Meanwhile, over in Georgia

I'm no apologist for Russia, but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems to me that Georgia struck first. Given that Russia has extended citizenship to most of South Ossetia, I'd imagine they see themselves as legally obliged to defend the area. (Whether or not that's also a handy prextext in realpolitik terms is, of course, another thing entirely.)

Georgian Foreign Ministry website's been amusingly hacked: http://www.mfa.gov.ge

A terrible situation, but not all surprising ... on the upside, for the West it is useful as it bodes well for perhaps strengthening or locking down HEU. Georgia has always been the weakest link in nuclear proliferation due to geography and political climate (i.e. Georgia currently is a 2.x on CPI) and both the United States and Russia have been at loss about what to due about the northern border (including South Ossetia), so in the least it offers a opportunity for greater global security if annexation occurs.

I don’t want to say too much (to save myself from looking like an ass) but while contemporary politics would suggest this is about annexation I believe this is political maneuvering on Russia’s part to put Saakashvili in the spotlight (which is obviously not in his best interest). It should be said, Saakashvili has fewer friends in the West than Putin and if an overthrow is intended this was the way to do it (at least from a strategic POV).

I live in georegia but i dont see rusia no where not even sound but they says theres tanks should i be worrie

"Nø need to fear the Russians. The Havarti Quesadilla Revolutionary Årmy is the real menace. The south will be reclaimed. Long live the Dano-Mex revølution. Long Live Knud Gonzales, the river to his people."

haha jon

might be a troll but stil a+

might be a troll

You think?

yeah, bad behavior all around. timing it during the Olympics is such a classic shitbag move ("no one's looking! let's kill some people!")

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 8 August 2008 18:54 (2 hours ago) Link

It's never a good time.

Quite a good article in tomorrow's Times. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that this is the big one.

I was in Georgia a month ago and read about the South Ossetia / Abkhazia situations. I remember thinking to myself "see, there are always a million potential flashpoints that seem really serious but never really go off" and smugly imagined myself as thinking like a seasoned diplomat.

Oops.

Richard Holbrooke, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, said that Russia’s aims in the escalating conflict were clear. “They have two goals,” he said. “To do a creeping annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and, secondly, to overthrow Saakashvili, who is a tremendous thorn in their side.”

this is fucking awful.

and it can grow worse still, much worse...

...and not only in georgia.

Good article by Edward Lucas there

I'll tell you what I find weird - the hordes of readers' comments that pour in under any article even mildly critical of Russia or the causes that the Russian government supports. Assuming these aren't all written from the Kremlin (and that's quite a big assumption), it's striking how they uniformly take the party line. Russian people seem to think of their government not like we relate to ours, but rather like we support our national football teams. Putin is Wayne Rooney in an England shirt.

1,500 Reported Killed in Georgia Battle

- and attacks might increase today. This is fucked up.

this:
"But on top of that is a vital Western interest. The biggest threat Russia poses to Europe is the Kremlin's monopoly on energy export routes to the West from the former Soviet Union. The one breach in that is the oil and gas pipeline that leads from energy-rich Azerbaijan to Turkey, across Georgia. If Georgia falls, Europe's hopes of energy independence from Russia fall too."

Michael Klare is surely biting his nails.

http://www.doubledogmusic.com/images/2005/AzPipeMap.gif

That BTC pipeline bordering Georgia could end up costing thousands of lives to protect.

I am just sharing this from somewhere else because I think it's notable: Tom Clancy actually almost got this right with the PC game Ghost Recon (the Original). Here is a quick Synopsis:

Ghost Recon begins in 2008, with civil unrest in Russia. Ultra-nationalists have seized power in Russia, with plans to rebuild the government. Their first step is clandestine support of rebel factions in Georgia and the Baltic States. This is where the Ghosts come in: to silence the invasion. Armed with some of the most advanced weaponry in the world, the soldiers of the Ghost Recon force are covertly inserted into area of operations and given specific missions to curtail the rebel actions and overthrow their benefactors.

Someone call the green berets quick, Tom Clancy needs them!

Analysis that correctly identifies Georgia's president as the initiator and aggressor in all this, other media outlets be damned (though MSNBC'S pithy, 7-word "Russia retaliates as Georgia attacks breakaway province" scrolling on the screen should be highly commended)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/08/russia.georgia1

Tom de Waal, of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and an expert on the region, said: "Clearly there have been incidents on both sides, but this is obviously a planned Georgian operation, a contingency plan they have had for some time, to retake [the South Ossetian capital] Tskhinvali.

"Possibly the Georgians calculated that, with Putin in Beijing, they could recapture the capital in two days and then defend it over the next two months, because the Russians won't take this lying down."

If Georgia calculated that Russia would be inhibited by Putin's presence at the Olympics, that soon backfired.

Mr Saakashvili, the Georgian president, was launching into a long rant - running 7 minutes overtime until 9:07 AM PST - on CNN just recently. Talking about Russian genocide, talking about how they had planned this by amassing troops on the border for months (troops Putin calls "peacekeepers"_)...hm. Poor TJ or whats-anchor's-name had to apologize to Frederika for stepping onto her airtime

"Russia attacks after Georgia attacks breakaway province of Georgia" might be better

Perhaps but the problem is South Ossetians surely don't consider themselves a "province of Georgia," they want to unite with North Ossetia

I can't remember whether Russia applied similar logic to Chechnya

I can't comment whether the Ossetian situation is similar to Chechnya's and I surely do not support the Russian stance regarding the latter.

And yes, Russian immigrants frequently populate non-Russian former areas of the USSR, and subsequently try to use the pretext of "supporting Russian minorities" in their aggression afterwards.

And yes, as mentioned elsewhere (notably here http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0809/p25s28-woeu.html) perhaps this is further proof that Russia is violently reacting to Georgia's implicit decision to join NATO, and it was timed with that in mind (to the chagrin of the United States, especially with its concern for the energy supplies in that region).

B-b-but you still can't deny the fact that the Georgian leader miscalculated here in his decision to attack the separatist forces at Tskhinvali. I don't know if an analogy to Chechnya is therefore even accurate or an oversimplification

I should rather say Georgia's *desire* to join NATO, not decision, since it of course hasn't happened (yet?)

Ever? is a better question now

I don't think it's like Chechnya really, I was just making an oblique point. Namely that the argument in Russia seems to be that what happened in Kosovo justifies division of countries with an identifiable Russian minority - but it's inconceivable that Russia could be divided in the same way. Not many people argue for uniting the Ossetians under Georgian sovereignty.

Whether or not it was wise for Georgia to attack now is another question. It appears not. However, there isn't much doubt that the separatists are funded and encouraged by Russia, and that they have been attacking the rest of Georgia recently. So what are they supposed to do, just wait and hope it gets better?

These are all questions that go back to 1992 (when the uneasy peace between the Ossetians and Georgians was first regulated by "Russian peacekeepers,") from my understanding, and there do not seem to be any easy answers

Yet what makes it more problematic now is the factor of those pipelines in the region. Just what we needed in this era of oil speculation

There's no possible justification for Russia to go anywhere near that pipeline.

Also most troubling is how Georgia is just one hop-skip-jump nation (Armenia or Azerbaijan, take your pick) over from Iran, and the non-covert, growing Russian/Iranian relationship in direct opposition to the West (despite all the surface talk of supporting sanctions). Is this all some sort of proxy war playing out (in addition to the ethnic issues at hand) in regards to preemptively preventing the expansion of NATO and a US invasion of Iran? If this gets worse, now would he perfect time to enforce the stranglehold on oil these two have over the West, and witness direct financial turmoil on our end. Yet I don't think that necessarily serves anyone's interests at this moment, despite how Iran has repeatedly gone on record saying they'd like their new oil bourse to weaken the dollar

It seems like a lot of mental chess is being played out, and the timing of this is too bad to be true.

Oh well, maybe we should all turn to Ghost Recon for some insight

Just to lighten the mood, but gazing up there - THIS is my favorite sentence in this thread. Maybe any thread. When you find that quarter under the dust and hair wedged in the cushions of your sofa, please use it to buy a clue if you haven't earmarked it for the pizza guy.

Georgia pulls out. Seems like the best that can be hoped for in the circumstances (if Russia stops as well). Wildly different casualty figures too.

cheney says russian aggression "will not go unanswered" wtf does that mean? is the us really gearing up for military conflict with russia?

It means "strongly worded letter to follow."

seriously tho, shit is scary.

anyone really think the us is going to get involved militarily?

after hearing bush talk about it, not really. seems like the most they're gonna do is help georgian troops get back home from iraq to help out.

The U.S. can't get involved militarily with Russia, not that it would be advisable in any form. The logistics of our troops in Iraq+Afghanistan are hardly sustainable as is.

god, i hope so.

So as the situation worsens with fighting spreading to Abkhazia and Russia's naval presence storms the Black Sea... at the Security Council mtg Russia was launches into a litany of grievances held over from the past 4-6 years against the US when told it must pull out immediately.

Fucking great. Thanks for setting the precedent Cheney.

Isn't this also what this admin was warned against regarding preemption in 2002?

http://www.rferl.org/content/Heated_Words_But_No_Action_On_UN_Security_Council/1189975.html

Khalilzad's angered Russian counterpart, Vitaly Churkin, fired back that accusing Russia of terrorizing the civil population is "absolutely unacceptable."

"Now, let me say about Mr. Khalilzad's statement regarding 'terror' against the civil population," he began. "Such a statement, honorable Mr. Khalilzad, is absolutely unacceptable; moreover when it comes from a representative of a country whose actions with regard to the civil population are well known in Iraq, in Afghanistan, even in Serbia."

They can - and will - use Iraq to justify anything.

Georgia's hopes of joining NATO are comatose; its sovereignty on life support

Sorry for lack of editing in that post and all my posts for the last 7 years; pulling an all-nighter again here, and don't care to self-edit. Oh, ILX, how I explain myself to thee

>>anyone really think the us is going to get involved militarily?

-- jeremy waters, Sunday, August 10, 2008 9:04 PM<<

No but considering McCain was saying talking about expelling Russia from G8 *last* week this whole thing couldn't get more serious on a diplomatic front.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-07-29-voa68.cfm

Richardson calling McCain out yesterday lol - http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=66226§ionid=3510203

Good commentary from Moscow Times:

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1016/42/369524.htm

The G8 expulsion could once again divide the world order into pro-U.S. and pro-Russian domains. The world's rogue states would eagerly join a pro-Moscow bloc, and this would make it difficult for the United States to fulfill its key foreign policy objectives. At a time when Washington intends to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, secure loose nuclear materials, stabilize Iraq and achieve resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it cannot afford to instigate a Cold Peace in U.S.-Russian relations.

Hell, even quintessential hawk Bolton opposed McCain's expulsion idea - as of last week :
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/07/29/john-bolton-questions-mccains-foreign-policy-proposals/?mod=googlenews_wsj

Been trying to think who Saakashvili reminds me of, I think it's Rupert Pupkin in "The King of Comedy".

^

The totally underrated Institute for War and Peace Reporting has had reporters in the Caucasus writing regularly for the past several years -

http://www.iwpr.net/?p=crs&s=p&o=-&apc_state=henh

I've been quite surprised by how one-sided the reporting of this conflict has been on the Beeb and elsewhere

But all down to rolling news tho, innit? We have film and lots of juicy photos of Georgian civilians suffering and dying in Gori but we don't have anything from South Ossetia; we have the Georgian President, who speaks good English and likes to put on a performance for the cameras while the Russians aren't saying much and they're all a bit faceless and grey anyway.

HappeningNow: #Tbilisi’s main avenue is packed with tens of thousands of people protesting against the #RussianLaw.
People keep coming irrespective of tear gas and rubber bullets.#NoToOligarch #Ivanishvili pic.twitter.com/MPghQQKdQS

— Giorgi Oniani (@OnianiG) May 1, 2024

This is Tbilisi. Heart of Europe. 10:25 pic.twitter.com/vciUS2gyeq

— Nodar Rukhadze (@xonoda) May 2, 2024

A lot of conflicting reports on just how big these crowds are but certainly appear to be growing

Fascinating to see!

Yeah, good for them... hope it's not another Belarus situation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5lEcJCJec0

Further footage here

Yeah, good for them... hope it's not another Belarus situation

Has something of a Maidan feel, with the arrival of Titushky as well, though so far small in number

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB1S7d91fLk

Starting to look like Maidan

Chichinadze street side of the parliament right now. Police pushed people here and stopped for now. pic.twitter.com/bRJ853bcKk

— Mariam Nikuradze (@mari_nikuradze) May 13, 2024

What foreigners and the Vake/youth liberal bubble needs to understand is this:

YES. Most (but not all) of the country is on their side on the Russian law

YES. 80%+ are pro-EU

YES. Almost everyone hates Russia

BUT....🧵 https://t.co/2Zb6PqIqYO

— Alex Scrivener - ალეკო სკრივენერი (@alscriv) May 17, 2024

Not exactly a counter-argument as such, but could be a broader picture on where the Georgian public as a whole is right, now. b

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GOW5WWaXUAIWbxJ?format=jpg&name=large

not backing down