Georgia Is Just the Beginning
Russia’s ham-fisted propaganda paints the Georgians as the perpetrators of treachery and genocide. Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed "We will be forced to take other measures to prevent any repetition of the situation that emerged because of the outrageous Georgian aggression." Dmitri Rogozin the Russian ambassador to NATO in Brussels was particularly histrionic "They shot their brother Russian peacekeepers, then they finished them off with bayonets, so we are not going to see them there any more," he said. At least Ambassador Rogozin refrained from banging the table with his shoe.
The concocted cover story of a Georgian “genocide” perpetrated against the placid and agrarian Ossetian people falls flat now that it is clear, this invasion had been planned for a long time. The destruction of Ossetian villages and the murder of Russian “peacekeepers” are all themes from a Russian information warfare plan, designed to justify their aggression and place it in a moral context. This theme is spread by a Russian propaganda machine working overtime to inundate the world press with its version of events, and as usual, much of the western press falls for it.
In the hasty and typically shallow analysis of the Russian invasion of Georgia, the evidence that Russia had timed their military aggression against a sovereign nation to coincide with the Olympic Games is glossed over. Presented as an internecine conflict involving ethnic divisions and a struggle for regional autonomy, the press parrots Russian propaganda and equivocates Russia’s guilt. In the group-think media environment Georgian President Mikhail Saakashailli is portrayed as overconfident, a foolish bungler who miscalculated the Russian response to the abortive attempt to recapture the South Ossetia region and unwittingly set in motion catastrophic events.
The press ignores the Russian and Ossetian provocations (one in the same) which are too numerous to list, and that Georgian villages had been shelled from inside Ossetia territory for three days prior to the Georgian response that the Russians used as the pretest for their invasion. Ignored is the deeper story of the large troop movements and extensive, months long preparations by Russia. More importantly, the press misses the probability that Saakashailli knew the Russians were coming, and knew there was nothing he or the US could do would prevent it.
It was certainly an agonizing realization. How could he prevent the likely destruction of a democratic Georgia? How could a small army with limited resources stand up to the juggernaut of Russian armor? They could not, but perhaps they could buy time. The Georgian rational was not to retake the break away region of South Ossetia as many would have you believe, but to interrupt the impending Russian invasion before it was fully ready to advance. They sprang a carefully constructed trap.
Russian armor, artillery, infantry, Special Forces and naval assault units staged for many weeks for what was to be a blitzkrieg attack, one that would have likely reached Tbilisi in a day. The Russian amphibious landing in Abkhazia, which delivered a significant motorized infantry force with artillery and support units, had taken months to plan and organize. Once this massive assault force was fully marshaled, the small Georgian army could have done nothing but sacrifice itself in futile effort to slow a three-pronged armor attack while under air, artillery and tactical ballistic missile assault. Saakashailli and his advisors knew what was coming. The best they could hope for was to expose the Russian subterfuge and awaken the indignation of world public opinion before the country was lost. It may have worked, to a point.
Putin’s objective was to take all of Georgia not just punish it. He had been betting on a fait-accompli, that the world would be too districted by the Olympics to care about a backwater democracy. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and the Russians are out of practice. Their advance was massive, but disorganized, pushed forward without all moving parts in place, slow enough that Georgia could mobilize reserves and call on its allies to put pressure on Russia. The Georgians fought tenaciously. Russian losses in aircraft and armor made Putins adventure an expensive one. If Putin decides to take Tbilisi, Russian casualties will be heavy. For now, he seems happy to wreck his neighbor and extort as many concessions as he can before his storm troopers leave.
The decisions required of a democracy faced with invasion and conquest, are hard ones; how many must die to keep the nation free? Is the sacrifice worth the cost? Whatever answers the Georgian nation chooses for itself will have much to do with its survival. It will take years for Georgia to recover from the destruction Russian troops are busily spreading in every town and village. Its national pride and self-confidence have taken a heavy blow, with more to come. The Russians are not finished.
History may well judge Saakashailli’s Ossetia gambit a failure, a victim of its own naive bravery and Russia’s thuggish neo-colonialism. It will also see Western inaction as a contributing factor and the US as overextended and powerless in the face of a resurgent oil rich Russia. We have been here before. Putin will use the implicit menace of military intervention as evidenced in Georgia on all the former Soviet colonies to force them away from western alliances. The threat of invasion is a sobering influence on a young democracy.
Putin promises a return to greatness for Russia, which as always, prefers its greatness taken by steel. Georgia’s struggle is an ominous warning of things to come. Georgia is just the beginning of a Russian resurgence; one that does not try escaping the ghosts of its past, but embraces them with all their paranoia and violence. Former Soviet client states are rightly worried.
"Poland and the Poles do not want to be in alliances in which assistance comes at some point later - it is no good when assistance comes to dead people. Poland wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of - knock on wood - any possible conflict…"
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, speaking about the recent US Polish agreement to deploy a missile defense shield, made all the more urgent, now that the specter of invasion seems plausible once again, and pointing out, perhaps unintentionally, that alliances of words mean little when Russian tanks cross your borders. Poland is a full member of NATO. Russia is not mincing words.
"Poland, by deploying (the system), is exposing itself to a strike – 100%."
Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Russian general staff
Related Reading: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/47815.html http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1552599.ece http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gDNLWfQWKrQc48pITBUg9KT_6oVwD92HIM080 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/13/2334658.htm http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121875647803242537.html?mod=googlenews_wsj http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/world/europe/16poland.html?em |
