Meanwhile, over in Georgia

I spent most of yesterday telling people here (Moscow) that I found it absolutely unimaginable that what everyone here believes -- that Saakashvili would've never ordered an attack without the full and explicit support of Washington -- was simply unimaginable. That Bush, given everything else he has going on in the world, plus his abysmal approval ratings, would approve military action by an unstable government in a tiny country that would be *guaranteed* to enrage the Kremlin (and, in the height of bad taste, do it just as the Olympics were beginning). No sale.

The front page article on one of the business papers here yesterday called on the government to raze Georgia's infrastructure and throw the country into chaos, otherwise the world community would never give Russia the respect it deserves (and virtually in that language). Admittedly you didn't read that everywhere, but that's a publication focused on business news.

From the beloved Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...easefire.html#

One pro-government tabloid, Tvoi Den, claimed that President Saakashvili made a suicide attempt because he realised the war was lost.

'His bodyguard knocked the gun out of his hand at the very last moment,' said the paper, which also claimed the 40-yearold president was mentally ill and spiced its report with lurid allegations about his sex life.

Thanks for committing nationalistic suicide first! If the Larson post that Belgravia linked to is accurate - most def. worth reading here - http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/08/09/georgia-and-russia/ - then Mr. Saakashvili has been anticipating this for a hell of a long time:

Soon after taking office, he succeeded in regaining Georgian control over the southwestern province of Ajara. Then, in the summer of 2004, citing growing banditry and chaos, he sent Interior Ministry troops into South Ossetia. After a series of inconclusive clashes, the troops were forced to make a humiliating withdrawal.

Not to mention the April 21st phone call Belgravia claims in which Putin explicitly warned Saaky to knock it off or else. I can't sympathize much for Saaky or his WSJ op-eds asking for Western intervention now - only with the Georgian people

Unless, of course, the rumors of an American bait-&-switch re: NATO are actually true. Then I can sympathize with Saaky. Still not advisable to go around kicking waking bears though, is it?

That Belgravia post again, which is excellent: http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/2008/08/georgia_on_my_mind.html

Man, I just hope we're not in the early days of some Threads-like situation.

From the Greenwald inteview with Charles King to which I linked above:

GG: One of the things that's a little difficult to understand is this idea that Georgia miscalculated what would be Russia's response. I mean, hasn't Russia been fairly unequivocal in the past, including the recent past, about that fact that they did intend to defend those provinces from incursions by Georgia, or an attempt to sort of take away their semi-autonomous status. It is really a surprise that Russia reacted the way that it did?

CK: Well, it's not a terrible surprise, but I think you also have to look at things from the Georgian perspective. Over the last several years, Georgia has become increasingly convinced that it's a real partner of the United States, that the US would defend Georgia - practically regardless of what Georgia did - that Georgia was simply reasserting control over bits of territory that are still internationally recognized as Georgia's own.
--------------------

Given the US's precarious condition militarily - where we're occupying two countries, fighting two wars - versus Russia's strength, and then you look at the aspect of soft power or moral credibility, there's that exchange in the UN where the US ambassador to the UN said that Russia had intended 'regime change' in Georgia, to which the Russian ambassador replied that that was an American concept, obviously referencing Iraq. Even if the US were inclined to do more, and Georgia's expectations of what we would do had been accurate, what would really our options be to intervene in any meaningful way in this conflict in a way that would influence Russia?

CK: Well, it would be absolutely impossible, I think. A great deal at this stage, in strict technical terms, not to mention the possibility of escalating what is really a very, a rather small and localized, however tragic, conflict into a confrontation between two major world nuclear powers. I mean, one can't imagine that scenario unless Russia pushes things much farther forward. I do think at the stage the ball is really in Russia's court.

From the US perspective, this is of course an illegal operation, it wasn't sanctioned by the United Nations, it doesn't fall under any kind of UN Security Council mandate, but so far, in fact the Russians have exercised a degree of restraint - that is to say, you haven't see, at least as of this morning, bombing of major Georgian cities. A few pieces of munitions seem to have gone astray, the city of Gori was hit, there may be some indications the city of Zugdidi, which is near the border with another secessionist entity, may have been hit. But these are cities are very near the zone of conflict.

yeah we don't have much of a leg to stand on here. Thanks, dubya.

administration is said to have given tacit support for a Georgian assault on South Ossetia in the believe that the territory could be recaptured within 48 hours.

i have no idea if that's true, but it would obviously fit the bush administration pattern: giving thumbs-up to israel to go into lebanon, encouraging abbas to crack down on hamas. the fact that these things keep turning out badly doesn't seem to prevent the next one from being tried. (it's like they've absorbed the seinfeld mantra: no learning!)

and of course, everybody is always hitler. you'd think if you were looking for a historical analogy to russia invading georgia you'd start with russia invading georgia. but hitler's more fun. appeasing appeasers and the appeasers who appease them.

nobody gives a crap about background or context.

Speak for yourself.

I'm speaking for the 99.9% of the people who watch CNN or BBC who have very little interest in hearing about anything other than the body count. (I am in the other 0.1%, or couldn't you tell)

It's fairly obvious why the news coverage is one-sided -- Combatant A kills more people than Combatant B, so cue pictures of dead bodies and accusations of a "disproportionate response" (the catchphrase that gets trotted out in all the armed conflicts these days) on the part of Combatant A. I'm not taking sides here or saying that the fighting is justified, but picking sides solely based on the body count is stupid and meaningless. But of course, if news broadcasts aren't going to bother with background and context, then there's not much else to go on when they decide to pick sides.

From the two-part dealbreaker link above:

13. Since Americans of all political stripes like to think of themselves as the center of the world, is this something Bush caused?
"Amazingly, it isn't. How nice to be able to blame Stalin instead of Bush for once!"

Worth bearing in mind. Saakashvili shouldn't have been expecting the western cavalry to ride to the rescue:
1. There was no US fleet stationed off the Georgian coast
2. The US army is otherwise engaged in Iraq and elsewhere
3. It's the Russkis, for goodness' sake
No, it was a gamble on a quick knockout blow, with a backup of swift withdrawal to the moral high ground. So far, all going to plan (plan B, anyway)

The leftish parts of the UK press are as usual disgracing themselves by pinning all the blame on Bush/the West. Honestly, that 'me, me, me' attitude bugs me beyond belief. I'm embarrassed by these people - it's one of the most racist things I can think of, to always deny other people the right to be autonomous actors.

which is the most up to date news source online that people are using? reuters? the poxy guardian seems to only want to update itself once every 5 hours while bbc news seems more concerned with the olympics.

I'm speaking for the 99.9% of the people who watch CNN or BBC who have very little interest in hearing about anything other than the body count. (I am in the other 0.1%, or couldn't you tell)

please go fuck yourself into a flooded ditch and lie there for a week or two.

I know I work with a bunch of exceptionally BRAINY UPPER CRUST high school graduates and such but when the dallas cowboys fan from gettysburg pennsylvania next to me schools me on a nation's natural resources I have a sneaky suspicion that for once in the history of man your really lovely assumptions about what the rest of a language's speakers know and care about might be a little bit, ahem, OFF

which is the most up to date news source online that people are using? reuters? the poxy guardian seems to only want to update itself once every 5 hours while bbc news seems more concerned with the olympics.

This throws up good links every so often.

danger room over @ wired is doing a bang-up job, and balloon juice has some good commentary (for us idiots who don't care about anything besides tv dinners and ufc pay-per-view)

Somebody in Georgia has to get hold of Saakashvili and stop him appearing on television every five minutes, he appears to have lost his marbles. I got in late last night to see Saakashvili, the president of a sovereign state, sitting in what appeared to be storage room, with some minor BBC guy, stabbing at a tiny map of Georgia with a fountain pen while rambling away some nonsense that contradicted what he'd just said half-an-hour earlier.

5 minutes later, switch over to Sky and who do I see but Saakashvili again, talking to some slip of a girl who'd obv. never interviewed anyone more important than a member of some boyband on the red carpet outside a film premiere in Leicester Square

yes, somebody tell the leader of a tiny, war-torn and apparently all of a sudden completely insignificant state (lol oil pipelines amirite) he needs to behave himself on british television

PS fuck putin btw I hope castro outlives him

Pupkin vs. Putin fite

finally get some good links and the whole thing suddenly finishes.

thanks for the links though chaps.

Wow, Tom, you have smart co-workers, give yourself a pat on the back. Of course that has nothing to do with the point I made, which (rephased) is this: the news broadcasts would show something other than explosions and body counts if that's what a majority of their viewership wanted to see. Which is why everyone is going out of their way on this thread to link to commentaries and reports that go beyond the basic "X number of people have died, fighting is bad" three-minute nuggets wedged between updates on the Olympics.

that's a criticism of network news, then, and not the general populace, where the comment you made is pretty explicitly against the general populace, as opposed to you, possibly the seventeenth smartest man alive

I mean if you're going to belong to some elite hundred thousandth of the public you might as well think a little about how you phrase things

Last I checked, the general populace are the people who watch the network news. If more people had the tolerance or the desire to hear something more than the most superficial coverage of a conflict like this, then that's what TV would provide them with.

ok well whatever I said ten minutes before whatever you said, I'm right and you're a prick

I mean, the difference between Saakashvili and Putin/Medvedev (generalizing again) is that Saakashvili knows that impassioned pleas for peace and justice are what flies on Western TV, and that many people will be quick to dismiss his own wrongs (or not even bother to consider them) if they could only catch a glimpse of him on TV and see what a swell guy he is. Putin couldn't give a flying fuck about any of that.

I'm speaking for the 99.9% of the people who watch CNN or BBC who have very little interest in hearing about anything other than the body count.

I know you are! Stop it!

By the way, the idea that television is some kind of accurate reflection of the totality of a nation's desires for entertainment and information has been disproven over and over.

Heh! I've just spent half an hour typing a very long email to a pal setting out how I think this whole thing will pan out (regime change and a proxy russian finger hovering over the pipeline tap, I can exclusively reveal), then I refresh here and find that, uh, I got it a bit wrong. Thankfully I concluded with that Churchill quote about 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma'

Note to self: always caveat everything (if appropriate)

Well to be fair that could still happen. Russia doesn't mind playing a long game.

Russia says it's concluded operations:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7555858.stm

but Lavrov is calling on Saakashvili to step down, among other things

The Russian airforce attacked a key oil pipeline running through Georgia on Tuesday but there was no word yet on whether it had been damaged, the secretary of Georgia's National Security Council told AFP.

"Russians bombed the BTC pipeline south of the city of Rustavi," said Alexander Lomaia.

"We don't know yet whether it was damaged. It's a second attempt to bomb this pipeline since August 10."

A spokesman for British energy giant BP, which operates the pipeline, said the company was unaware that it had been attacked.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jkO1FVRBFvudN6Oll6x_LRTRQ3LQ

but Lavrov is calling on Saakashvili to step down, among other things

That's hardly surprising. The Georgians do seem to be telling an awful lot of porkies.

If Georgian politics were anything like ours, it'd be hard to see Saakashvili not stepping down, given that it was his outrageous gamble that failed so quickly and so spectacularly. But it's not Lavrov's call to make

The point of view here (Moscow) is that this was all an elaborate gamble by Washington.

1. The Russian response to Georgia's actions was 100% certain.
2. Saakashvili would never have provoked Russia to that extent without, at the very least, the explicit agreement from someone in Washington.
3. Given the way the situation exploded, one side or the other must now "win" - there will be no settling back into the stalemate we've seen for the last 12 (?) years.
4. Georgia, and now probably most of the West, will insist on UN/EU/NATO peacekeepers replacing Russian ones as part of any peace settlement.
5. This means that Russian troops will leave South Ossetia, which will ultimately be seen as a defeat. And Saakashvili's real objective was to get the Russian troops out, anyway.
6. Washington wins because Russia "loses," although one consequence may very well be that Saakhashvili loses US support somewhere down the road (covert trade-off to Russia for leaving South Ossetia).

I don't think we'll be seeing Georgia in NATO or the EU any time soon

Esp. not if Saakashvili is still in charge

Eh, that was totally unrealistic even before this

Was it?

I think so. Georgia has a history of political instability, sits in the middle of a flashpoint with ties into Russia's own Caucasus issues. Far too much of an obligation for NATO to take on.

I think Saakashvili can stop constantly being photographed in front of the Georgian and EU flags because that's not going to work either.

So I guess the Russians basically made Sarkozy look like a dope for flying all the way to Moscow only to have the war end just a few minutes before he arrived? Of course, that's exactly how Russia wanted it -- "thanks but no thanks, we've got our business under control and we don't particularly need your input."

Anything that makes Sarkozy look like a dope is fine by me

anyone post Fred Kaplan's article?

The second half of the article is good, but I don't like this:

It's heartbreaking, but even more infuriating, to read so many Georgians quoted in the New York Times—officials, soldiers, and citizens—wondering when the United States is coming to their rescue. It's infuriating because it's clear that Bush did everything to encourage them to believe that he would

No it's not, it's infuriating because it paints the Georgians as naive, vulnerable idiots. I don't for a minute think they were banking on the Americans wading in - they were banking on making the Russians retreat with one blow - but if they were, they had no grounds to do so. Grounds for believing Bush wishes them well and will support them to an extent, but come on

I wish I shared your certainty that Sakaashvili is not an idiot

The eXile has it's own take

Saakashvili just didn’t think it through. One reason he overplayed his hand is that he got lucky the last time he had to deal with a breakaway region: Ajara, a tiny little strip of Black Sea coast in southern Georgia. This is a place smaller than some incorporated Central Valley towns, but it declared itself an “autonomous” republic, preserving its sacred basket-weaving traditions or whatever. You just have to accept that people in the Caucasus are insane that way; they’d die to keep from saying hello to the people over the next hill, and they’re never going to change. The Ajarans aren’t even ethnically different from Georgians; they’re Georgian too. But they’re Muslims, which means they have to have their own Lego parliament and Tonka-Toy army and all the rest of that Victorian crap, and their leader, a wack job named Abashidze (Goddamn Georgian names!) volunteered them to fight to the death for their worthless independence. Except he was such a nut, and so corrupt, and the Ajarans were so similar to the Georgians, and their little “country” was so tiny and ridiculous, that for once sanity prevailed and the Ajarans refused to fight, let themselves get reabsorbed by that Colussus to the North, mighty Georgia.

Well, like I’ve said before, there’s nothing as dangerous as victory. Makes people crazy. Saakashvili started thinking he could gobble up any secessionist region—like, say, South Ossetia. But there are big differences he was forgetting—like the fact that South Ossetia isn’t Georgian, has a border with Russia, and is linked up with North Ossetia just across that border. The road from Russia to South Ossetia is pretty fragile as a line of supply; it goes through the Roki Tunnel, a mountain tunnel at an altitude of 10,000 feet. I have to wonder why the Georgian air force—and it’s a good one by all accounts—didn’t have as its first mission in the war the total zapping of the South Ossetian exit of that tunnel. Or if you don’t trust the flyboys, send in your special forces with a few backpacks full of HE. There are a lot of ways to cripple a tunnel. Hell, do it low-tech: drive a fuel truck in there, with a car following, jackknife the truck halfway through with a remote control or timing fuse—truck driver gets out and strolls to the car, one fast U-turn and you’re out and back in Georgia, just in time to see a ball of flame erupt from the tunnel exit. And rebuilding a tunnel way up in the mountains is not an easy or a fast job. Sure, the Russians could resupply by air, but that’s a much, much tougher job and would at least slow down the inevitable. Weird, then, that as far as I know the Georgians didn’t even try to blast that tunnel. I don’t go in for this kind of long-distance micromanaging of warfare, because there’s usually a good reason on the ground for tactical decisions; it’s the strategic decisions that are really crazy most of the time. But this one I just don’t get.

Sure, the Russians could resupply by air, but that’s a much, much tougher job and would at least slow down the inevitable.

Even if Georgia had intended for this to blossom into war between Russia and Georgia, which I doubt, I don't think it would have been in their interest to prolong the conflict once it started.

perhaps Sarko's flying to Russia caused them to hold up a bit?

Saakashvili would never have provoked Russia to that extent without, at the very least, the explicit agreement from someone in Washington.

o rly?