[Peace-discuss] The Georgia conflict

Wed Sep 3 18:57:09 CDT 2008

The New York Times, in its reporting today, seems to think that it
might be a very bad idea for the US to re-arm Georgia:
----
Just weeks after Georgia's military collapsed in panic in the face of the
Russian Army, its leaders hope to rebuild and train its armed forces as if
another war with Russia is almost inevitable. Georgia is already drawing up
lists of options, including restoring the military to its prewar strength or
making it a much larger force with more modern equipment, like air-defense
systems, modern antiarmor rockets and night-vision devices.

Officials at the Pentagon, State Department and White House confirmed that the
Bush administration was examining what would be required to rebuild
Georgia's military, but stressed that no decisions had been made. The
choices each pose
difficult foreign policy questions.

Georgia's decision to attack Russian and South Ossetian forces raises
questions about the wisdom of further United States investment in the Georgian
military, which in any case would further alienate Russia.
…
So far the Bush administration has chosen to trumpet its humanitarian efforts
in Georgia, and has avoided publicly discussing efforts to study how best to
rebuild the Georgian military.
…
But interviews with Western military officers who have experience working with
Georgian military forces, including officers in Georgia, Europe and the United
States, suggested that Georgia's military shortfalls were serious and too
difficult to change merely by upgrading equipment.

In the recent war, which was over in days, Georgia's Army fled ahead of the
Russian Army's advance, turning its back and leaving Georgian civilians in an
enemy's path. Its planes did not fly after the first few hours of contact. Its
navy was sunk in the harbor, and its patrol boats were hauled away by Russian
trucks on trailers.

The information to date suggests that from the beginning of the war to its end,
Georgia, which wants to join NATO, fought the war in a manner that undermined
its efforts at presenting itself as a potentially serious military partner or
power.
…
In the field, there is evidence from an extensive set of witnesses that within
30 minutes of Saakashvili's order, Georgia's military began pounding civilian
sections of the city of Tskhinvali, as well as a Russian peacekeeping base
there, with heavy barrages of rocket and artillery fire. The barrages all but
ensured a Russian military response, several diplomats, military officers and
witnesses said.

After the Russian columns arrived through the Roki Tunnel, and the battle swung
quickly into Russia's favor, Georgia said its attack had been necessary to stop
a Russian attack that already had been under way. To date, however, there has
been no independent evidence, beyond Georgia's insistence that its version is
true, that Russian forces were attacking before the Georgian barrages.

Georgia Eager to Rebuild Its Defeated Armed Forces
C. J. Chivers and Thom Shanker, New York Times, September 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/world/europe/03georgia.html

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 3:10 PM, Brussel Morton K. <mkbrussel at comcast.net> wrote:
> View of Le Monde Diplomatique  --mkb
>
> Russia gets its act together
> September 03, 2008 By Serge Halimi
> Source: Le Monde diplomatique
> Serge Halimi's ZSpace Page
> Join ZSpace
> The question of responsibility for the hostilities in the Caucasus shouldn't
> worry us too much. Less than a week after Georgia's invasion, two well-known
> French commentators said it was old stuff. An influential neo-conservative
> from the United States backed that view: knowing who started things "is not
> very important", wrote Robert Kagan. "This war did not begin because of a
> miscalculation by Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. It is a war that
> Moscow has been attempting to provoke for some time" (1).
>
> One hypothesis deserves another. If, on the day of the opening ceremony of
> the Beijing Olympics, somebody else than Saakashvili, a graduate of New
> York's Columbia Law School, had started a war, would western capitals and
> their media have been able to contain righteous indignation at such a
> symbolic act?
>
> History is easier to follow when goodies and baddies are decided in advance.
> The goodies, such as Georgia, have the right to defend their territorial
> integrity against the separatist struggles of their neighbours. The baddies,
> such as Serbia, must accept the self-determination of minority communities
> or expect to be bombed by Nato. The moral of this story is even more
> enlightening when, to defend his country's borders, the charming
> pro-American Saakashvili repatriates some of the 2,000 soldiers he had sent
> to invade Iraq.
>
> On 16 August President George Bush, speaking with gravity, rightly invoked
> the "Security Council resolutions of the United Nations" including the
> "sovereignty and independence and territorial integrity" of Georgia whose
> "borders should command the same respect as every other nation's".
>
> Only the US has the right to act unilaterally when it decides (or claims)
> that its security is at stake. In reality, events have followed a simpler
> plan: the US plays for Georgia against Russia; Russia plays for South
> Ossetia and Abkhazia to "punish" Georgia.
>
> Two Pentagon position papers have indicated a desire to prevent the
> resurgence of Russian power ever since 1992, when it was in ruins. To ensure
> that US hegemony, which began with the first Gulf war and the disintegration
> of the Soviet bloc, became permanent, the Pentagon announced that it would
> be necessary to "convince likely rivals that they no longer need aspire to a
> greater role". If that didn't work, the US would know how "to dissuade"
> them. And the main target was Russia, "the only power in the world which
> could destroy the US".
>
> So can we chide Russian leaders for bristling against western help for the
> "colour revolutions" of Ukraine and Georgia, the inclusion of former members
> of the Warsaw Pact in Nato and the prospect of US missiles on Polish soil -
> all of which were elements of the old US strategy to weaken Russia, whatever
> its regime or its politics? "Russia has become a great power, that's what's
> so worrying," admitted Bernard Kouchner, France's foreign minister (2).
>
> Zbigniew Brzezinski, the architect of the US' risky strategy in Afghanistan,
> recently explained the other part of the US grand design: "We have access
> through Georgia... to the oil and soon also the gas that lies not only in
> Azerbaijan but beyond it in the Caspian sea and beyond in Central Asia. So,
> in that sense, it's a very major and strategic asset to us" (3). He can't be
> accused of inconsistency: even in the days of Boris Yeltsin, when Russia was
> still floundering, he advocated driving it from the Caucasus and Central
> Asia so that energy flows to the West could be guaranteed (4).
>
> Nowadays Russia is doing better, the US is doing less well and oil prices
> have taken off. Victim of its president's provocative actions, Georgia has
> just been hit from three directions.
>
> ________________________________________________________
>
> (1) Bernard-Henri Lévy and André Glucksmann, Libération, 14 August 2008, and
> Robert Kagan, Washington Post, 11 August 2008.
>
> (2) Interview in the Journal de Dimanche, Paris, 17 August 2008.
>
> (3) Bloomberg News, 12 August 2008.
>
> (4) Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, Basic Books, New York, 1997.
>
>
>
> Translated by Robert Waterhouse
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>

-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org

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