Posted on 08/09/2008 6:54:28 PM PDT by Fred
THE UN headquarters on New York's East River was supposed to have been in darkness on Friday night, the diplomats tucked up at home to watch the fireworks of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. Instead, they were in their offices long into the night. As overhead television screens outside the Security Council showed Russian tanks invading Georgia, Russian and Georgian envoys traded insults.
Russia's irritation with Georgia dates to November 2003 when pro-democracy protestors took to the street ADVERTISEMENT s in the so- called Rose Revolution to denounce an election rigged by pro-Moscow politicians.
The result was a new election and victory for American-educated Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who dropped Georgia's alliance with Moscow in return for one with Washington.
Another Russian neighbour, Ukraine, followed suit in circumstances similar to its Orange Revolution the following year.
One of the mantras of Vladimir Putin's rule was that Russia should have a "sphere of influence" over neighbouring states, a term many in the West assumed had been rendered redundant with the advent of globalisation.
"Russia is fond of saying: Georgia is in our backyard," said David Satter, an analyst with America's Hoover Institution. "But it's reasonable to ask what difference does that make? These (nations] are independent countries that have the right to chart their own future."
Since the Rose Revolution, the Kremlin has concluded that if it cannot control Georgia, it can at least cause trouble by supporting its two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
These enclaves were carved out in sharp and brutal wars with Georgia's forces in the early 1990s.
Protected by a ring of Russian troops, their leaders have refused offers from Georgia to drop their independence demands in return for autonomy.
In April, Putin, furious that the West had recognised Kosovo's breakaway from Serbia, signed a decree recognising both Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
For the Georgians it was a red rag to a bull.
Throughout the early summer both separatists and the Georgian army built up their forces around the mountainous borders of the two tiny enclaves.
Last week fighting broke out. After first calling a ceasefire, Georgia used the element of surprise to launch a snap invasion, sending armoured units into the enclave and reportedly capturing the capital, Tskhinvali.
When the first emergency meeting of the Security Council ended in deadlock in the early hours of Friday, Russia sent in the tanks.
But Russia's decision to invade has little to do with the welfare of South Ossetia's 70,000 inhabitants.
In fact, it is a powerplay in what many are now calling the New Cold War.
It was appropriate that this struggle should flare to life in the Caucasus, because this region of bubbling ethnic tensions is really home to a battle not for ideology, but for oil.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, or BTC, is lauded as a miracle of modern engineering. Costing £2bn, it will eventually carry a million barrels of oil a day across more than a thousand miles of some of the world's most inhospitable terrain.
It is also the only pipeline linking Central Asia's vast oil and gas fields – second only to the Middle East's in size – to the West. All other pipes pass through Russia or Iran, putting western customers at the mercy of their regimes.
For the United States, the key to the pipeline has been cementing firm relationships with the three states – Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan – through which the pipeline passes.
America has given generous aid to all three nations. It turned a blind eye to Turkish raids on Kurdish guerrillas in Iraq, was silent about rigged elections in Azerbaijan, and since 2002 has had US troops in Georgia training the locals. In April it backed Georgia's call to join Nato.
But for Putin, a former KGB colonel, and his hand-picked (some would say puppet) successor Dmitri Medvedev, the pipeline stands in the way of Russia's imperial ambitions.
"Russia has resented this break-up (of the old Soviet Union]," said former US defence secretary William Cohen. "They have been looking for an opportunity to wean people back."
Moscow has also torn up the old post-Cold War consensus whereby the war in Bosnia was brought to a negotiated end. In recent months, Russia, joined by China, has blocked UN attempts to halt the fighting in Darfur and impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe.
Upping the ante still further, Russia has claimed the North Pole for itself by planting a flag four miles down on the seabed, and last week mooted setting up a bomber refuelling base in Cuba.
But if the Kremlin set up the powder keg in South Ossetia, it was Georgia which supplied the match. Frustrated by South Ossetia's refusal to join talks on autonomy, and knowing world leaders would be off balance as they headed to Beijing, Tbilisi sent in the troops, triggering Moscow's angry response.
Complicating the search for a solution is that the West is itself split on a response. America wants to take a hard line. European leaders are more circumspect, in part because they fear a crisis if Russia cuts off gas supplies as it did with Ukraine. Germany's Angela Merkel has refused to consider Georgia's admission to Nato until its "internal disputes" are at an end.
The current fighting could well turn into a stalemate in the coming days. Moscow knows that if it tries to squeeze its tanks along the one mountain road that leads to Tblisi they can be picked off by American trained and equipped Georgian forces.
>>>For the United States, the key to the pipeline has been cementing firm relationships with the three states – Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan – through which the pipeline passes.
putin wants hegemony over european oil and gas imports,
and resents our proposed missile shield.
Toss Russia out of the G8. Their economy is smaller than California’s. Get them off the security council too.
Russia lost one person per family in WW-II, some fifteen or twenty million people. Other than for that, the owner of all of the oil in the Caucasus and everywhere else in or near Russian territory would have been Adolf Hitler and there would not have been a thing in the world which Georgia or Checheniya could have done about it. Given that consideration, there is no possible way to expect Russians to simply sit back and wave when any of these smaller actors try to assert any sort of a territorial claim on any sort of major oil resource and simply walk off with it on the basis of geolographical accident.
Given a choice of moving to Russia or to Californicatia right now, I'd be off to Russia in A New York second.
Geographical political accident?
Russia versus Georgia? Russia has huge assets and is a huge country...Georgia is a little country.
But the reality that russia would not let Georgia have control, especially if they are US friendly...well, that is a reality.Unfair, aggressive? But a reality.
good point.
but will the euro’s be so inclined to understand when putin turns off the oil or gas,
as he did to the ukraine?
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5327867&no_jw_tran=1&no_na_tran=1
Figure on putting your car up on blocks and laying in firewood.
THE UN headquarters on New York’s East River was supposed to have been in darkness on Friday night, the diplomats tucked up at Scores getting lapdances.
Fixed it.
Almost all of Russia’s GDP is oil and ng exporting. They shut that down and their country is bankrupt overnight.
Putins entire new USSR is based on energy exportation.
I'm sure that explains Russia's attitude of entitlement—to Eastern Europe, for instance. Not to mention its desire for control of South Africa, which was in Russian schemes even under the Tsars.
But I don't see how a country with a small-and-dwindling population spread out over 11 time zones has a credible claim to any other country's territory or treasure. The smaller countries around Russia's border are going to eat its lunch, tanks or no tanks.
“Given a choice of moving to Russia or to Californicatia right now, I’d be off to Russia in A New York second.”
In California they don’t imprison, torture and assassinate you for dissent.
That is the most convoluted argument I have seen in awhile. I think you would fit well in either Moscow or L.A.
Don't let the statue of liberty hit you in the ass on the way out. Buh By.
In Russia, you don’t have entire neighborhoods smelling like seal dookey because laws forbid touching either seals or white sharks and the white sharks have all the seals penned into the beach and won’t let them go out in the ocean to use the restroom.
I mean, yeah, Russia has problems remaining after serving as the world’s test-bed for 70 years to see if communism could be made to work, but it doesn’t just totally suck like California does. I don’t even like setting foot in the place (California) for the ten minutes it takes to transfer from airplane A to airplane B.
Greetings Oh late night Freeper
“Greetings Oh late night Freeper”
The hour is late and the coo-coo’s are out!
“I mean, yeah, Russia has problems remaining after serving as the world’s test-bed for 70 years to see if communism could be made to work,”
The “world” didn’t test communism in Russia, the RUSSIANS did.
***
“I don’t even like setting foot in the place (California) for the ten minutes it takes to transfer from airplane A to airplane B.”
California is “the land of fruits and nuts”, but Russia is a nation of serpents and scorpions.
Either you are grossly ignorant of the true conditions in Russia or you are an apologist for the new dictators.
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