Russia is asking for trouble in Georgia

Financial Times ^ | Eight-Eight-Eight | Staff

[library user]

Mighty Russia, population 150m, and tiny Georgia, population 4.6m, its former colony and now fiercely independent neighbour, are in terrible danger of blundering into a bloody and pointless conflict in the Caucasus. It would sorely damage relations between Moscow, the European Union and the US. It could also destabilise the rest of the Caucasus region. Washington and Brussels can urge restraint, but the only country that can stop the nonsense is Russia itself.

The immediate cause of the conflict is a tug-of-war over the secessionist region of South Ossetia, which has been trying to break away from Georgia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It is an ethnic patchwork of mountain villages, part-Ossetian and part-Georgian, with just 70,000 inhabitants, divided between pro-Russian and pro-Georgian administrations, and lacking any common identity.

A fragile ceasefire since 1992 has been regularly broken. This week it collapsed again, after a series of bloody skirmishes, with Georgian troops moving in to seize the capital, Tskhinvali, and a column of tanks and troops moving over the Russian border to stop them. Russian aircraft have attacked targets inside the undisputed territory of Georgia, including a radar installation. Both Vladimir Putin, the Russian premier, and Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, have called the confrontation “war”.

Russia has long ceased to pretend to be a neutral referee. It openly espouses the cause of the secessionists there and in Abkhazia, another breakaway enclave. Its actions seem aimed at deliberately destabilising its neighbour. In recent months – especially since Georgia was promised eventual membership of Nato at the alliance’s Bucharest summit in April – Moscow has stepped up its encouragement, reinforcing its troops and trade, as if deliberately taunting Tbilisi and daring its hot-headed president to respond. Now the inevitable has happened.

Mr Saakashvili does not want to take on Moscow. But Mr Putin (and Dmitry Medvedev, his anointed successor) seem to want to prove two things: that Georgia is far too unstable to join Nato, and that they alone can determine the future of the former Soviet space. They are right that neither the US alone, nor the Nato allies, would dream of intervening in a military confrontation. But Georgia is only unstable because of Russian policies. Encouraging secessionists sends a terrible signal to others inside Russia, especially in the rebellious north Caucasus. Moscow’s policy may be macho, but in the long run it will be utterly self-defeating.

[Jack Black]

Tumbledice you wrote: However, as a postscript, I might—I say, I say—I might just be willin’ to roll the dice on a `War between the States’ II/Redux. Why, this whole federalism (snort!) rigamorole has gotten entirely—I say, suh—entirely out of hand! Fie and fiddlesticks! So as far as sabre-rattlin’ goes, why—look at me when I’m talkin’ to ya boy, there you go—ah say, why go all the way `round the world when this heah might be as good a place as any to start a-warrin’ and such. . .

This requires a CW II Ping. Here it is.

[Jack Black]

What would we do if all the freakin illegal MExicans rose up and wanted to form a break-away country in the Southwest U.S. I would hope that the memories of one of my favorite Presidents would be invoked - that of President James K. Polk. Nothing. We have no ideology that allows us to resist them. Russia and Georgia have nationalism. We have only "Democracy". If a minority becomes a majority in any place they can change the local language to Spanish, run the government in it, school the kids in it, and re-do the state flag to be red, green and white. "It is the will of the people". This is already starting to happen in some border cities in the USA. It will accelerate.

Were we ever to attempt to restore American law in such an autonomous enclave we will be treated as invaders and beligerants by the world.

[dfwgator]

This might be about having 57 declension cases instead of six...

That's one for each state in the US. ;)

[iopscusa]

Payback for US (BJC & GWB) stupidity attacking Serbia and carving out Kosovo for no good reason!

[BnBlFlag]

“It is an ethnic patchwork of mountain villages, part-Ossetian and part-Georgian, with just 70,000 inhabitants, divided between pro-Russian and pro-Georgian administrations, and lacking any common identity.”

Very similiar to what these United States are becoming in many ways.

[ctdonath2]

I might just be willin’ to roll the dice

Having just had a pat on the back by a guy with a hood & a scythe, let me quote an Ent: let us not be hasty.

[dennisw]

Putin is as bad as the Muslims .....in some respects