Re: serious thinking about ossetia Re: What's going on in Ossetia?
- From: "Jerry Okamura" <okamuraj005@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:57:33 -1000
Do you think that Russia would have invaded Georgia, "if" what Bush was pusing for, i.e. Georgia joining NATO, had been accomplised?
"arthur wouk" <awouk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1218671338.680792@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
instead of listening to the talking heads on tv, or reading what's lrft of
the print media, it pays to read longer works by people hwo make it their
business to know what is going on.
in addition to tying the us in knots in the middle east, the junta in
washington has a foreign policy of annoying the resurgent bear whenever it
can. this is NOT wise. when you have nothing in you habe, you better fold.
this is a longish note setting ossetia in the proper perspective. russia
will no be trifled with by king george and darth vader. the fallout around
the borders of the current russia will be very serious indeed.
the balance of power is shifting all over the globe. a bankrupt us is no
longer in charge everywhere.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with
attribution to www.stratfor.com
this is from the free reports at stratfor.
The Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power
August 12, 2008
By George Friedman
The Russian invasion of Georgia has not changed the balance of power in
Eurasia. It simply announced that the balance of power had already
shifted. The United States has been absorbed in its wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, as well as potential conflict with Iran and a
destabilizing situation in Pakistan. It has no strategic ground forces
in reserve and is in no position to intervene on the Russian periphery.
This, as we have argued, has opened a window of opportunity for the
Russians to reassert their influence in the former Soviet sphere.
Moscow did not have to concern itself with the potential response of
the United States or Europe; hence, the invasion did not shift the
balance of power. The balance of power had already shifted, and it was
up to the Russians when to make this public. They did that Aug. 8.
Let's begin simply by reviewing the last few days.
On the night of Thursday, Aug. 7, forces of the Republic of Georgia
drove across the border of South Ossetia, a secessionist region of
Georgia that has functioned as an independent entity since the fall of
the Soviet Union. The forces drove on to the capital, Tskhinvali, which
is close to the border. Georgian forces got bogged down while trying to
take the city. In spite of heavy fighting, they never fully secured the
city, nor the rest of South Ossetia.
On the morning of Aug. 8, Russian forces entered South Ossetia,
using armored and motorized infantry forces along with air power. South
Ossetia was informally aligned with Russia, and Russia acted to prevent
the region's absorption by Georgia. Given the speed with which the
Russians responded ` within hours of the Georgian attack ' the Russians
were expecting the Georgian attack and were themselves at their
jumping-off points. The counterattack was carefully planned and
competently executed, and over the next 48 hours, the Russians
succeeded in defeating the main Georgian force and forcing a retreat.
By Sunday, Aug. 10, the Russians had consolidated their position in
South Ossetia.
The Conflict in Georgia
On Monday, the Russians extended their offensive into Georgia
proper, attacking on two axes. One was south from South Ossetia to the
Georgian city of Gori. The other drive was from Abkhazia, another
secessionist region of Georgia aligned with the Russians. This drive
was designed to cut the road between the Georgian capital of Tbilisi
and its ports. By this point, the Russians had bombed the military
airfields at Marneuli and Vaziani and appeared to have disabled radars
at the international airport in Tbilisi. These moves brought
Russian forces to within 40 miles of the Georgian capital, while
making outside reinforcement and resupply of Georgian forces extremely
difficult should anyone wish to undertake it.
The Mystery Behind the Georgian Invasion
In this simple chronicle, there is something quite mysterious: Why did
the Georgians choose to invade South Ossetia on Thursday night? There
had been a great deal of shelling by the South Ossetians of Georgian
villages for the previous three nights, but while possibly more intense
than usual, artillery exchanges were routine. The Georgians might not
have fought well, but they committed fairly substantial forces that
must have taken at the very least several days to deploy and supply.
Georgia's move was deliberate.
The United States is Georgia's closest ally. It maintained about
130 military advisers in Georgia, along with civilian advisers,
contractors involved in all aspects of the Georgian government and
people doing business in Georgia. It is inconceivable that the
Americans were unaware of Georgia's mobilization and intentions. It is
also inconceivable that the Americans were unaware that the Russians
had deployed substantial forces on the South Ossetian frontier. U.S.
technical intelligence, from satellite imagery and signals intelligence
to unmanned aerial vehicles, could not miss the fact that thousands of
Russian troops were moving to forward positions. The Russians clearly
knew the Georgians were ready to move. How could the United States not
be aware of the Russians? Indeed, given the posture of Russian troops,
how could intelligence analysts have missed the possibility that t he
Russians had laid a trap, hoping for a Georgian invasion to justify its
own counterattack?
It is very difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their
attack against U.S. wishes. The Georgians rely on the United States,
and they were in no position to defy it. This leaves two possibilities.
The first is a massive breakdown in intelligence, in which the United
States either was unaware of the existence of Russian forces, or knew
of the Russian forces but ` along with the Georgians ' miscalculated
Russia's intentions. The United States, along with other countries, has
viewed Russia through the prism of the 1990s, when the Russian military
was in shambles and the Russian government was paralyzed. The United
States has not seen Russia make a decisive military move beyond its
borders since the Afghan war of the 1970s-1980s. The Russians had
systematically avoided such moves for years. The United States had
assumed that the Russians would not risk the consequences of an
invasion.
If this was the case, then it points to the central reality of this
situation: The Russians had changed dramatically, along with the
balance of power in the region. They welcomed the opportunity to drive
home the new reality, which was that they could invade Georgia and the
United States and Europe could not respond. As for risk, they did not
view the invasion as risky. Militarily, there was no counter.
Economically, Russia is an energy exporter doing quite well ` indeed,
the Europeans need Russian energy even more than the Russians need to
sell it to them. Politically, as we shall see, the Americans needed the
Russians more than the Russians needed the Americans. Moscow's calculus
was that this was the moment to strike. The Russians had been building
up to it for months, as we have discussed, and they struck.
The Western Encirclement of Russia
To understand Russian thinking, we need to look at two events. The
first is the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. From the U.S. and
European point of view, the Orange Revolution represented a triumph of
democracy and Western influence. From the Russian point of view, as
Moscow made clear, the Orange Revolution was a CIA-funded intrusion
into the internal affairs of Ukraine, designed to draw Ukraine into
NATO and add to the encirclement of Russia. U.S. Presidents George H.W.
Bush and Bill Clinton had promised the Russians that NATO would not
expand into the former Soviet Union empire.
That promise had already been broken in 1998 by NATO's expansion to
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic ` and again in the 2004
expansion, which absorbed not only the rest of the former Soviet
satellites in what is now Central Europe, but also the three Baltic
states, which had been components of the Soviet Union.
The Russian Periphery
The Russians had tolerated all that, but the discussion of including
Ukraine in NATO represented a fundamental threat to Russia's national
security. It would have rendered Russia indefensible and threatened to
destabilize the Russian Federation itself. When the United States went
so far as to suggest that Georgia be included as well, bringing NATO
deeper into the Caucasus, the Russian conclusion ` publicly stated '
was that the United States in particular intended to encircle and break
Russia.
The second and lesser event was the decision by Europe and the
United States to back Kosovo's separation from Serbia. The Russians
were friendly with Serbia, but the deeper issue for Russia was this:
The principle of Europe since World War II was that, to prevent
conflict, national borders would not be changed. If that principle were
violated in Kosovo, other border shifts ` including demands by various
regions for independence from Russia ` might follow. The Russians
publicly and privately asked that Kosovo not be given formal
independence, but instead continue its informal autonomy, which was the
same thing in practical terms. Russia's requests were ignored.
From the Ukrainian experience, the Russians became convinced that the
United States was engaged in a plan of strategic encirclement and
strangulation of Russia. From the Kosovo experience, they concluded
that the United States and Europe were not prepared to consider Russian
wishes even in fairly minor affairs. That was the breaking point. If
Russian desires could not be accommodated even in a minor matter like
this, then clearly Russia and the West were in conflict. For the
Russians, as we said, the question was how to respond. Having declined
to respond in Kosovo, the Russians decided to respond where they had
all the cards: in South Ossetia.
Moscow had two motives, the lesser of which was as a tit-for-tat over
Kosovo. If Kosovo could be declared independent under Western
sponsorship, then South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two breakaway
regions of Georgia, could be declared independent under Russian
sponsorship. Any objections from the United States and Europe would
simply confirm their hypocrisy. This was important for internal Russian
political reasons, but the second motive was far more important.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once said that the fall of the
Soviet Union was a geopolitical disaster. This didn't mean that he
wanted to retain the Soviet state; rather, it meant that the
disintegration of the Soviet Union had created a situation in which
Russian national security was threatened by Western interests. As an
example, consider that during the Cold War, St. Petersburg was about
1,200 miles away from a NATO country. Today it is about 60 miles away
from Estonia, a NATO member. The disintegration of the Soviet Union had
left Russia surrounded by a group of countries hostile to Russian
interests in various degrees and heavily influenced by the United
States, Europe and, in some cases, China.
Resurrecting the Russian Sphere
Putin did not want to re-establish the Soviet Union, but he did want to
re-establish the Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union
region. To accomplish that, he had to do two things. First, he had to
re-establish the credibility of the Russian army as a fighting
force, at least in the context of its region. Second, he had to
establish that Western guarantees, including NATO membership, meant
nothing in the face of Russian power. He did not want to confront NATO
directly, but he did want to confront and defeat a power that was
closely aligned with the United States, had U.S. support, aid and
advisers and was widely seen as being under American protection.
Georgia was the perfect choice.
By invading Georgia as Russia did (competently if not brilliantly),
Putin re-established the credibility of the Russian army. But far more
importantly, by doing this Putin revealed an open secret: While the
United States is tied down in the Middle East, American guarantees have
no value. This lesson is not for American consumption. It is something
that, from the Russian point of view, the Ukrainians, the Balts and the
Central Asians need to digest. Indeed, it is a lesson Putin wants to
transmit to Poland and the Czech Republic as well. The United
States wants to place ballistic missile defense installations in those
countries, and the Russians want them to understand that allowing this
to happen increases their risk, not their security.
The Russians knew the United States would denounce their attack. This
actually plays into Russian hands. The more vocal senior leaders are,
the greater the contrast with their inaction, and the Russians wanted
to drive home the idea that American guarantees are empty talk.
The Russians also know something else that is of vital importance: For
the United States, the Middle East is far more important than the
Caucasus, and Iran is particularly important. The United States
wants the Russians to participate in sanctions against Iran. Even more
importantly, they do not want the Russians to sell weapons to Iran,
particularly the highly effective S-300 air defense system. Georgia is
a marginal issue to the United States; Iran is a central issue. The
Russians are in a position to pose serious problems for the United
States not only in Iran, but also with weapons sales to other
countries, like Syria.
Therefore, the United States has a problem ` it either must reorient
its strategy away from the Middle East and toward the Caucasus, or it
has to seriously limit its response to Georgia to avoid a Russian
counter in Iran. Even if the United States had an appetite for another
war in Georgia at this time, it would have to calculate the Russian
response in Iran ` and possibly in Afghanistan (even though Moscow's
interests there are currently aligned with those of Washington).
In other words, the Russians have backed the Americans into a corner.
The Europeans, who for the most part lack expeditionary militaries and
are dependent upon Russian energy exports, have even fewer options.
If nothing else happens, the Russians will have demonstrated that they
have resumed their role as a regional power. Russia is not a global
power by any means, but a significant regional power with lots of
nuclear weapons and an economy that isn't all too shabby at the moment.
It has also compelled every state on the Russian periphery to
re-evaluate its position relative to Moscow. As for Georgia, the
Russians appear ready to demand the resignation of President Mikhail
Saakashvili. Militarily, that is their option. That is all they wanted
to demonstrate, and they have demonstrated it.
The war in Georgia, therefore, is Russia's public return to great power
status. This is not something that just happened ` it has been
unfolding ever since Putin took power, and with growing intensity in
the past five years. Part of it has to do with the increase of Russian
power, but a great deal of it has to do with the fact that the Middle
Eastern wars have left the United States off-balance and short on
resources. As we have written, this conflict created a window of
opportunity. The Russian goal is to use that window to assert a new
reality throughout the region while the Americans are tied down
elsewhere and dependent on the Russians. The war was far from a
surprise; it has been building for months. But the geopolitical
foundations of the war have been building since 1992. Russia has been
an empire for centuries. The last 15 years or so were not the new
reality, but simply an aberration that would be rectified. And now it
is being rectified.
Copyright 2008 Strategic Forecasting Inc. All rights reserved.
--
"be wary of mathematicians..especially when they speak the truth."
--sT. Augustine
to email me, delete blackhole. from my return address
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