Caucasus Crisis
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Nayak
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Re: Caucasus Crisis
What has Obama's view been on the conflict ?
The most who gains from this demonization of Russia is McCain.
The most who gains from this demonization of Russia is McCain.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
Why didn't the Russians hit the transports returning from Iraq, full of soldiers?
because they must have been USAF planes.
because they must have been USAF planes.
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BSR Murthy
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Re: Caucasus Crisis
Last edited by BSR Murthy on 12 Aug 2008 09:50, edited 1 time in total.
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pradeepe
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Re: Caucasus Crisis
^ That picture is funny for sure, but is designed to trivialize and laugh off what is surely a genocidal campaign.
The west and particularly oiropeans are past masters at this when it suits them.
Hnair saar said it best, but the lesson for us is to watch and ever remember the brutality oirope is capable off, lest one has to tangle with them again.
The west and particularly oiropeans are past masters at this when it suits them.
Hnair saar said it best, but the lesson for us is to watch and ever remember the brutality oirope is capable off, lest one has to tangle with them again.
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Raju
Re: Caucasus Crisis
http://www.rense.com/general82/south.htm
It is symbolic that Tbilisi launched the aggression on the anniversary of the fall of the Republic of Serbian Krajina. Its demise became a prologue to the next phase of the Balkan war - to the war in Kosovo, the NATO strikes on Serbia, and the humiliation and partition of the country. It has been said many times that the West is reusing the Balkan scenario in the Caucasus, and that this time Russia is planned to play the role of Serbia. Belgrade politicians who said 13 years ago that selling their countrymen in Croatia and Bosnia would preclude the Western aggression now pretend they were unaware that Serbia's turn would come after the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
The Russian military action in Georgia is truly a seminal event and a major milestone in shaping the post cold war world order. The precedents set by the U.S. and the "holier than thou" European Union in Kosovo in the late 1990's in the back drop of oil prices in the teens and a Russia in the process of rebuilding and hesitating to use vetos in the U.N. are coming back to haunt the west.
The post Soviet Russia has never been a threat to the west. Instead of coopting the energy rich former super power (largest proven reserves of oil and gas) to ensure energy security and bring about grass roots changes in fundamentalist, religious monarchies, terrorist breeding military dictatorship swamps around the world the west continued to needle & threaten Russia with an expansionist NATO agenda.
In one fell swoop the Russian's have driven home the point that they have the keys to 40-50% of global oil reserves including reserves on the mainland, the caspian sea belt, parts of west asia (Iran). The message is loud and clear - the west can't have energy security without Russia in the equation. How the West reacts and Russia manages the fallout will reshape the geo political landscape over the next decade or two.
With the intermittent irritants in the U.S. - China relations, the west cannot afford to antagonize Russia. Will the west (especially the U.S.) realize that pax americana and the push for a unipolar world is counter productive ? Will they experience a change of heart and coopt and appease Russia ? or continue on a collision course that may result in cold war v2 ?
Regardless, there will be heavy courting of tried, trusted democracies and massive free markets such as India for "strategic" partnerships and sundry alliances.
I guess Georgia enjoyed an informal MUNNA status (Major U.S. Non NATO Ally). Seems like the days of MUNNA are over. MUNNA's in India's neighbhorhood should be taking note. Moral of the story - if big boys corral petty street criminals by the scruff of the neck and b!*chslap powerful friends and relatives of the street thugs will watch from the side lines
The post Soviet Russia has never been a threat to the west. Instead of coopting the energy rich former super power (largest proven reserves of oil and gas) to ensure energy security and bring about grass roots changes in fundamentalist, religious monarchies, terrorist breeding military dictatorship swamps around the world the west continued to needle & threaten Russia with an expansionist NATO agenda.
In one fell swoop the Russian's have driven home the point that they have the keys to 40-50% of global oil reserves including reserves on the mainland, the caspian sea belt, parts of west asia (Iran). The message is loud and clear - the west can't have energy security without Russia in the equation. How the West reacts and Russia manages the fallout will reshape the geo political landscape over the next decade or two.
With the intermittent irritants in the U.S. - China relations, the west cannot afford to antagonize Russia. Will the west (especially the U.S.) realize that pax americana and the push for a unipolar world is counter productive ? Will they experience a change of heart and coopt and appease Russia ? or continue on a collision course that may result in cold war v2 ?
Regardless, there will be heavy courting of tried, trusted democracies and massive free markets such as India for "strategic" partnerships and sundry alliances.
I guess Georgia enjoyed an informal MUNNA status (Major U.S. Non NATO Ally). Seems like the days of MUNNA are over. MUNNA's in India's neighbhorhood should be taking note. Moral of the story - if big boys corral petty street criminals by the scruff of the neck and b!*chslap powerful friends and relatives of the street thugs will watch from the side lines
Last edited by Manas on 12 Aug 2008 10:30, edited 1 time in total.
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Raju
Re: Caucasus Crisis
The Russian military action in Georgia is truly a seminal event and a major milestone in shaping the post cold war world order. The precedents set by the U.S. and the "holier than thou" European Union in Kosovo in the late 1990's in the back drop of oil prices in the teens and a Russia in the process of rebuilding and hesitating to use vetos in the U.N. are coming back to haunt the west.
The post Soviet Russia has never been a threat to the west. Instead of coopting the energy rich former super power (largest proven reserves of oil and gas) to ensure energy security and bring about grass roots changes in fundamentalist, religious monarchies, terrorist breeding military dictatorship swamps around the world the west continued to needle & threaten Russia with an expansionist NATO agenda.
In one fell swoop the Russian's have driven home the point that they have the keys to 40-50% of global oil reserves including reserves on the mainland, the caspian sea belt, parts of west asia (Iran). The message is loud and clear - the west can't have energy security without Russia in the equation. How the West reacts and Russia manages the fallout will reshape the geo political landscape over the next decade or two.
With the intermittent irritants in the U.S. - China relations, the west cannot afford to antagonize Russia. Will the west (especially the U.S.) realize that pax americana and the push for a unipolar world is counter productive ? Will they experience a change of heart and coopt and appease Russia ? or continue on a collision course that may result in cold war v2
Bear appears to be coming back….
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Nayak
- BRF Oldie
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Re: Caucasus Crisis
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20 ... ck_to_life
ANALYSIS
West frets as Russian bear roars back to life
By HELENE COOPER
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 1:05 a.m.
WASHINGTON - Russian troops stepped up their advance into Georgian territory on Monday, attempting to turn back the clock to the days when Moscow held uncontested sway over what it considers its "near abroad," and arousing increasing alarm in the West.
Even as they prepared to convene an emergency meeting of NATO today and President Bush denounced the Russian actions in the strongest terms to date, the United States and its European allies faced tough choices over how to push back. They seemed uncertain how to adjust to a new geopolitical game that threatened to undermine two decades of democratic gains in countries that once were part of the Soviet sphere.
Russian troops briefly seized a Georgian military base and took up positions close to the city of Gori on Monday, raising Georgian fears of a full-scale invasion or an attempt to oust President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Bush, little more than an hour after returning to Washington from the Olympic Games in Beijing, warned Russia that its military operations were damaging its reputation and were "unacceptable in the 21st century."
"Russia's actions this week have raised serious questions about its intent in Georgia and the region," he said. "These actions have substantially damaged Russia's standing in the world, and these actions jeopardize relations with the United States and Europe."
Administration officials said military options were almost certainly off the table, but the United States did airlift Georgian troops stationed in Iraq back home, answering a plea from the Georgian government and prompting a sharp response from Russia. Washington could also try to ostracize Moscow on the international stage, perhaps kicking it out of the Group of 8.
Yet there was no immediate indication that Western powers could exercise much leverage over Russia if it chooses to ignore their warnings. The country is enjoying windfall profits from oil exports and seems determined to reassert influence over Georgia and Ukraine, while sending a clear signal to former satellite states that they should be wary of an overly cozy political and military alliance with the United States, analysts say.
"If the United States and Europe don't stop Russia, I think this is the end of what we thought of as the post-Soviet era," said Sarah Mendelson, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
George Friedman, chief executive of Stratfor, a geopolitical risk analysis company, said: "The Russians feel they have been treated like dirt by the world for the last 20 years. Now, they're back."
Few foreign policy experts believe that Russia can ever recapture its days of communist glory, global intimidation and military might. The world has changed and growing global powers like China and India will make a return impossible.
But there is a growing belief in European capitals and in Washington that the return of Russia could mean a distinct redrawing of the Eurasia map, with Europe and the United States giving up on attempts to integrate former Soviet republics like Ukraine and Georgia, into the Western orbit, while battling with Russia to keep Eastern European countries like Poland and the Baltic states.
Even for an emboldened Moscow, the Russian foray into Georgia carries substantial risks: global isolation from the Western democracies and anger from neighboring states of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, the prospect of perpetual military quagmires around its borders, if not on the catastrophic scale of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and nationalist reprisals like those that resulted from its crackdown in Chechnya.
A crowd of more than 1,000 people demonstrated in the Latvian capital, Riga, on Monday, while hundreds more gathered in Tallinn, Estonia, and Vilnius, Lithuania, to press the West to adopt a tough stance toward Moscow. Leaders in Poland and the Czech Republic echoed that call.
Even as U.S. and European leaders were demanding, begging and pleading on Monday with Russia to halt its advance into Georgia
Many foreign policy experts say that part of the reason Russia responded so forcefully to Georgia's attempt to take back South Ossetia is because the United States and Europe had been asserting themselves in Russia's backyard.
Beyond that, Russia has also been angry about American plans to put a missile defense system in Poland, and by American moves to encourage Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
Anybody seen the movie Peachmakers - clooney
The truck convey passed this territory
The truck convey passed this territory
Re: Caucasus Crisis
run mushrador run...
Russian official says Georgian president must go
14 minutes ago
MOSCOW - Russia's foreign minister says that Georgia's president must leave office and Georgian troops should stay out of the breakaway South Ossetia region for good.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that Moscow won't talk to President Mikhail Saakashvili and Saakashvili "better go."
Lavrov's statement sets a tough stage for Russia's talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is heading to Moscow Tuesday to negotiate an EU-brokered truce for the fierce conflict over the breakaway region
Russian official says Georgian president must go
14 minutes ago
MOSCOW - Russia's foreign minister says that Georgia's president must leave office and Georgian troops should stay out of the breakaway South Ossetia region for good.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that Moscow won't talk to President Mikhail Saakashvili and Saakashvili "better go."
Lavrov's statement sets a tough stage for Russia's talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is heading to Moscow Tuesday to negotiate an EU-brokered truce for the fierce conflict over the breakaway region
Re: Caucasus Crisis
A picture speaks a thousand words and the the terror stricken face of the "Clown of the Caucasus's " ,Saakashvili cowering under cover,encapsulates totally the horror of his error!
From more and more evidence emanataing from a variety of international sources,this entire episode has now been exposed as a CIA black-ops operation,executed in the same magnificent style as that of the Bay of Pigs,meant to embarrass and disgrace Putin and Medvedev and roll bakc the Russian economic and military revival in global affairs.Trained and armed by US forces,Saakashvili's Georgian "blitzkrieg" of S.Ossetia has boomeranged upon his own state with such ferocity,that he will soon join Gen.Musharrat in glorious exile,both perhaps together in the US.There they can fulminate against their fate,ruminate about their ruin and masticate about their massive single error of judgement,that Uncle Sam through Bush and his big "Dick" and the choir boys of NATO would assist him in exterminating with the utmost prejudice the South Ossettians and thereby scalp the Bear.Genocide and ethnic cleansing as his patrons organised in the Balkans was achieved,but he never expected such a thunderous blow to the face from an enraged Bear,and neither did his sponsors and patrons imagine of such an immediate rout of their Georgian clowns.
In razing Tkshinvali to the ground and exterminating much of its population,Saakashvili was a willing disciple of his western high-priests of war,with the Balkans and Kosovo as their textbook.Sadly for him,he has found out later,rather than earlier,that the promises of support from Uncle Sam are truly poison pills,just as the late Shah of Iran,Ferdinand Marcos of the Phillipines and only recently,Gen.Pervert Musharrat of Pakistan is learning! At the very first sign of Russian resistance,the much trained (by US contractors) and touted Georgian ,fled from the battlefield and have suffered an ignominious rout,thereby restoring Russia's lost military pride after the untimely demise of the Soviet Union.This sends a huge signal to Russia's neighbours and many ex-Soviet states,not to believe the white-man's forked tongue so readily and never forget not to antagonise the Bear.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
Georgian army flees in disarray as Russians advance
(Vasily Shaposhnikov/Kommersant)
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was forced to take cover while in Gori
Tony Halpin in Gori
The Georgian Army was in complete disarray last night after troops and tanks fled the town of Gori in panic and abandoned it to the Russians without firing a shot.
As Russian armoured columns rolled deep into central and western Georgia, seizing several towns and a military base, President Saakashvili said that his country had been cut in half.
For the first time since the crisis erupted last Thursday, Russia admitted that its troops had moved out of Abkhazia, the other breakaway region under Moscow’s protection, and seized the town of Senaki in Georgia proper. Russian officials again insisted that they had no intention of occupying territory beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Georgia said that the Russian Army was also in command of the towns of Zugdidi and Kurga in the west, and its tanks appeared to be moving from the north and the west towards Tbilisi, the capital.
Analysis: roots of the Georgia-Russia conflict
Central cause of the conflict is that Southern Ossetes want to unite with their counterparts in the North, part of Russia
Reaction: world leaders condemn Moscow
This conflict matters to the West
Retreat and terror in face of Russian Army
Pictures: Saakashvili dives for cover
The retreat from Gori, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, was as humiliating as it was sudden and dramatic. The Times witnessed scores of tanks and armoured personnel carriers, laden with soldiers, speeding through the town away from what Georgian officials claimed was an imminent Russian invasion.
Residents watched in horror as their army abandoned its positions after a day of increasingly aggressive exchanges of fire along the border with South Ossetia, the breakaway region now fully under Russian control.
Jeeps and pick-up trucks filled with Georgian soldiers raced through the streets, their occupants frantically signalling to civilians that they too should flee. The road out of Gori towards Tbilisi was a scene of chaos and fear as cars jockeyed with tanks for a speedy escape.
Soldiers left by any means available. Dozens of troops clung to cars on the back of a transporter lorry, while five other soldiers fled on one quad bike.
A tank had exploded on the mountain road leaving Gori, although it was unclear what had caused the blast. The Times passed an armoured car in flames, soldiers leaping from the roof of the vehicle. It had apparently caught fire while trying to bulldoze the tank’s burning shell out of the way. Columns of Georgian tanks and heavy weaponry filled the road during the 50-mile journey back to Tbilisi as thousands of soldiers, many looking totally demoralised, headed for the capital. Police sealed off the highway from Tbilisi, turning back the few cars that ventured towards Gori.
The Russian attacks were met with Georgian artillery fire towards South Ossetia, despite President Saakashvili’s statement that he had called a ceasefire. Reporters later witnessed at least six Georgian helicopters attacking targets in South Ossetia.
Elsewhere, Russian armoured personnel carriers swept into Senaki, 20 miles inland from the Georgian Black Sea port of Poti, which Russian troops were also said to be attacking.
Georgia said that Russian forces seized police stations in Zugdidi, where reporters saw Russian soldiers posted outside an Interior Ministry building and armoured vehicles moving through the town.
It was unclear last night where the tanks fleeing from Gori were heading, but many of the troops regrouped on the outskirts of Tbilisi as if preparing to make a stand to defend the capital. Some artillery pieces had also been sited on the approach road from Gori.
The panic had been triggered at about 5pm, when troops suddenly started pouring out of Gori. Officials from the Georgian Interior Ministry claimed that up to 7,000 Russian troops with tanks were heading for the town and that it was under imminent threat of bombardment. A similar panic had ensued on Sunday night as thousands of people poured from the town, in what turned out to be a false alarm. The fear this time was more tangible, the sense of threat more real, as Gori’s streets emptied rapidly.
Not everyone was prepared to leave, however. One man said: “This is my city. I will never leave it even if the Russians come here and kill me. Why should I go to Tbilisi and wait for them there?”
The Georgian Government, which appealed for international support, claimed later that Russian troops had entered Gori, although there was no independent confirmation of this.
As the noose appeared to tighten around Tbilisi, the US State Department evacuated more than 170 American citizens. Poland and several other former Soviet satellites voiced fears that the fighting indicated Russia’s willingness to use force to regain its dominance of the region.
Even at the height of the chaos, Georgia’s legendary hospitality never faltered. A 70-year-old woman named Eteri retreated into her home and appeared moments later to offer apples from her garden to her guests. “I am not afraid,” she said. “We have lived with the Russians for 100 years so why do we need this war now? I don’t want to be with America; I think we should live peacefully with the Russians.”
From more and more evidence emanataing from a variety of international sources,this entire episode has now been exposed as a CIA black-ops operation,executed in the same magnificent style as that of the Bay of Pigs,meant to embarrass and disgrace Putin and Medvedev and roll bakc the Russian economic and military revival in global affairs.Trained and armed by US forces,Saakashvili's Georgian "blitzkrieg" of S.Ossetia has boomeranged upon his own state with such ferocity,that he will soon join Gen.Musharrat in glorious exile,both perhaps together in the US.There they can fulminate against their fate,ruminate about their ruin and masticate about their massive single error of judgement,that Uncle Sam through Bush and his big "Dick" and the choir boys of NATO would assist him in exterminating with the utmost prejudice the South Ossettians and thereby scalp the Bear.Genocide and ethnic cleansing as his patrons organised in the Balkans was achieved,but he never expected such a thunderous blow to the face from an enraged Bear,and neither did his sponsors and patrons imagine of such an immediate rout of their Georgian clowns.
In razing Tkshinvali to the ground and exterminating much of its population,Saakashvili was a willing disciple of his western high-priests of war,with the Balkans and Kosovo as their textbook.Sadly for him,he has found out later,rather than earlier,that the promises of support from Uncle Sam are truly poison pills,just as the late Shah of Iran,Ferdinand Marcos of the Phillipines and only recently,Gen.Pervert Musharrat of Pakistan is learning! At the very first sign of Russian resistance,the much trained (by US contractors) and touted Georgian ,fled from the battlefield and have suffered an ignominious rout,thereby restoring Russia's lost military pride after the untimely demise of the Soviet Union.This sends a huge signal to Russia's neighbours and many ex-Soviet states,not to believe the white-man's forked tongue so readily and never forget not to antagonise the Bear.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
Georgian army flees in disarray as Russians advance
(Vasily Shaposhnikov/Kommersant)
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was forced to take cover while in Gori
Tony Halpin in Gori
The Georgian Army was in complete disarray last night after troops and tanks fled the town of Gori in panic and abandoned it to the Russians without firing a shot.
As Russian armoured columns rolled deep into central and western Georgia, seizing several towns and a military base, President Saakashvili said that his country had been cut in half.
For the first time since the crisis erupted last Thursday, Russia admitted that its troops had moved out of Abkhazia, the other breakaway region under Moscow’s protection, and seized the town of Senaki in Georgia proper. Russian officials again insisted that they had no intention of occupying territory beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Georgia said that the Russian Army was also in command of the towns of Zugdidi and Kurga in the west, and its tanks appeared to be moving from the north and the west towards Tbilisi, the capital.
Analysis: roots of the Georgia-Russia conflict
Central cause of the conflict is that Southern Ossetes want to unite with their counterparts in the North, part of Russia
Reaction: world leaders condemn Moscow
This conflict matters to the West
Retreat and terror in face of Russian Army
Pictures: Saakashvili dives for cover
The retreat from Gori, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, was as humiliating as it was sudden and dramatic. The Times witnessed scores of tanks and armoured personnel carriers, laden with soldiers, speeding through the town away from what Georgian officials claimed was an imminent Russian invasion.
Residents watched in horror as their army abandoned its positions after a day of increasingly aggressive exchanges of fire along the border with South Ossetia, the breakaway region now fully under Russian control.
Jeeps and pick-up trucks filled with Georgian soldiers raced through the streets, their occupants frantically signalling to civilians that they too should flee. The road out of Gori towards Tbilisi was a scene of chaos and fear as cars jockeyed with tanks for a speedy escape.
Soldiers left by any means available. Dozens of troops clung to cars on the back of a transporter lorry, while five other soldiers fled on one quad bike.
A tank had exploded on the mountain road leaving Gori, although it was unclear what had caused the blast. The Times passed an armoured car in flames, soldiers leaping from the roof of the vehicle. It had apparently caught fire while trying to bulldoze the tank’s burning shell out of the way. Columns of Georgian tanks and heavy weaponry filled the road during the 50-mile journey back to Tbilisi as thousands of soldiers, many looking totally demoralised, headed for the capital. Police sealed off the highway from Tbilisi, turning back the few cars that ventured towards Gori.
The Russian attacks were met with Georgian artillery fire towards South Ossetia, despite President Saakashvili’s statement that he had called a ceasefire. Reporters later witnessed at least six Georgian helicopters attacking targets in South Ossetia.
Elsewhere, Russian armoured personnel carriers swept into Senaki, 20 miles inland from the Georgian Black Sea port of Poti, which Russian troops were also said to be attacking.
Georgia said that Russian forces seized police stations in Zugdidi, where reporters saw Russian soldiers posted outside an Interior Ministry building and armoured vehicles moving through the town.
It was unclear last night where the tanks fleeing from Gori were heading, but many of the troops regrouped on the outskirts of Tbilisi as if preparing to make a stand to defend the capital. Some artillery pieces had also been sited on the approach road from Gori.
The panic had been triggered at about 5pm, when troops suddenly started pouring out of Gori. Officials from the Georgian Interior Ministry claimed that up to 7,000 Russian troops with tanks were heading for the town and that it was under imminent threat of bombardment. A similar panic had ensued on Sunday night as thousands of people poured from the town, in what turned out to be a false alarm. The fear this time was more tangible, the sense of threat more real, as Gori’s streets emptied rapidly.
Not everyone was prepared to leave, however. One man said: “This is my city. I will never leave it even if the Russians come here and kill me. Why should I go to Tbilisi and wait for them there?”
The Georgian Government, which appealed for international support, claimed later that Russian troops had entered Gori, although there was no independent confirmation of this.
As the noose appeared to tighten around Tbilisi, the US State Department evacuated more than 170 American citizens. Poland and several other former Soviet satellites voiced fears that the fighting indicated Russia’s willingness to use force to regain its dominance of the region.
Even at the height of the chaos, Georgia’s legendary hospitality never faltered. A 70-year-old woman named Eteri retreated into her home and appeared moments later to offer apples from her garden to her guests. “I am not afraid,” she said. “We have lived with the Russians for 100 years so why do we need this war now? I don’t want to be with America; I think we should live peacefully with the Russians.”
Re: Caucasus Crisis
Mc Cain's reaction is idiotic. While my sympathies are with Russia, Georgia was supporting causes against India as far as I recall, as Russia has been humiliated by the West it could increasingly cool off from us and be drawn to China, which we should forestall.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
A signal lesson to be learnt by Indian strategists from this fiasco,is that if you put your faith in Uncle Sam,simultaneously take out the largest insurance policy available! If Bush and NATO can only support "Christian" Georgia in such a pathetic manner,that too after training him and goading him on,imagine what the consequences would be if we put our faith in the US or NATO to support us against an attack or invasion from China! The fleeing Americans from Georgia would be replicated a million times in scale over here.Let India and especially our "leaning tower of Punjab" reflect upon the track record of the US and the reality that India can only depend upon itself for its security and not expect anything from so-called friends.
PS:What has been the offical mouthings from the MEA or PM so far?
In the following piece,Putin and Russia's will to defend the rights of its citizens anywhere in the world is a magnificent message of patriotism from the motherland to its children.Can the current Indian dispensation guarantee the same for its own citizens living in the country,let alone its diaspora?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... tance.html
Georgia: Vladimir Putin sends emphatic message of global importance
Russia's pounding of Georgia means it will use force to protect all 25 million Russians in states that belonged to the Soviet Union
By David Blair, Diplomatic Editor
Last Updated: 2:23AM BST 12 Aug 2008
Central to Vladimir Putin's nationalistic policy is a conviction that the power of the West - seemingly unassailable at the end of the Cold War - is on the wane Photo: REUTERS
By seizing the opportunity to pound Georgia with air strikes and military incursions, Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, is sending an emphatic message with global consequences.
The curtain has fallen on the era when Nato steadily expanded into Eastern Europe and onwards to embrace former republics of the Soviet Union - and Russia was able to respond with nothing more than bluster.
Moreover, Mr Putin has demonstrated that the Kremlin will use force to protect the 25 million Russians who inhabit the Soviet Union's successor states, well beyond the mother country's borders.
The importance of this message cannot be exaggerated. Whether the populations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia's two breakaway regions, are genuinely Russian or merely the recipients of passports recently issued from Moscow matters little. Dmitry Medvedev made the crucial point last week when he stated that as Russia's president, he was obliged to protect the "security and dignity" of all Russian citizens, wherever they may live.
Countries ranging from Latvia to Moldova to Ukraine have large Russian minorities. If their presence justified Russian intervention in Georgia, might the same happen in these countries? Is the fighting in Georgia merely a prelude to what lies ahead in nations close to the heart of Europe?
Some Russians in the "Near Abroad" - the term used by Moscow's officials to refer to former Soviet Republics - inhabit clearly defined enclaves, uncannily similar to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Russians of Moldova have carved out the self-styled "Dniester Republic", a small, lawless region which Moscow effectively controls.
Elsewhere, Russian minorities have no enclaves, but they still enjoy significant influence simply because of their size. The 900,000 Russians in Latvia comprise well over a third of the population and the 500,000 in Estonia account for about 30 per cent.
Ukraine is the most crucial link in the chain. This aspiring member of both Nato and the European Union has 11 million Russians, concentrated in its eastern regions and particularly in the Crimea, where they comprise about 70 per cent of the population.
Jonathan Eyal, the head of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said that Russia's key priority was to prevent Ukraine from joining Nato, but further military intervention was unlikely.
"They don't need to do the same elsewhere simply because what is happening in Georgia has already driven home the message that what happens in these Russian enclaves, wherever they are, is for Russia to determine and no-one else," he said.
Mr Eyal said that Moscow's operation in Georgia would serve as a "deterrent" to any other country with a Russian minority. "The message is 'you do not touch any of them because the Russian military is determined to defend them even if it means crossing an international border with their tanks."
Moscow had "indirectly given a military guarantee" to Russian minorities across the former Soviet Union, especially in Ukraine.
This goes beyond merely guaranteeing their safety and the status of any enclaves they may have created. It also amounts to Moscow threatening force against any former Soviet Republics aspiring to Nato membership.
Ukraine was officially promised admission to Nato during the Alliance's last summit in April, although Russian objections ensured that no timetable was given.
When Mr Putin sent the tanks into Georgia, Mr Eyal there was "absolutely no doubt that one of his key calculations was Ukraine".
In essence, Mr Putin was seeking to deter Ukraine from pressing ahead with its plan to join Nato - and Mr Eyal believes that Russia's plan has succeeded.
If so, the balance of power in Europe has fundamentally changed and Russia has, through the use of force against Georgia, seized the power to veto Nato's future membership.
Ukraine is by far the most important of the former Soviet republics. Columns of Russian tanks hundreds of miles from its borders may now have changed its future.
PPS:Another excerpt from the Times UK.
"It is a shame that some of our partners are not helping us but, essentially, are hindering us," Mr Putin said.
For Georgians, the accusation that the US was assisting them in their struggle must have added cruel insult to mounting injury. Despite years of efforts by Mikheil Saakashvili to cement relations between his country and the distant Superpower, despite Georgia’s strenuous moves to push for Nato membership, and despite the courageous efforts of Georgian forces in supporting the US invasion of Iraq, the sum total of actual American assistance to the beleaguered former Soviet state in the last few days has amounted to a few verbal protests against the Russian action
PS:What has been the offical mouthings from the MEA or PM so far?
In the following piece,Putin and Russia's will to defend the rights of its citizens anywhere in the world is a magnificent message of patriotism from the motherland to its children.Can the current Indian dispensation guarantee the same for its own citizens living in the country,let alone its diaspora?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... tance.html
Georgia: Vladimir Putin sends emphatic message of global importance
Russia's pounding of Georgia means it will use force to protect all 25 million Russians in states that belonged to the Soviet Union
By David Blair, Diplomatic Editor
Last Updated: 2:23AM BST 12 Aug 2008
Central to Vladimir Putin's nationalistic policy is a conviction that the power of the West - seemingly unassailable at the end of the Cold War - is on the wane Photo: REUTERS
By seizing the opportunity to pound Georgia with air strikes and military incursions, Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, is sending an emphatic message with global consequences.
The curtain has fallen on the era when Nato steadily expanded into Eastern Europe and onwards to embrace former republics of the Soviet Union - and Russia was able to respond with nothing more than bluster.
Moreover, Mr Putin has demonstrated that the Kremlin will use force to protect the 25 million Russians who inhabit the Soviet Union's successor states, well beyond the mother country's borders.
The importance of this message cannot be exaggerated. Whether the populations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia's two breakaway regions, are genuinely Russian or merely the recipients of passports recently issued from Moscow matters little. Dmitry Medvedev made the crucial point last week when he stated that as Russia's president, he was obliged to protect the "security and dignity" of all Russian citizens, wherever they may live.
Countries ranging from Latvia to Moldova to Ukraine have large Russian minorities. If their presence justified Russian intervention in Georgia, might the same happen in these countries? Is the fighting in Georgia merely a prelude to what lies ahead in nations close to the heart of Europe?
Some Russians in the "Near Abroad" - the term used by Moscow's officials to refer to former Soviet Republics - inhabit clearly defined enclaves, uncannily similar to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Russians of Moldova have carved out the self-styled "Dniester Republic", a small, lawless region which Moscow effectively controls.
Elsewhere, Russian minorities have no enclaves, but they still enjoy significant influence simply because of their size. The 900,000 Russians in Latvia comprise well over a third of the population and the 500,000 in Estonia account for about 30 per cent.
Ukraine is the most crucial link in the chain. This aspiring member of both Nato and the European Union has 11 million Russians, concentrated in its eastern regions and particularly in the Crimea, where they comprise about 70 per cent of the population.
Jonathan Eyal, the head of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said that Russia's key priority was to prevent Ukraine from joining Nato, but further military intervention was unlikely.
"They don't need to do the same elsewhere simply because what is happening in Georgia has already driven home the message that what happens in these Russian enclaves, wherever they are, is for Russia to determine and no-one else," he said.
Mr Eyal said that Moscow's operation in Georgia would serve as a "deterrent" to any other country with a Russian minority. "The message is 'you do not touch any of them because the Russian military is determined to defend them even if it means crossing an international border with their tanks."
Moscow had "indirectly given a military guarantee" to Russian minorities across the former Soviet Union, especially in Ukraine.
This goes beyond merely guaranteeing their safety and the status of any enclaves they may have created. It also amounts to Moscow threatening force against any former Soviet Republics aspiring to Nato membership.
Ukraine was officially promised admission to Nato during the Alliance's last summit in April, although Russian objections ensured that no timetable was given.
When Mr Putin sent the tanks into Georgia, Mr Eyal there was "absolutely no doubt that one of his key calculations was Ukraine".
In essence, Mr Putin was seeking to deter Ukraine from pressing ahead with its plan to join Nato - and Mr Eyal believes that Russia's plan has succeeded.
If so, the balance of power in Europe has fundamentally changed and Russia has, through the use of force against Georgia, seized the power to veto Nato's future membership.
Ukraine is by far the most important of the former Soviet republics. Columns of Russian tanks hundreds of miles from its borders may now have changed its future.
PPS:Another excerpt from the Times UK.
"It is a shame that some of our partners are not helping us but, essentially, are hindering us," Mr Putin said.
For Georgians, the accusation that the US was assisting them in their struggle must have added cruel insult to mounting injury. Despite years of efforts by Mikheil Saakashvili to cement relations between his country and the distant Superpower, despite Georgia’s strenuous moves to push for Nato membership, and despite the courageous efforts of Georgian forces in supporting the US invasion of Iraq, the sum total of actual American assistance to the beleaguered former Soviet state in the last few days has amounted to a few verbal protests against the Russian action
Re: Caucasus Crisis
Russia seems to have a large beehive of -tans on its border...a lineup
of cats paws to be used suitably when the need arises.
be interesting to see - Ru might encourage a
E-W split of Ukraine if NATO presses fwd.
of cats paws to be used suitably when the need arises.
be interesting to see - Ru might encourage a
E-W split of Ukraine if NATO presses fwd.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
"Why didn't the Russians hit the transports returning from Iraq, full of soldiers?
because they must have been USAF planes."
That's what I thought too, but not exactly. Putin's (or the Russian Ambassador's) statement said that they were brought "almost to the borders". I assume that Russia will have sealed off Georgian airspace and warned everyone else not to try to enter. These guys may have come in by land from Turkey and rushed to defend Tbilisi.
They were bringing in 2000 armed, combat-ready (or maybe surrender-ready) mercenaries. Plus maybe anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
because they must have been USAF planes."
That's what I thought too, but not exactly. Putin's (or the Russian Ambassador's) statement said that they were brought "almost to the borders". I assume that Russia will have sealed off Georgian airspace and warned everyone else not to try to enter. These guys may have come in by land from Turkey and rushed to defend Tbilisi.
They were bringing in 2000 armed, combat-ready (or maybe surrender-ready) mercenaries. Plus maybe anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
Dick C and his cohorts must watch Dumb Dumber movie.
Iraq war WOT are straining the exchequer with budget deficit and then the oil price all this while Russia is rapidly becoming economic giant,
Dick C is trying to encorcle Russia with missile defence or color revolution.
There are very important lessons to our chai biscoot NSA if they ever wake up or our PM jee And Rajmata ji and Yuvraj.. Next time RAW or CBI IB says Bdesh based miloitants did this that, Bdesh has to pay. But then I too am dumb dumber to expect balls in the current leadership
Iraq war WOT are straining the exchequer with budget deficit and then the oil price all this while Russia is rapidly becoming economic giant,
Dick C is trying to encorcle Russia with missile defence or color revolution.
There are very important lessons to our chai biscoot NSA if they ever wake up or our PM jee And Rajmata ji and Yuvraj.. Next time RAW or CBI IB says Bdesh based miloitants did this that, Bdesh has to pay. But then I too am dumb dumber to expect balls in the current leadership
Re: Caucasus Crisis
I think the Russians are making a huge mistake. Then again, maybe by sitting on the east-west highway in Gori, and their tanks in the military bases in the west, and all the other Georgian military bases in ruins, time is on their side. The genocidal goon gang is all holed up in Tbilisi, where their popularity must be rising by the minute. 
The announcement came minutes before French President Nicolas Sarkozy was to land in Moscow to meet with Medvedev to negotiate terms for a possible cease-fire.
"I have reached a decision to halt the operation to force the Georgian authorities to peace," Medvedev said. "The aggressor has been punished and has incurred very significant losses. Its armed forces are disorganized."
"Le statement on le halt of le military acsion by Russia is le news oui had expected. C'est good news," Sarkozy said, according to an Interfax report.
The decision ends five days of fighting that began in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia and spread well into Georgia.
Before the Russian president said he would halt military operations, a Georgian Interior Ministry official said Tuesday that Russian bombs hit one of the three pipelines carrying oil to the Black Sea port of Poti. There was no oil in the pipeline at the time, the ministry official said.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has accused Russia of provoking the war to justify a full-scale invasion of the former Soviet state.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an earlier news conference Tuesday that Russia wanted a demilitarized zone to be created in Georgian territory before a cease-fire took effect.
The zone had to be big enough to prevent Georgia's military from again attacking the breakaway province, Lavrov said.
He said Russian troops already in the breakaway province on peacekeeping duty should remain, but that Georgian troops who were part of that force should not return.
Lavrov said it would be best if Saakashvili stepped down as Georgia's leader -- something the president has vowed not to do -- but that Russia is not demanding his resignation.
"We have no plans to throw down any leadership," Lavrov said. "It is not part of our culture. It is not what we do."
Re: Caucasus Crisis
And the BBC removed the last few seconds from the clip that showed him looking up in terror. They've been running long (>20 min) interviews with him during normal news segments where he poses in front of the EU flag.A picture speaks a thousand words and the the terror stricken face of the "Clown of the Caucasus's " ,Saakashvili cowering under cover,encapsulates totally the horror of his error!
Re: Caucasus Crisis
The only way to treat gangsters.
I hope they ride in under air cover to Tbilisi and politely request the gang bosses to step into the jeep for a short trip to the nearest wall. And of course, quell any signs of resistance.
The point that is being glossed over is that over 2000 civilians who were alive and well this time last week, are now buried, either in mass graves or in the rubble of their homes. The Georgian mass-murderers went systematically inside homes in Tkshinvali and tossed grenades down into the basements where people were hiding. The initial pictures also showed civilians lying dead where they fell along a line that seemed to be a mile long, on a meadow. Obviously they had been lined up and machinegunned.
No mercy should be shown to the Georgian military or political bosses. These sorts of mass-murder adventures should not go unpunished in the 21st century.
The Russian president, however, said he ordered the military to defend itself and quell any signs of Georgian resistance.
"If there are any emerging hotbeds of resistance or any aggressive actions, you should take steps to destroy them," he told his defense minister at a televised Kremlin meeting.
I hope they ride in under air cover to Tbilisi and politely request the gang bosses to step into the jeep for a short trip to the nearest wall. And of course, quell any signs of resistance.
The point that is being glossed over is that over 2000 civilians who were alive and well this time last week, are now buried, either in mass graves or in the rubble of their homes. The Georgian mass-murderers went systematically inside homes in Tkshinvali and tossed grenades down into the basements where people were hiding. The initial pictures also showed civilians lying dead where they fell along a line that seemed to be a mile long, on a meadow. Obviously they had been lined up and machinegunned.
No mercy should be shown to the Georgian military or political bosses. These sorts of mass-murder adventures should not go unpunished in the 21st century.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
It's more seminal for some than for othersManas wrote:The Russian military action in Georgia is truly a seminal event
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pradeepe
- BRFite
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Re: Caucasus Crisis
Thats probably why the Georgian military were doing a paki and fleeing as fast as their legs can carry them. They know what they did, and they sure as hell know what the Russians are capable of.narayanan wrote:The only way to treat gangsters.
The point that is being glossed over is that over 2000 civilians who were alive and well this time last week, are now buried, either in mass graves or in the rubble of their homes. The Georgian mass-murderers went systematically inside homes in Tkshinvali and tossed grenades down into the basements where people were hiding. The initial pictures also showed civilians lying dead where they fell along a line that seemed to be a mile long, on a meadow. Obviously they had been lined up and machinegunned.
.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
bitch slapping now over, the bear will retreat back over the mountains leaving carrion in his wake
the georgians have been phenomenally STUPID to embark on this adventure, medvedev(putin) has made his point, time to move on
the georgians have been phenomenally STUPID to embark on this adventure, medvedev(putin) has made his point, time to move on
Re: Caucasus Crisis
This is the start of the end of NATO expansion. Russia has made a statement here to build a large enough buffer, starting with Georgia between itself and NATO.Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an earlier news conference Tuesday that Russia wanted a demilitarized zone to be created in Georgian territory before a cease-fire took effect.
The zone had to be big enough to prevent Georgia's military from again attacking the breakaway province, Lavrov said.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
well the regular Rus army will withdraw but all the volunteers and militias that
steamed in looking for relatives and for revenge are going to remain behind thats
my tea leaf.
they and the south ossetians are going to police the region and the new DMZ
on georgian soil and they will looking for revenge if they catch any georgian troops or their US advisers sneaking around.
and should the US try its usual role of supplying used F16s, L88 radars and
PAC3 batteries - I predict another short sharp lesson will be engineered.
steamed in looking for relatives and for revenge are going to remain behind thats
my tea leaf.
they and the south ossetians are going to police the region and the new DMZ
on georgian soil and they will looking for revenge if they catch any georgian troops or their US advisers sneaking around.
and should the US try its usual role of supplying used F16s, L88 radars and
PAC3 batteries - I predict another short sharp lesson will be engineered.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
Russia also "visited" two major military centers, .................. must have carted a ton of evidence of outside help to the Georgian Army. Will come in handy when talking about Iran and the likes.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... itted=true
Another battle in the 1,000-year Russia-Georgia grudge match
Retaking Ossetia is just one part of Russia's campaign to reassert dominance over the Caucasus - and defy AmericaSimon Sebag Montefiore
The Russian tank columns rumbling into Georgia reveal the anger of a tiger finally swatting the mouse that has teased it for years. South Ossetia may seem as distant, trivial and complicated as the 19th-century Schleswig-Holstein question but Russia's fury is about much more than the Ossetians. The Caucasus matters greatly to the Russians for all sorts of reasons, none greater than the fact that it now also matters to us.
The troubles in Georgia are not the equivalent of an assassinated archduke in Sarajevo. But historians may well point to this little war, beside the spectacular Olympic launch of resurgent China, as the start of the twilight of America's sole world hegemony. If the new Great Game is for the oil of the Caucasus and Central Asia, the West may be in the process of losing it.
I've been visiting Georgia since the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991. I've known all three Georgian presidents since independence, and witnessed the wars and revolutions of the Caucasian tinderbox. In 1991 the chief of the Georgian partisans in the first Ossetian war, a dentist turned warlord, drove me up to villages around Tskhinvali, highlands of lusciously green beauty, where a vicious war between Georgian and Ossetian farmers was being waged with the ferocity of intimate neighbours, using comically armoured tractors instead of tanks.
My Georgian hosts leant their guns against a tree and took me to an open-air feast at a table stacked with delicacies in honour of a local boy killed that day. During the long drunken banquet I asked where the boy was buried. “He hasn't been buried,” replied my host, “he's under your feet.” Paling, I looked and there he lay, stretched out under the table, cradled with bouquets of flowers.
To understand this week's events, we must travel back a thousand years: long before Russia existed, Georgia was a Christian-warrior kingdom. The Caucasus was the natural borderland of the three great empires of the Near East: the battlefield between Orthodox Russia, the Islamic Ottomans and Persians. In 1783 the embattled King Eralke II was forced to claim the protection of Prince Potemkin, Catherine the Great's partner-in-power. Between 1801 and 1810 Russia swallowed the last Georgian principalities. In 1918 Georgia enjoyed independence for three years before Stalin seized it back for Moscow.
No one understood its ethnic complexity and strategic significance like Stalin, that Georgian romantic turned Russian imperialist, who had been born in Gori, the town that has been overrun by Russian forces and where a marble temple now stands over the hut where he was born. The Ossetians who straddled the border had early sought Russian alliance, earning Georgian disdain. Hence Stalin was accused by his enemies of being an Ossetian: his father was of Ossetian descent, though long since Georgianised. Stalin drew the borders of the Soviet republics to ensure Georgia contained autonomous ethnic entities, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Adzharia, through which Moscow could keep Georgia in order.
When that proud, cocky bantam, Georgia, became independent in 1991, the Russian double-headed eagle was humiliated. Ever since, Russian interference and skulduggery has bedevilled Georgia. Russia encouraged southern Ossetia to establish a statelet within Georgia, whose inept, insane first President, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, had inflamed ethnic tensions. As Ossetians fought Georgians who themselves rebelled against Gamsakhurdia, I sat in his office: he was a Shakespearean scholar and quoted King Lear to me.
Gamsakhurdia was either murdered or committed suicide. In 1993, his successor Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet Foreign Minister and Politburo member, lost Abkhazia in another bloody Russian-orchestrated war. But Shevardnadze won the peace. Georgia, which had longed to be part of Europe, embraced Western democracy and US friendship. Yet Shevardnadze recognised the limits of Georgian defiance, once telling me as we flew in 1993 in his plane to make peace with the Kremlin: “The destiny of Russia is reflected in the Caucasus like the rays of the sun are reflected in a drop of water.”
Old, autocratic Shevardnadze was toppled in the Rose Revolution of 2003 by an energetic and decent if impulsive US-educated lawyer, Mikhail Saakashvili, who hoped to escape Moscow for ever by joining the EU and Nato - as did Russia's huge neighbour, Ukraine. This prospect of encirclement by triumphant America infuriated Russia. Imagine if newly independent Wales cockily joined the Warsaw Pact.
Russia is no longer the spineless giant of the Nineties: Vladimir Putin's musclebound, oil-fuelled authoritarian regime has aggressively reinvigorated Russia. He had already shown his ruthless determination to master the Caucasus by crushing Chechnya. Nato in Georgia would have made that meaningless. The Kremlin has used its clients, Abkhazia and Ossetia, as Trojan Horses to ruin Tbilisi's independence - recently raising the tension by offering Russian passports to all Ossetians and testing Georgian resolve with cross-border skirmishing: the trap of a practised imperial power.
Georgia is not guiltless: most Georgians I know care little about Ossetia even though it is part of sovereign Georgia. But in order to join Nato, President Saakashvili wanted to settle Georgia's instability by reclaiming Ossetia and Abkhazia. By seizing Tskhinvali, he took one hell of a gamble that Russia wouldn't intervene. Georgia is paying a high price for this. To finish this vicious circle, Russian attacks show how badly Georgia needs EU/Nato protection, yet Georgia will never get it while embroiled in fighting.
The retaking of Ossetia is a minor part of the Russian campaign. More significant is the attack on Georgia proper, which reasserts Russia's hegemony over the Caucasus, assuages the humiliations of the past 20 years, subverts Georgian democracy - and defies and defangs American superpowerdom. The swaggering arrival of Vladimir Putin, now the Prime Minister, across the border, macho in his tight jeans and white leather jacket, shows he, not President Medvedev, remains Russia's paramount leader.
This war is really a celebration of ferocious force in the realm of international power, a dangerous precedent. The West must protest with unified resolve; Russia both despises Western hypocrisy and craves Western approval. Georgian democracy and sovereignty matter. So do our oil supplies: the West built a pipeline to bring oil from Azerbaijan and Central Asian across Georgia to Turkey, free of Russian interference.
Russia's clumsy ferocity could ignite a Caucasian tinderbox that even Moscow cannot extinguish. But faced with Western outrage, the Kremlin might toss Stalin's words back at President Bush: “How many divisions has the Pope?” None: Washington and London are not sending the 101st Airborne or the SAS.
Russia, which appears to be pushing its tanks into Georgia to overthrow its democratically elected president, has demonstrated gleefully the limits of US power and Moscow's historic destiny as regional hegemon and restored 21st-century superpower. The Empire has struck back and shaken the order of the world.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is the author of Young Stalin. His latest book is a novel, Sashenka
PS:RIP "sole superpower",unipolar world and swaggering yanquis ad nauseum!
PPS:How world leaders reacted.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/au ... a.russia10
"Saakashvili blundered. Perhaps he imagined he could pull a fast one in South Ossetia last week, perhaps he walked straight into a Russian trap. The results would be risible if not so tragic. His crack US-trained troops - a tenth of his army - took the Ossetian town of Tskhinvali and managed to hold it for all of three hours before being hammered by the Russians.
While George Bush watched baseball in Beijing, Putin created facts on the ground. European leaders rushed back from the beaches and villas of August for an "emergency meeting" in Brussels, while McCain and Obama used Georgia to sling mud at one another."
Another battle in the 1,000-year Russia-Georgia grudge match
Retaking Ossetia is just one part of Russia's campaign to reassert dominance over the Caucasus - and defy AmericaSimon Sebag Montefiore
The Russian tank columns rumbling into Georgia reveal the anger of a tiger finally swatting the mouse that has teased it for years. South Ossetia may seem as distant, trivial and complicated as the 19th-century Schleswig-Holstein question but Russia's fury is about much more than the Ossetians. The Caucasus matters greatly to the Russians for all sorts of reasons, none greater than the fact that it now also matters to us.
The troubles in Georgia are not the equivalent of an assassinated archduke in Sarajevo. But historians may well point to this little war, beside the spectacular Olympic launch of resurgent China, as the start of the twilight of America's sole world hegemony. If the new Great Game is for the oil of the Caucasus and Central Asia, the West may be in the process of losing it.
I've been visiting Georgia since the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991. I've known all three Georgian presidents since independence, and witnessed the wars and revolutions of the Caucasian tinderbox. In 1991 the chief of the Georgian partisans in the first Ossetian war, a dentist turned warlord, drove me up to villages around Tskhinvali, highlands of lusciously green beauty, where a vicious war between Georgian and Ossetian farmers was being waged with the ferocity of intimate neighbours, using comically armoured tractors instead of tanks.
My Georgian hosts leant their guns against a tree and took me to an open-air feast at a table stacked with delicacies in honour of a local boy killed that day. During the long drunken banquet I asked where the boy was buried. “He hasn't been buried,” replied my host, “he's under your feet.” Paling, I looked and there he lay, stretched out under the table, cradled with bouquets of flowers.
To understand this week's events, we must travel back a thousand years: long before Russia existed, Georgia was a Christian-warrior kingdom. The Caucasus was the natural borderland of the three great empires of the Near East: the battlefield between Orthodox Russia, the Islamic Ottomans and Persians. In 1783 the embattled King Eralke II was forced to claim the protection of Prince Potemkin, Catherine the Great's partner-in-power. Between 1801 and 1810 Russia swallowed the last Georgian principalities. In 1918 Georgia enjoyed independence for three years before Stalin seized it back for Moscow.
No one understood its ethnic complexity and strategic significance like Stalin, that Georgian romantic turned Russian imperialist, who had been born in Gori, the town that has been overrun by Russian forces and where a marble temple now stands over the hut where he was born. The Ossetians who straddled the border had early sought Russian alliance, earning Georgian disdain. Hence Stalin was accused by his enemies of being an Ossetian: his father was of Ossetian descent, though long since Georgianised. Stalin drew the borders of the Soviet republics to ensure Georgia contained autonomous ethnic entities, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Adzharia, through which Moscow could keep Georgia in order.
When that proud, cocky bantam, Georgia, became independent in 1991, the Russian double-headed eagle was humiliated. Ever since, Russian interference and skulduggery has bedevilled Georgia. Russia encouraged southern Ossetia to establish a statelet within Georgia, whose inept, insane first President, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, had inflamed ethnic tensions. As Ossetians fought Georgians who themselves rebelled against Gamsakhurdia, I sat in his office: he was a Shakespearean scholar and quoted King Lear to me.
Gamsakhurdia was either murdered or committed suicide. In 1993, his successor Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet Foreign Minister and Politburo member, lost Abkhazia in another bloody Russian-orchestrated war. But Shevardnadze won the peace. Georgia, which had longed to be part of Europe, embraced Western democracy and US friendship. Yet Shevardnadze recognised the limits of Georgian defiance, once telling me as we flew in 1993 in his plane to make peace with the Kremlin: “The destiny of Russia is reflected in the Caucasus like the rays of the sun are reflected in a drop of water.”
Old, autocratic Shevardnadze was toppled in the Rose Revolution of 2003 by an energetic and decent if impulsive US-educated lawyer, Mikhail Saakashvili, who hoped to escape Moscow for ever by joining the EU and Nato - as did Russia's huge neighbour, Ukraine. This prospect of encirclement by triumphant America infuriated Russia. Imagine if newly independent Wales cockily joined the Warsaw Pact.
Russia is no longer the spineless giant of the Nineties: Vladimir Putin's musclebound, oil-fuelled authoritarian regime has aggressively reinvigorated Russia. He had already shown his ruthless determination to master the Caucasus by crushing Chechnya. Nato in Georgia would have made that meaningless. The Kremlin has used its clients, Abkhazia and Ossetia, as Trojan Horses to ruin Tbilisi's independence - recently raising the tension by offering Russian passports to all Ossetians and testing Georgian resolve with cross-border skirmishing: the trap of a practised imperial power.
Georgia is not guiltless: most Georgians I know care little about Ossetia even though it is part of sovereign Georgia. But in order to join Nato, President Saakashvili wanted to settle Georgia's instability by reclaiming Ossetia and Abkhazia. By seizing Tskhinvali, he took one hell of a gamble that Russia wouldn't intervene. Georgia is paying a high price for this. To finish this vicious circle, Russian attacks show how badly Georgia needs EU/Nato protection, yet Georgia will never get it while embroiled in fighting.
The retaking of Ossetia is a minor part of the Russian campaign. More significant is the attack on Georgia proper, which reasserts Russia's hegemony over the Caucasus, assuages the humiliations of the past 20 years, subverts Georgian democracy - and defies and defangs American superpowerdom. The swaggering arrival of Vladimir Putin, now the Prime Minister, across the border, macho in his tight jeans and white leather jacket, shows he, not President Medvedev, remains Russia's paramount leader.
This war is really a celebration of ferocious force in the realm of international power, a dangerous precedent. The West must protest with unified resolve; Russia both despises Western hypocrisy and craves Western approval. Georgian democracy and sovereignty matter. So do our oil supplies: the West built a pipeline to bring oil from Azerbaijan and Central Asian across Georgia to Turkey, free of Russian interference.
Russia's clumsy ferocity could ignite a Caucasian tinderbox that even Moscow cannot extinguish. But faced with Western outrage, the Kremlin might toss Stalin's words back at President Bush: “How many divisions has the Pope?” None: Washington and London are not sending the 101st Airborne or the SAS.
Russia, which appears to be pushing its tanks into Georgia to overthrow its democratically elected president, has demonstrated gleefully the limits of US power and Moscow's historic destiny as regional hegemon and restored 21st-century superpower. The Empire has struck back and shaken the order of the world.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is the author of Young Stalin. His latest book is a novel, Sashenka
PS:RIP "sole superpower",unipolar world and swaggering yanquis ad nauseum!
PPS:How world leaders reacted.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/au ... a.russia10
"Saakashvili blundered. Perhaps he imagined he could pull a fast one in South Ossetia last week, perhaps he walked straight into a Russian trap. The results would be risible if not so tragic. His crack US-trained troops - a tenth of his army - took the Ossetian town of Tskhinvali and managed to hold it for all of three hours before being hammered by the Russians.
While George Bush watched baseball in Beijing, Putin created facts on the ground. European leaders rushed back from the beaches and villas of August for an "emergency meeting" in Brussels, while McCain and Obama used Georgia to sling mud at one another."
Re: Caucasus Crisis
Moral of the story:
Russia beating up on a weak country, good.
US beating up on a weak country, bad.
Roger that!
It's also interesting to note that some of the most outspoken people on this forum against the Iraq invasion is gleeful of the invasion of Georgia. The US made military reality on the ground in Iraq and Afganistan, where was the glee then?
Russia beating up on a weak country, good.
US beating up on a weak country, bad.
Roger that!
It's also interesting to note that some of the most outspoken people on this forum against the Iraq invasion is gleeful of the invasion of Georgia. The US made military reality on the ground in Iraq and Afganistan, where was the glee then?
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Nayak
- BRF Oldie
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Re: Caucasus Crisis
^^^ Your posts always reek of a pro-american stench. How can you compare the situation of Eye-rack invasion with the Russian actions ?
Re: Caucasus Crisis
And your's reek of "Russia is my herrow" stench. What's your point?Nayak wrote:^^^ Your posts always reek of a pro-american stench. How can you compare the situation of Eye-rack invasion with the Russian actions ?
Re: Caucasus Crisis
OT, but I guess the Rooskie re-assertion fits right back into the bipolar worldview that many once held, or the multipolar world that many (might) hope for. For this and many other reasons (very likely due to all those Mir and Raguda publishers books gathering dust somewhereVick wrote:Moral of the story:
Russia beating up on a weak country, good.
US beating up on a weak country, bad.
Roger that!
It's also interesting to note that some of the most outspoken people on this forum against the Iraq invasion is gleeful of the invasion of Georgia. The US made military reality on the ground in Iraq and Afganistan, where was the glee then?
), there will be many russophiles here.For US citizens, this of course will be anthema, coz after all, the CCCP was the Evil Empire. The same revulsion is not really shared by others.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
Both incidents are indeed comparable. Like Russia, US only intervened when EyeRaqi army marched into Florida (or Puerto Rico) in their Dhows and killed 2000 of the innocent nude overweight sunbathers. And then US also only stayed there in Eyeraq for a few days in some small disputed counties to teach a lesson, leaving the rest untouched and never even thought of killing its president (who probably was loved more by its vassals then this Caucasian Musharraf) like an animal!
Equal Equal onlee.
Equal Equal onlee.
Last edited by durvasa on 12 Aug 2008 19:53, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
Just as one must realize that many Indians are not russophiles and can in fact be yankeephiles. To each their own...Rishi wrote:OT, but I guess the Rooskie re-assertion fits right back into the bipolar worldview that many once held, or the multipolar world that many (might) hope for. For this and many other reasons (very likely due to all those Mir and Raguda publishers books gathering dust somewhere
For US citizens, this of course will be anthema, coz after all, the CCCP was the Evil Empire. The same revulsion is not really shared by others.
Russia pulverizes a weak country to further national interests (prevent NATO expansion) and control oil resources (pipeline), good.
US pulverizes a weak country to futher national interests (control ME SLOCs) and control oil resources, bad.
No, no equivalence at all...
Last edited by Vick on 12 Aug 2008 20:03, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
To most armchair folks, geopolitics is no different from a event at the Olympics... where India does not have a team. Just root for the underdog (Roos) while disapproving the overwhelming strong contender (Unkil).
I was like this only. But now I think about how the Indian team can benefit. Maybe when Unkil, Roos, Cheen are all busy we can bite off a piece of PoK? Who cares about Georgians or the Roos. Let them fight, bomb, kill and hopefully weaken.
In the long run a weak Roos can be restricted to Europe and maybe India bite off a piece of Siberia
.
I was like this only. But now I think about how the Indian team can benefit. Maybe when Unkil, Roos, Cheen are all busy we can bite off a piece of PoK? Who cares about Georgians or the Roos. Let them fight, bomb, kill and hopefully weaken.
In the long run a weak Roos can be restricted to Europe and maybe India bite off a piece of Siberia
.Re: Caucasus Crisis
there was wild rejoicing here on the US invasion of afghanistan because that was a just war
even if it did not directly benefit us immediately wrt the pakis. have you forgotten?
Iraq2 was a sham war - even the american public realize it now. there is no comparison of
iraq war with georgia.
even if it did not directly benefit us immediately wrt the pakis. have you forgotten?
Iraq2 was a sham war - even the american public realize it now. there is no comparison of
iraq war with georgia.
Re: Caucasus Crisis
I am sorry Vick, there are not going to be too many takers for Iraq == Georgia. It simply does not
the cartoon in the independent says it all.
the cartoon in the independent says it all.