Russia Unmasked

Russia has started a full scale undeclared war against Georgia. This creates a new reality not only for its smaller neighbour but the entire international community.

For more than a decade Russia has opposed Georgia’s independently-pursued course towards democracy and western values, fighting through the covert agency of the separatist regimes. While doing so Moscow has pretended to play the role of peacekeeper. But now Russia has unmasked itself and we can see it for what it is.

Now Russia reveals that its face is that of an aggressor, as the world has readily seen. Russia’s own actions, not those of its client separatist regimes, suddenly claim world attention. The question arises: why has this occurred?

There could be several answers to this. But one question often asked when analysing particular developments is: who benefits? We can hardly find anyone who will say that this war is in Georgia’s interests. But almost all agree that the war is in Russian interests. Russian politicians and political analysts have many times considered the possibility of getting Georgia engaged in a war, simply to destabilize it. The separatist regimes have been used as the primary means of achieving this objective. Georgia did not receive its hoped-for Membership Action Plan from NATO because it has unresolved separatist conflicts on its territory. Any kind of aggravation of the situation will further postpone Georgia’s accession to NATO, which Russia opposes.

The Russians chose to start this destabilization from South Ossetia, because the other breakaway territory, Abkhazia, is very close to the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Sochi. Russia would not like to undermine its claims to this international prize by allowing conflict to take place there. In recent times there has also been serious Western involvement in efforts to resolve the Georgia-Abkhazia conflict, a fact Russia could not simply ignore. But the situation in South Ossetia is different. Whereas in Abkhazia there is a distinct line dividing separatist controlled territory from Georgian, in South Ossetia Georgian and Ossetian villages stand side by side. It is very easy to trigger any kind of trivial dispute which could escalate into a full scale confrontation. South Ossetia is also close to the most important transit pipelines, and the motorway connecting Eastern Georgia to the seaports of Poti and Batumi, and thus has deeper strategic significance.

When the current situation has stabilized, a lot more details will emerge about how the Kremlin dragged Georgia into a military confrontation. One of tools in Russian hands is the ability to start an information war, and the Russian state-controlled media has unleashed many lies about Georgia. The Russian plan as a whole was not much different to the old tried and tested ones: to escalate the situation in the conflict zone by multiple and regular provocations. We have seen how they have killed non-combatant civilians. We have seen so-called ‘volunteers’, in reality mercenaries, bandits and adventurers, enter the conflict. We have seen the build up of arms and ammunition. The Russian military machine has privately participated in such subversive actions whilst publicly proclaiming a peacekeeping mission.

The Russians did not expect the very effective and rapid advance of the Georgian law-enforcement bodies, or the liberation of almost the entire separatist region from the bandit groupings, or the restoration of constitutional order there. It was frustrated. Russian military expert Pavel Felgengaur told the Rezonansi newspaper that Russia had not much choice about whether to intervene in this conflict, as not doing so would discredit Russia’s image in the North Caucasus. Interfering would mean a large scale open war with Georgia with possible heavy casualties, but this was a better option. That was the choice, in the eyes of Russia, and now Georgia is seeing the result.

Moscow has started a full scale war, occupying a sovereign country’s territory, bombing it, killing people. But Russia has failed to gain immediate success. The 58th Russian Army was stopped in its tracks by heroic Georgian troops. Russia has already lost up to 10 war planes. Two pilots have been captured and one has died. There is no panic among the Georgian population, on the contrary, Georgian society has united against the behaviour of its common enemy.

The international community almost unanimously condemns Russian aggression .But Georgia has limited resources. The world should be much more active in supporting a sovereign country striving for democracy.

Russia, AKA the USSR, has awakened from its self-induced coma of about 18 years. This is just like Germany after WW1 - they got pretty well whipped, economically and morale-wise. They sucked it up for quite a while until they got tired of it, and now have an aggressive leader with a vision. That vision is of a renewed Russian/Soviet Empire, stronger than before and a master of enormous energy resources and of energy chokepoints.

Francis Fukayama, you were a putz. History never ended, and events like the naked Russian aggression against democratic Georgia prove that point, in spades. We have, thanks to the likes of you, fallen asleep. We think that the philandering activities of an insignificant former Senator are so important that they must take up the majority of the news coverage of the nation for several days, while the Cold War renewal is barely mentioned.

The Bear is back. Those who thought that our time as lone superpower would last for many decades are dead wrong - we now face a multi-polar world with Russia and China as major, prosperous and technologically-advanced adversaries, and with several wealthy oil producers as major allies in Russia’s and China’s emerging anti-US block. We had better wake up and remove our collective heads from our national hindquarters, or we’re going to be in HUGE trouble in 5-10 years.

“We’re seeing the opening of a world war for oil resources, while the US sits here completely exposed to any shut off of foreign supply.”

Yeah, thanks a bunch Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Obama, Kennedy and the rest of the anti-energy Left!! You’ve left us very vulnerable, and it’ll take years to catch up to where we should be (in terms of nuclear plants, oil production and refining capacity), even if you get your sorry asses out of the way. If Obama gets elected, we’re screwed, badly.

I hope that when we gradually phase out of Iraq that we put some of the money saved into newer and better equipment (including a new rifle for our infantry) and into massive stockpiling of ammo, ordnance and spare parts. We’re going to need those, someday, and perhaps having those stockpiles will dissuade our enemies.

Frankly, it is hard for me to believe that no one foresaw this Russia / Georgia thingy coming. The Ruskies have been adamant about Georgia not joining NATO; Russia has all but co-opted Europe's involuntary compliance with their goals by putting Europe into bondage, supplying 40% of Europe's energy needs.

Energy is certainly a prime cause of this aggression; but the break up - and the re-establishment - of the Russian hegemony is at the heart of this brutality by the Russian Bear.

There has been logical talk of the oil pipeline running from Baku through Georgia to Eastern Turkey. However, such talk overlooks the source of the contents of that pipeline: the oil fields of Baku, Azerbaijan. Does anyone doubt that Russia wants to get that oil back under their control? After all, Russia's new global strategy is to gain control over much of the world by controling energy. Certainly Germany didn't hesitate to make a bee-line for Baku early in WWII.

For brevity's sake let me briefly make two additional points. 1/ If Georgia and Azerbaijan are enclosed in the new Russian hegemony, the road from Moscow to Teheran is virtually wide open.

2/ Russia has no real strategic access to the North Sea - and thus the North Atlantic - without the old ports of Lithuania and Latvia... Could they be next in the Bear's plans?

Our long-term weak reaction to being attacked on 9/11 - and fueled by our bi-partisan bickering on the costs of defending ourselves from such attacks - has engendered this aggression, in the same way JFK's original appearance of lack of resolve caused Kruschev to test Kennedy's metal via the Cuban Missile Crisis. This sort of need for international comity always brings the strong man to the forefront.

Soon we will see similar developments again in Cuba and Venezuela... since the Clintooon abandoned the Monroe Doctrine.
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I just got out of four days in the hospital; YIKES! ...tired.

FReegards, IR

So sorry you’ve had to spend time in the hospital, Bob. Hope you’re recovering alright. Keep us updated, will you?

Here’s V.D.Hansen’s take on the situation if you haven’t seen it yet:

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MDcwY2I4MjhjMTc0Y2Y4ZmJmMWNmNzJlOTA0Y2MxYjg=

August 12, 2008, 4:00 a.m.

Moscow’s Sinister Brilliance
Who wants to die for Tbilisi?

By Victor Davis Hanson

Lost amid all the controversies surrounding the Georgian tragedy is the sheer diabolic brilliance of the long-planned Russia invasion. Let us count the ways in which it is a win/win situation for Russia.

The Home Front
The long-suffering Russian people resent the loss of global influence and empire, but not necessarily the Soviet Union and its gulags that once ensured such stature. The invasion restores a sense of Russian nationalism and power to its populace without the stink of Stalinism, and is indeed cloaked as a sort of humanitarian intervention on behalf of beleaguered Ossetians.

There will be no Russian demonstrations about an “illegal war,” much less nonsense about “blood for oil,” but instead rejoicing at the payback of an uppity former province that felt its Western credentials somehow trumped Russian tanks. How ironic that the Western heartthrob, the old Marxist Mikhail Gorbachev, is now both lamenting Western encouragement of Georgian “aggression,” while simultaneously gloating over the return of Russian military daring.

Sinister Timing
Russia’s only worry is the United States, which currently has a lame-duck president with low approval ratings, and is exhausted after Afghanistan and Iraq. But more importantly, America’s attention is preoccupied with a presidential race, in which “world citizen” Barack Obama has mesmerized Europe as the presumptive new president and soon-to-be disciple of European soft power.

Better yet for Russia, instead of speaking with one voice, America is all over the map with three reactions from Bush, McCain, and Obama — all of them mutually contradictory, at least initially. Meanwhile, the world’s televisions are turned toward the Olympics in Beijing. The autocratic Chinese, busy jailing reporters and dissidents, are not about to say an unkind word about Russian intervention. If anything, the pageantry at their grandiose stadiums provides welcome distractions for those embarrassed over the ease with which Russia smothered Georgia.

Comeuppance
Most importantly, Putin and Medvedev have called the West’s bluff. We are sort of stuck in a time-warp of the 1990s, seemingly eons ago in which a once-earnest weak post-Soviet Russia sought Western economic help and political mentoring. But those days are long gone, and diplomacy hasn’t caught up with the new realities. Russia is flush with billions. It serves as a rallying point and arms supplier to thugs the world over that want leverage in their anti-Western agendas. For the last five years, its foreign policy can be reduced to “Whatever the United States is for, we are against.”

The geopolitical message is clear to both the West and the former Soviet Republics: don’t consider NATO membership (i.e., do the Georgians really think that, should they have been NATO members, any succor would have been forthcoming?).

Together with the dismal NATO performance in Afghanistan, the Georgian incursion reveals the weakness of the Atlantic Alliance. The tragic irony is unmistakable. NATO was given a gift in not having made Georgia a member, since otherwise an empty ritual of evoking Article V’s promise of mutual assistance in time of war would have effectively destroyed the Potemkin alliance.

The new reality is that a nuclear, cash-rich, and energy-blessed Russia doesn’t really worry too much whether its long-term future is bleak, given problems with Muslim minorities, poor life-expectancy rates, and a declining population. Instead, in the here and now, it has a window of opportunity to reclaim prestige and weaken its adversaries. So why hesitate?

Indeed, tired of European lectures, the Russians are now telling the world that soft power is, well, soft. Moscow doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, the European Union, the World Court at the Hague, or any finger-pointing moralist from Geneva or London. Did anyone in Paris miss any sleep over the rubble of Grozny?

More likely, Putin & Co. figure that any popular rhetoric about justice will be trumped by European governments’ concern for energy. With just a few tanks and bombs, in one fell swoop, Russia has cowered its former republics, made them think twice about joining the West, and stopped NATO and maybe EU expansion in their tracks. After all, who wants to die for Tbilisi?

Russia does not need a global force-projection capacity; it has sufficient power to muscle its neighbors and thereby humiliate not merely its enemies, but their entire moral pretensions as well.

Apologists in the West
The Russians have sized up the moral bankruptcy of the Western Left. They know that half-a-million Europeans would turn out to damn their patron the United States for removing a dictator and fostering democracy, but not more than a half-dozen would do the same to criticize their long-time enemy from bombing a constitutional state.

The Russians rightly expect Westerners to turn on themselves, rather than Moscow — and they won’t be disappointed. Imagine the morally equivalent fodder for liberal lament: We were unilateral in Iraq, so we can’t say Russia can’t do the same to Georgia. (As if removing a genocidal dictator is the same as attacking a democracy). We accepted Kosovo’s independence, so why not Ossetia’s? (As if the recent history of Serbia is analogous to Georgia’s.) We are still captive to neo-con fantasies about democracy, and so encouraged Georgia’s efforts that provoked the otherwise reasonable Russians (As if the problem in Ossetia is our principled support for democracy rather than appeasement of Russian dictatorship).

From what the Russians learned of the Western reaction to Iraq, they expect their best apologists will be American politicians, pundits, professors, and essayists — and once more they will not be disappointed. We are a culture, after all, that after damning Iraqi democracy as too violent, broke, and disorganized, is now damning Iraqi democracy as too conniving, rich, and self-interested — the only common denominator being whatever we do, and whomever we help, cannot be good.

Power-power
We talk endlessly about “soft” and “hard” power as if humanitarian jawboning, energized by economic incentives or sanctions, is the antithesis to mindless military power. In truth, there is soft power, hard power, and power-power — the latter being the enormous advantages held by energy rich, oil-exporting states. Take away oil and Saudi Arabia would be the world’s rogue state, with its medieval practice of gender apartheid. Take away oil and Ahmadinejad is analogous to a run-of-the-mill central African thug. Take away oil, and Chavez is one of Ronald Reagan’s proverbial tinhorn dictators.

Russia understands that Europe needs its natural gas, that the U.S. not only must be aware of its own oil dependency, but, more importantly, the ripples of its military on the fragility of world oil supplies, especially the effects upon China, Europe, India, and Japan. When one factors in Russian oil and gas reserves, a pipeline through Georgia, the oil dependency of potential critics of Putin, and the cash garnered by oil exports, then we understand once again that power-power is beginning to trump both its hard and soft alternatives.

Paralysis
Military intervention is out of the question. Economic sanctions, given Russia’s oil and Europe’s need for it, are a pipe dream. Diplomatic ostracism and moral stricture won’t even save face.

Instead, Europe — both western and eastern — along with the United States and the concerned former Soviet Republics need to sit down, conference, and plot exactly how these new democracies are to maintain their independence and autonomy in the next decade. Hopefully, they will reach the Franklinesque conclusion that “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDcwY2I4MjhjMTc0Y2Y4ZmJmMWNmNzJlOTA0Y2MxYjg=

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