‘Putin Has Given Us An Order That Everyone Must Leave Or Be Shot’
August 18, 2008 — budsimmons
The Old Russia Is Back
August 16, 2008 — budsimmonsDuly Noted: The Old Russia Is Back
1. It is understandable that Russia wishes to be as powerful as her weight-class demands and allows. However, her leaders are not content to keep national power as a deterrent in “reserve.” The policy for the use of the fist seems to be to a reversion to past practices. It is to assert might offensively and therefore, not for the sake of securing the defensively interpreted national interest. Foreign Offices will not fail to take notice of this.
2. Russia’s reaction to Georgia’s attempt to retake its province of South Ossetia demands that several factors be considered. The selection is without the pretense of all inclusiveness. The Ossetes obviously do not wish to be Georgians. Their independence, also the will to assert it, would not have been materialized without Russian instigation and protection. Georgia’s move to solve the problem has been a mistake – and an action against which US cautioned the country’s US educated President. Russia’s military operations, the timing and the speed of force-deployment suggest that, this response has been prepared and the crisis anticipated. Issuing Russian passports to the independence-minded Ossetes and the large number of Russians there gives substance to the claim of acting defensively to protect Russian citizens. The same fact also supports claims of pre-meditated transgression. Russia might claim otherwise but her military moves suggests the pursuit of goals that go beyond what is stated by the “peace enforcers.” To secure South Ossetia it is not necessary to occupy Georgia, to bomb unrelated civilian targets and industrial installations far away from the front. Russia’s SecCouncil attempt to draw an analogy between bombardments’ fall-out effect in Iraq and Afghanistan on civilians and the smashing Georgian housing areas sound good. Provided they are viewed through the optics of anti-Americanism. There is a difference between hitting military targets placed in civilian areas and “total war” type attacks that have the destruction of non-military installations as their objective.
3. The conduct of the war in Georgia suggests that, as in Chechnya, the Russians have still not learned much about the tricks of asymmetric warfare. Being only able – or willing? – to proceed in their WW2-style might be a significant disadvantage in a future crisis. Perhaps because her systems allows it and the deterrent value is not lost on her, Russia’s instinct is not to “kick ass” but to “crush skulls.”
4. Even if you live far away from Georgia and know as little about it as you care to, the subtle effects are greater than meets the eye. Russia’s neighboring small countries are additionally alarmed by the threat that Georgia might be overran by Russian troops that only “defend Ossetia.” By Sunday (August 10), the official political objective of military operations had been achieved. Not stopping at that red line indicates more is wanted than the security of Ossetia. Russia also exhibited some reluctance to talk in order to pursue her suspected goal of subjugating Georgia. Refusing to talk to Saakashvili on the phone (if true) reveals that unstated goals are pursued. (This applies to Georgia but also to others.) The outbreak of an early peace then would have been too soon for Moscow. The, for the Kremlin’s modus operandi typical, continuation of military operations after the armistice, support the foregoing. Meanwhile, the reaction of the West and of NATO reveals that the alliance is weak. Threatening the impact of continued lack of restraint on EU-Russian relations – as Sarkozy implied – is less than impressive. Europe’s dependence on Russian energy makes serious consequences as far fetched.
5. Even now (August 11) it is clear: the old Russia with a Tsarist-Soviet imperial appetite and a determination to use all its military, political and economic means, is back. Those of us who thought that it is otherwise were wrong.
6. Thanks to Russia, Ossetia and Abkhazia will be saved from Georgian supremacy. Ironically, fearing Tbilisi, the advocates of independence resorted to Moscow’s help. Through this they will become Russian and not Georgian subjects. Their next problem will be Russia’s domination. No one will be willing or able to rescue them from this self-inflicted condition. Russian occupations, regardless of the circumstances have led to them, have a distinguishing feature. Even if officially called “temporary” – as in central Europe 1945-89 – they are a condition whose duration is, at best, measured in decades.
7. French “mediation” that coincided with the moment Russia intended to cease major operations brings us a Moscow-dictated settlement in Georgia. The discussion about what to do next is on. It is pointed out that measures such as disinviting Russia from the G8 or canceling joint military exercises are symbolic and unlikely to harm Russia. This is so. Nevertheless, if such measures would cause material damage the same people would warn us that this is not desirable to injure Russia. If symbolic measures expressing strong disapproval are excluded then a conclusion will emerge. It will be that the democracies are unwilling to use whatever means they have against aggression by a major and determined power. Anybody can guess the long-term consequences.
8. Soviet-Communist dictatorship had accomplished the repression of its outstanding opponents. Whether we consider the merits of the woks (in literature, art, the social sciences) or the qualities of the persons producing these, the term “outstanding” is properly used. Now that the road to democratization is open, we find that the leaders with stature needed for the completion of the process are missing. Why is this so? Nowadays we have to do with a more skilled and supple dictatorship than the openly Stalinist one had been. Today’s system understands and exploit’s the weaknesses of old (ageing?) democracies. Accordingly, the abuses have grown in quality and the presentation of their show-window elements have improved. Most significantly, the rewards for cooperating with the “system” have become more bountiful. This latter point is true for those living “inside” and those located “outside” of the new, re-baptized, system.
9. The causes of conservatives and the greens appear to show limited convergence in the area of energy supplies. Yet the appearances hide enormous substantial divergences. Both are concerned with energy supplies and the alternative sources from which the need can be covered. While alternatives are to be explored, conservatives wish to tap available conventional supplies. In doing so, their concern is energy independence as a component of political independence. The greens think it realistic to exhaust available supplies to force the switch over to wind, geothermal and solar generated power. To accomplish this, the curtailment of economic activities that supported the way of life of industrialized countries is a welcome side effect. Moreover, the strategic implication of energy shortages and dependence on politically unreliable suppliers are of little concern.
10. The “Dictator’s Tantrum,” Sequel 3. Hours after the posting of “Sequel 2” Libya has obliged her skeptics by a new move. It lays bare that tyranny’s substance. The newest is that the brother of the Moroccan servant Hannibal and his spouse have beaten has been arrested in Libya. The charge must be “criminal inclination to choose the wrong relatives.” The mother of another servant is also in jail. Some signs suggest that the servants who are now in Switzerland, might trade their relatives’ release for the withdrawal of the complaint. To complicate matters Geneva’s DA persists in pressing formal charges against the Gadhafis. He makes no political deals he tells. (By the time of this posting one of the relatives was allowed to leave Libya.)
11. An accidental correlation with non-accidental consequences. Libya and Russia are coming closer. Russia will modernize Libya’s military (U-boot, Planes, rockets, tanks). Cooperation in exploiting oil and gas fields is also envisaged.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3465
War in the Caucasus
August 12, 2008 — budsimmonsWar in the Caucasus
The first thing to understand about the war between Russia and Georgia is that Georgia has lost. As Doug Muir explains, seizing South Ossetia required the quick severing, and then holding, of a single key route leading from the Caucasus peaks to the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. A look at the terrain tells the tale: Tskhinvali’s north side is to the mountains, and its south faces toward a broad plain in which the Georgians already controlled the major routes. As an operational problem, the solution was self-evident. Seize the north-south route to Tskhinvali, and the conquest of South Ossetia resolves into an exercise in alpine insurgency – unpleasant but winnable.
The Georgians did not get it done. Having failed to seize the Tskhinvali approach, the next best option is to interdict its traffic. Russian air power, which appeared to have a Georgia-wide romp in the past 24 hours, almost certainly renders this impossible. Here, then, is the circumstance that the Georgians face: their warmaking assets will only decline (the hasty recall of Georgia’s Iraq contingent notwithstanding), while Russian power in-theater will only grow. Georgia’s military has benefited from significant American training and equipment since 2002 – but it simply does not have the manpower to face down a Russian Army accustomed to victory through sheer mass.
The real question for Georgia, then, is not whether is will win or lose – it has already lost – but how bad its loss will be. The worst case scenario is a Russian occupation and annexation. Fortunately for the Georgians, that’s also the least likely. Less unlikely is some sort of Russian occupation coupled with a Russian-driven regime change that puts Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on the street – if he’s lucky. This might not be the tragedy for Georgia it seems, given Saakashvili’s rather astonishing incompetent gamble in leading the country into the present war. Most likely is that the Russians fully occupy South Ossetia, along with the other secessionist region of Georgia, Abkhazia; declare them both independent or somehow annexed; and thoroughly punish the Georgians with a countrywide air campaign targeting what meager infrastructure there is. Georgia at war’s end – which may well be mere days away – will be definitively dismembered, and smoldering in body and heart.
So much for the probable outcome. What remains is what, if anything, America should do. The policy reflex, certainly, is to blame the Russians for this catastrophe, and act accordingly. Indeed, the Russians bear much blame – not least for their Kuwaiti-tanker stratagem with South Ossetia’s residents, who were issued Russian passports freely so Moscow might have a pretext to intervene. Yet if the Russians acted with malice, the Georgians under Saakashvili acted with stupidity. The separation of South Ossetia rankles the good Georgian nationalist’s heart – but that’s about it. South Ossetia’s economy barely deserves the name: to paraphrase Muir, it’s populated by peasants who drive sheep uphill in summer, and downhill in winter. It did not enrich Georgia, nor do its people want to be Georgian – and if Georgia wishes to claim it nonetheless, there is still no urgency to the task. A smart Georgian government would have brought Georgia to some meaningful prosperity over the years, and left the impoverished Ossetians demanding for reunion with a thriving nation. Biased though he may be, the Chairman of the Russia’s State Duma Security Committee, Vladimir Vasilyev, said it well:
Georgia could have used the years of Saakashvili’s presidency in different ways – to build up the economy, to develop the infrastructure, to solve social issues both in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and the whole state. Instead, the Georgian leadership with president Saakashvili undertook consistent steps to increase its military budget from $US 30 million to $US 1 billion – Georgia was preparing for a military action.
That Mikheil Saakashvili thought it better to have hundreds of young men die instead – by launching an attack upon a town garrisoned by Russians! – is a damning indictment of his judgment. No nation ought to base a policy, and still less an alliance, upon this unreliable actor.
If there is a rationale for American action, it lies in American self interest in showing that America’s friends may count upon it. Georgia fought alongside the US in Iraq, and there is some debt owed for that. In that vein, America might commit itselve to resupply – though not direct to forces in the field – and it might guarantee Georgian sovereignty, though not Georgian territorial integrity. Short of a threatened extermination of Georgia (which does not seem at issue), there is nothing at stake here to justify a US-Russia war. Those accustomed to invoking appeasement and Munich at moments of foreign crisis may recoil at this – but that historical parallel is barely applicable here. Russian Putinism, for all it rightly repels our moral sensibilities, is not an existential foe of the West like Nazism, Communism, or Islamism. Its advance is not intrinsically America’s loss.
Whether America’s policymaking apparatus will have the wisdom to discern this is another matter. The Secretary of State’s statement gives us some clue as to the outline of American policy, but what matters is the accompanying action. There is a rumor that the President will speak on this from Beijing shortly. Meanwhile, the war in the Caucasus goes on.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3451
Russian Imperialism – It’s Back
August 12, 2008 — budsimmonsRussian Imperialism – It’s Back
By Michael Radu
FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/12/2008
While it is still not clear whether it was Georgia that escalated the conflict first, or Russia through its local puppets and mercenaries who provoked Tbilisi, the basic fact remains that the fighting is taking place exclusively within the internationally recognized borders of Georgia. Despite the Western media’s persistent description of the Russian military in South Ossetia as “peacekeepers,” they are and have always been nothing but an occupation and invading force.
In fact, Russia has used the same method for years elsewhere. In Transnistria, a secessionist area of Moldova, Russian “peacekeepers” have kept the local gang of unreconstructed Stalinist smugglers since the early 1990s, and in Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgian territory, it is the same “peacekeepers” and mercenaries who have ethnically cleansed the Georgian majority and de facto annexed the area.
The pattern has been the same in Abkhazia and South Ossetia – Russia has unilaterally granted citizenship to the secessionists and then, when Georgia has tried to recover its territorial integrity, claimed that it has the right, and duty, to defend its “citizens” – a claim repeated on August 8th by President Dmitry Medvedev, and reminiscent of the old Soviet “struggle for peace” in places like Afghanistan.
What is Russia’s interest in controlling these regions? The economic value of these small areas is close to zero – they are too poor to survive without Moscow’s subsidies and, more to the point, without all being criminal black holes – Mafia ruled havens for smuggling and trafficking of arms and drugs to the mutual benefit of the local thugs and their Russian military overseers.
Transnistria specializes in the traffic of weapons, South Ossetia on drugs, cigarettes and weapons; Abkhazia alone has anything resembling a local economy, mostly based on Russian tourism. Ultimately, with Moscow paying the salaries, pensions and various subsidies to the local puppet “governments” in Tiraspol, Sukhumi and Tskhinvali (the capitals of Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia respectively) they are an economic drain – but a valuable political and strategic tool.
Domestically, the war in Georgia serves multiple purposes to the Putin-Medvedev regime. It gives satisfaction, and something to do, to a newly vocal military, throws an ideological bone to the ultra-nationalists in the Duma (who have already voted to recognize the “independence” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia), and divert the attention of restive Muslim, and increasingly Islamist minorities in Northern Caucasus. The fact that Russia’s North Ossetia, the only mostly Christian and loyal to Moscow region in that area has a direct ethnic stake in the developments to its south, may also explain, in part, the decision to invade South Ossetia.
On a wider scale, through its control of Transnistria (and oil supplies), Moscow has transformed Moldova into an obedient annex; its activities in Georgia has not only mutilated that country’s territory, but ensured that NATO membership, desired by most Georgians, will not become a reality.
Indeed, the Europeans, especially Germany, are naturally reluctant to admit a new member involved in a long term conflict with Russia. That means that Georgia will remain vulnerable to Russian threats for the foreseeable future – and that its fate would be anxiously watched, and remembered by Ukraine, another former Soviet colony seeking strategic independence from a resurgent Russian imperialism.
It should be remembered also that a cowed Georgia will also mean the strengthening of Moscow’s control over the energy supplies of Europe. The only major pipelines for Caspian Sea oil and gas not controlled by Russia, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku – Shupsha, will come under the indirect control of Putin & Co.
Not surprisingly, the West’s response to the developments in Georgia has been unimpressive. Washington and various European capitals have expressed alarm and demanded a cease fire, as well as the withdrawal of Russian troops from that country – something they have demanded for years, without noticeable results. The United Nations, as usual and as could be expected, has taken notice and the Secretary General made the usual demands for a peaceful resolution, etc. – while everybody remains fully aware that the Security Council, the only body with any influence on the matter, will go nowhere, given the Russian veto.
What the world should keep in mind is that the present conflict is not over the 3,900 square kilometers of mostly barren South Ossetian mountains but over the fate of Georgia as an independent state and, even more importantly, over the West’s ability, or willingness, to take a stand against the blatant revival of historic Russian imperialism.
If Georgia loses the current fight, and part of its territory, both of which are likely, in the longer term the main loser will be the United States and its credibility as a friend. At the very least, Washington, NATO and the European Union should make it clear that, by its behavior in Georgia, Russia has proven that it is a security threat and should be treated as such. That may mean a rapid re-arming of Georgia, even security guarantees against further Russian aggression, Moscow’s removal from the (mostly symbolically relevant) G-8 Group and, most importantly, the shedding of all illusions that Russia is, or could be a “partner” on anything but trade.
Michael Radu is Senior Fellow and Co – Chair, Center on Terrorism and Counterterrorism, at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.
The Caucasus War: It Is About More than “a Kosovo for a Kosovo” Now
August 11, 2008 — budsimmonsThe Caucasus War: It Is About More than “a Kosovo for a Kosovo” Now
America’s stake in the Caucasus war just went up.
In the past 24 hours, the Russians launched offensive operations beyond the secessionist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, marking a dramatic expansion in their war aims — well beyond the putative casus bellum of protecting Russian citizens. (It should be recalled that these “citizens” are Abkhaz and Ossetian locals who were issued Russian passports without, for the most part, ever setting foot in Russia.)
The town of Gori, in Georgia proper, is apparently the first to face a determined Russian assault. Georgian Zugdidi, just south of the second front erupting from Abkhazia, is also apparently occupied, though reportedly ceded by fleeing Georgians. It’s Gori, though, where the real fight is: and a look at the terrain around Stalin’s hometown tells why. This map shows Gori at the southern end of the plain to which the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali is the northern entrance. (Recall that this war began with a Georgian assault on Tskhinvali; they’ve been tossed clear down against the mountains in two days.) Gori sits on a pass leading into a long valley that slopes toward the southeast. About 50 miles at the other end of that valley, against that long blue lake in the lower right-hand corner of the map, is the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.
In light of the recent, and somewhat frantic, Georgian offers of truce, there aren’t many reasons to take Gori if the Russians are merely interested in the direct protection of their clients. Though it wouldn’t be entirely out of character for the Russian army to simply bludgeon a city because it’s there, the logic of events lends credence to what America’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, charged today: that the Russians seek the overthrow of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. The synopsis of the exchange, at the UN Security Council’s emergency meeting on Georgia, between Khalilzad and Russia’s UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, makes for chilling reading:
Mr. KHALIZAD (United States) …. went on to say that Mr. Churkin had referred to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s phone conversations with United States State Secretary Condoleezza Rice this morning, a conversation that raised serious questions about Russia’s objectives in the conflict. Mr. Lavrov had said that President Saakashvili, the democratically elected President of Georgia, “must go”, which was completely unacceptable and “crossed the line”. Was Russia’s objective regime change in Georgia, the overthrow of the democratically elected Government of that country?
Mr. CHURKIN (Russian Federation) …. said “regime change” was an American expression that Russia did not use. As was known from history, different leaders came to power either democratically or semi-democratically, becoming an obstacle to their people’s emergence from difficult situations. The Russian Federation was encouraged by Mr. Khalilzad’s public reference to that, which meant he was ready to bring it into the public realm.
Mr. KHALILZAD (United States) asked whether the goal of the Russian Federation was to change the leadership of Georgia.
Mr. ALASANIA (Georgia) said that, as he had heard Mr. Churkin, the question asked and the answer received had confirmed that what Russia was seeking was to change the democratically elected Georgian Government.
Mr. CHURKIN (Russian Federation) suggested that he had given a complete response and perhaps the United States representative had not been listening when he had given his response, perhaps he had not had his earpiece on.
Dealing with Churkin is rarely pleasant, but the facts in Georgia now — and especially the assault on Gori — render this episode something more than one of his usual tantrums.
Here’s where America’s stake goes up. As I noted when this war kicked off in earnest, the Georgian state blundered into this with eyes open, and Saakashvili is not the sort of man to whom we ought to harness our own policy. Were the Russians content to merely fulfill their putative war aims of 48 hours ago, and strictly occupy Abkhaz and Ossetian territory — in other words, were Moscow content to deliver a Kosovo for a Kosovo — this would be painful but acceptable, and not worth a showdown between America and Russia. A Russian overthrow of the Georgian government, coupled with what must be some sort of occupation, is altogether different. It would mark the explicit debut of Russia as a post-Cold War revisionist state in fact, and not just in rhetoric; it would be an explicit repudiation of the post-World War Two order in Europe, as the first inter-state aggression of its sort since 1945; and it would be an explicit warning to those seeking America’s friendship and the aegis of NATO.
Defending the standards of Europe’s long peace, preserving the strategic outcomes of the Cold War, and upholding the credibility of the institutional guarantor of that peace and the winner of that war: these are things worth acting for — and yes, worth fighting for.
None of this is to argue that the United States must now fight Russia for Georgia. On a pragmatic level, there is no American manpower to spare, and the risk of such a confrontation spreading is too great. The Vice President has told Saakashvili that “Russian aggression must not go unanswered,” and one hopes he has not leapt direct to the idea of armed force. (There is, though, much the West may do to help the Georgians help themselves short of that, from imagery sharing to signals intelligence to resupply.) But we must understand and swiftly come to grips with the realities of what this war costs us, and the institutions — NATO in particular — that protect us.
Already we see that several of our allies, and aspirants to that status, are tremendously alarmed at Russia’s war on Georgia. They understand what it signifies, because they remember all too well suffering aggression from the same source. As that memory drove them to seek refuge in alliance with us within NATO, it befits us to justify their confidence as an ally should. We noted yesterday the extraordinary joint communique from the Presidents of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia that condemned Russia’s “imperialist and revisionist policy in the East of Europe.” Poignantly, the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, is now allowing the Georgian government — whose online portals are blocked by Russian action — to use his own official website to disseminate news and photographs on the war. Most remarkably, Ukraine, which hosts the Russian Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol, is threatening to bar Russian access to the port. Ukraine was one of the two states denied a NATO Membership Action Plan at the NATO summit last April, specifically because of fears of Russia’s reaction. The other was Georgia.
America’s stake in the Caucasus war just went up. It may be too late to save Georgia — though we ought, within limits, to help Georgia save itself — but it is not too late to contain the damage to America and its allies that Georgia’s tragedy inflicts. As the Russian tanks roll toward Tbilisi, we should think hard about how far we’re willing to go to do it.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3456
