poor work ethic and lack of respect for private or public property…”
@ wretchard “If this scenario is true, Putin was playing with a weak hand. He is bluffing.”
Perception/image is just absolutely critical. I have to admit that probably the biggest factor for me in the media war has been seeing photos of the Russian army. They look ragtag. Some of them are shirtless, waving cigarettes, lounging on military hardware. That had the most dramatic effect on me as far as pulling the covers off the state of the Russian military. By contrast, the US trained Georgian army looks exceedingly professional in the photos I’ve seen.
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:50 pm 261. neolex:@bobal
Nuclear war is a myth.
@whiskey
I do not harbor any conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, the homes were in fact blown up by FSB. Both people with detailed knowledge and evidence of it: Litvenenko (wrote a book FSB blows up Russia) and Politkovskay (was collecting evidence for a book) were killed by Putin.
As to Beslan, terrorists are no doubt responsible for the deaths of those children and death is too kind a punishment for them. However, it is the government that killed them and not Chechens. From the very beginning, Putin refused to negotiate. The terrorists have passed a tape to Putin with their demands. The contents of it are still unknown. Russian utilized not only Speznaz, but regular military as well. Some soldiers used mortars, tanks were firing on the building. The operation began with helicopter firing a rocket and blowing up parts of a wall, with obvious results for everyone who was sitting on the other side. No facilities were set up to deal with the wounded. Take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis#The_first_explosions_and_the_fire_in_gymnasium
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:57 pm 262. nichevo:Terrorists actually did not detonate anything. Russia’s objective was to destroy the terrorist and show that they will be ruthless in such cases. Hostages did not enter the picture. Same was the case is Nord-Ost.
Just one thing, I find the issue of possible FSB complicity in the Moscow apartment bombings to be very troubling. As for Nord-Ost and Beslan, Russian incompetence made things worse, but I certainly don’t suspect them of false-flag hostage-taking.
Just brutal hackery. Pump in fentanyl – cool, though not sure it worked quite as fast as advertised – but what kind of @#$%^&*(! morons don’t have the antidote on hand?!?!?!?!?eleven? And won’t tell anyone else what was used in time to do anything about it?
And for fairness, I have posted elsewhere that NORAD needs an enema, not to mention the US intelligence failures, yada yada.
I must insist, however, that this Georgia affair cannot be confused with a terrorist hostage crisis response. Classical naked Great Game aggression jack-move IMHO.
…
OTOH my cousin, a lefty lawyer and former politician (Cedarford’s wet dream, you have no idea) disagrees somewhat; I quote from a recent email:
Too long to go into in length.. S. should never have moved troops into S Ossetia. Q was did we give him green light to do this. Putin has several objectives–mostly keep US from meddling at his borders. Between missile defense and NATO issues of encirclement. Were we probing what P’s line in the sand was? P will make it clear that he is in charge, try to overthrow S. Don’t know if he will actually invade Tiblisi and do it physically. We have no leverage here.
Sigh. Not totally 100% night-is-day wrong, but bad enough. This is Columbia and Harvard and the Democratic Congress talking. And has traveled to the region on business. Not a moron in the low-IQ sense, far from it, I fear.
Stop crapping on Bush, this is what he has to deal with. And yes, it is wiser to have a senator (McCain) playing attack dog and Bush the voice of reason. Rhetorical satisfaction a la Bush ’speaking truth to power’ is not the point here, gents.
Or we could just go to the nukes right here and now. That work for everybody?
Right, that’s what I thought. What some people here confuse with a vigorous response is really more in the Russian style.
…Fletcher, your phrasing is awkward, but I agree the concept of X Prizes for energy technology breakthroughs (as you have cribbed from Jerry Pournelle) is fundamentally sound.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:09 am 263. bobal:Article From American Thinker
Hope you are right neolex, and, you probably are.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:13 am 264. John Samford:“Also, I doubt the Russians tanks have any defense against Predator drones”
Actually, they do. It’s called a MiG-29. UACV’s, RPV’s, etc. all started off as target drones. No matter what sort of weapons you hang off the wing, or new name you call it, when a manned fighter enters the area it reverts back to type and becomes a target drone. This is a simple FACT, and the reason why the USAF is sporting wood for F-22’s.
The solution in Georgia is to do what JFK did in Cuba and force the Bear to back off.
Have the Diplos do up a treaty with Georgia that subcontracts the defense of their air space to the USAF. That will make it ‘legal’ for the USAF to shoot down Soviet, err…..Russian fighters. Close off the tunnel with a B-2 strike and knock down some bridges and there is no longer a valid overland supply line for the 58th Army. With command of the airspace over Georgia, the 58th will onlt be able to re-supply by sea. I would get one of our NATO allies to contribute an AIP sub to stop that. An American nuke boat could do it until NATO got it together to send a better choice of weapon systems.
The black sea is a teacup in naval terms and it would be pretty easy for an air hunt to track down a sub. The AIP boat would be harder to find then a nuc boat.
So we cut off the 58th’s logistics, then start hunting down their commanders. Once they are dead, the 58th is a mob of hungry men with no major weapons that still work. The Georgians will have a field day.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:41 am 265. sfblue:With a small footprint of US troops inside Georgia, the public outcry here will be small, just the useful fools and the paid 5th columnists. The Agi-prop guys would not have a lot to work with, since a few hundred US troops would not pose a creditable threat to Georgian sovereignty. Plus if things went to ‘ell in a handcart, as they are apt to do in a war, getting a few hundred special forces types out would be much easier then extracting the 82nd Airbourn or the 1st Armored Division.
After a while ( year or two), we willl et the 58th go back home. That will put paid to Putin.
This plan would kep the potential for a world wide war pretty low. The Soviets, errrrr……Russians are rational, they understand that if we can kick their arse in the sky over Georgia, we can do it in the Sky over Moscow. If we can’t then , yes they will widen the war. I doubt that the USAF will have any real problem with the Soviet Air Force, other then running out of red paint for putting kill stars on the sidesof the F-22’s.
Do they make radar assorbing paint in red?
Is it possible that the US, by appearing to equivocate about backing up Georgia, intentionally gave the Russians enough rope to hang themselves with, knowing that they could step in at any time under the auspices of humanitarian aid?
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:42 am 266. neolex:@Fletcher
I have misunderstood you initial statements, but your phrasing was, in fact, awkward. Usually continious power generation is talked about in terms of ‘capacity’ or ‘xGW facility’.
The concept of energy prizes is flawed because it means that investors have to assume a big risk for a big payoff, since the prizes for energy generation are in billions, as are the development costs. The payoff incentive is there already, as the breakthrough that makes energy cheaper than current methods of generation would allow the inventor to swim in money. The issue is risk. Investors are unlikely to invest billions of dollars into high risk enterprises. It could have made sense if the prizes were set according to certain benchmarks or breakthroughs, but R&D is not that predictable, so, again investors could not estimate the likelyhood of getting the prize. It would also allow for giving away prizes for technologies that are not utilizable.
Furthermore, unless you convert our current fleet of vehicles into EVs to a significant extent, the dependence on foreign oil still exists.
One thing that I’ve found interesting in your post is electro-static confinement. I haven’t heard about it before, and its an interesting technology, however currently it is at 0.1% efficiency of what it needs to even break even. POP looks promising, but it would likely take longer to develope than tokamak, and tokamak has a much larger generation capacity due to its design.
US president still can’t repeal laws.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:56 am 267. sfblue:Also, could Saakashvili’s quickly floated exaggeration about the US ‘taking over’ Georgian ports and bases have put out there specifically so that Rice could forcefully deny it, stemming any speculation on that front?
It may sound smarter than possible, but I think this administration has some under appreciated tactical push/pull skills that it has been employing at least since GWB’s second term began.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:57 am 268. poul:fred,
“and especially for the Ossetian pigs (a criminal, gangster enclave in the Caucasus if there ever was one).Take no prisoners and make it especially cruel for the Ossetians.”
why does it not surprise me that this racist garbage comes from people defending georgia’s fascist regime?
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:05 am 269. JB:The timing on this seems to be good. This is typical W. — must be seen as to “give peace a chance” and when the enemy is revealed as devious and treacherous, cavalry to the rescue. In 24 hours perception has changed completely. Rope-a-dope.
I thought Putin was some great thinker until I heard a certain anecdote about him thinking W. had removed Dan Rather. And it occured to me that the guy doesn’t really understand the West very well. A clumsy thug.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:09 am 270. poul:neolex:
“Russia’s behavior is really baffling in all this. It did not make sense for them to move beyond SO borders without capturing Tbilisi.”
what in the world is so baffling here to you guys? russians are ethnically cleansing georgians from inside and around south ossetia, to perpetuate their hold on the province. everything else is a smokescreen.
that much should be obvious, seriously.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:22 am 271. sfblue:poul: They could have been content to arm up SO with ground forces and use air power beyond that, but instead, the Russians got greedy and fell into a big trap.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:42 am 272. Fletcher Christian:@neolex:
OK, I am not that good a writer; I am quite sure that Presidential speechwriters are better.
At least one of the “alternative” (carbon-neutral) technologies I mentioned (growing algae, some of which have around 60% oil content) produces liquid fuel directly, and in any case if you have an energy source you can make liquid fuel.
OK, I admit to cribbing the idea from Mr. Pournelle.
There is a big problem with the risk inherent in this sort of energy R&D; however, I am confident that someone might well take the gamble. As you rightly state, the payoff is enormous – in at least one case, literally astronomical. However, one of them already works (ocean thermal). We know that, because the pilot plant was built in 1930!
You are quite right about the potential power generation from a Polywell plant. However, what is the solution to that? Simple. Build several! As I said in my first post, it is quite possible that the units might be small enough for a large building. If you ran an office block, wouldn’t you like to have a fusion plant built in the basement and tell the power company to stick it?
Finally, who said that it had to have been the President who repealed the law? He might have been simply making the announcement. I admit that with the current bunch of Luddites in Congress (and in the UK Parliament too, to be fair) that is rather unlikely. I am no expert on US law, but doesn’t the President have the powers to do some unlikely things under war powers? I submit that cutting off a large percentage of the national income of a declared enemy might be called a war measure. Declaring “War on Terror” while giving $50 billion per year to the enemy seems rather strange to me.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:58 am 273. someone:“the point is –i know i’m driving this into the ground and breaking it off –what USA is doing now cannot possibly be a surprise.”
Osama thought we were soft and incapable of decisive response, too.
Putin must have let the “looked into his eyes” stuff get to his head.
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:19 am 274. fedya:@poul:
It is not racist to refer to a gangster operation run by Russian General Officers as criminal, especially when the tiny Farsi-like-speaking minority they have hijacked has no say in what they do in their name. Check out the numbers of ethnic Ossettians in exile vs. how many neo-fascist hooligan adventurers Pukin has recruited to replace them.
They’ll be cleaning toilets on the Metro for an awfully long time before Czar Puke-in lets them back in South “Ossettia”.
Hard words, yes; life is hard, oy.
No, the Ossettian’s do not deserve to suffer for the sins of neo-Czarist gangsters, but they do and they will. So will many other little peoples in the Causcasus suffer, just like they have suffered under the Czars since 1800, under the Ottomans before that, before that the Seljuks, the whoevers, …[to Hell with all of them...oops, sorry, all the Imperialists are already in Hell, my bad].
Is there such a thingie as a power that is smart enough NOT to be imperialist? Why, yes, and thank you for asking. It is us, the United States of America; may God Bless us all, American or not, every single one.
Aug 14, 2008 - 3:56 am 275. DanM:How do you deal with a Reuters article that doesn’t support the Reds? Believe it, or suspect a counter-counter propaganda ploy?
Haven’t had time to scan through thread.. If already linked, let me Emily Latella outta here..
Aug 14, 2008 - 4:11 am 276. Cannoneer No. 4:Talk Is Cheap
The U.S. should firmly tell Russia that unless its troops pull back to their August 6 positions, the U.S. will provide military aid to Georgia, demand and help author a more neutral peace plan, require all future peacekeeping forces in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia be truly international, and move quickly to reassure other U.S. allies by convincing NATO to extend Article 5 protection to Ukraine.
Aug 14, 2008 - 4:17 am 277. Cannoneer No. 4:Iranian President Ahmadinejad arrives in Turkey on two-day visit
Aug 14, 2008 - 4:20 am 278. Dan:Russian tanks in Gori to “help” withdrawal.
-Georgian police return to Gori…
-BP pipeline is “on” again…
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/14/georgia.russia.war/index.html
Aug 14, 2008 - 4:36 am 279. Cannoneer No. 4:The Americans arrive
South Ossetia is a tiny patchwork of villages—Georgian and South Ossetian—which was easy to drag into a war. It is headed by a thuggish former Soviet official, Eduard Kokoity, and run by the Russian security services. It lives off smuggling and Russian money. In early August Georgian and South Ossetian separatists exchanged fire and explosive attacks. South Ossetia blew up a truck carrying Georgian policemen and attacked Georgian villages; Georgia fired back at the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali.
Aug 14, 2008 - 4:38 am 280. Doug:Peace Plan Offers Russia a Rationale to Advance
Negotiating from a position of strength, the Russians demanded the fifth point, allowing their troops to act in what was termed a peacekeeping role, even outside the boundaries of the separatist enclaves where the war began, with an understanding that later an international agreement might obviate this need.
The vague language of the fifth point allows Russian peacekeepers to “implement additional security measures” while awaiting an international monitoring mechanism.
The Georgians asked that a timeline be included in the language for these loosely defined Russian peacekeeping operations, but the Georgian official said Mr. Sarkozy’s response was that without an agreement, a Russian tank assault on the capital could ensue: “He was saying it’s a difficult situation. He said, ‘Their tanks are 40 kilometers from Tbilisi. This is where we are.’ ”
Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Saakashvili announced the agreement around 2 a.m., and Russian tanks and troops moved toward Gori soon afterward. The Russians cited the fifth provision, saying they had identified a threat to the local population that justified their troops assuming a peacekeeping role in the city.
Aug 14, 2008 - 4:41 am 281. Evil Pundit:—-
Text: Peace Accord Sarkozy Gave to Georgians (August 14, 2008)
Bush, Sending Aid, Demands That Moscow Withdraw (August 14, 2008)
Russian Soldiers Occupying Stalin’s Birth City Are Buoyed by Battle With Georgia (August 14, 2008)
Conflict Narrows Oil Options for West (August 14, 2008)
Rejuvenated Georgian President Cites U.S. Ties as ‘Turning Point’ in Conflict (August 14, 2008)
I can think of one possible reason the Russians are letting the “irregulars” run amok.
The remaining elements of the Georgian Army seem to be holding strong defensive positions on the road to Tbilisi. It must be difficult for them to sit there while the rest of the country is raped. If they can be drawn into the open to attack the brigands, that achieves two things:
(1) It weakens their defensive position and exposes them
(2) It provides a pretext for Putin to say that the Georgians have broken the ceasefire
So it could be part of a strategy to take Tbilisi, further weaken the Georgian military, or to create a propaganda incident.
Aug 14, 2008 - 4:45 am 282. Cannoneer No. 4:Georgia’s PR agency lashes out at Russian ‘propaganda’
GPlus comes under fire for promoting Russia’s side in the conflict with Georgia
Aspect Consulting founding partner James Hunt told PRWeek: ‘There are agencies that work for Russia but I don’t know how they can be comfortable about that. I feel I’m on the side of the angels.’ He added that part of Aspect’s strategy was appealing to ‘journalists’ sense of right and wrong’.
Aug 14, 2008 - 4:46 am 283. fred:“fred,
“and especially for the Ossetian pigs (a criminal, gangster enclave in the Caucasus if there ever was one).Take no prisoners and make it especially cruel for the Ossetians.”
why does it not surprise me that this racist garbage comes from people defending georgia’s fascist regime?”
It’s the truth, “poul” – something you Russians react to like a denizen from another galaxy. And stop cluttering up the discussion with your nonsense. I won’t retract a word of any of it; the Ossetians are worse whores than the Russian women are. By all accounts their means of makin’ a livin’ consist of criminal activities like drug-running and black market. Hardly a sainted people. And the “racist” label you sling around gives you away. Any time someone says un-politically correct thing about another group of people, the Leftist multi-culti babblers come out of the woodwork.
What Russian PR firm tugs on your leash?
Aug 14, 2008 - 4:58 am 284. Doug:Cannoneer’s NRO Article, linked above says…
“The current response to the situation in Georgia does not bode well for U.S. influence in the region. The U.S. has failed to protect its friend and ally, an ally that had the third-largest troop presence in Iraq, after the U.S. and Britain, and is sending the message that our assurances and promises are meaningless. Russia is trying to show the world that it is the only meaningful power in the region, and the U.S. has done nothing to disprove that”.
—
On the contrary, the outspoken President has done the opposite, even exaggerating our efforts:
Rejuvenated Georgian President Cites U.S. Ties as ‘Turning Point’ in Conflict
By Wednesday he seemed an almost preternaturally reinvigorated man, once again raising the temperature in Georgia’s bitter disagreements with Russia, and invoking special ties with American democracy and freedom.
Moments after President Bush appeared at the Rose Garden to say that the Pentagon would begin a humanitarian aid mission to support Georgia, Mr. Saakashvili was on the phone with a Western reporter, talking fast. “This is a turning point,” he said. Soon he appeared on national television, his tousled hair combed back flat and wearing a freshly pressed suit, assuring his country that the worst had passed.
We already saw U.S. Air Force landing in Georgia despite Russians controlling the airspace,” he said, after a C-17 had touched down. “And we will see U.S. military ships entering Georgian ports despite Russians blocking it. That we will see.” He added, “These will be serious military ships.”
But the American military said that although the Navy had been ordered to assist in the humanitarian mission, it had not yet formed its plans and no ships were en route.
Aug 14, 2008 - 5:08 am 285. exdem13:Fletcher Christian: why on earth are you tossing money into the air for energy tech that will take a decade to work out? The laws of physics are what they are…not what we’d like them to be.
Why is it that you utterly ignore the one technology that works NOW. Coal conversion [invented 75+ years AGO...] that produces hydrocarbon derivatives at a cost of 45-65 dollars per bbl [depends on who you talk to...]. Need gas? Diesel? Jet-A? JP-5? Plastics feedstock? All there, all at half the world market cost.
You want a heroic project FC? How about an announcement to the world that American is taking it’s military off the world oil grid [and thereby freeing up ALL the POL DoD is currently buying to go back into the commercial market...] and will no longer be a slave to OPEC. That’s right, a goal of 100% coal-based POL for government use…commercial market to follow.
I wonder who’s digestion would spoiled by that speech?
Aug 14, 2008 - 5:21 am 286. Cannoneer No. 4:Alexis, your 11:03 pm
I had a spirited discussion with a Georgian colleague on that exact topic a few years ago. The Georgians are not a numerous people, and their rich oral tradition is mostly the retelling of thousands years of heroic tales of Georgians outsmarting, outfighting, and out terrorizing everybody else.
He told me “Stalin was a bastard, of course, but he was one of the worst bastards that ever lived, and he was our bastard.”
Aug 14, 2008 - 5:22 am 287. Doug:Nice Map @Stratfor
—
Ex Dem,
Here’s some Hitler Methanol links I found a few days ago.
Methanol Uber Alles
The Air Plan that Defeated Hitler – Google Books Result
Aug 14, 2008 - 5:35 am 288. CPT. Charles:by Haywood S. Hansell, Haywood S. Hansell, Jr. – 1979 – History – 311 pages… 100 percent of her nitric acid (basic component of all explosives), and 99 percent of her equally important methanol were synthesized from coal, …
Sorry about that…that me speaking about coal conversion. I didn’t notice my house-mates tag was up.
Only one cup of coffee in me so far. More to follow…
Aug 14, 2008 - 5:41 am 289. exhelodrvr:John Samford,
” JFK did in Cuba and force the Bear to back off.”
Urban legend. The Soviets didn’t “back off”, they traded their missiles in Cuba for our missiles in Turkey.
Aug 14, 2008 - 5:50 am 290. neolex:@exhelodrvr
In the end Soviets still lost. US removal of missiles from Turkey was very private, Russia’s removal of missiles from Cuba was anything but. US has won the information battle back then. Also, Russia had to remove missiles from Cuba first, US later.
Aug 14, 2008 - 5:56 am 291. James:I read a book written in the 60s (I think) about the Berlin Airlift which noted that part of its success was the retaliatory blockade of the 10% of reparations from West Germany to Russia that Russia had negotiated for.
Aug 14, 2008 - 6:04 am 292. ridgerunner:fred,
Aug 14, 2008 - 6:11 am 293. sigintel:In the early 80’s E.O. Wilson and Charles Lumsden modeled the evolution of human behavior and concluded that a thousand years under a particular set of societal norms was long enough to cause an evolved response in innate behavior (their 1000-year rule). Perhaps the average Russian psychology is different than that of many other peoples due to the selective pressures deriving from the regimes that Russians have lived under.
As Gen. Borisov assured that Russian soldiers have no intention of staying in Georgia beyond a day or two, the signal of the Georgian mobile phone network disappeared in the Gori vicinity. Instead, cell phones lit up with a message highlighting new realities on the ground. “Welcome to Russian network MegaFon,” the message said. “Enjoy your stay!”
…sounds like its going to a long “day or two”. If the Russians destroyed the Georgia Telecom cell tel network, they have to have deployed a portable cell site with a satellite backhaul to bring up MegaFon service.
Aug 14, 2008 - 6:11 am 294. Annoy Mouse:The Russians are clearly in the cat-bird seat. All they need to do now is stay put and to apply pressure to the international community to oust Saakashvili and to insist that his replacement “recognize” OS and Abk automony. In other words, a puppet. It will be easy and seamless for them to do too because the EU-US Leftest front will say that it is just desserts.
Aug 14, 2008 - 6:28 am 295. neolex:@Annoy Mouse
They are by no means in a catbird seat. In fact their plan, to overthrow Saakashvili by force has failed. The intention it seems, was to destroy Georgian army and take over Tbilisi in the shortest time possible. Thus, Georgia would be lost to US, and any response by US in Georgia would be pointless. That did not come to pass. If it only wanted SO and Abhazia, it merely had to stay there. Instead, the gamble failed and now Russia in a precarious position. Diplomatically and economically it is really bad for Russia, at the same time, continuing forward would only worsen that and provoke US response. It seems logical then, to pull back, but that would mean that the end-result is the same as if they stayed in SO, but with much worse consequences for Russia’s standing. As such, it seems that Russia is trying to blackmail US and EU with the territory of the Georgia proper they are holding and their potential actions. Kind of like robbers who went to rob a bank, but failed, start taking people hostage to get better terms for their surrender or possibly escape.
Aug 14, 2008 - 6:40 am 296. neolex:@sigintel
Not necessarily. It could simply be that destruction of Georgian cell network has led to the Russian tower being the nearest one in reach. It might either be in SO or on a high peak in Russia itself as the distance is under 40 miles.
Aug 14, 2008 - 6:46 am 297. Doug:Agree w/neolex.
Aug 14, 2008 - 6:54 am 298. exdem13:Need to replace the Russian “Peacekeepers” w/neutral Peacekeepers (Put foreward by McCain) require them to return to Aug 6 or they are out of G-8.
The Olympics right up the tracks will either not occur, or be a PR Catastrophe if Russia sticks w/a hardline.
Heh, I don’t mind if CPT Charles makes a good point under MY byline too much, y’know.
Putin is thuggin’ it in Georgia, in order to regain control of the Black Sea & eventually the entire Caucasus region ASAP. He knows that eastern Siberia is eventually going to become part of the PRC, and he is anticipating that day by ensuring that the Russian Empire (CIS my fanny) has a definitely viable energy resource to provide to Europe. His plan is politically….very Russian.
The funny thing is, he could’ve gotten the cooperation of Ukraine & Georgia by doing some trade deals, splitting the difference, you know “making the deals”. That’s the way the rest of us in the free World do it, right? Your guys & my guys do lunch, the contracts get arranged, the political seals of approval are applied, we have the press conference & photo ops, life goes on, everybody is happy. But no, Putin, ideological heir to Uncle Joe Stalin, the Czar of the Soviet Empire, gets the Cossacks and the mechanized divisions and the IRBMs and goes in swinging. After all, the Bear of the East doesn’t need to negotiate or make deals, right? “We will bury you!” Nice of him to reinforce the lesson to our post-Cold War generations that the Russian people are good, but they toil for a government that is wicked, and dedicated to holding onto power at all costs.
Aug 14, 2008 - 6:54 am 299. buddy larsen:Neolex is right, i think. News flash at this moment is ”heavy explosions in Gori” and something about the mil base and an airfield being blown up at this time. Unless that’s a ruse, it should mean they’re leaving, and leaving as much damage as possible.
Dawns on me the importance of the armed mob trailing the troops may’ve been intended to hang the Georgian government from the familiar lamposts we’ve seen so often associated with Rus clients *ahem replacing the local government.
Aug 14, 2008 - 6:54 am 300. Doug:Peacekeepers, Inc
Behind them, according to people fleeing those villages, came a militia army of Chechen and Ossetian volunteers who had joined up with the regular Russian army. The volunteers embarked on an orgy of looting, burning, murdering and rape, witnesses claimed, adding that the irregulars had carried off young girls and men.
“They killed my neighbour’s 15-year-old son. Everyone was fleeing in panic,” Larisa Lazarashvili, 45, said. “The Russian tanks arrived at our village at 11.20am. We ran away. We left everything – our cattle, our house, and our possessions.”
Achiko Khitarishvili, 39, from Berbuki, added: “They were killing, burning and stealing. My village isn’t in a conflict zone. It’s pure Georgia.”
Aug 14, 2008 - 7:04 am 301. Doug:Buddy,
Aug 14, 2008 - 7:09 am 302. Annoy Mouse:The Russians say they are carrying out point 5 of the agreement, namely the Russian Peacekeepers there are protecting Georgian Citizens from Marauding Ossetians!
Thus, they must stay to live up to the agreement…
“As such, it seems that Russia is trying to blackmail US and EU with the territory of the Georgia proper they are holding and their potential actions.”
Kind of makes my point. The only question is what were Russias intentions and where do they go from here. It doesn’t seem to me that the Russians were forcefully ground down. Moreover I think they were pulled into the vacuum of a Georgian military collapse. They burst out of SO and Abk as a forward defense then followed the retreating Georgians to their first redoubt. They seem to be taking their time, and as far as negotiated settlements are concerned, the party in the least hurry is in the best position to set conditions.
Aug 14, 2008 - 7:09 am 303. Sid:“The Russians are clearly in the cat-bird seat.”
If they’re in the cat-bird seat (and intimidating the West), why do they have to publicly harangue even a vassal-state like Belarus to support them? World opinion outside the offices of the New York Times seems to be against them, they haven’t captured Tblisi, the US is entering the region, the Georgian army and government are still in existence….maybe I’m just not smart enought to follow the complexities of the situation, but Russia doesn’t seem to be running away with this one to me.
Aug 14, 2008 - 7:17 am 304. buddy larsen:@doug 7:09 –”I aimed the pistol and squeezed the trigger. Suddenly, shots rang out!”
Aug 14, 2008 - 7:19 am 305. CPT. Charles:Here’s an additional info asset:
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.28464/pub_detail.asp
I respect this man’s opinion, and his insights.
Aug 14, 2008 - 7:35 am 306. CPT. Charles:BTW…how much of this do think goes out thru the Black Sea?
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Russian_Arms_Exports_To_Exceed_Eight_Billion_Dollars_In_2008_999.html
Aug 14, 2008 - 7:45 am 307. neolex:Probably lion’s share. But 8 billion is not that much in military export for a country like Russia. That figure surprised me. Israel exports about $2 billion a year.
Aug 14, 2008 - 7:52 am 308. Dan:Well, with their “wares” on full display, who would want to buy their stuff? It was obsolete a decade ago.
Aug 14, 2008 - 7:58 am 309. mark_b:Uranium’s got a pretty long half-life.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:01 am 310. Annoy Mouse:“The Russians are clearly in the cat-bird seat.”
OK. Maybe they’re not, what ever a cat bird seat is. They don’t need to take Tbilisi. What is to be gained there? Westerners, including the NYT love negotiated settlements and the Russians can surely parley for one in their favor. They have committed very little forces to bottle up Georgia and as long as there “irregulars” can live off the land and terrorize the populace in a way that gives plausible deniability to the Russians for responsibility; ie: South Ossetians who rampaged after seeing their daughters violated and their dogs squashed by Georgian monsters…et al. The Russians control their media by the force of death and Western media news outlets will not upset anyone who will theaten them bodily or threaten their access to a story (see CNN and Saddam).
I do not see the Russians weakness here. Maybe it is I with a log in my eye but from this perspective it doesn’t seem so. Westerners are in short attention span theater more and the Leftists will eventually control the meme and the evil tyranny will have to go home in humiliation. That will be GWB and company. Wait and see.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:04 am 311. Konyok:Evil Pundit:
I think you’ve got it!
In “The Western Way of War” Hanson describes exactly the same phenonmenon – an invading army would employ lightly armed pillagers, usually slaves or poor citizens unable to afford armor, in order to raid the countryside in an attempt to lure the defenders from their phalanx.
Plus, the obvious benefit of terrorizing the Georgian citizenry and increase pressure to get rid of Saakashvili.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:07 am 312. Medea:AND SO IT BEGINS:
MEDIA ALERT: 50 Estonian Volunteers Arrive Shortly in Tbilisi
August 14, 2008 9:20AM EST
MEDIA ALERT
** 50 Estonian Volunteers Arrive Shortly in Tbilisi ** First Citizens Initiative to Reach Georgia ** Will Provide Medical & Other Aid ** Ceremonies Shortly in Front of Parliament & Ministry of Defense **
TBILIS, Georgia-A short while ago, 50 Estonian volunteers crossed the Georgian border to offer the support of the people of Estonia to Georgia. The volunteers will be greeted shortly at the Ministry of Defense, registered as humanitarian aides, and symbolically presented with a Georgian flag and a first aid kit. A ceremony will follow at the Parliament, where President Saakashvili is expected to attend.
http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5867&Itemid=65
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:09 am 313. mark_b:CPT. Charles:
Followed the aei link.
“The Russians have also established several principles and precedents:
…
That Russian Federation law can be used to bring charges against non-Russian citizens who are not resident in Russia for crimes not committed on Russian territory, if their actions are “against the interests of the Russian Federation.”"
How does this compare to the US requiring trials for the Gitmo detainees?
Is it moral equivalency run amok?
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:12 am 314. Annoy Mouse:“In sum, there has been no compromise. Russia has imposed its demands upon Georgia by force, under coercion and in the midst of partial military occupation, under the auspices of the European Union.”
Thanks for the AEI link Cpt Chaz. The Russians do not need to negotiate forcefully when even Sarkozy is falling all over himself to erase all past agreements and to make accomodatations that are outrageous and unsustainable for the all important, peace at any price. Saakashvili is screwed.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:12 am 315. Shivermetimbers:At the end of the day, I am glad that GW is in charge right now, despite all of his faults, as opposed to Obama, Kerry, Gore, Edwards, or some other loser.
I am sure this event reminded a few folks what the world is like and what having a strong leader means. I am reminded of Frum’s book “the right man’ written right after 9/11.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:21 am 316. Medea:I would like to invite Cannoneer No 4 to comment on the following:
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:21 am 317. Panday:http://informationdissemination.blogspot.com/2008/08/all-ahead-slow.html
Too many comments for me to keep up with on this post…
Has anyone brought up the idea of the US arming the Georgians a la the mujahedeen in Afghanistan?
The US could drop a few thousand tons of weapons, ammo, MREs, night vision devices, and Javelin missiles to help the Georgians. It also has the benefit of helping to kill the same people who are helping Iran build a nuclear bomb.
Turn the Georgians into the new Mujahedeen. Ought to bring back good memories for those rampaging cossacks.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:23 am 318. Cannoneer No. 4:Information Warfare: All the World is a Stage
And everybody lurking and commenting here and everywhere else is an actor.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:23 am 319. buddy larsen:That AEI piece –Kagan’s –is pretty grim alright. But hasn’t Russia already violated it? Georgia if in a US court would have an out –the duress.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:23 am 320. buddy larsen:Panday, Tblisi –and the Georgian gov’t is now a hostage. Any pretext at all, and Ivan can start bombing. In some ways, Ivan is stronger for the not taking the capital.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:28 am 321. bobal:I think the Russian Orthodox Church must be a totally shameless, worthless institution.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:37 am 322. CPT. Charles:Hanson strikes again…
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MGM5NGE1ZTc2NWUzZTljNjVhZGQ0ZDEwMDJmMGRlMmU=
Stand strong, or get ready for the Darkness…
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:41 am 323. Lifeofthemind:When this ends the Georgian government must be backed in asserting its right to expel every non-citizen from Georgian territory. In Georgia, as in the United States, accepting a foreign passport or claiming dual citizenship must give the government the right to declare the lose of your original citizenship and therefor the lose of all right to be in the country’s territory. When this is finished the only Russian troops permitted anywhere on the planet south of 44º N should be embassy guards and staff, with no more than 50 each in all but a half dozen countries.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:42 am 324. buddy larsen:It’s quite literally Byzantine, bobal.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:42 am 325. Cannoneer No. 4:There are hangers-on trailing this Russian advance; Ossetians with scores to settle, volunteers with their own weapons, or plain-old mercenaries scenting a quick buck. And this is an ethnic conflict so, just like the Balkans and Chechnya there’s blood letting in the air.
These men were killers, that was clear in their demeanour, they just didn’t kill us.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:46 am 326. ken anthony:Russia plays the deniability game. Time to join them. McCain says “We are all Georgians now.” So why not? How hard would it be to get Georgian passports and uniforms for our troops? I think we could greatly expand the size and expertise of the Georgian military.
Georgia should request American no fly zone and we should honor it. Let Putin decide if he’d like to take us on directly as we also deny adding to Georgian troops.
The Russians are destroying the country under the ‘cease fire’. Make them pay. These bullies have to be smacked down hard (and often!)
Reagan’s plan: WE WIN, THEY LOSE!
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:47 am 327. Lifeofthemind:Good morning sports fans.
Fred I think you have to be careful about letting your emotions get repressed. Why don’t you tell us what you really think? Seriously despite the frustrations and costs the President was right to stay focused on a humane transformative approach to Iraq and he is right to establish our moral superiority in the Caucasus. Once that is done it is my sincere hope that things are rearranged to make the lose to the Russians unambiguous.
Now we see the Chinese are continuing to team with the Sudanese and Saudis to perform ethnic cleansing for oil in North Darfur. We do not need that for a host of reasons. Perhaps we can encourage them to consider other resources that are closer (cough due North cough) to home?
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:57 am 328. John Samford:Actually, the US President has suspended the law MANY times in history.
Lincoln hung war protesters and tried to arrest an anti-war Congressman.
Wilson looked the other way after authorizing the APL ( American Protective League);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Protective_League
Wikipedia has a pretty much left wing slant on the APL, which doesn’t synch with other written histories, notably Corson, who while the best source is NOT a liberal, or at least a rabid one like the Wiki guys prefer.
Then there is FDR, who routine and almost daily violated the Law. I have not touched on the other Presidents, who played fast and loose with both the law and legislation.
I would almost bet that EVERY President of the 20th century ignored the law when they thought is necessary. Something to always remember is that the US President IS above the law, by the law. POTUS must be impeached before he can be arrested and charged with a crime. Impeachment is a political process, NOT a legal one.
So if the USA wanted to use some ’soft power’ on the Russians and hit them where it leaves a mark, President Bush needs to order American OIL companies to stop helping the Russian pump OIL from their wells. That would cut Soviet OIL production by 10 to 15 percent, which would be an economic blow that the Bear would feel.
U.S. OIL companies would raise holy billy bob ‘ell, but that would be all they could do.
IIRC it was FDR in WW2 that responded to a coal miners strike by arresting the Union leader and naturalizing the Coal Industry. It could have been WW1 and Wilson. I’m too lazy right now to google it.
In a time of war, which we are in now, since Congress declared one, a President can do ALMOST anything. So far in history, the USSC has always backed POTUS when it got down to it. Maybe that is because most of them understand if America falls it will be thru an internal coup and that they will be the 1st ones lined up against the wall. They are good with the President taking unconstitutional actions to ensure the survival of the Constitution. Or at least until recently. Once Stevens dies the USSC will get much more rational.
There are stories about the Supreme Justice hiding from Federal Marshals after Lincoln signed a warrant for his arrest. No hard evidence, just entries from the Supreme Justices diary, but a plume of smoke 150+ years old must have some sort of fire under it.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:58 am 329. Cannoneer No. 4:Fighters from South Ossetia are reportedly reluctant to surrender control of Gori to the Georgians and to retreat behind the border of their breakaway region. Irregulars among the South Ossetians were also continuing to steal cars belonging to Georgians, though one was returned later by a Russian officer.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:01 am 330. bobal:Thanks, But No Tanks–Understanding The Realities Of Power
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:03 am 331. bobal:Here
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:05 am 332. Fratar:Would someone mind explaining the concensus position that a military solution is off the table. I’ve heard the arguements about the problems getting material into the area, but I can’t imagine we wouldn’t be able to obtain Turkey’s consent. They have almost as much to lose as anyone. Why couldn’t the President state that Russia needs to be out of Georgia completely in 72 hours or we start hitting their positions. What’s the likihood that Russia would be willing to enlarge a limited engagement on Georgian territory? The chances seem extremely small and the message from the US to its friends and those countries considering whether it would be beneficial to develop a friendship would be clear.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:05 am 333. trish:The Russians have the diplomatic edge here simply because no one who would be negotiating for our side wants a war with them. That happens. This never meant, however – nor will it mean – that we will abandon the Georgians. That particular relationship is viewed in the long term, subject as always to political whims and winds but protected and maintained by those who are actually on the ground there. And those on the ground ain’t leavin’.
The Russians, too, recognize that.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:09 am 334. Hope Muntz:Bobal–the Russian Orthodox Church is a traumatized relic. Under communism, a majority of its priests were KGB agents or informers, something from which it has never recovered.
John Sansom–Lincoln didn’t just try to arrest an antiwar congressman–he did arrest him and kept him and dozens of other political prisoners in a Delaware camp, if I’m correctly remembering my American history courses.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:11 am 335. nichevo:We’re all wanking ow. What is actually happening and what can actually be done?I admit I vacillate between pushing them back gently and pushing hard but pushed back, and out, they must be.
I think all the unnecessary violence (i.e. atrocities) is just that. If the Russians leave this will be remembered. If they stay it will indeed fuel insurrection. The only logic is to give them deniability, e.g. for rape and pillage, attacking humanitarian formations, kidnaping Rice, things Russia doesn’t want to own, or at least have title to in Russia’s name.
I think it very significant, if true, to hear the BBC reports of drunkenness among the Russian troops.
What the hell are they thinking?
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:13 am 336. Wretchard Fan:http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=19574|
Ted Galen Carpenter is spot on. I wonder if the likes of kabud or La Russophobe will denounce him as a Kremlin stooge for working at Cato and advocating that America cut its foreign commitments in the interests not of leftist appeasement but of limited government and lower taxes at home? Carpenter is not Pat Buchanan, he is not singling out Israel for any critcism or vitriol or rewriting the history of World War II. If the British Commander Jackson wasn’t willing to start WWIII over Pristina Airport (in spite of Gen. Wesley Clark’s stupid order) after NATO’s Kosovo war in 1999, why risk it for the Tblisi airport in 2008?
Thank God the Russians appear to have stopped short of Tblisi, going in there would trigger a bloodbath and clearly unacceptable to the U.S. But in a tiny country with Georgia, it’s hard to drive much beyond South Ossetia’s frontiers without ending up within artillery range of Tblisi. Think of all the Israeli-Syrian battles over the strategic Golan Heights from 48 until the Yom Kippur War in 73. South Ossetia is even smaller than the Golan. And the Syrians want the Golan back not so that they can resume shelling Israeli towns around Galilee, but so they can have the headwaters to the Jordan River. When I was in Israel in 2003 I quickly realized every ancient Tel-fort that commanded the Valley of Megiddo, dating back to King Solomon’s time and untold civilizations before that, had water cisterns.
I don’t if there are any natural resources in South Ossetia that make it worth the Georgians beating their head against the unmoving Bear. However, Abkhazia has some wonderful Black Sea beach front real estate that buyers in Moscow will probably start snatching up before the Olympics in neighboring Sochi. Both Stalin and Kruschev used to spend their winters there.
Perhaps that is the Russian endgame – without 24 hour UAV coverage paired with incredibly accurate artillery (something only the U.S., and Israel due to its small size and sophistication, are capable of), they cannot possibly kick every Georgian soldier out of cannon or rocket range of the rebel provinces in their own country. And the Russians have no desire to occupy the whole country with their still-hobbled military. But the Russians can occupy South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the commanding heights near the same, and basically return to the status quo, but with a much heavier footprint on the ground. Hopefully that is what Medvedev or others around him are telling Putin to do.
At the very least, any Americans left on the ground doing humanitarian work need to work as far away from the Russians and the loose cannon South Ossetian militias as possible. And what happens when Russian sailors board an American flag vessel to make sure all of the supplies on board are of a humanitarian nature? That could be tense, a sort of Cuban Missile Crisis situation in reverse. All the warmongers who want to send in the F-22s need to think for a second…August 1914…August 1914…China has restive provinces of its own. The precedents that were set in Kosovo when Clinton unleashed Albright to carry out her maxim of “what’s the point of having this great military if you never use it” are coming back to bite America in the butt. This is real blowback, not the “oh jee jihadis don’t like us” kind the leftists talk about, as if jihadis aren’t killing people all over the world that have nothing to do with America or Israel.
I just hope the Russians pull back to South Ossetia and Abkhazia while all American forces are withdrawn from the country, except for the Embassy detail in Tblisi. The U.S. does not need this hassle right now. And in the long term, having made its point about former FSU countries provoking it by inviting in foreign troops and bases, neither does Russia. As Henry Kissinger has pointed out, the last thing Russia needs with its declining demographics and manpower pool for an army is a bunch of simmering wars or hostile powers on its enormous borders. And contrary to what the Kremlin may think now, there is only one nation in this world that has designs on Russian territory in the long term. And they are far more patient than the Americans, who merely want unfettered access to Central Asian natural resources and are exploiting Georgia and Ukraine as pawns for this purpose. Well, there are millions of people in eastern Ukraine who linguistically, ethnically, religiously, and culturally consider themselves to be Russian. What happens if Moscow starts issuing them passports before an Orange Government can barely cobble together a coalition to get Ukraine into NATO? Am I an “appeaser” or leftist for asking such questions of the maximalist, triumphalist, teenagers that are running the show in D.C.? I pray to God that Bush would call his father and the others around him who handled the breakup of the Soviet Union in a way that limited bloodshed from what was indeed, “a geopolitical catastrophe”. The collapse of the Soviet empire was no more bloodless or less catastrophic than the end of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, or German empires, and now we’re seeing some poisonous seeds bloom.
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=19574.
As Richard Fernandez has pointed out over at the Belmont Club website, every Russian soldier or border policeman in the Caucases is one less enforcing immigration laws on the wide-open Chinese border. Russia’s real internal problems won’t go away, and neither will the patient Chinese.
As for what the Russians have gained in the short run, this UK Times article fairly sums it up:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4525885.ece
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:15 am 337. Eggplant:buddy larsen said:
“Dawns on me the importance of the armed mob trailing the troops may’ve been intended to hang the Georgian government from the familiar lamposts we’ve seen so often associated with Rus clients *ahem replacing the local government.”
I wonder how someone in Russia signs up to be part of an “armed mob”? What do these armed mob guys do when they’re not raping and pillaging? Do they have day jobs? Are they normally welfare bums living in the suburbs of Moscow or does the Russian government usually keep them locked up and only lets them loose for special occasions?
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:22 am 338. bobal:They think they are on holiday, the bastards.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:23 am 339. JJ Joseph:Honestly, who gives a rat’s ass about Georgia? Stuck under the thumb of the corrupt Georgian Orthodox church, the place is a cesspit of amoral rage and steaming gangsterism. It’s no coincidence that Goergia’s gift to the world was the amoral Joe Stalin. A free Georgia, free to beat the crap out of ordinary Christians, is going to be a perennial pain in the ass and sooner or later somebody will have to hammer the place into line. If America befriends Georgia and continues to tolerate Georgia’s lunatic religious bullies, Georgia will be like a monumental boil on America’s ass within a few years. A shit-load of Russian discipline, while not the perfect solution, is way better than what Georgia is able to come up with on its own.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:23 am 340. John Samford:I just watched Gates, the Minnie Mouse of the pentagon, announce the American surrender.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:25 am 341. Lifeofthemind:It looked like he was channeling Chamberlain. Should there be a pool on which country is next?
It looks like Puttie was correct, this administration has no balls atall.
Well, we will pay. And pay and pay.
A minor engagement involving a few hundred Special ops guys and a 100 or so combat aircraft will now end up as a large scale conventional war in another decade or so. 1938 all over again.
What did Gates say?
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:31 am 342. Cannoneer No. 4:Eggplant, see Volunteering to Kill Georgians
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:32 am 343. Dave:John Samford: Do not forget the very first President to violate his oath of office, shred the Constitution, use military force on civilians, ignore congresss etc etc etc and so forth.
That was George Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion. And if he had not done all these evil and nefarious things, no USA today.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:35 am 344. Cannoneer No. 4:Beneath a corrugated iron awning in the courtyard of the recruitment centre, a group of irregular soldiers mills about restlessly. Their battle get-up ranges from jeans and striped Russian navy T-shirts to Soviet-era military dress. But their chatter is uniform – an endless discussion about the war and what it means. One fighter, who described himself only as a Cossack from Siberia, also said the goal of Georgia’s President, Mikheil Saakashvili, and his American backers is nothing less than the complete ethnic cleansing of the region. “It’s an American-led genocide,” he said. Some volunteers in Vladikavkaz said they were being given assault rifles and $400 (£200).
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:35 am 345. Lifeofthemind:Cannoneer,
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:37 am 346. Cannoneer No. 4:Re: your bit on the Russian officer returning the stolen car, in a few years we should get a run of books by former Russian officers giving their opinions of the “oppressed minorities” that Putin sent them off to kill and die for. The Russian officers probably identify far more with the avowedly European Georgians.
The Russian army loves its NATO loot
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:40 am 347. RAH:Likely outcomes of the Georgian/ Russian war.
The US in humanitarian mode will be there for a while, months at least. Increased training of Georgian military, upgrades to communications to replace what was damaged, upgrades to air security. I do not think the US want to give high-grade AA systems to Georgia and Georgia cannot afford. So some type of air cover will be discussed and provided. This will have to be agreed to by the Russian to their dismay; we do not want future accidents between Russian Air Forces and US. If Russia refuses we can do it anyway with more risk.
S. Ossetia and Abkhazia will not have Russian peacekeepers after this. The US have a policy that we do not like to have to do things over, Russia and Georgia got our attention and this boiling pot is going to taken off the stove. Europe will provide the monitors.
That is a loss for Russia. They gambled we would grumble and acquiesced and we did not.
Shaaskavilli will be told to shut up for a while and not do more provoking statements. The US is not happy to be dragged into a US- Russia conflict. WE have tried to avoid that for 45 years and not happy that Georgia made it happen.
We will leave alone the Turkish enclave in Georgia, they were not involved and we do not want to upset Turkey.
Russia may not realize it yet, but Georgia will be in the US sphere of influence. After fighting two wars over German ambitions, The US decided no more. It only took one war with Japan for the US to decided no more. The same will be with Georgia but with a lighter footprint.
The US had an unnamed policy of if the US has to go to war then we make the defeated nation over in our image as much as possible. We broke with that policy in 1991 with Iraq and since it was not completed, we had to go back. Iraq is now being rebuilt, so it will no longer be a possible threat and we have the strategic center of the Middle East.
Georgia succeeded in its ambitions to get US protection, but it paid a large price with the Russian destruction to the infrastructure.
Poti commercial seaport will get loans for upgrades so we can deliver goods. Georgia just became a US trading partner. Ukraine will probably get more trade, with US casually in the area. Boon for Romania trade also. The Black Sea will not be exclusively Russian anymore.
US will probably put in signals intelligent monitoring systems in the area. It makes sense. NATO will fast track Ukraine and Georgia in December. The argument that it would bring us closer to war with Russia is moot. That risk happened when Georgia was rejected. It was the German defense minister who rejected Georgia before, who said they ought to reapply and the Georgian – Russian war would not deter that process.
Short term the Russians can say they won to their own people. Long term Russia lost influence over the Black Sea region. The US will not have greater entanglement in the Caucasus. This makes the need to get Iran under control greater than before.
This may change the calculation to just bombing Iranian nuclear processing plants into a more long term plan to over turn the regime. Personally I would take out the nukes plants and try for a CIA regime change. But that will be tricky to manage.
I suspect that in the future the US will go back to the 1950 style of using black ops to effect regime change into our favor, If we had not been squeamish about taking out Chavez was he was first being elected then the Venezuelan problem would not be here today and the spread of his ideas to Bolivia.
Of course that presumes that McCain will win this election. Which I believe is probable. I do not think McCain will be onboard with CIA active in effecting regime changes but his Republican successor will be more likely to see it is cheaper than going to war.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:42 am 348. jdwill:@exdem13 at 6:54
“Nice of him (Putin) to reinforce the lesson to our post-Cold War generations that the Russian people are good, but they toil for a government that is wicked, and dedicated to holding onto power at all costs.”
S for Snark, T for True. We always want to believe everyone would behave as we would if only a few despots were removed (i.e., Saddam). Then we are shocked when trouble ensues.
This book sample
Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power By Anatol Lieven
has some interesting passages on the Cossacks (present in this horde) and their role in Russian history to the near present. From what I gather, there are some very rough characters besides the Chechens in this region – I bless America and my fortune to have been born here.
The author was in the region in the 90’s, his obituary for Russion Imperialism may have been premature.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:44 am 349. Cannoneer No. 4:Professional Russian soldiers have to be disgusted with the hyenas following behind them. Looting and pillaging and rapine and plunder are prejudical to good order and discipline and the officers know it. They will shoot a few to encourage the others or they will be fragged and their commands will become murderous mobs of freebooters.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:47 am 350. neolex:“President taking unconstitutional actions to ensure the survival of the Constitution”
What kind of crock is that? There is a joke in Russia that Putin does not violate Russian constitution because he doesn’t use it.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:48 am 351. cjm:the thing to do is to attack the russian infrastructure; bite by bite, like mice stealing corn. mix concrete slightly wrong; cause food to spoil in warehouses; mis-wire weapons under construction; mis-label parts. spy on officials and release pics of them going to the bathroom or getting out of the shower.
Aug 14, 2008 - 9:52 am 352. buddy larsen:don’t blow things up. screw up the power grid a hundred different little ways. send people with contagious diseases through crowds of russians. ship in chinese medicine.
WSJ announces “Musharraf will resign within days”
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:05 am 353. Dan:In Soviet Russia, constitution amends YOU!…
/Yakov
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:05 am 354. Konyok:Rah,
Nice bit of analysis. I do kind of get a whiff of Ottoman futility in Putin’s strategy. It is a setback for the Russians precisely because they have not been able to utilize their potential power to simply roll into Tblisi and replace Saashkavili. When push comes to shove they have to step carefully in their own “near abroad.”
The Americans ARE coming to Georgia. There WILL be a serious effort to reconstruct Georgian infrastructure. The message sent to our friends will be that we can’t guarantee that bad stuff won’t happen, but we will promise a big boost after the storm passes.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:09 am 355. NahnCee:RAH – Nice. I like it.
I’m curious — is there any such thing any more as a “professional russian soldier”? Given reports of hazing unto death, drunkeness, and how they handled both the Moscow theater take-over and the Chechnya school thing. Not to mention their sunken submarine that they allowed the whole crew to smother to death on.
* * *
Incidently, to poul from much higher on the thread – obviously you’ve never heard the definition of a “racist”. It’s what you call someone when you’ve lost the argument. It’s amazing to me that a country that has headlines about its thugs beating on minorities in the streets dares to call ANYone else a “racist”. Both the Russians and the Arabs have learned their lessons from our progressive left.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:15 am 356. Konyok:I’m also encouraged to read that the Georgians have attempted to restore order in Gori when the Russians were supposed to have withdrawn. I was wondering why they allowed the vacuum to persist and was worried that they might be disintegrating.
The Russians destroying Georgian bases, equipment and munitions are giving the Georgians a short term obstacle but a long term benefit – this will help accelerate their transition to NATO standards.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:15 am 357. poul:sfblue:
“They could have been content to arm up SO with ground forces and use air power beyond that, but instead, the Russians got greedy and fell into a big trap.”
which trap? they created enough FUD to accomplish ethnic cleansing in a few days, unnoticed – something never successfully done before. even albanians in kosovo, going genocidal on serbs under nato protection, made a lot of blunders to create news.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:18 am 358. Charles:OT: Hunter Responds To Mexican Military Incursion By Reaffirming Need For Infrastructure
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:19 am 359. neolex:RAH,
Almost completely agree, with the exception of the status of SO and Abkhazia. Most likely they will gain independence, recognized by Russia, but maybe EU and others as well, depending on the agreement. EU monitors will be stationed along the border with Georgia, on Georgian territory to prevent provocations from either side. Russia troops will stay in newly minted countries. In effect Russia gets SO and Abkhazia but will be made to pay for it in other aspects, like international cooperation, investment, trade agreements, G7, etc.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:20 am 360. buddy larsen:The Gulf Cooperation Council should buy Georgia 100 F-16s.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:20 am 361. poul:NahnCee,
under what definition of “racist” do you operate that it does not apply to somebody saying “all ossetins are scum and must die”?
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:22 am 362. Charles:bobal:
Article From American Thinker
Hope you are right neolex, and, you probably are
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:24 am 363. neolex:///////////////
this looks good to me
@poul
“all ossetins are scum and must die” That quote is not from this thread. If it is your attempt to paraphrase, you should know that you cannot put a paraphrase in quotes and then expect to have a rasonable discussion
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:26 am 364. jhviyt5r9t8ogflv:I suspect the Tiwanese are closely watching the US assistance to Georgia because they will want to understand what type of assistance they can expect from the US if Tiwan is ever invaded by China.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:26 am 365. Cannoneer No. 4:You can’t blame soldiers for submarines sinking any more than you can blame sailors for tanks breaking down.
There are Russians who have devoted their lives to the study and practice of the military arts and sciences. Commissioned officer equivalents. Their noncommissioned officers are still mostly just senior privates and head hazers. Contract soldiers, if they stay in long enough, may eventually acquire a level of professionalism.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:27 am 366. cjm:we have a formal arrangement with taiwan.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:27 am 367. buddy larsen:Wonder who replaces Musharraf –? Jeez, Afghan may be in for escalatio.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:33 am 368. bobal:Rufus reports via Dow Jones that Poland is set to sign the missile defense agreement with USA. “Well played, pooty” Rufus
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:37 am 369. cjm:musharraf going helps clarify the situation in pakistan, and that will help the afghan situation.
from listening to my indian friends — devout hindus all — pakistan is eventually going to be dealt with permanently.
pakistan is a failed state and will probably break up into several pieces.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:37 am 370. neolex:Meanwhile,
Georgia has left CIS and Ukraine has introduced a bill to do the same. Ukraine is taking a firm stance in regards to the new presidential decree about the procedure of crossing the border by Russian fleet. Ukrainian military said it is tasked with ensuring that the decree is followed.
Estonia has began to receive AAA and RLS from France.
As I previously mentioned, Belorus’ Lukashenko said that he wants better ties with US and EU.
This is getting really interesting. It seems that soon Russian sphere of influence will be solely inside Russian borders, and, of course, Abkhazia and SO.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:37 am 371. JBean:Cannoneer: Professional Russian soldiers have to be disgusted with the hyenas following behind them.
The UK Telegraph is painting a somewhat different picture:
Russia destroying military bases in Georgia
Meanwhile, South Ossetian irregulars continuing to loot and pillage in Gori and nearby Georgian villages, often with the encouragement of Russian troops.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:39 am 372. neolex:“Take whatever you want,” a Russian officer shouted at the Ossetian militiamen in one village.
Forgot to mention Gori.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:40 am 373. buddy larsen:Taiwan’s last elections put the anti-PRC party out and the PRC-friendly party in. A lot of the heat went out of the war issue, supposedly. Trade between the two is flourishing. All may come out peacefully there, you never know.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:41 am 374. cjm:people who haven’t been to America, the real America, have no frikkin idea how big our industrial capacity really is. and how hard Americans work.
this is the most competetive country in the world.
we will flood the russian zone with advanced weapons and training. the locals are more than up to the job of visiting hell on the russians so equipped.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:42 am 375. DanM:“In a manner reminiscent of the mythical Haitian high priest of voodoo, Baron Samedi, with his top hat and cadaverous countenance, Putin has resurrected choice moments from recent European and U.S. history — the wars against Serbia, Iraq, and Nazi Germany, among others — for zombie-like service of his own, very different ends. In his narrative, Georgia and its backers, above all the United States, are the forces of darkness and Russia alone upholds the values of light.
Putin’s zombie-world of values with its spurious parallels and precedents is not a viable one in the long term. But parasitical as it is on European and American historical and political discourse, it serves to create diversions at a time when time is of the essence. It sows confusion and spreads paralysis among Western political elites.
Which is its main object.
Excerpt from Radio Free Europe
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:43 am 376. neolex:“this is the most competetive country in the world.”
Japan is, but US is likely 2nd.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:43 am 377. matt:From the article posted by JBean:
“Mr Lomaia then met a Russian colonel, who, in an apparent drunken rage, railed incoherently at western correspondents.”
WTF are they thinking, or not.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:45 am 378. cjm:japan isn’t competetive in the sense of the word i mean. they are conformist, promotion is seniority based, get into right school and you can coast the rest of your life. not here. glad they are on our side though.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:48 am 379. buddy larsen:Baron Samedi zombie voodoo is a perfect image for the stuff I’ve been reading. Apparently there are quite a few western ‘opinion’ sites that transmit the zombie message. It’s disturbing –always built around actual events and people, but twisted into something hideous.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:02 am 380. cjm:russia only has magic left to save them from the void.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:06 am 381. RAH:S. Ossetia does not exist at the moment. The people are gone. It is easy to resettle them into N Ossetia, which is within the Russian border. Russia has had a long-term strategy of having separatist enclaves in other countries; they tried it in Poland I believe and one of the Baltic Countries. Russia was told no. The Russian under the pretext of protecting their people put military and security resources in the area to intimidate the host country.
Short term Russia controls the enclaves, but under negotiations I think the police state that existed in S. Ossetia with 70% of the residents paid by the Russian government will be gone.
Koklaity the S. Ossetia leader is more criminal than politician and is a known thorn in Russia’s side. He was tolerated as a ploy against Georgia. However with this fiasco, I expect the Russian will quietly deep six him after a while. Not too soon, so it is not obvious but Russia will need a scapegoat and he is elected.
Secretary Rice may be PO enough to not allow Russian control of the territory any longer or she may get rolled. She tends to get rolled, but Russia was her specialty and she is angry at Russia’s attitude and ploys trying making war crimes an issue against the Georgian President. But I think we have learned from the Baltic’s to not allow festering wound be left alone, to open them up and drain the infection. The radical hot headed Ossetian’s and the Russians were the infection. In Abkhazia the infection is worse.
But Abkhazia is contiguous area and S. Ossetia was not. It was a patchwork of S. Ossetian’s villages and Georgian villages. It created a lot of cross-raiding and ethnic cleansing to get rid of competition populations. Russian had usually mixed populations but it causes a lot of problems.
S. Ossetia was the cause and will not be allowed to go back to status quo.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:09 am 382. Whitehall:France was the right country to represent the EU since they are much less dependent on Gazprom than, say, Germany. Why? Their civilian nuclear power plants. Germany’s Greens intended to shut down their nukes and rely (ha!) on wind power – sounds 5th column-ish to me.
One expected outcome is lots on new orders for nuclear power plants from Germany, Poland, the Balts. Finland already saw this coming and has one under construction and another one under consideration.
The Europeans should have listened to Reagan when he recommended avoiding depending on a Gazprom pipeline.
Now guess what? California is setting itself up to be dependent on Russian LNG to keep the lights on! What fools our state government is.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:10 am 383. Whitehall:“this is the most competetive country in the world. ”
Yea, our spelling is pruty darn good tooo. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:12 am 384. Charles:There are laws of political inertia. Below is a quote from Buchanan’s 1992 speech to the republican convention.
“Under the Reagan Doctrine, one by one, the communist dominos began to fall. First, Grenada was liberated, by US troops. Then, the Red Army was run out of Afghanistan, by US weapons. In Nicaragua, the Marxist regime was forced to hold free elections–by Ronald Reagan’s contra army–and the communists were thrown out of power.
Have they forgotten? It was under our party that the Berlin Wall came down, and Europe was reunited. It was under our party that the Soviet Empire collapsed, and the captive nations broke free.
It is said that each president will be recalled by posterity–with but a single sentence. George Washington was the father of our country. Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union. And Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. And it is time my old colleagues, the columnists and commentators, looking down on us tonight from their anchor booths and sky boxes, gave Ronald Reagan the credit he deserves–for leading America to victory in the Cold War.”
//////////////////
The current business in Ossetia is not about the cold war.
But rather something akin to the Suez crises of 1956 in the sense that England and France (but not israel)were declining powers looking to reassert their power over sections of their old empires and were overruled by the USA.
That intervention by the USA in the Suez Crises made decades long enemies of the USA of conservatives in both the French and English establishments. Not just that–imho but loss of confidence accelerated the decline of France and England after WWII.
For those two reasons I have wondered about the wisdom of that USA intervention in the Suez crises.
I wonder if this Ossetia biz will not do the same to the Russia–tie up the conservatives in Russia and accelerate that country’s decline.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:14 am 385. buddy larsen:yuk yuk (snark snark) –it’s like a banana peel –how can ya not laff?
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:15 am 386. cjm:i get that word right about half the time
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:18 am 387. RAH:Energy is another topic, but Germany is rethinking its plan to shut down the nuclear plants. Remember Shroeder, Germanys ex-prime minister went to work for Gazprom. He was a Russian collaborator in my opinion and did a lot of wrong to Germany.
Sarkozy did the best he could to stop the drive to Tbilisi. No one knew if Russia would halt after Bush told them and Shaaskavilli was screaming we are about to die.
Sarkozy was Rice’s idea. The humanitarian ploy is someone else’s and probably Gates’s idea and one was enough to stop the Russian momentum.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:21 am 388. ks:Afghan may be in for escalatio.
I haven’t gotten escalatio since the night I blacked out in Tijuana.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:23 am 389. NahnCee:Whitehall – what America chooses to spell something usually becomes a done deal in the end. Like color and colour — how would a non-English speaker spell it?
If the Ossetians and Abkhazians choose to live under Russian rule, more power to ‘em. They’re choosing the option deliberately of lawlessness and brutality, so as long as they’re being brutal to each other, I don’t see why Georgia or the U.S. should care.
Just make sure their visa-privileges to visit the West are cut off at the same time as the rest of the Russians are.
(I never even knew there *was* a country called Abkhazia outside of Harry Potter and his “Prisoner of Azkaban” …)
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:23 am 390. buddy larsen:we’re still laffing over –years ago–my 10 yr old fighting w/8 yr old wrote her a note calling her an idoit.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:23 am 391. Konyok:Maybe, we’re at the turning point. The Russians have been driving around the countryside today, but there doesn’t look like any new aggressive actions. The Georgian defenses in front of Tblisi can only be improving. Not to mention the arrivial of the 50 Estonian volunteers! (Is that like the elves coming to Helm’s Deep?)
I think that the crisis is nearing an end.
It might just be possible to start speculating about outcomes without endangering ourselves with fart gas …
I think that either Saakashvili will have to leave office or Georgia will have to cede Abkhazia and S. Ossetia. The payoff is that Georgia will become a full client state of the United States.
Russia has a legitimate claim in the deaths of its peacekeepers during the initial assault on Tskhinvali and some concession will need to be made.
If Saakashvili resigns, the speaker of the parliament, David Bakradze would be next in line. He is a political ally of Saakashvili, the leader of his United Nation Party.
If Saakashvili doesn’t resign, I don’t see how either independence or union with Russia for the breakaway regions can be avoided. I reckon that plebiscites would be held and the seperation will become formal.
The good news for Georgia is that the United States will lavish its attention on the Caucasus nation. (I can’t explain, but, there is already feverish activity in surprising agencies of the federal govt.)
Leastwise, that’s how it looks from here …
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:29 am 392. DanM:Georgian “irregulars” firing on reporters.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:31 am 393. Mark:Comrade Konyak wrote:
“Russia has a legitimate claim in the deaths of its peacekeepers during the initial assault on Tskhinvali and some concession will need to be made.”
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:31 am 394. cjm:i concede that the russian peacekeepers are in fact dead. is that enough?
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:40 am 395. nichevo:Oh, I dunno, what’s a Russian worth these days? By the pound or the kilo?
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:40 am 396. Dan:Harrigan was admittedly “SITTING DOWN” with Russian soldiers, then gets fired on by Georgians?
I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you!
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:41 am 397. buddy larsen:Middle daughter’s circle of Russian ex-pat friends from the university all have family back home, and something that bothers them is Putin’s youth programs –which apparently he backs much as our first lady always has a pet social project –which are springing up all over the country. The kids here report that the programs ‘change’ the kids over there, that they become extreme patriots, extremely critical of the USA, and –get this –they’re being encouraged to marry young and get busy reversing the falling birth rate. Couple such straws in the wind as that with the strange Baron Samedi political vision emanating from well, Putin, and, well, if you’ve never read Nazi propaganda, you should. The opinion papers I’ve read (several linked in these Belmont threads) seem like the reading equivalent of listening to one of those Nazi heavies you see in wartime Hollywood and English films, where he’s glassy-eyed, talking at the middle of your forehead, in a strange high decibel voice, two notes above normal, and almost without thought. i don’t think Nazism died in 1945. Not by a long shot.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:49 am 398. Lugh Lampfhota:How would Harrigan know the difference between Georgian or Russian irregulars? By their uniforms? And what are Georgian irregulars doing within shooting range of Russian armor? Sounds dumb to me. Doesn’t sound right.
Harrigan strikes me as reckless. He got himself kidnapped once and may just get himself killed one of these days. Not the sharpest pencil in the box.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:51 am 399. Konyok:Now, now, boys.
At the end of the day, whatever happens, when everybody climbs down and things get back to *normal,* the Russians will demand a concession for their troops killed in the initial assault on Tskhinvali. And we’ll give it to them.
The “peacekeeping” fiction is just pro forma plausible enough that it WILL be honored. (Imagine if Serbian army forces attacked a position in Kosovo and killed American troops.) Otherwise, this whole half-way house structure that we’ve evolved to freeze hot conflicts will completely crumble away. We’ll give the Russians some kind of concession …
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:52 am 400. neolex:“Russia has a legitimate claim in the deaths of its peacekeepers during the initial assault on Tskhinvali and some concession will need to be made.”
If Russian claim that Georgian peacekeeping contingent was responsible, I would agree with that statement, but so far it is not clear the circumstances around the death of the peacekeepers.
@RAH
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:56 am 401. buddy larsen:Georgian villages inside South Ossetia have been thoroughly cleared of Georgians by Russians and SO. SO is no longer a patchwork, and is likely to be “independent”.
I guess it’s not worse than our kids over here getting hollywood-celebrity hip-hop mcDonalds-fat, but somehow you know that the der yute organizations iss going to smash people somewhere sometime in der future.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:58 am 402. Eggplant:Konyok said:
“I think that either Saakashvili will have to leave office or Georgia will have to cede Abkhazia and S. Ossetia.”
If I was a Georgian, I’d be mad as hell at Saakashvili. He should have seen this thing coming and taken appropriate counter measures. Lucky for him that the EU and US stuck their noses in.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:01 pm 403. Whitehall:My point about France is that Russia does not yet have them by the short and curlies from the threat of gas shutoffs. Germany is much less well positioned by their own decisions.
California is next.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:02 pm 404. buddy larsen:this thread moves so fast –i don’t mean to keep ranting off thread –ignore crazy guy in corner wrestling with invisible nazi ghost –
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:04 pm 405. cjm:the older nazis despised the hitler youth, who were overwhelmingly arrogant. pretty useless too. kind of funny how that all worked out.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:07 pm 406. bobal:Quotes
Vladimir Zhirinovsky made headlines by threatening to take Alaska back from the United States, nuke Japan, and flood Germany with radioactive waste.
Ladies and Gentlemen, be thankful we aren’t dealing with <a href=”http://www.acs.brockport.edu/~dgusev/Russian/vzbio.html”<This Man
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:08 pm 407. bobal:Here
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:10 pm 408. Lifeofthemind:buddy
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:12 pm 409. NahnCee:It isn’t crazy because it is the way Putin and company look at the world. When training a dog you quickly learn that it is not profitable to expect the dog to think like a human being. Fortunately humans are sophisticated enough to think about how a wolf or dog views a situation and then act in a way that fits the beasts expectations. Putin is human, more or less, but he does have very fixed prejudices and expectations. That does not mean that he is stupid. He is not, the bear is intelligent. The Nazis and the Soviets always had strong common elements, just look at their art.
If Russian claim that Georgian peacekeeping contingent was responsible, I would agree with that statement, but so far it is not clear the circumstances around the death of the peacekeepers.
Sounds like friendly fire to me. If you don’t want to become dead, don’t be invading the other guy’s country. Especially surrounded by drunken undisciplined comrade soldiers.
Is Russia going to pay reparations for the looting done in Georgia cities and villages?
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:13 pm 410. buddy larsen:here’s news, coming in as ”foxbusiness news alert” –Bush makes new statement: “Georgian territory should be respected. Russia should honor cease fire” –that’s all the annoiuncer said –and that’s a paraphrase –
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:13 pm 411. Eggplant:RAH:
Your analysis is very insightful. If you’ll pardon my asking, do you do this sort of thing for a living?
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:14 pm 412. neolex:Poland signed agreement with US to station US troops and Patriot there, agreement on PRO is a done deal, but is awaiting final signatures. Could Russia have made US job any easier?
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:19 pm 413. Aether:cjm:
“japan isn’t competetive in the sense of the word i mean. they are conformist, promotion is seniority based, get into right school and you can coast the rest of your life. not here. glad they are on our side though.”
pfffft… then how do you explain the success of people like Al Gore or Barack Obama ?
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:19 pm 414. bobal:If voters prefer Boris Yeltsin, Zhirinovsky said, “then we are really a country of idiots and there is nothing to do, this is the final diagnosis.”
hehe
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:22 pm 415. bobal:Ladies and Gentlemen, if we elect Obama, then we are really a country of idoits and there is nothing to do, this is the final diagnosis.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:24 pm 416. Ricardo:Before all this happened, if Putin wanted to disrupt or control the pipeline, it was Putin vs Georgia.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:26 pm 417. Cannoneer No. 4:He tried. He did not disrupt the pipeline. He does not control the pipeline. Now he has American peacekeepers around the pipeline.
If there is anybody in this forum who thinks that Putin has positioned himself well for whenever he wants to control or influence flow through that pipeline, i’d be interested in hearing the rationale.
The irregulars had come from the Russian-controlled South Ossetian capital, Tskinvali, five miles (8km) away. According to the villagers’ accounts, the militias, with the apparent support of the Russian army, began a campaign of ethnic cleansing, killing teenage boys, stealing vehicles, looting and burning.
There is no way to independently verify these accounts.
Georgian forces were supposed to take back control of Gori. In reality, the Russian army is refusing to leave, blockading the entrance to the town and the road north with dozens of tanks.
While negotiations took place between a Russian general and Georgia’s national security adviser, in the nearby mountains black smoke poured from a burning Georgian military base. Every few minutes there was a rumbling explosion. The air smelled of cordite.
Negotiations broke down today after the Russians insisted that the South Ossetians run Gori’s police force.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:28 pm 418. neolex:@aether
I beg to differ. Both Obama and Gore are very intelligent and well-educated. Now, Gore is a hypocritical opportunist chasing the ManBearPig, but thats a different issue. Obama, on the other hand seems to be completely clueless about the foreign policy. (this is why I will be voting for McCain, but would vote for Obama if another republican candidate, besides Guiliani, was his opponent – who here thinks Romney would make a better president than Obama?) This might irk a lot of people on this forum, but if anyone is an example of the point you’re trying to make, it is Bush.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:33 pm 419. Cannoneer No. 4:He Who Has the Biggest Gun
. . . if the Americans go to Georgia, they won’t be fighting Russia, but there will be some fighting. Russia will use the paramilitary forces in the provinces for a proxy war.
And it is a safe bet those guys won’t be withdrawing, after all, according to the law they are Georgians, and don’t have to.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:34 pm 420. cjm:aether: sometimes people win the lottery, sometimes they put on a clown face and dance for the rabble — with a little tin cup to collect pennies in. al gore and obama are shaking their little tin cups like crazy.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:34 pm 421. bobal:Now he has American peacekeepers around the pipeline.
What American peacekeepers?
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:36 pm 422. Annoy Mouse:“While negotiations took place between a Russian general and Georgia’s national security adviser, in the nearby mountains black smoke poured from a burning Georgian military base. Every few minutes there was a rumbling explosion. The air smelled of cordite.”
The Russian general says that the Georgians broke ranks and ran, leaving behind their M16s, so it would be irresponsible to leave all those weapons laying around. What epic stones. Baghdad Bob would be impressed.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:38 pm 423. Konyok:buddy,
We could have a ginormous thread on that topic alone. The Russian people still have a bad case of vertigo – their entire universe turned upside down in an instant, everything they thought that they *know* was shown to be false and they’re grasping at straws.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:40 pm 424. Shivermetimbers:As much as I love Russian culture, they really are the klingons – space trash.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:42 pm 425. Annoy Mouse:“turned upside down in an instant”
That may be so, everything is in slow motion when you have to wait hours in line for a loaf of bread. How many years were they spiralling down the toilet? It was so slow even the CIA didn’t notice.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:44 pm 426. Dan:Man, you could land a C-17 on this thread.
But good stuff. Good stuff. And it looks like the Russkies are NOT particularly keen on leaving, does it?
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:46 pm 427. Konyok:Nahncee,
I’m talking about the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali the early morning of Aug. 7 with tanks and massed katyusha rockets. About 10 Russian soldiers were killed, as well as an unknown number of civilians.
You just don’t sneak attack populated areas with katyusha rockets.
I guess that we can’t expect the Georgians to adhere to American norms of warfare, but, the Soviet style attack will have consequences beyond subsequent events. Either lose Saakashvili or lose the disputed regions.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:47 pm 428. buddy larsen:Ha’aretz notices something:
“China. The 2008 Beijing Games this week joined the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, and the 1980 Moscow Olympics. These four Olympiads were overshadowed by Russian attacks on neighboring countries that Moscow deemed overly independent. The timing of the attacks on Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan and Georgia was not coincidental: In the United States, Olympic years are also election years. And when Uncle Sam is heading for the ballot box, he is weak, and cannot prevent a Russian bear from devouring. For the fourth time in half a century, the Russian bear emerged from Olympic hibernation and feasted to his heart’s content.”
brings to mind that in Korea and VietNam (if not Iraq), they started it from the rear, and safely watched our soldiers die.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:47 pm 429. bobal:Of the relief efforts, Wood said more than $2 million in U.S. humanitarian assistance had been delivered to Georgia and that three convoys had transported 202 Americans from Georgia to Armenia, the third one carrying 32 Americans.
Romney would make a much better President than Obama.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:48 pm 430. Aether:neolex:
“I beg to differ. Both Obama and Gore are very intelligent and well-educated. ”
Attending an Ivy League school does not mean you are either Intelligent, or Well Educated. My understadning is that Gore barely graduated from college, and his graduation was likely predicated on the fact that his old man was a US Senator. As to Obama, he’s been given a “hall pass” the whole way through.
Otherwise, the Bush/Cheney team is probably smarter than all the folks on this forum combined.
CJM: “al gore and obama are shaking their little tin cups like crazy.”
I hear ya brother, I hear ya… They’re dumb like a fox is.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:49 pm 431. cjm:gore is as much a child as privilege as bush, and has far less character (and less intelligence). manbearpig indeed.
obama comes from an affluent (but not wealthy) family. he is a con man and a race hustler, albeit a more polished version of the type. soft as mush.
bill clinton is and was white trash. momma’s boy to the core.
bush is the son of mars.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:52 pm 432. Lifeofthemind:A friend of mine was repeating the TV propaganda. “The Georgians ran away leaving their ammunition behind I saw it on TV.”
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:52 pm 433. Peterike:something that bothers them is Putin’s youth programs –which apparently he backs much as our first lady always has a pet social project –which are springing up all over the country. The kids here report that the programs ‘change’ the kids over there, that they become extreme patriots, extremely critical of the USA
Huh. Just like Obama is planning his little compulsory youth programs. Great minds think alike, apparently. And funnily enough, kids will come out of Obama’s programs “extremely critical of the USA” too!
@neolex: who here thinks Romney would make a better president than Obama?
Anyone who prefers an American for President rather than a “Citizen of the World” commie-symp.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:54 pm 434. cjm:putin has a well known fondness for children, if you know what i mean. probably the least of his sins.
obama will not win, and may not even make it out of denver with the nomination.
odd that fellow they found dead in denver, with a pound of cyanide. especially when one considers the fellow in las vegas — a couple of months back — found with ricin in *his* hotel room. dem convention time will be a good week to go camping i think.
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:58 pm 435. bobal:Vlad The Bad Wins War, Dupes The West
Aug 14, 2008 - 12:58 pm 436. mkunert:What about the Chinese in this? Russia initiated the incursion in the midst China’s moment of glory on the international stage, something the Middle Kingdom spent hundreds of millions of dollars, years of work, and national prestige into. Either Putin felt the lure of the Olympics would send his incursion to second class news – so he used the Chinese for cover, or he didn’t care that he made the Chinese loose face. Both ways, the Chinese must be pissed – big time. And payback can be a bitch.
BTW, I’m visiting Poland as I write this. In the last few days, Poles suddenly found a new appreciation for US missiles on their territory. I wonder why.
Poles, I don’t think, put too much value in NATO protecting them against Russia. After all, Poland had similar mutual protection pacts with France and England prior to WW2, and when Germany invaded Poland, what did those two countries do to help Poland? Nothing. So what’s better than an agreement? Having American soldiers running American military equipment on your land. It makes a trip-wire for American military involvement.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:04 pm 437. Aether:to be clear, there are a lot of smart mofo’s that come out of the Ivy’s, (or drop out, ie. Bill Gates)
that said, having an Ivy League education or being a Rhodes Scholar, means you get practially get a free pass in America … because your’re now one of the “elite”, which actually means you’ve been brainwashed to Progressive standards.
Speaking of Rhodes Scholars, Wesley Clark is yet another example of an Ivy League fraud.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:09 pm 438. exhelodrvr:Buddy,
“The 2008 Beijing Games this week joined the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, and the 1980 Moscow Olympics. These four Olympiads were overshadowed by Russian attacks on neighboring countries that Moscow deemed overly independent”
OF course, the Republicans won the Presidential elections in 56, 68, and 80. Just a coincidence?
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:12 pm 439. exhelodrvr:Aether,
“Wesley Clark is yet another example of an Ivy League fraud.”
He went to West Point.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:13 pm 440. Dan:Bad day to be a reporter in Gori…
Russian sniper shoots journalist in middle of newscast
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23532788-details/Video%3A+Georgian+TV+reporter+shot+by+Russian+sniper+during+live+broadcast+carries+on+with+her+report+with+bleeding+arm/article.do
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:14 pm 441. Peterike:@aether: having an Ivy League education or being a Rhodes Scholar, means you get practially get a free pass in America … because your’re now one of the “elite”, which actually means you’ve been brainwashed to Progressive standards.
Agreed! Ivy League education, in most cases, is inversely proportional to a person’s political acumen and historical understanding. You have to fight very hard against what you’re “taught” to get out of there as anything other than a preprogramed Leftist wind-up toy. Exhibit A: Mr. Obama. (Hard sciences and math somewhat excluded from the general rule. Somewhat.)
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:16 pm 442. Peterike:Re: Wesley Clark, from Wiki:
“Clark was valedictorian of his class at West Point, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford where he obtained a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (Philosophy, Politics & Economics).
Yeah, pretty clear to me where it all went wrong.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:19 pm 443. Medea:Konyok,
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:21 pm 444. hdgreene:If Saakashvili does not quit, Volodya will be looking for a job at the Gorbachev Foundation.
Let’s see. Before George Bush invaded Iraq he gave the Baathist Government a UN sanctioned ultimatum. The ultimatum said nothing about “destroy your weapons in secret” or “get Russian help to hide them in a third country.” It demanded he dismantle his program in an open and verified manner with a clear accounting to the world. Saddam did not comply. The US removed him. The left went ape shit.
Vlad the Invader stomps on another country and does not even pause long enough to give the UN the finger. The left springs militantly to his defense. What could it all mean? Is the UN dead even for the left?
Nah: Just not useful in this instance. Somehow, it’s got to be George Bush’s fault.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:21 pm 445. Annoy Mouse:Interesting article on National Review;
“Half a strategist would have told the Georgian planners that rather than strike at civilian centers, thus hardening Ossetian resolve, it would have been better to bypass Tskinvali and secure the only road from the border with Russia to South Ossetia — the logical ingress route for the Russian 58th Army out of North Ossetia — in case Russia responded with force. The road to the border is also ideally fit for guerilla warfare, the type the Chechens employed to stymie the Russian military in Chechnya for years. RPG and sniper teams well-placed along the route could have crippled the Russian assault before it even got started.”
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTEyZTIxYzVjZWM1YTY4MGEzYjg2ZDlhNzJmOGQ3NTg=
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:22 pm 446. Aether:re. W. Clark, I stand corrected… but you get the point.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:27 pm 447. cjm:ivy league schools, to my knowledge, do not excel in the hard sciences. their academic standards have been hollowed out to accommodate affirmative action programs. MIT, CAL-Tech, UCLA, BERKLEY, ?? are far more rigorous academically, than the ivies.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:27 pm 448. Medea:The following was just released from the US Treasury (Maybe the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was involved):
August 14, 2008
HP-1114
Statement by Deputy Secretary Robert M. Kimmitt
on Telephone Conversation with
Georgian Prime Minister Gurgenidze
Washington – Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert M. Kimmitt issued the following statement on his telephone conversation with Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze:
“Earlier today, I telephoned Prime Minister Gurgenidze to express the United States’ continuing support for the democratically-elected government of Georgia and to reiterate our willingness to join other countries to support deeper engagement by the International Financial Institutions to assist Georgia’s economy. Prime Minister Gurgenidze updated me on Georgia’s economy and I noted that the Treasury Department continues to believe Georgia’s sound macroeconomic and fiscal policies – as well as its excellent progress transitioning to a market economy – make it well-placed to weather the current crisis.”
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:29 pm 449. Ricardo:Bobal, read your article.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:33 pm 450. DrJ:“The empire of the czars hasn’t produced such a frightening genius since Stalin.”
Like I said, at the end of the day, he can keep Ossetia, he can keep his soldiers there, etc., etc. Except that now he has the pesky problem of American “advisors”, and “humanitarian convoys” surrounding the prize plum both Russia and the US wanted- The oil pipeline. THAT is the real prize that the US could have never dreamed of approaching on their own, but now Putin has delivered to their feet. He is, indeed, a “frightening” genius.
The Russians will now piss on the carpet, hurl a few obscenities, squat on the porch, etc, but I doubt they will come inside to beat up the US guest and steal the family jewels.
ivy league schools, to my knowledge, do not excel in the hard sciences.
That just not right. Harvard, Cornell, Penn and others have outstanding Chemistry departments, for example. Cornell also has one of the best micro/nanofabrication facilities in the World. This is on the Graduate level; I have no idea about their undergrad programs. But those are not important for ranking programs, at least as the rankings are usually performed.
(FWIW, I did my doctoral work at Berkeley, so I have no dog in this fight.)
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:35 pm 451. RAH:Eggplant:
RAH:
Your analysis is very insightful. If you’ll pardon my asking, do you do this sort of thing for a living?
Eggplant, No I do it for fun. I would like to do it for money, but hard to show the professionals without any paid experienced in my resume. I just like the news and I read Spengler’s article 3-4 weeks ago about the Georgia- Russia possible war and started to track pipelines and Gazprom contracts because I was curious.
I had heard in the background about Gazprom, but US news is notoriously insular so I did the usual Internet search and came to the realization that Russia was cornering the non-OPEC energy market. I already knew about Schroeder’s connection to Gazprom and Russia heavy handed stopping of gas to various countries so it all fell together.
That is why when Georgia shelled S. Ossetia and Russia invaded that I started posting that this was really a push for control of the pipeline. I did not wanted to narrative to be about separatist independence issues because that is an obvious smokescreen.
Thankfully the media did pick up on the pipeline connection, which is surprising for western media, which loves celebrity news and elections news.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:36 pm 452. cjm:Penn is an ivey?
i stand corrected; the iveys have between 3 and 7 decent hard science programs between them.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:40 pm 453. No Genius:What is interesting about this whole incident is it seems like “the next 24 hours will tell” is the constant mantra in regards to it. Seems like a continuing escalation game. Would not be surprised to see the irregulars knocking on the capital door tomorrow.
I also agree with others that Russia receives short term gains from this, but it worsens their long term prognosis.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:41 pm 454. buddy larsen:Ha’aratz article i linked above also reports very favorably on Georgia’s economic performance (pre-war of course). I’m still looking for anything besides assertions from comsymps that point to any of the items on their hate Shalikashvili list: CIA agent, murderer, election-stealer, fascist, gangster, etc. The Ha’aratz writer seems to know a lot, seems to be no cheerleader, seems to admire & respect the Georgian president.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:41 pm 455. jdwill:@Annoy Mouse
More telling from the NRO article:
It is astonishing that Georgia seemed intent to encircle and bombard the South Ossetian capital, full of civilians.
This and the early images of MRLS salvos against Tskinvali is what makes it hard for me to cleanly support the Georgians. I do think the Russians suckered them, but still, the best reason I have left to support them is to prevent momentum building against Ukraine and the other budding democracies.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:42 pm 456. Lifeofthemind:cjm
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:44 pm 457. DrJ:No but there are competitive first tier schools and Ivy is just aterm for an athletic league really
Penn is an ivey?
Yeah, so is Brown. Princeton is solid in the hard sciences, too, as is Columbia (quite a number of Nobels). Don’t know about Yale and the others, though I would suspect they are solid too.
Large endowments help a lot. It helps to offer endowed chairs and other goodies to the star professoriate once they bubble up through the state university ranks.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:46 pm 458. Shivermetimbers:cjm
University of Pennsylvania is an Ivy. Founded by Mr. Ben Franklin (founder and trustee 1749 – 1790, and president of the board of trustees, 1749 – 1756 & 1789-1790).
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:51 pm 459. Aether:Annoy Mouse:
“Half a strategist would have told the Georgian planners that rather than strike at civilian centers, thus hardening Ossetian resolve, it would have been better to bypass Tskinvali and secure the only road from the border with Russia to South Ossetia”
That makes sense, however it may be that the Georgians *had* to transit population centers to reach the Roki pass.
This map may shed some light on the roadways and terrain…
http://maps.yahoo.com/mapmixer?lid=2f2803a3&pg=view
It’s very difficult to parse through the “reports” (propaganda)to determine what actually occured in S Ossettia on Aug 8th.
From what I can ascertain from various reports, the Georgians were headed to the pass, but got bogged down with the SO forces in Tskhinvali, and the Russians made it through the tunnel while the Georgians were still in the city. The Russians attacked the Georgians holding that ground, and the resulting battle and artillery dual resulted in the reported damage to Tskhinvali, and the expulsion of Georgian forces.
The above narrative is a key detail to pin down, in terms of the ongoing info-war.
If it can be definitively shown that the damage to Tskhinvali was the result of a battle between oppossing forces, then the Russians should lose any Propaganda advantage they may hold in the West.
If it can be shown that the Georgians did, in fact, use indisciminate, indirect fires on Tskhinvali, and kill some 1500 “civilians” (civilian militia?), I’m thinking the info-war could turn in Russia’s favor.
Aug 14, 2008 - 1:55 pm 460. Doug:Al-Bob’s Peter’s Piece:
A CZAR IS BORN BAD VLAD WINS WAR, DUPES WEST & PROVES HE’S GENIUS
As a former intelligence officer, I’m awestruck by the genius with which Putin assessed the strategic environment on the eve of his carefully scripted invasion of Georgia.
With his old KGB skills showing (he must’ve been a formidable operative), Putin not only sized up President Bush humiliatingly well, but precisely anticipated Europe’s nonreaction – while taking a perfect-fit measure of Georgia’s mercurial president.
Putin not only knew what he was doing – he knew exactly what others would do.
This is intelligence work at the hall-of-fame level. (For our part, we had all the intelligence pieces in our hands and failed to assemble the puzzle.)
On the military side, the months of meticulous planning and extensive preparations for this invasion were covered by military exercises, disingenuous explanations – and maskirovka, the art of deception the Red Army had mastered. The Russians convinced us to see what we wanted to see.
Equally as remarkable was the Kremlin’s ability to lead the global media by the nose. (Oblivious to the irony, a BBC broadcast yesterday portrayed tiny, poorhouse Georgia as a propaganda powerhouse and Russia as an information victim – an illustration of the Russian propaganda machine’s effectiveness.) From the start, every Russian ministry was reading from the same script (try to orchestrate that in Washington). Breaking off his phony play date with Bush in Beijing, Putin rushed back to the theater of war.
Upon arrival, he publicly consoled “refugees” who had been bused out of South Ossetia days in advance. Launching the war’s Big Lie, Putin deployed dupe-the-rubes code words, such as “genocide” and “response.”
Wearing his secret-policeman’s stone-face, Putin blamed Georgia for exactly what his storm troopers were doing to the Georgians. And lazy journalists around the world served as the Kremlin’s ad agency.
He fobbed Sarko off on Russia’s play-pretend president.
Sarko thought he was grandstanding as a statesman, but Putin saw him as a “useful idiot” (in Leninist parlance).
Carla Bruni’s husband got the cease-fire the twittering European Union demanded, all right. He returned to Paris holding in his hands a piece of paper that “guarantees peace in our time.” Putin’s thugs kept on killing. And they’re still killing as I write.
Want a straightforward indication of what the Russians intend? Putin’s code-name for this operation is Chistoye Polye. Literally translated, that means “clean field.” In military parlance, it means “scorched earth.”
The empire of the czars hasn’t produced such a frightening genius since Stalin.
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:05 pm 461. cjm:blah blah blah
stalin did wonders for the place.
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:11 pm 462. MachiasPrivateer:We need to finish development of the CBU-105 http://www.futurefirepower.com/the-sensor-fused-weapon-cbu-97-cluster-bomb-video to send to countries threatened by Russian armor.
Tell the Russians we intend to level the field against their armor.
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:13 pm 463. Lifeofthemind:The interim score for Putin’s brilliant effort at playing a Napoleon
1. The Black Sea is lost to Russia.
2. The Caspian Sea oil is largely lost to Russia.
3. The American’s have a clear shot at Iran any time they want to.
4. The Chinese are pissed at Putin and open to a deal at the expense of Russia.
5. The EU and Nato have not been more united and pro-American in decades.
6. McCain is much more likely to be the next US President.
Genius sheer genius.
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:20 pm 464. RAH:Hah! Genius because Putin gamed the probable response of Europe ? By that measure all the rest of us are geniuses also.
Heck Shaaskavilli is a genius, he reacted against S. Ossetia and when Putin was in China and disruption in the ministries in Russia and a new untested Russian President. Too bad he misjudged the severity of the response even though he knew what force had been building on the border.
Georgia had its backup plan, scream to the West and the US for help. But Bush was not about to go to war over a break out of hostilities over a hot spot that has had problems every year. It was not until it was obvious that Russia was going to gobble Georgia did Bush decide he had to stop the Russia land and power grab.
But now that we are involved, lots of thinking will be done on how to secure the Caucasus nations that are different from our original intentions.
Georgia pays the cost of damage to its country and yet will get US protection under the humanitarian guise. Now who is the genius? Naw, Georgia took a gamble and it seems it may pay off.
Peters may be ex CIA but he is no better than others in the CIA and other places in analysis.
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:22 pm 465. John Samford:Lifeofthemind:
What did Gates say?
NO military action. Of any kind for any reason.
Those were not his exact words, but the gist of his message.
Why does America have a military budget if we won’t use military force?
Meanwhile, about 2 hours after his words, the Russians resumed their advance.
“That was George Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion. And if he had not done all these evil and nefarious things, no USA today.”
I think you misunderstood me, which means I made a mistake. It is the person communicating that has the responsibility to make sure the point is made.
What I was saying is that when the Republic is trgheatend, the President will take what actions he deems necessary to save it, and dam the law. This was in response to another posters comment (about 77665654432234567886 posts ago) about the President not being able to change the law. If ignoring it isn’t ‘change’, What is?
I am not as optimistic as most. Even if the US manages to pull a diplomatic rabbit out of a hat, nothing will repair the damage done by allowing the Russians to overrun Georgia. Even if we repave the streets with gold.
Paying the Danegeld DOES not get rid of the Dane.
“You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:32 pm 466. Doug:Churchill’s remark after Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich pact with Hitler
The sad thing is the World’s most successful Democracy is being rubbled.
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:42 pm 467. Doug:…and it hasn’t stopped yet.
Russia ‘controls a third of Georgia’…
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:51 pm 468. cjm:The White House said it was ignoring Russian “bluster” about Georgia never regaining disputed border regions.
—
Gates told reporters he believes Russia has decided “to punish Georgia for daring to try to integrate with the West.”
Well, duh!
georgia will have the best infrastructure in the region, once it is rebuilt. and it will be impregnable to russian or turkish advances.
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:54 pm 469. RAH:Actually Gates said we did not expect military action in the humanitarian mission. He explained the context, which was carefully nuanced.
Gates and all have to play a delicate dance. This is to speak softly and carry a big stick. Using the military rather than just the Red Cross is a big stick. It is like if Russia attempts to stop us, we say sorry I am going through anyway and you have to attack me to stop me. Russians forces, not the irregulars, have to be told not to cause a confrontation.
The media wants Bush and Co. to say yes we are using the humanitarian mission as a way to force the Russians out. The administration would be stupid to be that obvious. It gets the Russian pride insulted. We said that Russia must allow access and we expect that. Russia has complied to that implied threat.
Too many people want to strut rather than be effective. I am glad that Bush and Co likes to be effective rather than be a braggart and strut their macho. Bush can do the macho but he has to think carefully about the consequences .
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:56 pm 470. Lifeofthemind:Gates had to say that to get the troops in. Now we are there. Still waiting for the tunnel to go boom.
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:58 pm 471. Ricardo:Rah, I agree with you, the only genius here is Shaaskavilli. He was no fool when he upped the ante on the # of troops in Iraq from 500 to 2000 last year- the largest # of troops after US and UK.
Aug 14, 2008 - 3:05 pm 472. copperhead:That’s the kind of thing Bush appreciates. Last week he called in his chits. The georgian soldiers in Iraq were brought back in US military cargo planes within 24hrs of the Russians incursion. From that time on there were overt US assets in play. I don’t think Putin was about to risk a bomb hitting a stray US “advisor” from that moment on. That’s why the Russians are strutting around the garden, but don’t dare come inside the house.
The US didn’t blink, Putin did. If he hadn’t, he’d already be in Tiblisi. Let Genius Putin sink a few Georgian ships, and burn as many tanks as he wants. Let him destroy villages, etc. Then dummy Bush will just replace the old worn out hardware with new ones, plus a few goodies for pain and suffering, and a whole crew of “humanitarian workers” will stay in Georgia for years, and I mean years, to rebuild all that devastation.
Maybe Shaaskavilli misjudged the reaction of Russia, but maybe he also wanted to force the US hand. Comments from State Dept. seem to indicate that US felt “played”, but once the pipeline was bombed, US really had no choice. The pipeline was being offered to US on a Shaaskavilli plate.
Re: “A CZAR IS BORN”
It’s too soon to judge the results of this situation, but, at this moment in time, things aren’t looking good for Russia now that we have responded. That may change. Who knows what is happening behind the scenes or what may be in motion elsewhere. I’m not familiar with Peters or his style.. perhaps his aim is something like satire, or his purpose is to spur people into action or remind them that life is cruel and evil truly exists. I can’t accurately tell if he is serious or not.. I’ve seen too many glittered Valentines for Putin and petty thugs like him. I’m reminded of that leftist lesbian blogger who, knowing full well what others suffer in Iran, still gushed over Ahmadinejad and his eyes, or every dope that dresses himself in Che’s face. What is the appeal?
Aug 14, 2008 - 3:07 pm 473. Doug:“ I am glad that Bush and Co likes to be effective rather than be a braggart and strut their macho. Bush can do the macho but he has to think carefully about the consequences ”
RAH,
Shaaskavilli does all the struting and bragging for him!
…and Condi and Company keep telling him we won’t go to War for any of his displays that get out of hand.
Russia Vows to Support Two Enclaves, in Retort to Bush
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates declared that Russia’s actions now required a full reassessment of administration efforts to create “an ongoing and long-term strategic dialogue with Russia.”
The Lede: Georgia Crisis Upends Vacations, Sort of
In the Russian capital, as it happens, there are signs that dachas will be emptying by the dozens for a vote to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent of Georgia. As RIA Novosti reported, “It is quite possible that both houses of the Russian parliament will interrupt their vacation.”
Aug 14, 2008 - 3:19 pm 474. Steynian 224 « Free Mark Steyn!:[...] ALTHOUGH analysts may debate how far Putin decides to go in Georgia, its actions are indistinguishable from [...]
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