UMD Libertarians

Georgia was tricked, but by Russia or US?
Ian Bell on the new cold war

LET’S RUN through this again. Vladimir Putin is not a nice man. The KGB, with whom the young Vlad earned his reputation as a people person, was not Russia’s answer to the Rotary Club. As a direct consequence, Russian traditions of democracy remain wafer thin, a cracked veneer that fails utterly to conceal thuggery, rigged votes, oligarchic mafias, corruption, and the corpses of journalists. Are we clear?

Russia’s current identity is composed, meanwhile, of a volatile mixture of intense nationalism and paranoia. Its rulers, whatever their labels, take it as read that their country exists under permanent threat of encirclement by its enemies. Now, here’s the tricky part: there is nothing currently to suggest that they are mistaken. Intense nationalists of a different stripe, feed the paranoia of the intense nationalists in Moscow.

This is not, of course, the story we have been hearing. When the United States − having shredded the anti-ballistic missile treaty that gave nuclear deterrence its single justification − bribes Poland into housing rockets pointed at the Russians, we hear only of a "shield". When Georgia launches smaller rockets at a South Ossetian town, in defiance of all the humanitarian rules, we hear only that a freedom-loving but "provoked" Georgian leader has stepped into a cunning Russian trap.

It may be, of course, that Georgia’s President Saakashvili committed just such an act of astonishing, inexplicable folly. North Ossetia, ethnic and cultural twin to its disputed neighbour in the south, is part of the Russian Federation. Putin and those who support him - a clear majority, as no-one disputes, of Russians and Ossetians - meanwhile have difficulty understanding the concept of Georgian independence.

But when Saakashvili offered the gift of a direct military challenge by shelling Ossetian Tskhinvali, hospitals, parliament and all, how was Russia supposed to react? By asking politely for clarification of Georgian intentions? Imagine the French have just shelled the Channel Islands. What’s our next move?

A daft analogy? Not as daft, I suspect, as the claim that the US, with military advisers on site in Georgia busily equipping and training its army, tried and failed to dissuade Saakashvili from launching a war. Does America have so little influence over a tiny client state that depends entirely on American goodwill? Or did Saakashvili somehow get the wrong idea from someone somewhere about the nature and scale of likely US support and US responses? Nothing else makes any sense.

Much of the West’s media have accepted the script as written, and accepted it with enthusiasm. Some people, it seems, really miss the Cold War. As political eminences in the US tell it, that conflict never ended. Who knew? George Bush senior and the "new world order" never happened. Without missing a beat, we are back to "containing Russia". The proportionate response to a five-day war in a postage-stamp region of the Caucasus is the placing of missiles in Poland. Perhaps the Cubans should offer a view?

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Saakashvili did indeed make a grievous error. Let’s accept that a Harvard education cannot eradicate a tendency to hot-headedness. It’s still either/or. Either Saakashvili was misled, or he is dumb. Either way, does that qualify him to be in a position to whistle-up the nuclear arsenals of Nato should he have another rush of blood to the head?

David Miliband, our vastly-experienced Foreign Secretary, thinks it does. The latest junior Churchill argues that, precisely because Georgia took a kicking from the Russians, its membership of Nato should be nodded through forthwith. This was precisely the outcome sought by the US at a Nato meeting in Bucharest in the spring, long before anyone had heard of South Ossetia.

You can see how that one would run in State Department strategic gaming. So the Russians get a little war, they would say, and the chance to flaunt their cojones. If this plays, we get to overcome the objections of the Germans, the French and the Italians and plant another Nato flag in Russia’s back yard. This is known, I think, at least to the never-recently-sane, as a price worth paying.

Does a leader with Saakashvili’s lamentable credentials in war, and as a democrat, really become entitled to have another crack at the Russians with full Nato backing? Such is the meaning of article V of the organisation’s treaty: one for all and all for one. If a Nato member is attacked, its brethren must come to its aid militarily. We should grant that licence to the Rocket Man of Tbilisi? Miliband says we should.

Putin and his stooge, Russian "President" Dmitry Medvedev, are reliable villains. Russia says that Poland, with its planned shield, must go back on the nuclear target list: the Apocalypse Express gets its headline. Yet none of this, bizarre as it sounds, should be Europe’s real concern.

We are being sucked in, suckered and conscripted. As an economically embattled US flails after former glories, it fashions Nato into a blunt instrument. Whatever the organisation’s purpose during the Cold War, it currently stands revealed as an expeditionary force on behalf of Washington’s interests. That is not a useful development for Nato, Europe, America or the world.

Georgia should be proof enough. We know that Putin’s Russia is not to be trusted. But we also know a simple fact: in South Ossetia, Saakashvili started the shooting. Had the United Nations been allowed to function we might have been talking about faults on both sides. Instead, we are offered a new Cold War as though no other alternative is possible.

Far off in Afghanistan, meanwhile, 10 young Frenchmen die in a single engagement; then three Poles. They join the list of Britons, Canadians, Dutch and Americans that creeps towards 200 lives lost in 2008 alone, mostly for the sake of a Nato mission in a war on terrorism declared, forgotten, botched, forgotten and botched again under Washington’s direction. So remind me: where is Kabul, exactly, in relation to the North Atlantic?

The city is rather closer to Pakistan, source of the Taliban’s endlessly-replenished supplies of men and guns, a country that has just discarded America’s latest favourite general. Pervez Musharraf leaves behind a state with ungovernable borders that is also − let’s take another bow − armed with real, rather than Iranian potentially-perhaps nuclear weapons. Those in the Taliban and al Qaeda, people who would do us actual harm in our own towns and cities, given the chance, cannot feel too disgruntled.

Another Cold War in Europe and a hot war on the old Northwest Frontier: as a scorecard for Nato, these involve precious few bonus points. You would have to mark them as abject failures. Afghanistan begins to seem very like Europe’s long-avoided Vietnam. The disastrous challenge and counter-challenge with Russia meanwhile has a very creaky and disreputable sort of plot line. Nato, amid it all, has become America’s proxy.

It was always that, in most senses. You suspect, however, that an expiring Bush administration has found its gimmick, finally. How to draw the sceptical and under-achieving Europeans back in to the great global cause without deferring to their doubts and finer feelings?

Forget threats, insults, or expressions of undying friendship: binding treaties will do. Treaties, that is, and a couple of decent scripts. Wag the dog. Do it all with a crisis in a place with a name that might just have been invented. Do it with an unending war on the authors of permanent, inchoate, indefinable alien threat.

Putin, Saakashvili, and some Afghan warlords will be happy to oblige. David Miliband will not even hesitate. And the matinee crowds will be none the wiser.
america > georgia > russia

/thread
The fact that YOU believe the US is the reason they’re fighting proves beyond any doubt that the US is NOT the reason they’re fighting.

That deal with Poland sure got signed fast.

I heard they’ve been trying to get that deal done since 2002.

delicious textbook ad hominem.
How can a whole country be tricked into doing something?
It’s about Russian control of European oil and gas. The US has an interest in preventing that control but it’s involvement has been in promoting pipelines that bypass Russia. Same involvement as Europe.

If Georgia joins NATO that would mean that any and all hope of Russia acquiring the three pipelines through it would be lost unless Russia wanted to start a real war. That’s why Russia is so opposed to Georgia joining.

and my plumber named Pulaski called me back ON THE SAME DAY as the attack! PROOF THAT THE ATTACK WAS DONE BY THE US TO PUT THE FEAR OF GOD IN POLISH PLUMBERS!!

what’s going on in georgia has nothing to do with the deal we were trying to make with poland.

"I heard"
"I bet"
"I think"
"I know someone"
"I believe"
"It seems that"

….and variations of those ("I bet" = "You can bet")……..the mantra of the conspiracy crowd.

nice terrorist fist bump

he has never *not* seen a conspiracy where the US didn’t do something behind the scenes. at this point that’s something to be taken into consideration when reading his theads.

You are dead wrong on this one.

we make a good team then, since you don’t ever think its possible that the US ever does anything behind the scenes

we’ve got both extremes covered

I explained Russia’s interest in Georgia and it has nothing to do with the defense shield. The defense shield is a separate concern for Russia.

If you would like to explain the connection that you believe exists please do.

You are dead wrong on this one.

Who do you believe started this conflict?

You first

sig.

I’ll re-state the obvious

Georgia

Please explain the connection that you believe exists between the Georgia/Russia conflict and the missile defense shield.

russia->georgia, georgia->russia

either way, what does it have to do with the US and a missile shield in poland?
Not sure why you suggest anyone take your article as authoritative when they have some basic facts completely wrong… in the third paragraph.

First, they aren’t pointed at Russia at all and they are kinetic missiles… no war head. Not sure how you are going to point a kinetic missile at Russia and why Russia would feel threatened by a kinetic missile.

The writer then goes on to some how justify Russian invasion of Georgia… because North Ossetia is part of Russia… and Russians "meanwhile have difficulty understanding the concept of Georgian independence."? Seems like some pretty hazy logic.

I’m not addressing who fired on who first, or who is more in the right (between S. Ossetia and Georgia), just that the writer doesn’t seem to be an authoritative source (as you seem to be asserting).

we sure love being the Global Whore dont we

isnt that obvious? russia shows aggression (or is portrayed as showing aggression…however you like) and all of a sudden we have an urgent need for a missile shield. is it so hard to understand?

you’re kidding, right?

aren’t you?

its been in development long before that son.

Hmm a former warsaw pact country sees it’s former oppressor, rising in economic and military power, crush a former republic….. and all this happens close to the 40th anniversary of the invasion of czechoslovakia.

and somehow they conclude a MISSILE defense shield is their best bet to keep those ruskies back?

Why not have a free missile defense system in your country that would make your country a more integral part of america’s security. Now we have more to lose in poland than we had before, other than the fact that they are nato.

1. ignoring that there’s no proof, much less evidence that the US had anything to do with this
2. ignoring that whether they have our missiles or not there’d be a shitstorm if russia invaded poland
3. ignoring that poland isn’t a threat to russia, and russian isn’t eying poland
4. ignoring that having missiles there wouldn’t stop the russians if they wanted to invade

ignoring all that, your post is still stupid.

if you’re going to be condescending, you should learn to use commas, dad.
Not to throw a monkey wrench into the America did it, but i just read an article that is at odds with the current generally believed time line.

Discalimer: This guy is a Conservative pundit, though i have found he has been pretty accurate when it comes to foreign affairs.

Not sure how accurate this is, but it does answer some of the questions about how quickly Russia was able to get their seasoned divisions into Georgia (through S. Ossetia and Abkha in less than 2 days).
that’s all new to me. does he name his sources for that crap?

One guy is a German national, but was hired by Georgia as a media advisor, so keep that in mind. The other guy is supposedly an unbiased observer that has been writing about conflicts in the region for a long time. I haven’t been able to find out much on the second guy.
well its strange that his version doesn’t match what either side is saying.

I tend to doubt both sides comments because they both allege genocide. But who knows.

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