Bear Baiting
U.S. soldiers training Georgian Army
One of the sad resonances of the U.S. Invasion of Iraq is playing out on the Steppes of Northern Georgia today. As President Bush was feverishly trying to assemble the “coalition of the willing” to join with us in Iraq, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia eagerly stepped forward. Always looking for a way to bait the Russian bear across the border, Saakashvili became the first of the “coalition of the billing”. He would send 2000 troops to Iraq if the U.S. would completely modernize his army, train his soldiers and give him the latest technology like surveillance drones. We were so desperate for allies in Iraq, we gladly complied. And of course, in order to make sure they got as much from our treasury as possible and encouraged Congress to let them into NATO, the Georgians hired some Neo-con lobbyists like Randy Scheuneman, now John McCain’s chief foreign policy advisor. All of this advice from the Neo-cons led to a classic miscalculation.
In the ensuing years, even as Russia issued warnings, Mr. Saakashvili grew bolder. There were four regions out of Georgian control when he took office in 2004, but he restored two smaller regions, Ajaria in 2004 and the upper Kodori Gorge in 2006, with few deaths.
The victories gave him a sense of momentum. He kept national reintegration as a central plank of his platform.
So Saakashvili kept pushing the Russians, probably with the encouragement of the Neo-cons, whose official mouthpiece Bill Kristol wrote this morning.
But Georgia, a nation of about 4.6 million, has had the third-largest military presence — about 2,000 troops — fighting along with U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq. For this reason alone, we owe Georgia a serious effort to defend its sovereignty. Surely we cannot simply stand by as an autocratic aggressor gobbles up part of — and perhaps destabilizes all of — a friendly democratic nation that we were sponsoring for NATO membership a few months ago.
But of course Randy Scheuneman and Bill Kristol are not running the Pentagon, and if the Georgians were under some sort of illusion that we would come to their aid, in return for their 2000 soldiers in Iraq, they were smoking crack.
All of these policies collided late last week. One American official who covers Georgian affairs, speaking on the condition of anonymity while the United States formulates its next public response, said that everything had gone wrong.
Mr. Saakashvili had acted rashly, he said, and had given Russia the grounds to invade. The invasion, he said, was chilling, disproportionate and brutal, and it was grounds for a strong censure. But the immediate question was how far Russia would go in putting Georgia back into what it sees as Georgia’s place.
There was no sign throughout the weekend of Kremlin willingness to negotiate. A national humiliation was under way.
“The Georgians have lost almost everything,” the official said. “We always told them, ‘Don’t do this because the Russians do not have limited aims.’ ”
This morning, with Bush in China, Dick Cheney is pounding the drums saying Russian aggression must be answered.John McCain, the neo-con “dead ender” Presidential Cadidate is taking an increasingly hawkish tone. But like Bill Kristol and Randy Scheuneman; it’s all just bluster. We are a victim of our own Imperial Overstretch. But McCain is in his own American Empire bubble, and with advisors like Scheuneman and Kristol, he has no idea of the limits of American military power.
A pretty good article at Stratfor:
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/russo_georgian_war_and_balance_power
Alex- I agree with you. As I tried to point out in The Cost of Empire, the main push to expand NATO came from the Military Industrial Complex, anxious to outfit all these new countries with NATO compatible weapons and systems. How all of this serves the US is beyond me. Europe has been a Defense Free Rider on our DOD since 1946. They are big and rich now. Let them pay for their own defense.
Hugo-I do believe in Devolution. That’s why I don’t believe that Russia is interested in taking on more financial responsibility for the Caucuses. Russia’s main objective is to stop the expansion of NATO and the Polish anti missle shield bases. Why should we keepexpanding NATO when all it does is feed the pocket of Lockheed?
Hugo,
I’m perhaps oversensitive to vague 30′s analogies, even though you make them with more verve than most neo-cons are capable of.
What’s frustrating about the Georgia situation is that we’ve spent so much of our energy on a palpably false 30′s analogy (Saddam=Hitler) that we’re badly positioned to react to it. If you would like support from the left for a true effort to assure the “success of liberty”, you’ve got to be careful about where the line is drawn and how it is signaled. We can’t prop up brand new allies in a bunch of former Soviet republics and expect to hold an instant moral advantage in defending them. We have to build up consensus in Europe about where the line has to be drawn at a minimum. That’s not an ‘apology’ for Russian behavior — just recognition that cornering them is likely to make them more irrationally violent in reaction.
And Alex should get a trademark on that empire line: “Empire. It’s everywhere you don’t want to be.” Love it!
Re: Russia’s intentions, including how it looks to expand Russia control in East Europe, while being willing to cede land to the Chinese on the other
Found this statement from Kasparov’s opposition group:
http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/08/11/russian-opposition-on-the-war-in-georgia-official-statement/
STS,
Yes, of course the U.S. should lead the broadest possible effort to kick the Bear back to where she belongs, and it ought to hurt the damned treacherous Bear, too.
I agree that Alex should license his witty line
Finally, I am not a”neocon”, and nor have I ever knowingly met one of that rare breed. I have, however, worked for a U.S. Secretary of Defense, and with a Secretary of State, and also with the world’s foremost arms control negotiators and experts on the origin and prevention of human violence. Most of these people are in active support of Barack Obama — one of them is already on his team. But not ONE of them. would ever trust Russia for so much as an instant, much less make excuses for it’s predations.
Oh, and did I mention that several of the were Soviet, and later Russian, serving officers, all of them now newly naturalized American citizens?
Jon, I prefer Europe help pay for the defense we provide them.
And they do, in their own way. The Euro was a nice start. Voting up conservatives – another nice move.
Hugo,
I didn’t call you a neo-con, but I’m glad you disavow the label.
It would be surprising if Russian military officers who have defected were fond of the Russian government, but I also have personal experience of Soviet emigres and their perspective. As an almost reflexively non-conformist member of American society, I’m sure I would have found Russia every bit as unlivable as they did.
I suppose one could see Russia’s Georgia incursion as a convenient pivot for dropping the overblown and incoherent GWOT rhetoric and starting a more rational conversation about our foreign policy.
Sure, STS, I hadn’t thought about it, but it would be an important line to pursue of course.
Me, I think they were testing for a Ukraine offensive, something I really really wish I were still in a position to work against, in some small way.
STS, it was the line about how I “make” my “vague” analogies to the ’30s “with more verve than MOST neo-cons are capable of.” [emphasis mine.]
See, that sounded a lot like you calling me a neo-con. Please forgive my mistake.
“I say we let them have Alobama . We sure as hell don’t need it.”
Hey! Just because Lynard Skynard is covered by every bar band in the world every night while you have to find someone with a turntable to hear Neil Young’s Alabama, that’s no reason to get insulting. Besides, we have to take care of the refugees pouring out of Atlanta.
Having pulled back from Ossetia and Abkhazia, the Georgians can now regroup and re-equip. They are in desperate need of two things: weapons to kill tanks, and weapons to kill or deter aircraft and helicopters. We can supply both. The Stinger missile, the bane of Russian Frontal Aviation in Afghanistan, is still the most potent shoulder-fired weapon around. It will cause Russian close support aircraft to keep their distance, or to attack from higher altitude. Providing Georgia with medium-range surface-to-air missiles which can be deployed from Georgian territory proper will further push back their high-altitude aircraft (e.g., Tu-22M Backfires ).
Freed from aerial observation and the threat of air attack, Georgian forces could move dismounted over the mountains more readily than Russian mechanized forces can move along the roads. Which means that the Georgians would be free to set up ambushes to block further Russian advances and to interdict their lines of communication. We can provide the wherewithal for them to do this. First, we need to give the Georgians anti-tank mines, and not just any kind, but our latest “smart” off-route mines like the XM93 Wide Area Mine (WAM). These don’t have to be placed directly on the roads, but can be put off to the side, where built-in sensors can detect armored vehicles and launch explosive formed penetrator (RFP) warheads at them.
Second, we need to give them our best anti-tank guided missile, the FGM-148 Javelin . This is a
“fire and
forget” weapon: once the operator lines up the target in his sights and locks on, he can
fire the missile and get away, while the missile will fly autonomously to the target. With a range of about two kilometers, the Javelin also uses a “top attack” profile, diving down onto the roof of the tank where the armor is thinnest. In action in Operation Iraqi Freedom, javelins were devastating against Russian-designed tanks. Knocking out a few tanks or other armored vehicles on a narrow mountain road creates a barrier to movement behind which all traffic piles up, immobile and vulnerable to attack.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/410pebgo.asp
Morgan, you must be a lobbyist for the MIC. Yeah, send all that expensive shit over there to be blown up so they’ll just have to buy more. What fun! Nothing is quite as much fun as blowing shit up…
Do you ever think about the civilians on the ground? Collateral damage? About the fact that the main man in Georgia is a nut case?
He’s OUR nutcase – US educated. Our man. Lets go help him.
The Russian army should be withdrawn. We should not be sending weapons. This only gets worse and more people die if both sides keep at it.
Then let the diplomats do their work regards Ossetia.
The Blame Game is just a way of keeping the diplomats from doing their jobs while both sides try to gain more ground physically and politically.
Now a Russian general is saying that a Poland is risking a nuclear strike for hosting an anti-missile defense system.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080815/ap_on_re_eu/russia_us_missile_defense
***He added, in clear reference to the agreement, that Russia’s military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons “against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them.” Nogovitsyn that would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, he said, according to Interfax.***
Uh, yeah, clearly this shows that what Russia is doing is only a natural reaction to U.S. policy…
Morgan,
I like your brass-tacks thinking, and I just expected (but mostly hoped) that when the U.S. sent 2,000 very tried and angry Georgian troops back to Tblisi, they were packing at least some fire-and-forget shape charges. (Next, look for a U.S. sale of Abrams A1A’s to Georgia.)
Longrun, though, wouldn’t you agree that Georgia must emulate Switzerland or else perish ?
Morgan? Morgan?
tump tump…
Are you in there?