Fresh Out of Statesmen, Awash In Ideologues

Who will negotiate with Russian strongman Vlad Putin? It won’t be Georgia’s Saakashvili. He’s finished. It will probably take some sort of intermediary, a stand-in for Georgia, and that would be?

The Russia-Georgia conflict cries out for statesmen but, sadly, all we’ve got right now are ideologues and it shows. Ideologues are at their very worst in situations like this. They have little credibility and less persuasiveness. They’re often one-trick ponies. When they run up against a nation that’s not vulnerable to their coercion, we usually find that ideologues revert to angry denunciation and hollow gestures – tantrums, foot-stamping.

Unfortunately for our side, Vlad Putin is a hard case. When it comes to negotiators that pretty much rules out the Bushies or the Brownies. The Guardian suggests our intermediary might be Sarkozy.

What’s unclear is just what is to be negotiated. Here we may run into considerable asymmetry. What Russia is after may be a far more expansive than what Georgia wants or what Europe wants.

From Moscow’s perspective, Georgia may be a metaphor for its greater struggle against a steadily encroaching NATO. If the Russians can’t roll back recent NATO expansion into the Balkan and Caucasus regions, it may still serve Russian interests to sow doubts about the alliance and the security it truly offers among NATO’s new, eastern members.

Would NATO truly defend Romania against Russia? What do you think? Of course what I think and what you think doesn’t matter. What’s important to Putin is the impression left in the minds of those in places like Sofia and Bucharest, Kiev and Riga.

Georgia’s Saakashvili was playing a bluff when he attacked South Ossetia. He’s not stupid. He must have expected a different outcome than what he’s facing just a week later. What’s not clear is why. It will be fascinating when, months from now, Saakashvili spills the beans about why he pulled the trigger without noticing the gun was pointed at his own head.

A disastrous military adventure leading to the permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will surely spell the end of Saakashvili’s political future. It will also at least somewhat destabilize eastern Europe. America, after all, is in no position to reinstate Cold War-style militarization through this region.

What we probably won’t see anytime soon are the ripples now being felt by the NATO alliance. Whether Washington or Brussels wish to acknowledge it, NATO has suffered strains and at least hairline fractures over Afghanistan. There were some members who were uncomfortable with Bush’s stampede to expand the alliance into eastern Europe. The Georgia debacle will do nothing to ease those concerns and doubts.

Russia now says it will halt its blitz into Georgia short of Tbilisi. It’s also said it won’t recognize Saakashvili. Probably everybody agrees on that one. Imagine Saakashvili sitting at the table and signing off on South Ossetia and Abkhazia. He’d be hanging from a light post within weeks.

So an outsider will do the negotiating for Georgia and, by implication, for the rest of Europe and (to some extent) NATO itself. Sarkozy? Perhaps but he too is an ideologue, not a statesman. The risk to that is that ideologues will probably see this as a simple question of Georgia and a couple of autonomous regions to be stripped from the loser. That’s an approach that would thrill Putin if only because it leaves all of the greater issues and his future options unmentioned and wide open.

We’d do well not to let the ramifications of this fiasco escape us. This isn’t an isolated matter. To Putin and the Kremlin it’s a couple of moves that may have a telling effect later in this chess game.

 

First Ossetia, Next Abkhazia? Georgia Reels.

Poor Mikheil Saakashvili. The Georgian president truly opened a can of worms when he launched a military attack on South Ossetia earlier this week.

What was he thinking? By firing an artillery and rocket barrage on the Ossetian capital, he brought Georgian forces into direct conflict with Russian forces monitoring a ceasefire between the Ossetians and Georgians.

It was a pretty blatant provocation of the Russians and was bound to inflame separatist fury among the Ossetians. It was also pretty obvious that Georgia’s armed forces had no chance of holding their own against the Russian army.

Georgia has long had problems with two minority regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, problems that have seen periodic armed clashes. Now, with South Ossetia in open revolt and Georgian forces driven out by the Russians, Abkhazia is also ratcheting up its separatist demands. With Russian fighters and bombers in support, Abkhazia is moving to drive Georgian forces out of their territory and it appears to be succeeding.

When Milosovich sent Serbian forces against Kosovo, NATO responded with a bombing campaign against the Serbs. When Saakashvili sent his forces to seize Ossetia, Russia responded with a bombing campaign against Georgian targets.

Did Saakashvili gamble that his attack on Ossetia would bring NATO or American military backing? If so he showed himself to be naive and dangerously naive at that. It was a reckless stunt with far-reaching consequences.

To several European nations, Saakashvili’s rash actions will be seen as clear justification of their objections to Georgia’s admission into NATO. They’ve already had their fill of “shoot’em up” cowboys in the White House and have no appetite for a mini-Bush in Tbilisi who could trigger a NATO/Russia showdown. Bush’s warm embrace of Saakashvili won’t cut much ice with the Europeans.

Will America send the cavalry to Georgia’s rescue? It’s hard to imagine Washington doing that. With its forces bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan the last thing the Pentagon needs is any military action that could ratchet up tensions with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran, maybe. Russia and China? Over Ossetia or even Abkhazia? Forget it.

I expect the best Washington can do at this point is to extract Georgia from this silliness as intact as possible. That may mean yielding sovereignty to South Ossetia and perhaps even to Abkhazia.
As for Saakashvili, it may be over for him, both at home and abroad. He precipitated an armed conflict with a resurgent, regional superpower that no one wanted and, worse, he lost, crying “uncle” within two days. He acted without the knowledge or support of his Western backers. He has severely undermined Georgia’s prospects with NATO. If he loses even South Ossetia, Georgian opposition politicians will serve him up for dinner.

 

Why We All Have a Huge Stake in America’s Election

Look at George Bush and South Ossetia. See any connection? Too bad because it’s there.

One of the lasting scars we’ll all have to deal with after the death of the BuCheney regime will be the enormous damage it’s caused to global security. Answer a few questions.

Who drove the revival and spread of Islamist fundamentalism?

Who has destabilized the once Sunni-dominated Middle East and precipitated the ascendancy of Shiite power in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the Occupied Territories?

Who relentlessly pressed for the expansion of NATO right to the borders of Russia?

Who has undermined the strength and economic stability of the very nation the world has accepted for so long as the leader of the Free World, the United States itself?

Who has sparked and then fueled arms races around the world?

These are just some of the dregs of BuCheney that’ll be left behind for others to deal with. The Frat Boy and his puppeteer have done their work. They don’t see their administration as a failure if only because they managed to enact the social agenda they wanted, albeit with some setbacks such as the Social Security debacle.

George w. Bush meant it when, during his first term, he addressed a black-tie dinner and described the guests as “his base” calling them “the haves and the have-mores.” To these people, this top sliver of American society, the Bush years have been grand indeed.

So, what’s the connection between George w. Bush, Dick Cheney and South Ossetia? The White House has relentlessly pressured NATO to expand to the very borders of Russia. It was France and Germany that balked at admitting Georgia into the Alliance. America has encouraged Georgian adventurism and defiance of Russia, even backing a thug like Saakashvili (shown with Bush above) while he violently suppressed dissent in his country.

Georgia was no place for clumsy meddling. The Ossetia issue has been around since at least 1922 when the South Ossetia Autonomous region came into being. In fact the Russians have been backing Ossetian autonomy since the reign of Catherine the Great. Since 1925 there has been a movement to unite South and North Ossetia. Georgia moved on South Ossetia in 1989 declaring it no longer autonomous and trying to force assimilation by measures such as declaring Georgian the official language. Fighting between the Ossetians and Georgians has been an on and off reality since 1991.

When America, despite the wishes of the Europeans, moved to consolidate its influence with Georgia, it emboldened Saakashvili to the point where he thought he could execute a coup de main while everyone was distracted with the Beijing Olympics.

America’s puerile foreign policy has played a direct role in the current fighting and has been reflected in Condoleeza Rice calling for Russia but not Georgia to withdraw entirely from Ossetia. Her rank stupidity and complete disregard for the historical realities at play in Ossetia has been nothing short of breathtaking.

We can only hope that we’ll see a new face of America after the November elections.

 

Georgia Calls for American Intervention in Ossetia

Georgian strongman president Mikhail Saakashvili is pleading for American intervention against the Russian incursion into South Ossetia.

Saakashvili gambled that he could roll up the Ossetian separatists and drive Russian peacekeepers out of the breakaway province but opened up a hornets’ nest instead. The Georgian president escalated tensions by bombarding the Ossetian capital with rockets, artillery, tank fire and aerial bombardment.

Moscow, instead of retreating has retaliated with its own airstrikes and has sent tank columns pouring into Ossetia in support of the separatists. Cossacks from North Ossetia are likewise heading south to help oppose the Georgian forces.

The situation somewhat resembles the Kosovo problem. Ossetians are ethnically different than Georgians and, like the Kosovor Albanians, have been attacked by the larger, parent state. Where NATO intervened on behalf of the Kosovors against the Slavik Serbs while Russia had to sit by and watch, this time it’s the Slavik Russians coming to the aid of the Ossetians while the West, taken by surprise, has been sidelined, at least for now.

The idea of a direct Russian-American military showdown over Ossetia seems improbable but, then again, there’s always the Cheney wild card.

 

Russia Invades Georgia

The Guardian reports that Russian forces have invaded Georgia in support of the breakaway Ossetia rebels. The situation is confused but Georgia has admitted attacking two military convoys that had come from Russia and were heading toward the capital:

Whatever the precise battle details, it was clear that a serious conflict had broken out only hours after President Saakashvili promised a unilateral Georgian ceasefire and offered South Ossetia the chance of broad autonomy within Georgia. The number of casualties was unclear but likely to be high.

All eyes were on Russia and its peacekeeping contingent in the area, which Georgia accuses of supporting the separatists. The Russian peacekeepers said the Georgians were targeting their positions and they had lost some men. In Moscow, Russia’s security council was due to meet in an emergency session today.

Georgian forces appear to have the upper hand and the element of surprise at the moment but they could soon find themselves fighting on two fronts, as another separatist region, the Black Sea enclave of Abkhazia, announced its troops were moving towards the Georgian border. Cossaks from Russia said they were also ready to go to the aid of the South Ossetians, many of whom have Russian citizenship.

In Tskhinvali, Kokoity was meeting Teymuraz Mamsurov, the leader of North Ossetia, which is just over the border in Russia. The North Ossetians have also promised help to their South Ossetian brethren.

Mamsurov said a convoy of lorries carrying humanitarian aid from his region was attacked by Georgian war planes during the night.

Georgian forces shelled the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, in an act seen by experts as a deliberate provocation intended to humiliate Russia and timed to coincide with the opening of the Beijing Olympics when world attention was distracted. The Georgians seem to be gambling that they can quickly overrun the 1,000-strong Russian force in the breakawa region but Moscow now seems determined to push back with reinforcements.

The Globe and Mail reports that the Georgian shelling hit a barracks being used by Russian peacekeepers, killing 10 and wounding 30. Georgia also claims at least one of the Russian convoys it is attacking is made up of tanks, not trucks.