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  NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL   MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA       THESIS   Approved for public release; distribution unlimited. THUMPING THE HIVE: RUSSIAN NEOCORTICAL WARFARE IN CHECHNYA   by   Scott E. McIntosh   September 2004         Thesis Advisor:                          M. Tsypkin   Second Reader:                              T. Thomas   ABSTRACT     Since the 1994 Chechen war, analysts have written volumes about the evolution of—and lessons learned from—this ongoing conflict.  Why has success eluded this Cold War superpower in subduing the small Caucasian republic?  Russia has since hiccupped back and forth across the spectrum of conflict in the region and...

Excerpt - LONDON, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Georgia is calling for a United Nations' peacekeeping force to intervene to halt its conflict with Russia, a Georgian diplomat said. ~ snip ~ "We need troops (on the) ground," he told Reuters in an interview late on Monday. "Let it be a U.N.-mandated international force, ideally EU," he said. Russia, as a permanent member of the Security Council, would have the ability to veto any such move. ~ snip ~

Military Learning Between the Chechen Wars By: Michael Coffey The downward spiral of the Russian military that began with Afghanistan is often compared to the U.S. army’s experience in Vietnam. However, unlike the American experience, the conflict did not serve as an impetus for drastic military reform. In fact, the decline of the Soviet army continued through the 1980s, leading to the defeat of the Red Army’s “ghost” in Chechnya in 1996 at the hands of a few rebels. Three years later, President Vladimir Putin ordered the army back into Chechnya. The military did not undergo dramatic transformation in the...

McCain said the Georgia conflict shows the need for a president with strong foreign policy skills, while likely Democratic opponent U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has little such experience. Supporters of likely Republican U.S. presidential nominee John McCain say the conflict between Russia and Georgia is making him look better to voters. Backers of the senator from Arizona say his stand for a tougher stance against Russia, such as his call for the country to be excluded from the Group of Eight industrialized nations, is resonating in the wake of its military campaign against Georgia, The Hill reported Monday. McCain's...

Breaking News 3:09am UK, Tuesday August 12, 2008 Georgia's President has told Sky News there will be no surrender to Russia over the disputed region of South Ossetia. Mikheil Saakashvili said his country had made every diplomatic effort to try to bring about a peaceful solution to the crisis. But he accused Russia of persisting in being the aggressors in the conflict, which started last week after Georgia sent forces to retake the pro-Russian region. "This nation is not going to surrender," he told Sky News. "This nation is not going to give up its freedom, its system that is...

Some dreams are hard to kill, even when run over by invading tanks. As a youth, Gizo Ujarmeli of then-Soviet Georgia was drafted into the dreaded Interior Ministry. Posted as a border guard on the frozen steppe, he listened to Voice of America, taught himself English and dreamed of a day when he could live in freedom. Soon after the collapse of Communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Georgia declared independence, and Ujarmeli was on his way. In 2000, newly married, he and his wife Elena settled in Wausau. Central Wisconsin welcomed them and, in...

Bush administration officials, worried by what they saw as a series of provocative Russian actions, repeatedly warned Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to avoid giving the Kremlin an excuse to intervene in his country militarily, U.S. officials said Monday. But in the end, the warnings failed to stop the Georgian president — a Bush favorite — from launching an attack last week that on Monday seemed likely to end not only in his country’s military humiliation but complete occupation by Russian forces. SNIP Pentagon officials said that despite having 130 trainers assigned to Georgia, they had no advance notice of Georgia’s...

<p>GEROGIA'S President Mikheil Saakashvili today vowed no surrender even as Russian troops pressed deeper into his country and he said the capital Tbilisi was being threatened.</p> <p>Asked during a phone interview with CNN what he would like Russia's leaders to know, Mr Saakashvili responded: "I think they should hear Georgia will never surrender. Georgia will never surrender."</p>

Bush warns Russia not to overthrow Georgia's government Russia's attacks against the former Soviet republic of Georgia have "substantially damaged Russia's standing in the world," President Bush told reporters ... Bush also warned Russia against trying to depose Georgia's government, saying evidence suggests Russia may be preparing to do so. "Russia must reverse the course it appears to be on," Bush said in the Rose Garden of the White House.

Obama today: "We should continue to push for a United Nations Security Council Resolution calling for an immediate end to the violence. This is a clear violation of the sovereignty and internationally recognized borders of Georgia – the UN must stand up for the sovereignty of its members, and peace in the world.".........JUST ONE LITTLE THING WRONG YOUR STATEMENT BARRY!

Time to stop the hand-wringing about Russia's re-igniting the Cold War by invading Georgia. Time to start thinking of what a golden opportunity this presents. First the reality. Russia, before, during, and after the Soviet Union was and remains a brutal imperialist dictatorship. The Soviet Union was simply the same old Czarist Russian imperialism with Marxism-Leninism as an ideological rationale. The fall of the USSR only meant the fall of the rationale. So Russia is back to where it has always been, with the Russian compulsion for brute force bullying as its way of dealing with the world. It is...

Ridge said he was proud of how McCain has handled the crisis unfolding in Georgia. ...“He has kept a cool head, taken calls from Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili -- and really behaved very presidential in his perspective of this crisis,” said Ridge as McCain shook hands with the crowd that gathered around him. “He has been to Georgia several times,” Ridge added. “He doesn’t need to look for it on a map.”

The US military was surprised by the timing and swiftness of the Russian military's move into South Ossetia and is still trying to sort out what happened, a US defense official said Monday. Russian forces surged into the breakaway region last week after weeks of clashes, threats and warnings between Tblisi and Moscow which culminated August 6 in a two-day Georgian offensive into South Ossetia. That the two countries were on a collision course was no surprise to anyone, but the devastating Russian response was not expected, officials said. "We were tracking it earlier in that week and we knew...

OK, On war in Ossetia and Georgia, Russian patriarch (head of Russian Church) issued statemen, that Iv menage to translate only roughly, so please any of Russian- speaking FRpeers, please translate propperly! "The most holy Patriarch Moscow and Russia Alex II has made the application in occasion of events in South Ossetia. « Having learned about fighting clashes in Tskhinvali and its vicinities, I call to stop fire and to return on a way of dialogue, — it is spoken in the statement of his Hollyness. — Now on the ground of South Ossetia blood flows, and people, over what...

US calls on Russia to end 'campaign of terror' in South Ossetia Compiled by Daily Star staff Monday, August 11, 2008 The United States, Georgia's strongest ally and military trainer, on Sunday warned Russia to end aggression in the Caucasus or face a diplomatic head-to-head with Washington. The unspecified threat came as UN observers in Georgia confirmed that a military airport near Tbilisi was bombed and another former Soviet satellite state in Poland, a major US ally which is already a NATO partner, called for an EU stabilisation force to be sent in. "We have made it clear to the...

U.S. citizen Joe Mestas, who married resident of South Ossetia and has 5 - old daughter witnessed the attack on Tskhinvali. "I am ready to declare the whole world that this war unleashed a Georgia, Ossetia live in that peaceful people who do not need war," - Joe Mestas told ITAR-TASS.http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vesti.ru%2Fdoc.html%3Fid%3D199974%26tid%3D60353&hl=ru&ie=UTF8&sl=ru&tl=en

  Compare  and contrast Russian Strategy in the First and the Second Chechen wars.  Perhaps the greatest challenge Yeltsin had to face after he had been elected president of the Russian Federation in August 1991was to deal with a country that had 89 regions and autonomous republics, often populated by different national minorities oppressed by the Soviet rule, which sought independence.  Yeltsin’s famous phrase ‘the republics have to take as much sovereignty as they can,’[1] was perhaps the spunk that local leaders needed. However, in one particular case, this would become catastrophic for the FSU.  The Chechen Republic was one of...

Belgrade, 11 August (AKI) – The deadly conflict between Russia and Georgia in the breakaway province of South Ossetia is an indirect result of Kosovo's declaration of independence in February, Serbian analysts and politicians said on Monday. “If there wasn’t a ‘Kosovo precedent’, as the greatest world powers headed by the United States called the secession of a part of Serbian territory, there wouldn’t have been a war in South Ossetia,” Oliver Ivanovic, Serbian government official in charge of Kosovo told the Belgrade daily Blic. Ivanovic said that Kosovo's example was “inspiring to South Ossetia, so they wanted to strain...

The Czech experience of being invaded and subjugated by Russia has undoubtedly coloured the Czech view of the conflict. The Czech foreign ministry released a statement fully supporting Georgia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty and indirectly blaming Russia for causing the crisis. Czech arms firms, meanwhile, sell weapons and munitions - ironically weapons originally supplied by the Soviets - to the Georgian armed forces. The export deals are approved by the Czech centre-right government. But not all Czechs support Georgia in its attempt to regain control over South Ossetia. Former Foreign Minister Jiří Dienstbier, for one, believes Georgia has made a...

irredentist - One who advocates the recovery of territory culturally or historically related to one’s nation but now subject to a foreign government. [alphaDictionary.com] It must come as a shocking news to all those who preached: “We are one global community, now. We are all the citizens of the world. As freedom and democracy are spreading all over the globe, there will be wars no more.” Despite their dire predictions based on such absurd inventions as “diversity is strength”, “nation states are anachronism in today’s world”, and “a key to peace and prosperity is a lack of border and immigration...