Arms for Georgia
Lee on Aug 11 2008 at 3:08 am | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page
Evidently immune to the historical irony, Israel halted arms shipments to Georgia months ago due to fears of a Russian attack. As an IDF veteran interprets that:
“When we found ourselves in a similar situation, we expected the world to act differently.”
(Haaretz)
And the world did act differently, or at least the United States…and at far greater political risk and economic consequence than Israel would sustain now.
Armaments are a problem for Georgia. She must have a method in ample supply to neutralize Russian armor.
To that, Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili:
“And weapons. We need weapons. We are not going to surrender. We will take this to the end.”
(IHT)
Unfortunately fear seems to be a prevailing influence in Washington at the moment, unlike the firmer hands that armed Israel in Operation Nickel Grass, in the middle of the Yom Kippur War. The administration needs to realize that Russian retaliatory options against US assistance to Georgia are severely limited. More crucially, it’s not a permissible level of escalation for Russia to attack a US ally, while an impermissible level of escalation for the US to assist that ally. Even the threat of it, given the options in our arsenal, can profoundly change the calculus of this conflict.
Given the political will, Shota Utiashvili’s entirely sensible plea can be easily accommodated. I’ll even draw the president a picture:
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