Russia invades Georgia

[Drewbot]

The United States set a precedent 140 years ago, "do not try to secede, or you will be crushed."

I heard the people of Alabama in the mid 1800's So wanted to be part of the CSA, but the USA forced them.

 

[Uzzy]

Well, look at that. Russian forces have moved into a Georgian town now.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7554507.stm

 

[Uzzy]

Do you have accounts that say something else than that the Georgians started a big offensive?

Oh, the Georgians certainly launched an offensive on the 7th. However, fighting had started on the 1st. Who started that is a matter for debate.

You didn't pick up on my sarcasm? Israel and the US pulled a little stunt in the Lebanon 2006 war by needlessly postponing a ceasefire arrangement. You can't blame Russia for doing the same now, can you?

Sure I can. It was wrong then, it's wrong now. Of course, Russia isn't aiming to have a ceasefire. Nor are they aiming to just defend South Ossetia. They want regime change in Georgia.

There you go again with the Cold War comparison. That's only meant to say something like "Putin evil commie". Why don't you compare Putin with, say, Ivan III, the czar who, IIRC, threw off the Mongol yoke and was the first to seriously work on Muscovite expansion? Expansion into and influencing of its neighbours is a constant in Russian politics for the last, say, 500 years - and not only of Russia but of all great powers. In fact, when it comes to foreign policy, the whole Communist period is not different than before and - gasp - than after. You could just as well compare Putin with Ivan IV, Peter the Great, Catharine II or Alexander I who managed to conquer Paris.

ETA: that last tidbit is a bit over the top indeed. See here.

Or we could just stick to the argument. Putin still has a cold war attitude to the west, and given that Putin is the ruler of Russia, it's quite right to make a Cold War comparison.

 

[SDC]

I was talking about Ida-Viru county, it has the most lopsided composition. The data is from here:
Population indicators and composition.

Aha. I didn't understand that you were referring to a single county.

It's been the case for as long as Russia has had actual censuses (so back into the 19th century) that that piece of Estonia ("Estland gubernia" in the 19th c.) has had a largely Russian population.

Don't ask me how I know.

ETA: apologize for derail.

Though it relates to the important point that the lands of the ex-Russian empire, ex-Soviet Union, present Russian federation plus other states representing the former Soviet Union, have very mixed populations.

 

[Beerina]

Dang, if only we hadn't rushed to inhale as many former Eastern Block, if not outright former republics, into NATO.

It's the US's fault this is happening!

 

[Uzzy]

BBC just reported that Russian troops are battling Georgians in the Georgian town of Gori.

 

[Wire]

Aha. I didn't understand that you were referring to a single county.

It's been the case for as long as Russia has had actual censuses (so back into the 19th century) that that piece of Estonia ("Estland gubernia" in the 19th c.) has had a largely Russian population.

Don't ask me how I know.

Did you really mean that Governorate of Estonia ie the entire Northern Estonia (sans Narva city!) had more Russians than Estonians in 19th c? I've never heard it, this has never been disputed by any Russian. The number of Russians in Estonia had never before been so high than after WWI and it was still less than 100000.

 

[egslim]

Who fired the first shot, hard to tell. But Russia definitely profits from the conflict and as of now has used a disproportionate amount of power.

There is no such thing as a "disproportionate amount of power" in conventional military conflicts. The more overwhelming your power is, the fewer losses you suffer.

"Disproportionate use of force" is a law enforcement term, where the goal is to keep both officers and suspects from harm.

War is when both sides try hard to kill each other, which is a fundamentally different situation.

 

[mr rosewater]

Can the U.S. now invade Cuba? Lookout Canada and Mexico!

 

[idealist]

It's the US's fault this is happening!

I wonder if the US presence and joint-training exercises starting on July 15, 2008, in Georgia had anything to do with the escalation?

Ceremony opens Immediate Response 2008

Story and photos by Lance Cpl. Edward H. Currie

VAZIANI TRAINING BASE, Georgia — Immediate Response 2008, a joint training exercise between U.S. service members and the Georgian Ministry of Defense, opened with a ceremony here July 15.

mfr.usmc.mil/MFRNews/2008/2008.07/IR08.asp

Photos of 'Operation Immediate Response 2008': caucasus-images com/?tag=vaziani

Notice that the USMC story lists the origin as "Vaziani training base"?

Follow-up here:

Russian air forces have dropped at least two bombs on the Georgian military base at Vaziani, near Georgia’s capital. The strike is a none-too-subtle message to Georgia and to the United States.

stratfor/analysis/georgia_russia_bombs_vaziani_base

In other words, Russia bombed the same exact base where US forces were engaged in a training exercise less than a month ago.

The same article also reports:

Striking at the base — but not hitting occupied buildings — is a blunt warning to the United States not to get involved.

Forum rules prevent me from posting links but I tried to include enough information so that the above quotes could be found.

 

[egslim]

It's the US's fault this is happening!

Cut the straw.

It's Georgia's fault that they attacked South Ossetia, under the mistaken belief that they would get away with it.

But because the US backed Georgia the latter's humiliation by Russia is an embarassment for the US as well.

 

[ddt]

Ddt, acceptance of notions of the historic Russian sphere of influence is one thing from the Netherlands, or New York. It looks different not only in Tbilisi, but in Kyiv and Warszawa and Vilnius. I've said before I don't expect Putin is such a fool as to dream of rolling tanks into the centers of those cities. But just shrugging off the wreckage of the Transcaucasus, and the North Caucasus, which Putin's Russian state has played a key role in creating, is... Well, let's just call it a sad and cynical statement.

Those "spheres of influence" are a fact of life, whatever way you put it. Russia has meddled in the affairs of those countries for centuries (and before that vice versa, see False Dmitri I^WP). We better accept the fact that that is a constant in Russia's foreign policy and cope with it intelligently, than brush it aside.

As to the wreckage of the Caucasus, I think it's only partially Russian making.

First of all, there are lots of ethnic groups in the Caucasus and they don't neatly live separated in different regions, but interspersed - e.g., some Georgians live in South Ossetia but you can't slice off a piece of SO where all Georgians live. Then, they all hate each others' guts. To quote the War Nerd on this:

The ones who are left in South Ossetia are the hard core, the ones who can't or won't leave, and they're backed by Russian "peacekeepers." Not all of those 70,000 are even Ossetians; some of the villages in the nominal breakaway region are Georgian, so there's no way even God himself could draw a clean border that would put all the Ossetians on one side and all the Georgians on the other.

Truth is, if God himself had to solve problems like this or Bosnia, He'd probably end up using Ethnic Cleansing Powder. It makes more sense and in the long run might even be less bloody than just letting the locals carve each other up from now till Doomsday.

As a bleeding-heart, Amnesty-supporting liberal, I'm of course against ethnic cleansing. But when people don't get along without fighting all the time, ethnic cleansing seems the less evil option. Another example how they all exploit each other, this time from Le Monde Diplomatique:

Vladikavkaz faces an even greater risk because the conflict between Ossetians and Ingush remains unresolved. Though some Ingush refugees have returned to their villages, they have often found their homes occupied by refugees from South Ossetia. The North Ossetian government has been placing them there since 1991. This cynical attempt to stake an ethnic claim to the disputed territory has only exacerbated the dispute.

For clarification: the Ingush live East of North-Ossetia and West of the Chechens, with which they're ethnically related. Ingushetia and North-Ossetia also have a border dispute over mixed-inhabited land.

Now, as long as most people's horizon was no more than their own village and the only real government they knew was the village elders, people could live in peace. Ethnic tensions are a result of the rising nationalism since 1700 in Western Europe and the dominance of states. States want to impose uniform rule, and dictate there's only one language you learn in education and so on. We've had the same in Western Europe actually. Barely a century ago, in schools in the Bretagne signs were posted that "it is forbidden to speak Breton and to spit on the floor" - shows where the French authorities ranked speaking a minority language. Only, with fairly fixed boundaries we've had more time here to stamp in the majority opinion on all.

I'm by no way an expert on Russian policies in the Caucasus - and they surely will have now and then pitted them against each other, but they seem to be capable themselves of doing that too. Stalin has deported one of the populations - forgot which - away during WW2, but has let them return too after the war. I know not of instances that the Russians have exacerbated the problems by dispersing the various ethnic groups among each other. Surely the Soviets have not tried to "russify" the area as they did with the Baltic states by importing there lots of Russian speaking folk. And when I look at the borders of the various districts in that map above, they seem to be quite sensible too, as far as possible. Which of those borders should become state borders is another question.

So could you enlighten me as to the key role Russia has played in making a wreckage of the Caucasus?

 

[Darth Rotor]

@egslim:

1. Poland. I am trying to uncover how a defensive, point defense system (which is what bmd systems are, in terms of being able to cover defensively discrete areas of Poland) is any kind of threat to Russia. You are still wrong about that, as you have been before. It even strikes me as absurd that the Russians would ever threaten the Poles with nukes. Their conventional threat is sufficient. However, the conventional threat includes Theater Ballistic Missiles with conventional warheads.

2. Agree entirely with you on Georgia starting it, and being somewhat foolish to think that the US could save their bacon.

3. Even more confused: how is membership in the EU any kind of deterrent to Russian designs on central and eastern Europe, if any such exist? (I wonder) The EU is, as a collective security organization, a paper tiger. It is only due to its NATO link that EU has a credible security posture vis a vis the central and eastern nations.

@capel dogder: The parallels with the Israeli situation are indeed amusing. I was interested to see that Israelis were involved, to some extent, in Georgian security training. I also note that in April the usual suspects here discussed the shootdown of a Georgian UAV by a Russian fighter (Big Les and I wandered off for a bit, trying to figure out which model of fighter was in the video.) The skullduggery between Georgia and Russia has been simmering of late.

@Uzzy: Please look at a map, not a vial of testosterone.

If we depict the President of Georgia as a small loudmouth, usually relying on the protection of a large fellow on the playground, and Russia as a bully who is deterred by that large fellow most days, we see Georgia insulting the bully whilst the large fellow is off taking a dump. So the bully kicks his arse. Gee, what a surprise.

That the Russians are penetrating in through both Abkhazia and SO, into Georgia proper, is a smart bit of real estate acquisition, see Israel 1967. Now, when the shooting stops, there is something to negotiate over, something that the Georgians have a stake in more dear than SO. You don't get even, you get ahead.

It is troubling to see that the UNSC deliberations were not taken advantage of. One suspects that the Georgians saw the Brit/US position vis a vis the Russians as a signal, a green light. I'll have to look into that more, unclear.

Once again, the UN as a collective security organization is shown to be of marginal value.

DR

 

[egslim]

1. Poland. I am trying to uncover how a defensive, point defense system (which is what bmd systems are) is any kind of threat to Russia.

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Why_Russia_Fears_Ballistic_Missile_Defense_999.html
"The real motivation of the multibillion-dollar undertaking is the desire to expand U.S. military and strategic capacities and constrict those of other states that have nuclear missiles, Russia and China most of all."
Basically the system would expand the US's sphere of influence, at the cost of Russia's. Obviously Russia doesn't like that at all. It may not be a threat to Russia proper, but it is a threat to Russian interests.

3. Even more confused: how is membership in the EU any kind of deterrent to Russian designs on central and eastern Europe, if any exist? The EU is, as a collective security organization, a paper tiger. It is only due to its NATO link that EU has a credible security posture vis a vis the central and eastern nations.

While the EU is not formally a security organization, the close political en economic integration within the EU means that if a member is invaded the organization will have to respond militarily. The organization is too intra-dependent to allow any of its members to be lost that way, especially in the Euro-area.
And the EU has over three times the population and a much bigger economy than Russia, its military potential is far greater.

NATO on the other hand is in danger of becoming a paper tiger. If the US had had its way Georgia would have been on its way to become a NATO member by now. But I don't believe for a second that any other NATO member would have been willing to wage war with Russia over the lousy speck of real-estate that is Georgia. And such a refusal would be the end of NATO as a relevance.

All that assumes a conventional military attack. But those are expensive and hold great risks for the attacker. Therefore an economic offensive is a much more likely threat. And that's where EU-membership offers much greater protection than NATO. Poorer nations are more vulnerable to economic pressure.

 

[dudalb]

Nice to see so much love for a dictator like Putin. neither side has moral high ground here, but this almost blind support for Putin and Russia is disturbing.
And some of it is fueled by pure Hatred of America. And certain self proclaimed Empress, for instance.
I am so happy that some people here seem willing to sell the Democracies of Eastern Europe down the river.

 

[SDC]

As to the wreckage of the Caucasus, I think it's only partially Russian making.
....

I'm by no way an expert on Russian policies in the Caucasus - and they surely will have now and then pitted them against each other, but they seem to be capable themselves of doing that too. Stalin has deported one of the populations - forgot which - away during WW2, but has let them return too after the war. I know not of instances that the Russians have exacerbated the problems by dispersing the various ethnic groups among each other. Surely the Soviets have not tried to "russify" the area as they did with the Baltic states by importing there lots of Russian speaking folk. And when I look at the borders of the various districts in that map above, they seem to be quite sensible too, as far as possible. Which of those borders should become state borders is another question.

So could you enlighten me as to the key role Russia has played in making a wreckage of the Caucasus?

Cut by me to actual discussion (I think). Here are some responses.

Stalin deported the Chechens, and the Ingush during the war. We know how well that worked out in the long run. Other groups as well, such as the Crimean Tatars, but they are outside the conversation. I've heard it said that he would have deported the entire Ukrainian population of about 40 million but even he couldn't figure out how.

However neat the borders look on the map, the population is hopelessly tangled and intermingled. This is a mountainous region, remember, where there is limited living space relative to the total land mass. The historic Georgian Kingdom up to ca.1801 was something of a mini-multinational-empire in its own right, and that hasn't changed.

It is simply history plus current events that the Russian states (e.g., the old empire, the Soviets, and now the new Russian federation) has played the local groups against one another for generations. Russia is doing it now with supporting Ossetia and Abkhazia against Georgia. Sorry if you don't believe it. But that is normal imperial behavior, not limited to the Russians. It's how empires work, away from the center; see Britain in India for examples.

It is true that the Transcaucasus was among the least Russian parts of the old USSR, in terms of population. But it didn't prove necessary.

Well, that's enough. Notice I am not claiming that Russia in behaving in any sort of unique fashion, for an empire. I guess I am mostly saying that life is easy away from the conflict zones, and it is easy, from western Europe and North America, to speak casually about how silly they are in the successor states to the Soviet Union.

 

[plumjam]

I just heard they bombed some porta-potties in the port of Poti.

 

[CapelDodger]

There is no such thing as a "disproportionate amount of power" in conventional military conflicts. The more overwhelming your power is, the fewer losses you suffer.

The only remarkable fact is the need for that to be pointed out yet again.

War is when both sides try hard to kill each other, which is a fundamentally different situation.

War is diplomacy by special means. The killing is incidental.

 

[Alex Libman]

I normally don't watch American TV, but I just caught a few minutes of CNN and... WOW!

I gotta get out of this country... If you ignore the freedoms this country inherited and just look at the past few years, this is one of the least free countries in the world!

 

[CapelDodger]

Nice to see so much love for a dictator like Putin. neither side has moral high ground here, but this almost blind support for Putin and Russia is disturbing.
And some of it is fueled by pure Hatred of America. And certain self proclaimed Empress, for instance.
I am so happy that some people here seem willing to sell the Democracies of Eastern Europe down the river.

Georgia (without South Ossetia and Abkhazia, obviosuly) is one hell of a bait to dangle in front of the Turks, What purpose does Georgia serve, after all? Wouldn't life be simpler if is was got rid of and never mentioned again?