[Peace-discuss] Geopolitical machinations

[C. G. Estabrook]

I think there are problems with this account. Some comments:


[1] "Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, on 7 August, invaded the tiny
breakaway province of South Ossetia. The initial attack on the South Ossetian
capital, Tskninvali, soon extended to an all out war, which eventually invited
Russia's wrath, and the death of thousands of innocent civilians on both sides."

Baroud's right to begin with the fact that the proximate cause was an attack on
civilians ordered by the half-mad president of Georgia, but he's entirely too
even-handed.  Georgia attacked civilians with rockets, artillery and ground
troops; the Russians seem to have been careful to attack the Georgian military,
in spite of what the USG and media said.


[2] "Prior to Saakashvili's war, *little was known* about the political
specifics of that area and the brewing decades-long territorial disputes which
date back to the early 20th century..."

Some people knew them, because in fact the Georgian/Ossetian animosity is much
older.  The Financial Times wrote, "Hostility between Ossetians and Georgians
stretches back at least as far as 1839 when Mikhail Lermontov, wrote 'Demon', a
poem about the enmities that pervade life in the high mountains of the Caucasus. 
When a Georgian prince was ambushed on his way to his wedding, 'the wicked
bullet of the Ossetian / found him in the darkness', Lermontov wrote."  The FT
points out, "Ossetia was independent of Georgia but was absorbed into the
Russian empire with Georgia, in 1801."


[3] "The small region of South Ossetia [is] majority ethnic Russians and
minority Georgians..."

That's just wrong, and importantly wrong.  Only about 2% of the population of
South Ossetia is ethnic Russian.  Ossetians are a different people from
Georgians and Russians -- they speak a different language (a dialect of Farsi). 
South Ossetia has about the population of Champaign-Urbana -- but two-thirds is
Ossetian and less than a third Georgian.  Baroud may have been misled because
about 70% of South Ossetians have Russian citizenship, as a result of the
resistance to Georgia and Russia's peace-keeping role.


[4] "The fact that South Ossetia belongs to Georgia was hardly contested."

Nonsense. "When the Soviet republic of Georgia was formed, following the
revolution of 1917, the southern part of Ossetia became part of it. North
Ossetia stayed in Russia. As the USSR collapsed in 1991, South Ossetians moved
to reclaim their independence from Georgia and, aided by Moscow, fought a brief
civil war, broke away and began running their own affairs ... For the 12 years
following the civil war an uneasy truce reigned between Tbilisi and the
breakaway capital in Tskhinvali" [again, the FT].


[5] "Since the collapse of the Soviet Union ... the US and NATO expanded their
boundaries of influence and territorial outreach, while Russia struggled to
maintain a level of influence and halt the encroachment of the US-led NATO."

In fact, the US promised not to expand NATO into E. Europe at the time of the
unification of Germany, a promise which the Clinton administration spectacularly
broke while trying to reduce Russia to a Third World country in the Yeltsin years.


[6] "By embarking on a war against a tiny province, because, as he claimed, he
ran out of patience, Saakashvili was following a script that was hardly of his
own writing."

Nonsense again. Saakashvili believed that all the US and Israeli money and
munitions presaged US support for solving his political problems by force, when
the US was just staffing part of its general Middle East policy: South Ossetia
is not needed for the pipelines that the Clinton administration arranged for
Georgia to build.


[7] "The logic behind the war was to test Russia's resolve..."

That's just silly.  The US and Saakashvili had rational if vicious -- but
different -- political goals. Saakashvili wanted to subdue a province in revolt
with the strong arm tactics that even the US State Department admits he used
against his domestic opposition; the US wanted to advance its constant policy of
control of ME energy resources -- in this case from the region of the Caspian Sea.


[8] "It's rather interesting how a controversial and unpopular plan that has
raised the ire of the Polish people -- 70 per cent of the country is against it
-- was overcome within days of war ... Now Poland is all for it. It return,
Poland would receive US assistance in overhauling its military, reminiscent of
the Israeli-US efforts in aiding Georgia's military, which emboldened the latter
to pursue war with Russia."

The Polish government was not scared into acquiescence by the war: Washington
sweetened the deal!  Both the USG & the Polish government knew they could use
the Russian action as a propaganda cover for a more cynical arrangement.  The
Polish government may have thought that propaganda useful against its domestic
opposition -- but I bet a majority of Poles are still against it.


[9] "...the US will do its utmost to maintain a level of tension, if not
hostilities in the region, for without it neither a missile shield nor the 270
billion barrels of oil in the Caspian basin can be brought within Washington's
reach."

He ends well. --CGE


Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> Interesting analysis of the Georgia/Ruassian/USA conflict.
> 
> *The Saakashvili Experiment* August 23, 2008
> 
> By Ramzy Baroud
> 
> 
> Ramzy Baroud's ZSpace Page 
> <http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/ramzybaroud>
> 
> Join ZSpace <https://www.zcommunications.org/zsustainers/signup>
> 
> ...