A Second Hand Conjecture

Seems to be an awful lot of “testing” going on.

Mutiny in Georgia!!!

Iran attacks Kurdish guerillas in Iraq with helicopters

Pakistan is melting down!!!

Chinese Ships Come Dangerously Close to American Vessel

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Georgia has stopped a tank battalion mutiny. Naturally the Russians are suspected of being behind it. I’ve been wondering if President Obama will continue support for Georgia, and cause the ire of a belligerent Russia.

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Not sure how true this is, but here’s what the London Times says about how close Putin came to over throwing the Georgian government.

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” – he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.” Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah – you have scored a point there.”

This would seem to settle whether or not Russia aimed to actually overthrow Georgia’s government that some in the blogosphere were debating.

Also is it just me or have a lot of my titles been ending in question marks lately? Who knows?

(HT: Reason Online)

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Who jumped first in South Ossetia has become a bit of a information war between Georgia and Russia. Today, the Georgian government went a ways toward resolving it by releasing recordings of intercepted radio traffic preceding the Russian invasion. The tapes seem to demonstrate that elements of the Russian invasion force had entered Georgian territory twenty hours before the Georgian army responded.

(more…)

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Russian FM Sergei Lavrov reportedly went berserk on David Miliband in phone discussions over the Georgia war. Apparently he was raving, shouting obscenities, and ridiculing Miliband’s knowledge of history.

There’s something incredibly deranged about that government. They’ve taken the traditional Russian penchant for seeing itself under siege (real or imagined), and pressurized it to a delusional pitch.

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Well, well. Mr. Putin held a press conference and there’s much to condemn as usual. Not the least of which is Putin’s continued delusion that Russia was invaded by Georgia. But foremost perhaps, is an education for those who argued that the investiture of Tbilisi was not very much in the cards until the very last moment:

Mr Putin said that Russia had been four hours away from invading the Georgian capital Tblisi and deposing its pro-American leader, Mikheil Saakashvili. It refrained from doing so but now, Mr Putin said, it was up to the Georgian people.
(The Times)

A mitigating faction is still at work in Russian policy however, as today the South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity again pledged to be annexed by Russia…and was forced to withdraw his statement. Simultaneously, Sergei Bagpash, leader of Abkhazia, pledged not to join Russia, but instead the CIS.

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As the European Union commendably attempts to pull Ukraine closer into the safety of the West, Russia has reportedly earmarked $1 billion to fund suddenly pro-Kremlin Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, against heroically pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko in the 2010 presidential election.

One billion. If true, it seems Russia is ready to make an enormous commitment to the subversion of democracy in her neighbor…and it’s a frighteningly expensive investment to allow to fail.

(more…)

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Another splendid ad for SOSGeorgia. I say again, in the conceptual appeal to world opinion, the Georgians are simply better at this sort of thing than their far better financed adversaries.

(Carpetblog)

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A depressingly confused analogy from Medvedev on US aid to Georgia:

“I wonder how they would like it if we sent humanitarian assistance using our navy to countries of the Caribbean that have suffered from the recent hurricanes.”
(AFP)

We’d welcome that. It’s distressing that the Russian government hears only our resistance, without our reasons for it. And here again, there is a certain naiveté to Medvedev that always makes one think it might someday be possible to penetrate the reality distortion field of Putinism that imprisons his imagination.

(more…)

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After forcefully savaging the Russian invasion of Georgia, controversial Swedish economist Anders Aslund lays out ten reasons he expects an impending economic collapse in Russia. Each point is sound, although some are more problematic than others.

Particularly cogent are the following Aslund points IMO:

4. Renationalization is continuing and leading to a decline in economic efficiency. When Putin publicly attacked Mechel, investors presumed that he had decided to nationalize the company. Thus, they rushed to dump their stock in Mechel, having seen what happened to Yukos, Russneft, United Heavy Machineries and VSMP-Avisma, to name a few. In a note to investors, UBS explains diplomatically that an old paradigm of higher political risk has returned to Russia, so it has reduced its price targets by an average of 20 percent, or a market value of $300 billion. Unpredictable economic crime is bad for growth.

5. The most successful transition countries have investment ratios exceeding 30 percent of GDP, as is also the case in East Asia. But in Russia, it is only 20 percent of GDP, and it is likely to fall in the current business environment. That means that bottlenecks will grow worse.

6. An immediate consequence of Russia’s transformation into a rogue state is that membership in the World Trade Organization is out of reach. World Bank and Economic Development Ministry assessments have put the value of WTO membership at an additional growth of 0.5 to 1 percentage points a year for the next five years. Now, a similar deterioration is likely because of increased protectionism, especially in agriculture and finance.

[...]

8. Oil and commodity prices can only go down, and energy production is stagnant, which means that Russia’s external accounts are bound to deteriorate quickly.

9. Because Russia’s banking system is dominated by five state banks, it is inefficient and unreliable, and the national cost of a poor banking system rises over time.
(Moscow Times via Robert Amsterdam)

As for all this leading to a Russian economic apocalypse, it should be noted that the accuracy of Aslund’s predictive powers leaves more than a little to be desired. I note that we’re still waiting for his prediction of a military coup against Medvedev to come true.

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Francis Fukuyama argues in the Financial Times that the United States should have traded European missile defense and/or Kosovar independence in order to pacify a resurgent Russia. This strange proposal of strategic charity work for the Kremlin, is animated by his belief in an inevitable diminution of American moral authority by course of the Iraq War, and alleged American provocations of Russia which have in his view, inaugurated a decline of American global power.
(more…)

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Extremely interesting post from Seth Weinberger on the opportunity for pulling China in the pro-Georgia camp, after the SCO failed to endorse Russian actions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Seth is as mystified as I am that the Russian foreign ministry could possibly have believed it would persuade China to endorse ethnic separatism and provincial secession. If there is such a thing as an enduring Chinese ideology from ancient times, it is the idea of struggle against separatist disorder and provincial independence. A fear that is only amplified to extraordinary degrees by the prospect of other great powers assisting in the dismemberment of traditional territorial unity.

(more…)

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The IMF has come through for Georgia in an enormous way, approving a $750 million credit line for the beleaguered republic. Beyond the much needed aid, it’s a powerful political reminder for Russia of the gargantuan economic advantage the West maintains.

But in that article notice the black banner in the feature photograph. It’s a promotional piece for the slick SOSGeorgia site, written in very literate English and produced by a Georgian IT firm. Have you noticed how much better the Georgians are at appealing to world opinion than the Russians? Granted, theirs is the far more sympathetic cause, but there is some native skill involved in the marketing that may have something to do with the country’s cultural, political and commercial orientation toward the West. I hate to speculate too deeply on it, but it’s possible that disconnection from the West simply leads to bad public relations strategy. At least when you need to persuade the West, as both the Russians and Georgians do.

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I often find former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s supporting arguments irksome and occasionally even masochistic. But she has a certain knack for ending up in the right place by the wrong course. It’s a unique skill really.

Thus it is that she denounces US policy toward Russia as too hostile, emphasizes assuaging largely fabricated Kremlin territorial security fears, and criticizes overt US solidarity with Georgia…but (there’s always a *but* with Maddy), in the end she rejects South Ossetian and Abkhazian annexation and demands the eventual integration of Georgia into NATO.

As always with Maddy,  my feeling is that however we got to the same page matters not, so long as we’re both on it.

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Saakashvili has finally severed all Georgian diplomatic ties with Russia. A bit overdue, I must say.

Meanwhile, Putin, in his ongoing effort to legitimize the Russian invasion of Georgia, again compared his country’s actions to the NATO intervention against Serbia –which Russia and Putin himself still opposes in principle as illegitimate, but nevermind. Putin argued that NATO intervened because the “White House gave the order and everyone carried it out,” in a rather pathetically ahistorical appeal to transatlantic discord.

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A couple of days into Russian-declared, universally unrecognized independence (excluding Hamas and Belarus), South Ossetian officials have expressed their desire to be annexed by Russia. The brave new defenders of Russian imperialism on the American Left have thus suddenly found their arguments for fake Ossetian self-determination on Georgian soil dealt a sudden blow.

Apologizing for Russian foreign policy ventures is historically always a tricky business. The sensibility of which is perhaps now restricted to the brief thaw of Yeltsin’s dream of a benign commonwealth of trade and friendship. A dream now sustaining an excruciatingly painful death on the world stage.

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Michael Totten is in Georgia interviewing actual Georgian soldiers and finding out what went on behind the scenes of this conflict. Turns out Saakashvili didn’t start it after all.

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Michael Totten has a succinct yet informative post up from the Georgian capital of Tblisi:
And my translator, whose husband works for Georgia’s ministry of foreign affairs, made a similar guess that the West helped save the capital. “The night they came close to Tbilisi,” she said, “Bush and McCain made their strongest speeches yet. The Russians seemed to back down. Bush and McCain have been very good for us.”
RTWT.

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Columbia Journalism Review asked me to write an essay criticizing blogger coverage of the War in Georgia. As I’m sure you can imagine, I was scathing.

While this wasn’t necessarily surprising—after all, these blogs all talk in a big circle, and tend to reference each other—it was disappointing. As Reason’s Michael C. Moynihan trenchantly observed, much of the commentary on the conflict resolved into very clear partisan lines: Russia on the Left, Georgia on the Right. Rather than providing the clarity, nuance, and honesty that they promise to provide, the big blogs instead retreated to their comfortable and predictable ideological corners. By keeping to their usual haunts, these blogs did their readers a tremendous disservice: they were just as incurious and ideological as they regularly accuse the MSM of being.

Go read the whole thing.

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Surely, some of our terms for peace will have to be modified to correspond to new realities on the ground and to achieve our ultimate ends, which are security for the Kosovars and peace and stability in the Balkans. Genuine autonomy for Kosovo that includes the presence in Kosovo of 5000 Serb military and security personnel is hard to conceive as practical anymore. I think it would be a pretty hard sell to convince Kosovars that it is safe to return to communities that are policed by the very people who so savagely depopulated them. Nor do I think it likely that the Kosovo Liberation Army can be persuaded again to accept any status less than independence.

—John McCain at a speech to CSIS in 1999, back when he opposed a country violently retaking a separatist ethnic enclave, and supported the use of a foreign military to impose an outside peace. It is unclear what changed his mind since.

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Instapundit

“German Chancellor Angela Merkel is offering strong support for Georgia, saying the country is on track to become a member of NATO. Merkel flew to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Sunday, two days after she met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.”

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Now Ukraine invites Western participation in her missile defense. Regionally, Russia’s actions in Georgia can only be poisonous to her interests. Coercive force is the only way to compel compliance once you’ve used it so malevolently. Not such a wonderful thought for a regional future.

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Ceasefire be damned,* the Russian army reportedly destroyed the Metekhi-Grakali railway bridge. The bridge was used by Georgian refugees fleeing the mayhem in the Russian occupied zones given that the highway is controlled by the Russian army, which has naturally acquired a rapacious reputation among Georgians. Thus it could expand the humanitarian crisis in Western and Central Georgia.

Oddly, the Russian military has denied it destroyed the bridge, which is perhaps further evidence of factional schizophrenia in Russian policy, given that the bridge is in fact destroyed (photo).

In reaction to this and continued Russian occupation of Georgia, Secretary Rice said that the Russians are “perhaps” just liars. That’s news to no one at this point, but there’s reason to assume command-and-control is fantastically weak within the occupation army (much less within the state).

There’s also an energy oligarch-faction corruption rationale for a Russian action on the bridge, as it was the conduit for Azeri oil export which has now had to cease.

* Edit: Attack was coordinated to occur a couple of hours before Medvedev signed the agreement.

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In From the Cold wonders why Russian tactical aircraft proved so vulnerable to an air defense system they knew intimately. I’d merely say that low-and-slow Russian tactics are going to get you shot eventually, whatever the SAM is on the ground. Major Vyacheslav Markovich, one of the Russian pilots shot down, thinks the entire war is absurd, lamenting the state of Georgia-Russia relations. And I still ask why the Georgians were not supplied with Javelin anti-tank missiles in large quantity and immediately. The Russian mechanized attack wouldn’t have made it to Tskhinvali, much less to Igoeti.

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(photo: Chris Dunn)

John Bolton argues that the future of Russian imperialism in Eurasia rides on the outcome of the US presidential election. Unsurprisingly, he pitches McCain: “First reactions, before the campaigns’ pollsters and consultants get involved are always the best indicators…McCain at once grasped the larger, geostrategic significance of Russia’s attack.”

That’s evidently a sentiment shared by the American electorate.

(more…)

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Alex Harrowell reminds us that NATO wasn’t always so timorous about conflict risk exposure:

[I]f we assume that Georgia, and specifically Mikhail Saakashvili’s version of it, wasn’t sufficiently responsible (adult, civilised, possibly even white?) to play, how do we explain that Germany got to join in 1955, when a whole great chunk of it was in the other side’s hands? Or Turkey and Greece, who despite being profoundly NATO-integrated regularly use their NATO-standard air defence infrastructure to play cowboys and Indians over the Aegean? One of the reasons for extending membership of NATO, and the EU, has been to reach out first; that it’s better to offer membership, and hope the requirements shape some country’s thinking, than to wait forever for perfection. If this was good enough for Germany, surely it can be good enough for Georgia.
(Fistful of Euros)

A fine and troubling point. If the division of Germany between 1945 and 1955 wasn’t an unresolved ideological version of a “frozen conflict” at perpetual flashpoint risk, then do tell me what it was.

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Russian Major General Vyacheslav Nikolaevich Borisov, in command of occupied Gori, has finally received orders to do something about the Russian allied irregulars who are rampaging in Georgia committing atrocities:

“Ossetians are killing poor Georgians, this is a problem and we are trying to deal with it”. He said his troops had been ordered to stop the abuse and arrest those responsible. Most of the atrocities occurred in Georgian enclaves in separatist South Ossetia and villages in Georgia proper outside Gori.
(The Independent)

One might hope. The atrocities that are beginning to come to light reportedly include systematic ethnic murder, the rape of children, the incineration of the elderly and other egregious crimes, evocative of the wars for Yugoslavia.

Thomas de Waal, Caucasus editor for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting tells Tony Halpin that the Russian army’s attitude toward such acts has thusfar been largely acquiescent:

“The Russian Army can’t be bothered to bring the paramilitaries under control. Its attitude is ‘let them have their revenge’”
(The Times)

The long puzzling capacity of the Russian government to excuse and ignore identically inhuman conduct by Slobodan Miloševic’s criminal army, is perhaps no longer so mysterious.

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Robert Amsterdam speaks with Geert Jan Alexander Knoops, an expert on international law governing peacekeeping missions, who concludes the Russian claims of acting as belligerent peacekeepers, have no legal foundation in international law. Amsterdam further observes that by citing the right of self-defense under the UN Charter as justification, Russia seems to be confessing to an assumption that South Ossetia is a part of Russia’s territory already. Which brings us back the oddness of Russia arguing that Georgia had illegally invaded its own territory. Perhaps this only makes sense in the Russian state imagination, because there exists the tacit imputation that this land is theirs, not even by declaration, but by collective assumption.

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Estonians and Latvians are apparently buying up all available Georgian wine in a demonstration of national solidarity with the beleaguered republic. Particularly popular is the consumer label Old Tbilisi (order here).

Sandra Saakashvili, First Lady of Georgia, is weathering the storm with her children in Ukraine, as the guest of Kateryna Yushchenko. Foreign Notes wonders what effect the Georgian experience at the hands of Russia is having on public attitudes toward NATO membership there. Public sentiment was opposed to Ukrainian entrance prior to the war. An essential question for a number of countries really.

Why wait on the West BTW, why not establish an Eastern European NATO? Get everyone on board, you might even have a more formidable fighting force against Russia.

Meanwhile, Estonians have arrived to put their lives on the line in Georgia. Their outfits will hopefully stand out in identifying them as humanitarian workers at distance. Perhaps it will dissuade a Russian (or worse, separatist) sniper.

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CCTV video capture of Russian soldiers robbing a Gori bank at gunpoint. While plunder has a bit of an enduring tradition in the Russian army even in modern times, this is pretty extreme. I’d be abusing the event as metaphor, as no army is immune to such temptations, but it does seem that the duocrat’s war has a certain peculiar comprehensiveness to its criminality. (via: Lesterblog)

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(photo: Pavel Trebukov | blog)

From the gang who brought you the “because Georgia has invaded its own country we had to attack” rationale for the South Ossetian War, Poland has now apparently “made itself a target” for Russian nuclear strike, by agreeing to base an entirely defensive missile system which could not possibly repel even a small Russian ballistic missile salvo.

Alas, this preposterous Russian claim like so many others, can find plenty of eager advocates in the West, who believe it is “aggressive” to create a defensive system against an Iranian missile threat, because Russia (!) says her “right” to target a country with ICBMs could be infringed…only to then confess the lie of that, by targeting the country with missiles. It’s an utterly immoral and entirely ludicrous formula on its face; indefensible from every direction.

And such a painfully helpless claim for erasing or even obscuring the fact that it was Russia alone which invaded Georgia, and it is Russia alone which is targeting Poland — and most sadly of all, it is Russia alone which is destroying Yeltsin’s great security achievement of an international framework for peaceful borders between friendly republics. A squandered and priceless inheritance, traded cheaply, in favor of an engineered frontier war for the vanity of militarism.

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Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves says the West must act fast:

“They should take Ukraine immediately into NATO, and what is left of Georgia,” he told Reuters by telephone, adding that a decision this year not to give the two countries a road map to membership had persuaded Russia it had free hand in the region.
(Reuters)

If only it could be done, especially for Ukraine. The crisis there is building and more strategically vital, as Victor Yushchenko has followed through on the threat to restrict Russia’s use of the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.

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It seems Russia is increasingly leaning toward dismembering the Republic of Georgia, something previously denied, now legitimized. The predominant characteristic of Russian policy in Georgia up to this point actually.

In the same vein, Russia is finally admitting to being in Poti and low an behold, it turns out the presence was legitimate all along, even when it wasn’t happening:

Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of Russia’s general staff, told a news conference it was legitimate for Russian peacekeepers to be in the Georgian port town of Poti for intelligence operations.

The General Staff had previously denied Russian troops were in Poti.
(Reuters)

How analysts continue to look at Russian behavior in Georgia and see cunning plans within plans is something of a mystery to me. This is a schizophrenic, factionally riven leadership that has overextended itself, and can’t decide what it wants to do in Georgia from one day to the next.

I said as much to a friend of mine yesterday (who is inclined to believe in this notion that all events involving Russia are the result of clever preplanned strategy by the Kremlin). Amusingly he said that was just what they wanted us to think and I was falling into their trap. It was all a plan you see, to look uncertain, incompetently lying, inconsistent and confused and thereby keep Georgia unstable. Sigh.

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89 amateur snapshots from the war in Georgia. Some are rather gruesome, so avoid this link if you’ve a weak stomach. It was good to see some US munitions and equipment in Georgian hands too.

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Georgian television reporter Tamara Urushadze gets shot by a Russian sniper as she delivered a live report near Gori. Tough girl, she finishes the report without a tear.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says “the world can forget about” Georgia’s territorial integrity. Quite a remarkable statement from the former permanent representative to the United Nations. As a statement of purpose or justification in his country’s war, it is of course an explicit violation of Article 2 of the United Nations Charter.

Furthermore, Lavrov’s comments came at a meeting with separatist leaders from South Ossetia and Abkhazia, leading some to believe it’s increasingly likely that Russia will annex these regions. This would make the conflict officially an illegal war for the purpose of territorial conquest.

It would also represent a moment to begin considering a longer term international plan for the United States of disengagement from Russia and/or a more general alignment against her interests. Perhaps Cuba would recognize a falsely claimed Russian right to rule the territory it has conquered, but the world will not. If Russia attempts to do so, the country would have clearly self-identified as a definitional rogue state.

Despite Lavrov’s wishes, the world cannot “forget” Georgia’s territorial integrity and has not. Only Russia has done that, in violation of the mandate it is pledged to defend by membership in the United Nations. Principles it ironically appealed to very vigorously (and still does) in the service of Serbian irridentism.

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Russian units are on the move again in Georgian territory, apparently in violation of the truce agreement. One Russian soldier in a large convoy shouted an ominous flirtation to a press photographer outside Gori, hopefully in jest or lust:

“Come with us, beauty, we’re going to Tbilisi.”
(AP)

A week in a Caucasian foxhole will make any soldier promise a pretty girl the world, but it’s certainly likely elements of the Russian military leadership wouldn’t mind actualizing his advance.

(more…)

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Exactly.

Now, as for Lee’s latest… Let’s just say I’ll be shocked if Saakashvili lasts the year.

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Last night Joshua argued that Saakashvili, having quite obviously failed to recapture his renegade territories, is certain to be finished one way or the other. Either overthrown by the Russian army, or by the Georgian people at the ballot box. This is a bit of an analyst consensus as you look around the web. Not so fast, says me.

It should be said that the mere fact of the Russian demand to remove him has supplied a method for his political redemption — which is why it was so important for the United States to leak the Russian foreign minister’s views on this. If Russia fails to bring him down, he can easily emerge as a defiant patriot who defeated the one Russian objective they most desired, through force of personal will.

The trouble with pressing your advantages and changing your objectives to increasingly ambitious goals, is if you get to a point where you cannot (or will not) actualize the final measure, you can create the circumstances for a political defeat. With the world aware that the Russian goal is to remove Saakashvili, if they don’t do it now, that can (and probably will) rescue him as a political leader.

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I’m doing this for my own benefit, as I’ve not followed the goings on in the Republic of Georgia, except to note when it’s in the news, not our Georgia.

April 18, 2008

Georgia sought the backing of NATO and the European Union on Friday after Russia stepped up pressure by announcing intensified ties with two separatist Georgian regions.

Georgia’s Vice Prime Minister Giorgi Baramidze called Russia’s action “very, very, very dangerous.”

“It is a decisive moment,” said Georgia’s Vice Prime Minister Giorgi Baramidze. “Russia has crossed the red line and Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community must react.”

April 22, 2008

Georgia has asked the U.N. Security Council to discuss Russia’s “military aggression” after saying a Russian jet shot down one of its unmanned spy planes.

“We call upon the United Nations to address this direct military aggression against Georgia and to fully exploit its own means and capabilities in order to keep the situation from further escalation,” Georgia’s U.N. Ambassador Irakli Alasania told reporters Monday.

To bolster its case, the Georgian air force released a video that it says shows a twin-tailed Russian MiG-29 shooting down a Georgian unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, over the separatist region of Abkhazia on Sunday.

April 23, 2008

Tensions have been escalating between Georgia’s pro-Western government and Russia, which is providing assistance to Abkhazia and another breakaway region, South Ossetia.

Georgian forces fought separatists in Abkhazia before the ceasefire was negotiated more than a decade ago.

Last week, Moscow formalized relations with the territories and withdrew trade sanctions while expanding “trade, economic, social, scientific and technical, information, cultural, and educational” contacts with them, Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency reported.

April 29, 2008

Russia is increasing the number of its troops near the region of Abkhazia amid simmering tensions between Russia and Georgia, the Defense Ministry announced Tuesday.

Georgians protest outside the Russian Embassy in Tbilisi on April 25, 2008.

A statement posted on the ministry’s Web site said the increase of what it called peacekeepers was in response to a Georgian troop buildup.

“Georgia is increasing its group of forces in close vicinity to the conflict zones,” and there have been “threats to use military force and provocations on behalf of Georgian authorities,” the statement said, according to a CNN translation.

July 4, 2008

Georgia and its breakaway region of South Ossetia offered differing accounts Friday of a shooting that highlights continued tension between them amid Georgia’s NATO ambitions.
South Ossetians stand in the street during a night of shelling in Tskhinvali.

South Ossetians stand in the street during a night of shelling in Tskhinvali.

South Ossetia said shootings Thursday night in the regional capital of Tskhinvali and surrounding areas killed two people and wounded 11 in what a South Ossetian government spokeswoman called a Georgian “military provocation,” according to a report on Russia’s state Interfax news agency.

A Georgian defense official, however, denied that Georgian troops even fired a shot, though they were fired upon, and said the incident is part of ongoing provocation by South Ossetian separatists.

August 2, 2008

Six people were killed and 13 wounded in the shelling of South Ossetia by Georgian forces, South Ossetian officials said Saturday, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.

Officials of the breakaway Georgian region said the shelling was part of a Georgian military operation, Interfax reported.

Georgia initially suggested Russian peacekeepers were to blame, drawing heated denials from the Russian Defense Ministry, which called the allegation “dirty informational provocation.”

Later, however, Mamuka Kurashvili, the commander of Georgian peacekeeping operations, told reporters that four people were wounded when several Georgian villages were fired upon from South Ossetia, and Georgia “had to return fire.”

August 7, 2008

Georgia’s president on Thursday ordered his country’s forces to cease fire in South Ossetia, the separatist region where days of sporadic clashes have raised fears of full-scale war.

President Mikhail Saakashvili announced the order in a television broadcast in which he also urged South Ossetian separatist leaders to enter talks on resolving the conflict.

He proposed that Russia could become a guarantor of wide-ranging autonomy for South Ossetia, if the region remains under Georgian control.

Russia has close ties with the separatist leadership, and Georgian officials have alleged that Moscow is provoking the recent clashes.

August 8, 2008

Intense fighting reportedly raged for a second night in the Georgian separatist region of South Ossetia on Saturday and Georgia’s interior ministry reported air attacks on three military bases and key facilities for shipping oil to the West.

Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said the Vaziani military base on the outskirts of the Georgian capital was bombed by warplanes during the night and that bombs fell in the area of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

He also said two other Georgian military bases were hit and that warplanes bombed the Black Sea port city of Poti, which has a sizable oil shipment facility.

Utiashvili said there apparently were significant casualties and damage in the attacks, but that further details would not be known until the morning.

Russia dispatched an armored column into South Ossetia on Friday after Georgia, a staunch U.S. ally, launched a surprise offensive to crush separatists. Witnesses said hundreds of civilians were killed.

August 9, 2008

Russian forces launched an airstrike against a military airfield near the Tbilisi International Airport early Sunday, despite international calls for Russia to stand down from the escalating conflict, Georgian officials told CNN.

The attack near the Georgian capital city came after a day of intense fighting in the former Soviet republic, with dozens of Russian warplanes bombing civilian and military targets in Georgia on Saturday.

As many as 2,000 people had been killed in the capital of separatist Georgian province South Ossetia, according to a Russian ambassador.

“The city of Tskhinvali no longer exists. There is nothing left. It was wiped out by the Georgian military,” the Russian news agency Interfax said, quoting the Russian ambassador to Georgia, Vyacheslav Kovalenko.

August 11, 2008

As fighting continued Sunday between Russia and Georgia over the separatist province of South Ossetia, U.N. officials expressed concern about violence in another Russian-backed breakaway territory in Georgia.

Forces of Abkhazia launched air and artillery strikes on Georgian troops Sunday, intending to drive them out of a small part of Abkhazia that the Georgians controlled, The Associated Press reported.

U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Edmond Mulet said Russian personnel and weapons were part of a military buildup in Abkhazia’s capital, Sukhumi. The Georgian government said 4,000 Russian troops have landed in Abkhazia, according to the AP.

Also Sunday, bombing was reported in the Georgian city of Zugdidi, south of the Abkhaz border, “causing panic among the civilian population,” Mulet said. Information on casualties and who was responsible for the bombing wasn’t available.

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The country is officially, largely cut in two.

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Sorry for my absenteeism on this, guys, but I’ve barely had the time to write on Registan.net about the war in Georgia (seriously, go there for some really in-depth discussions about what is going on), and have simply neglected copying posts over here. I’m sorry. Since I don’t have the time to follow the play-by-play very closely thanks to work, and since in my experience that doesn’t indicate much of use anyway, I’ll summarize my writing on the conflict so far.

For starters, this was a surprise to no one. Weeks before Saakashvili struck Tskhinvali, the South Ossetians were simultaneously shelling Georgian positions while using Russian transports to evacuate thousands of women and children for “summer camp” in North Ossetia right when Russia was massing troops across the border. Coupled with the years of Russian provocations in Abkhazia, including downing of Georgian drones by Russian aircraft, and the repeated military strikes by Russian helicopters on Georgian territory, it should surprise no one that Saakashvili finally reacted.

That being said, Saakashvili obviously miscalculated the extent to which he was being baited by Russia, and his normal brinksmanship sort of telegraphed that he would take decisive action at some point.

At the same time, the ultimate result of this fight will not be the annexation of Georgia by Russia, nor will it be an immediately dramatic reordering of the energy policies of the region. Russia will not touch the BTC pipeline, nor will it occupy Tblisi. They just want Saakashvili gone—the equivalent is how we used to view Fidel Castro… and if the opportunity presented itself we would have tried (and did several times) to kick him out of office without formally occupying the territory.

It is also important to note that Russia’s financial markets are not doing well right now. They have been steadily sinking since outright hostilities broke out, and they can be expected to sink further the longer conflict continues. So don’t expect anything long term from the Russian military—war is not as profitable for them as it is for us. If they do drag this war out much longer, they lose big time—financially, militarily, and internationally. Which they might do, because one should never underestimate Russian hubris.

Believe it or not, Russia actually is responsive to global opinion. Just not in the way we like to think. A key part of Russia’s geopolitical strategy is to breed European dependence on Russia energy, a goal they have largely achieved. At the same time, that isn’t permanent, and if Russia pushes too far Europe could panic, actually bother to come up with a unified energy policy, and diversify its supplies. Russia does not want that. But they do want to dictate terms along their southern flank.

Russia also has a compelling interest in preventing Georgian ascension into NATO. It has been interesting to see how much diplomatic activity has been in Brussels, rather than Tblisi, Tskhinvali, or Moscow. They are keenly aware of their audience here, and given the fact that they’ve made their point—NATO’s stipulation that Georgia solve its “frozen conflicts” is clearly still valid—they have little reason to occupy the capital and provoke a global response.

Questions remain. Did NATO’s stipulation, along with years of American support, funding, and supply, create the conditions for this war? Right now, it looks like it did (so what culpability does the West have?). Does this war conclusively prove that Russia is politically rotten, and that Medvedev is worse than a paper tiger since it’s all been about Putin? Quite possibly. Does this mean that Caspian energy will no longer flow according to Western interests? Almost definitely. Can this mean, since Russia stands a serious chance of overstepping its bounds and provoking a counter-movement from the international community, that the U.S. might in all of this emerge the actual winner? A remote possibility.

More ominously, what happens to Georgia? Saakashvili is finished, but there is no one to replace him. As the electoral crisis last year demonstrated, even when he voluntarily resigns and holds fair and open elections, he remains the only real leader the Georgians have. Alas, he is finished now. What, or more importantly who, comes next? It will almost certainly be one of the many opposition leaders, all of whom share varying degrees of warmth toward Russia. The winner of that political fight—which will be metaphorically if not physically bloody—will determine the ultimate result of this war. So in that sense, Russia is taking just as big a gamble here as Saakashvili did.

But basically, it is all very fluid, and there are too many variables to conclusively discuss what the war will really mean. Which is a cop-out in a way, but it is all one should feel comfortable saying.

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Russian West-Georgia attack expands. UN meets to fret again.

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It’s looking increasingly as if the alarmists were right and Russia intends to drop all pretense. Georgian troops are pulling back to Mtskheta to defend the approach to the capital, if Russia pushes to conquer and subjugate the entire country.

To call this country an outright menace to democracy and world peace, is to speak too kindly of it.

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As if the physical invasion of territory isn’t enough, it looks like it was preceded by a cyber-attack.

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Russia has invaded Western Georgia (proper) and captured Senaki, far from Abkhazia. It’s being billed by a Russian official as a preventive move against Georgian troop concentration. This being yet another new rationale invented on the fly to justify further incursion and murder. Remember when this was about South Ossetia peacekeeping?

For trivia, the military base at Senaki was where the 1998 mutiny against Eduard Shevardnadze was organized. Yesterday Wu Wei was amusingly speculating that he’d be dusted off by the Kremlin as Georgia’s eventual pro-Moscow puppet.

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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.

(more…)

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How much of the Georgia/South Ossetia/Russian conflict can be laid at the hands of a corrupt cabal of former soviet ministers bent on lining their own pockets? Perhaps a great deal.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has handed his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, a victory over the “siloviki” in Russia. And if Medvedev is able to take advantage of the fruits of this victory, the consequences will be significant not so much for Tbilisi as for Moscow.

So, why is this a victory over the siloviki — those in the Russian ruling elite with close ties to the state security organs? Because there is no way the regime in South Ossetia can be in any sense called “separatist.” Who there is a separatist? The head of the local KGB, Anatoly Baranov, used to head the Federal Security Service (FSB) in the Russian Republic of Mordovia. The head of the South Ossetian Interior Ministry, Mikhail Mindzayev, served in the Interior Ministry of Russia’s North Ossetia. The South Ossetian “defense minister,” Vasily Lunev, used to be military commissar in Perm Oblast, and the secretary of South Ossetia’s Security Council, Anatoly Barankevich, is a former deputy military commissar of Stavropol Krai. So who exactly is a separatist in this government? South Ossetian “prime minister” Yury Morozov?

However, alas, I also cannot say this regime is “pro-Russian.” On the contrary, all the recent actions of Eduard Kokoity, the leader of the breakaway South Ossetian government, have run counter to the interests of Russia in the Caucasus — beginning with his embarrassing Russia in the eyes of the international community and ending with his ratcheting up the tensions in the very region where Russia might begin to come undone. South Ossetia is not a territory, not a country, not a regime. It is a joint venture of siloviki generals and Ossetian bandits for making money in a conflict with Georgia. For me, the most surprising thing in this entire story is the complete lack of any strategic goals on the part of the South Ossetians.

[...]

Again — nothing that is going on in South Ossetia makes any sense from the point of view of strategy. It only makes sense as a means of making money. And we aren’t talking about small sums. Running a gas pipeline through the mountains from Russia — a precaution in case Georgia decides to cut off the 70,000 residents — cost $570 million. And then there is the secret budget Russia has allotted for the struggle — estimated at somewhere around $800 million. And don’t forget the pensions and wages for state-sector workers, who officially number some 80,000 but whose actual numbers are not more than 30,000.

Yulia Latynina lays out a convincing case that this war is not about ethnic tensions, nor about Russian power plays, but instead about the soliviki creating the tensions necessary to loosen the Kremlin’s purse strings. Towards that end, Kokoity is using the PLO playbook:

Whenever someone starts telling us about shelling in Tskhinvali, it is important to keep in mind exactly what Tskhinvali is. It is not a city somewhere in the middle of a republic that is being fired upon by saboteurs. On three sides, Tskhinvali is surrounded by Georgian villages. The edge of Tskhinvali is a military outpost. South Ossetian forces fire from there into the Georgian villages, and the Georgians respond with fire of their own. To help keep Georgian fire from hitting civilians in the city, all the South Ossetians would have to do is move their military base forward a couple hundred meters.

But, of course, it is a fundamental principle of terrorists the world over — set up firing points in civilian areas and then when your enemy fires on you, you gleefully parade the bodies of your own children in front of the television cameras. Kokoity’s terrorists are following this same principle. If South Ossetia can in any way be considered a state, it must be considered a terrorist state.

When we are told about “peaceful civilians” in South Ossetia, we must keep in mind that the situation there is similar to that in Palestinian refugee camps. South Ossetia, like the Palestinian Liberation Organization before it, is not a state or an ethos or a territory. It is a peculiar form of mutated government in which residents have been turned into militarized refugees. It is a quasi-armed force that is not allowed by the authorities to occupy itself with anything other than war — a situation that gives the authorities absolute power and absolute control over the money at its disposal. It is a place where the hysteria of this disfigured population is the primary means of filling the authorities’ personal coffers.

Without endorsing Ms. Latynina’s views, I have to admit that they are quite compelling, and that a lot of it makes logical sense.

[HT: Joshua Foust]

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Joshua hasn’t disappeared, he just isn’t gracing us with his opinions on the conflict in the Caucasus, but you can find them at Registan.net, here and here.

Heh, Insty links to him, but describes it as peevish (Josh? Peevish? Also, by linking to him kind of undercuts Josh’s complaint.) Great surprise, but Joshua makes a few good points about Russia having pushed the action using mischief in Ossetia to set off Georgia.

Outside of being unfairly peevish about people searching for information, and providing some links of use (as has Lee) I would caution Josh on this:

the plain old wrong (Russia wants to annex Georgia)

Maybe not, but I am not so sure given the behavior of Russia since Josh wrote his last post on this.

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Zbigniew Brzezinski strikes a note from our discussion on tonights podcast and compares the invasion of Georgia with Stalin’s assault on Finland. If Georgia can hold up the military end of that analogy it would be quite impressive. I am not holding my breath.

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