The short, but miserable, war in South Ossetia seems to be over for the moment at least. Some not very original observations over the fold
* The decision by the Georgian government to send its troops into South Ossetia reflected at least two of the military miscalculations common to those who start wars
– belief in a quick and complete victory producing a fait accompli
– the assumption that helping a powerful ally (in this case, the US in Iraq) will call forth help when it is needed. In this case, a glance at the map ought to have been enough to show that the US could, and would, do nothing, but the error is much more common than this.
* The Russian government may seem to have triumphed, but the costs of this action will far outweigh the benefits. Among the consequences, an obvious one is the likelihood that Ukraine will be admitted to NATO sooner rather than later. But more generally, Russia has acquired a limited capacity to throw its weight around in the Caucasus at the expense of any likelihood of being treated as a friend by the rest of Europe, not to mention the US. That won’t stop them selling oil and gas, for example, but I imagine most of Russia’s customers will now be willing to offer a premium to alternative suppliers. Implicitly, that means a discount on the price received by Russia
* Virtually everything the Russian government has done here has precedents in the recent actions of the US. Of course, the precedents have been stretched, but the Bush Administration set the (meta)precedent here as well. If it weren’t tragic, it would be laughable to see Bush proclaiming that such actions were ‘unacceptable in the 21st century’.
John Quiggin 
Well said
Worth noting that the President of Georgia was already facing impeachment from the opposition, and may have thought this war would bolster his popularity. Now it’s likely he will be dumped, and the opposition takes over.
Sounds good, right? But the opposition has been supported by even more hawkish US neocons. Rupert Murdoch actually took temporary control over the opposition leader’s Georgian newspaper empire, so that he could legally challenge the President. It will be interesting to see how all that pans out…
What was Saakashvili thinking? Why did he think he’d get away with it?
Now he and his colleagues are all over the media proclaiming how ‘pro-west’ they are, Harvard educated etc, but as if the US or anyone else would to to war with Russia over this.
It took, I think, 18 months for Milosevic to get the flick after an initial popularity boost with Kosovo.
Does anyone else get the feeling that China is playing a very smart geo-strategic game at the present and that the USA and Russia are being plain stupid by comparison? China seems, historically, to have always had a good understanding of the dangers of strategic overstretch. Accordingly, China acts to keep its core continental empire secure and seems to display only modest expansionist ambitions against much weaker opponents. Tibet is the modern example of this.
China’s behaviour in relation to Taiwan illustrates its cautious and patient strategy. Just as Hong Kong and Macau “fell� back to China one expects that China feels Taiwan is an apple that will fall to China when the stalk is withered and the fruit is ripe. There is no need to shake the tree while the fruit is still green. China will wait while the USA grows weaker in relative terms. China will wait as the USA exhausts itself in absurd adventures in the Middle East. China will wait as the USA systematically destroys itself by spending so heavily on armaments that it ruins its financial and economic base just as the Soviets did.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that China is all-wise or all-knowing. China is choking itself on pollution, stoking the global warming and sea level rise will which harm it probably as much as any other continental power possessing seaboard cities and desertification problems. And finally, China cannot complete its transition to a modern economy (right across its 1.3 billion people) because there are not enough resources left in the world to complete the project. However, perhaps the Chinese leadership are well aware of this and is not aiming impossibly at a middle class of 1.3 billion but simply at having a tiny wealthy elite, 300 million middle class citizens and 1 billion who remain at peasant, serf and servant status.
I wonder how much manufacturing capacity is left in the world outside China. It seems to me (anecdotal evidence I know) that I cannot buy a textile or an electronic item that is not made in China. It seems that soon we will struggle to buy a car that is not made in China. Is it overstating the case to say that the world’s manufacturing base is being moved to China? What is the end game if only China retains significant manufacturing capacity in the heavy industries and electronics? Is this the end game for which China is playing?
China is encircled and contained by Russia, Japan, the USA, India and even to some extent by the Islamic world. Even though some in this encircling group are not natural allies among themselves, none of them are the natural allies of China. China knows this. China will remain solid in its continental Empire heartland. China will simply wait for the rest of the world to crumble before it does.
A certain level of paranoia is always necessary when considering the goals of Empires. The Romans, The Germans, the British, the Soviets, the Japanese and the Americans (to name a few) have all been completely ruthless when seeking an empire. Does China, though no less ruthless, see conquest and empire in a rather different light to the West? Does it perceive that it does not need to send armies abroad but merely to arrogate all manufacturing power to itself and once again become the greatest and perhaps only major centre of industry and culture in the world? China IS civilization and the rest are barbarians. This is an ancient Chinese view.
Saddam (on listening to the then US Ambassadaor before the Kuwait invasions) also thought they had backing/support/assent somewhere in the US for his decision to go to war. Saddam had some reason to believe in it too as he had support against Iran.
Indeed without such support early in his reign, would he have gone on to live in a spider hole.
Neocon help is not what it seems.
Another glib, half-baked assessment from The Professor. My bet is that idiots like Robert Kagan assured Saakashvili that
Russia would do nothing. These guys do nothing but stuff the world up
The Russian government may seem to have triumphed, but the costs of this action will far outweigh the benefits.
I couldn’t disagree more!! The costs to Russia have been minimal, and now not only have they asserted their military ‘credibility’ so to speak, but they control two client states, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in the very strategic Caspian Basin. Russia will probably push for the de jure independence of these two breakaway regions and point to Kosovo if anyone raises an objection. On the other hand, if Russia, which had a peacekeeping mandate in South Ossetia, NOT responded to the Georgian offensive, they would be considered a complete geopolitical lame-duck and laughing stock, unable to even defend their internationally recognized mandates against a piddling little country like Georgia. What would be the benefits of that?? The ‘goodwill’ of the ‘West’, which itself has no hesitation in invading and bombing remote countries on the flimsiest of excuses, wants to expand NATO (i.e. locked-in armaments markets) into Ukraine and elsewhere REGARDLESS of what Russia does, and has been sponsering ‘color revolutions’ around and inside Russia for the past several years? Russia knows that the West only understands the language of force – if anything the West will probably treat Russia better hereafter as a result of this. I think Russia realizes that it has nothing to lose by telling the West to shove it – they hold the energy cards in the post-peak world, and what are the ‘alternative’ energy suppliers that would recieve a ‘premium’ from Europe anyway? Russia will have no shortage of energy customers, even less if it controls the Caspian routes in the caucasus. Russia is sick of being bullied and humiliated in its own backyard and did what any ‘realist’ government would do. Not that I’m saying it’s a good thing what they did – just that it would be crazy to expect them to do otherwise (although the neocons are crazy in fact). I think that speaking objectively and putting aside the reflexive anti-Russian sentiment it is obvious that for Moscow the benefits of this operation clearly exceed the costs.
Virtually everything the Russian government has done here has precedents in the recent actions of the US.
I would hardly say that this was remotely comparable to the invasion of Iraq, or any recent American offensive in fact. Maybe if Russia launched an unprovoked full-scale invasion of Colombia that might be comparable.
Gerard – precendence does not imply equivalence in outcome. A large precedent can have smaller antecedents.
Gerard says, “Russia knows that the West only understands the language of force.” Correct!
The West also knows Russia only understands the language of force. The Islamic world knows the West only understands the language of force which is what the West also knows about the Islamic world. China knows the rest of the world only understands the language of force and the rest of the world knows the same applies to China.
It’s an interesting face-off considering the other trouble we are in. We are at a point where our global problems centre around gloabl warming, climate change, sea level rises, mass extinctions, pollution, deforestation, desertification, loss of arable land, salination and depletion of fresh water supplies not to mention peal oil. It’s pretty much peak everything in fact.
How is man reacting to these fearsome challanges? Well last time I checked the statistics, the world’s largest trade commodities in money values were 1. aramaments, 2. illegal drugs, 3. oil and 4. coffee.
So when we are not blowing each other up, blowing our minds, blowing out pollution and or trying to wake ourselves up for another round of these edifying pursuits… we are actually trying to figure a way out of this mess?
Yeah right… I wish. It truly is difficult at times to maintain a positive view of our species. On the other hand, I guess it’s just our nature as species with certain abilities and proclivities. It’ll never change…. er um until we go extinct.
I get what you’re saying FDB but I think that the difference is not just of scale; this case is qualitatively different in that Russia’s act is retaliation against a Georgian offensive that killed Russian peacekeepers and broke a ceasefire agreement. I daresay that if America was in the same position (having its peacekeeping mandate attacked) and did the same thing that many of the people now criticising Russia would be all for it. afterall, a lot of so-called ‘liberals’ supported the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, which was a much purer case of aggression than what Russia has just done.
more comparable to recent American acts would be if Russia, without having any prior peacekeeping role in the region, just one day decided to invade and occupy Georgia. they would have a choice of Clinton-style or Bush-style lies; they could either say it was a humanitarian intervention to protect the Ossetians, or absurdly claim that Georgia somehow posed a threat to Russia.
also if Putin was Clinton I think you could say that Tblisi’s civilian targets would have come under full scale bombardment, as happened in Belgrade.
I repeat: how on earth can the actions of the Georgian president be understood? What world does he live in? What did he think would happen?
He thought that with Vladimir in Beijing, Dmitri would be asleep at the wheel?
I think it was what JQ has already noted, the fundamental and ubiquitous problem of military adventurism – it seems to be inseperable from unbridled optimism.
Downer,
I think he lives in this world – the one where Russia has been steadily been trying to ensure that Abkhazia and South Ossetia are never going to be able to re-join Georgia, having been ethnically cleansed of Georgians and integrated into Russia. The one where Russia has a veto at the UN, and is thus able to stymie any “legal” or diplomatic action by anyone else to stop it.
He was left with accepting it or trying to do something about it. Diplomacy had failed over the last decade and a half and this was probably the only way he could see to get it back on the agenda. In that, it worked.
“The Romans, The Germans, the British, the Soviets, the Japanese and the Americans (to name a few) have all been completely ruthless when seeking an empire”.
Actually, the British pattern was that empire builders at the periphery were like that, but groups at the centre, e.g. “knights of the shires”, continually dragged against that for fear of overstretch and because the centre was the profit centre that would have to pay directly for keeping the gains. Even though early gains indirectly helped that enough to pay for it, and later ones almost did, the central groups were bound to lose out from imperial gains – they weren’t part of any military-industrial complex. These groups even managed to give up certain gains, e.g. the East Indies and the Ionian Islands. The result was that the Empire only grew on the (frequent) occasions when there was a suitable combination of local support and/or power vacuum, a need to head off other powers who could increase their direct and indirect threat moving in instead (typically the French, e.g. at Fashoda and in New Zealand, and sometimes the Russians) and an ability of empire builders to reach a fait accompli (they didn’t in the Basutoland Gun War or the First Boer War). This meant that Britain was – accurately – not seen as being as ruthlessly expansionist as it otherwise might have been, which reduced blowback except from other, thwarted, would-be imperialists.
Probably correct PML. Exhibit one would be the move into China in the opium wars. China could easily have been taken after their serial defeats in those wars. The fact they did not was unusual at that stage.
Perhaps, though, considering what happened after it may have been better if they had.
I think Andrew Reynold’ explanation is crazy. Quite apart from the one-eyed and simplistic Kagan-esque analysis of the situation, the idea that he was anticipating the outcome that did occur makes no sense.
Possibly as Michael said, he thought Vlad would be too busy watching the gymnastics. Perhaps some silly Americans were in his ear telling him that Putin and Medvedev are paralysed in a power struggle or something like that.
And to bolster his internal position.
yes what andrew is saying makes no sense. Georgia has gotten South Ossetia and Abkhazia back on the agenda – but at the cost of irreversibly consolidating Russian control over these regions and subjecting his own country to a totally predictable military defeat. it’s as if Serbian forces had invaded Kosovo after the NATO occupation was in place – totally crazy and doomed to fail from the outset. one thing is for sure – he wouldn’t have done it without a green light from Washington – who also presumably knew the likely outcome. it’s a strange series of events all round. maybe the neocons just wanted a confrontation with Russia for old times’ sake.
and it’s off topic, but the unequal treaties in china gave the european powers all of the commercial benefits of empire without the costs of imposing order over an absolutely enormous and largely hostile population. as for Andrew’s stupid racist garbage that ‘perhaps it may have been better’ if the Europeans had taken over China: yes then today it might be doing as well as Africa is.
I did not say that he was expecting to get his butt whipped. What I did say is that he put it back on the agenda – as this thread makes plain. A lot more people are now worried about Abkhazia than were worried about it a week ago.
The loss of the regions was certain last week. Now he has more attention on the issue. From that POV he has succeeded. Now he just needs to see if he can win the “peace” after the war.
“Accordingly, China acts to keep its core continental empire secure and seems to display only modest expansionist ambitions against much weaker opponents. Tibet is the modern example of this.”
Well yes if you ignore the fact that Tibet has been a Chinese dependency for about the past 500 years with the exception of a couple of decades in the early 20th century when the British forced the Tibetans literally at gunpoint to claim independence from China.
“I did not say that he was expecting to get his butt whipped.”
He expected the Georgian army to beat the Russian army?
Prof Q, you said “I imagine most of Russia’s customers will now be willing to offer a premium to alternative suppliers.”
Can I ask why?
Two thoughts about Saakashvili’s motives.
Firstly, the western media accounts pretty much start out. “Georgian tanks attacked South Ossetia.” In fact, there’s been months of attacks and counter-attacks by both sides. Saakashvili’s attack on the South Ossetian capital was a clear escalation of the conflict but he may not have expected the Russians to use it as a pretext for an attack on this scale.
2. Virtually the only ground route from Russia to South Ossetia is via the Roki road tunnel. (Russia’s interest in South Ossetia has a lot to do with maintaining control over this route into the Caucasus.)
If the Georgians had managed to capture the tunnel’s southern exit, they might actually have gotten their short, glorious war.
“Probably correct PML. Exhibit one would be the move into China in the opium wars. China could easily have been taken after their serial defeats in those wars. The fact they did not was unusual at that stage.”
China’s eastern provinces were effectively partitioned between several European powers – in particular the British, the French and the Germans – and the Japaanese (after 1905 when they took over the Russian “concessions” in addition to their earlier gains from the Sino-Japanese War).
Continuing nominal Chinese independence was mostly because the the Concessionary powers weren’t prepared to fight a full-scale war with each other. Especially since the US and other non-concessionary powers were pushing for an “Open Door” policy to get access to Chinese markets outside the concessions.
Ian,
The Tibetans would debate the “dependency for 500 years” bit. To the extent that anyone cared about it (too cold, too distant and on no significant trade routes) it was largely left alone – with the occasional Chinese incursion when they were feeling bullish.
On the strategic point I would agree with you though – the Georgians had a chance. The only real downside (prior to a full Russian invasion) was that it would go back to the status quo pro ante. I do not think the Georgian government expected that Russia would launch a full invasion so quickly. As noted elsewhere, the plans must have been sitting on the shelf and the troops already mobilised.
Andrew, if the loss of the regions were certain last week, now they are even more certain. Saakashvili certainly paid a heavy price to put these regions on the international ‘agenda’ – he turned a small Russian peacekeeping force into a massive Russian blitzkreig, and basically ensured that these regions will never be under Georgian control again. What does the scoreboard look like to you?
the fact is that the majority of people in Abkhazia and South Ossetia don’t want to be reintegrated into Georgia – they favor independence. Some months ago at a press conference in Europe, Putin pointed out (quite legitimately) that if the Kosovar Albanians have a right to secede from Serbia, then minorities in Georgia have similar rights. Previously Russia might have been content to allow de facto independence, but after the de jure independence of Kosovo they will probably want to pay the West back in kind.
“The Tibetans would debate the “dependency for 500 yearsâ€? bit. To the extent that anyone cared about it (too cold, too distant and on no significant trade routes) it was largely left alone – with the occasional Chinese incursion when they were feeling bullish.”
Not exactly – the Ming dynasty first got involved in Tibet when it was being attacked by the Mongols.
Chinese troops were largely responsible for installing the first Dalai Lama as the ruler of tibet.
There was a continuing Chinese military presence in Tibet for a couple of reasons.
The first was to prevent the re-emergence of the pre-Mongol strong Tibetan states that had been serious rivals to China in what’s now western China.
The other was the Dalai Lama’s prestige and influence over Lamaistic Buddhists in Central Asia and Mongolia and amongst ethnic Tibetans within China.
There’s a reason the current Dalai Lama has repeatedly said he doesn’t want Tibetan independence just autonomy within China.
“the fact is that the majority of people in Abkhazia and South Ossetia don’t want to be reintegrated into Georgia – ”
Well yes, the systematic murder and ethnic cleansing of Georgians and local opponents of secession over the past 16 years have pretty much ensured that.
“. they favor independence”
Pity they won’t get it. Russia will see to that.
Russia would definately have had these plans on the shelf for a long time, since the Rose Revolution at least, and the Georgians must have known this.
the systematic murder and ethnic cleansing of Georgians and local opponents of secession over the past 16 years have pretty much ensured that.
yes, pretty much.
as for independence, well I doubt that Russia will annex these territories. Moscow will be content to have a couple of small Kosovo-style puppet micro-states.
The key differences between Kosovo and Ossetia and Abkhazia are as follows:
1. Yugoslav-era Kosovo was approximately 90% Albanian. Soviet-era South Ossetia and Abkhazia were 50% or more Georgian or other nationalities.
2. Kosovo was guaranteed autonomy under the Yugoslav constiution. Milosevic unilaterally revoked that autonomy and conducted a decade-long campaign of murder, torture and intimidation against the Kosovars culminating in the attenpted ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars.
The Soviet-era “Presidents” (i.e. Communist dictators) of Abkhazia and South Ossetia declared independence within hours of Georgia seceding from the Soviet Union. The Georgians never got the opportunity to make good on their offer of autonomy and equal treatment.
The USSR was divided into ethnically based ‘Republics’ which were themselves divided into ethnically based regions, which as in the case of Yugoslavia, were to become the fault lines of ethnic conflict once central authority collapsed in 1991. It is an interesting point to consider that far from quashing sectarian nationalism, the Soviet and Yugoslav systems of ‘autonomy’ actually encouraged it. But is there a certain level of ethnic homogeneity at which secession becomes legitimate?
As for Kosovo – it is a complicated story. there was a civil war between Yugoslav forces and the KLA (designated a terrorist organization by the US and UK) but there has never been any forenzic evidence of genocide. Milosevic described his campaign as a “War on Terrorism”, which is no more ridiculous than NATO-member Turkey’s similar description of its brutal contemporaneous campaign against the Kurds. there were atrocities committed by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo (and also by the KLA) but there was no “attempted ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars” prior to the NATO bombing. People tend to conflate what happened in Bosnia with what happened in Kosovo.
Also, during the negotiations in Ramboulliet prior to NATO bombing, Russia brokered an agreement that would give full autonomy to the Kosovar Albanians – Milosevic accepted this, but NATO instead demanded that Yugoslavia agree to what essentially amounted to NATO occupation of the entirity of Yugoslavia. In the end, the final agreement was very similar to the one that NATO initially rejected. Oddly enough, the Serb population of Kosovo thereafter became the targets of ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Albanians, all under the noses of NATO peacekeepers.
http://www3.baylor.edu/~Charles_Kemp/kosovo_refugees.htm
“In 1998, Serbian aggression or ethnic cleansing against the Kosovar Albanians caused hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes. It is estimated that approximately three-quarters of a million Kosovo refugees fled to Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, and other countries abroad.”
Not only was this a war crime but the dumping of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians on Mecedonia (which was already about 40% ethnic Albanian) would probably have precipitated a war there if they had been unable to return to Kosovo.
And here’s a contemporaneous eye-witness report of the ethnic cleansing that you say never happened.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/stories/s21350.htm
“ERIC CAMPBELL: It was like opening the gates of hell.
After days of incarceration in a filthy unsewered holding camp, Kosovo’s refugees were finally allowed to leave.
By 1am, the border police had moved out the entire camp of 45,000 people, some of them trapped here since Thursday, and loaded them on to buses.
It should have been the final relief for these victims of Serbia’s ethnic cleansing. But for some ethnic Albanians, even worse was to come.
PAULA GHEDINI: As the queues were being loaded on to buses, let’s say a family of six would be loaded on to four different buses, so two members would be one place, another would be another place.
ERIC CAMPBELL: The United Nations says the refugees weren’t told where they were going, or asked if it was where they wanted to be.
They were just driven out, in some cases to other countries. Ten thousand people found themselves bused to Albania and Greece. One-thousand-five-hundred were taken to the airport and flown to Turkey.
Those who resisted were forced to leave.”
From your link:
The UN High Commissioner for refugees, UNHCR, estimates nearly half a million people, the vast majority of them ethnic Albanians, have now fled their homeland since NATO began its air assault on Yugoslavia on March 24.
I said that ethnic cleansing didn’t take place before the NATO bombing. it certainly did take place AFTER the bombing started – and NATO commander Wesley Clark actually predicted that it would be a consequence of the bombing.
so the question is – was there a campaign of ethnic cleansing prior to the bombing by NATO?
there was certainly a civil war between the KLA and Yugoslav forces, which certainly involved atrocities committed by both sides (notably the Racak massacre) – but there was no systemic campaign to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of its Albanian inhabitants. the scale of the atrocities was always exaggerated by pro-NATO propaganda – Clinton spoke of hundreds of thousands of people missing, presumably murdered and buried in mass graves. after the war, the UN war crimes tribunal and FBI carried out the largest forenzic investigation in history and failed to uncover a single mass grave – they exhumed 2788 bodies – including Serb, Roma and Albanian, civilian and combatants. after the war, the Red Cross reported 3368 civilians missing, and statistical methods estimate 10,000-12,000 deaths above ‘normal’ rates attributable to war – including combatants. Notably, most of the civilian deaths occured AFTER the NATO bombing and cannot be retrospectively used to justify it. During the height of the NATO bombing, half a million refugees fled Kosovo, although after the war, 200,000 Serbs were driven out of Kosovo, which represents a much higher fraction of the population, and could indeed be described as permanent ‘ethnic cleansing’.
the most ironic thing about it was that Yugoslavia campaign against the Kosovars absolutely paled in comparison with what the Turks were doing to the Kurds at exactly the same time. So NATO doesn’t tolerate ethnic cleansing near its borders, but ethnic cleansing WITHIN its borders is JUST FINE, as long as it is being done with Western armaments. Typical hypocrisy.
Wikipedia has an unusually detailed entry on the Kosovo War.
the best account of the situation in Kosovo prior to the NATO bombing that I have read is ‘Saving Strangers’ by Nicholas Wheeler (Oxford University Press 2000).
http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&id=XBBBwis6VtwC&dq=saving+strangers&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=0TMRQJ8Bu1&sig=_AV6e83flIijegkoj_25n9rZ1bM&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result
One thing to bring out is the proportion of residents of South Ossetia who are only there as a result of past generations’ conscious ethnic replacement, much like the Russians in Lithuania. The true test is to compare ethnic Georgians and Ossetians, not Georgians and others.
Curiopusly, something similar only more complicated happened in Kosovo. If you start the clock a few centuries ago, you find it was Serb and then infiltrated by Albanians who also grew in numbers with the “revenge of the cradle”; Turkish power favoured this. But if you go back all the way to when the Slavs arrived in the Dark Ages, you find that they entered a region that was Illyrian from Italy to Greece and the Danube; these were the people from whom the Albanians came. It was only deliberate Byzantine consolidation (with ethnic cleansing) that restored the Greek character of Greece and stopped it from going Slav too, albeit at the price of losing the Greek character of southern Italy and parts of the Levant.
On the USA as a non-concessionary power in China: this was solely because the USA didn’t play along but opted for trying for a Cuba-style relationship in which it would sweep the pool. It wasn’t playing catch up. There was certainly no US objection to being a concessionary power; in fact it was the last power to give up its concessions and capitulations in Morocco in the 1950s, even after the French and Spanish. And, of course, that is just precisely what its bases and status of forces agreements impose now, even on Australia (their troops routinely do not get charged even when they grievously wound locals – even here, not just in Okinawa etc.).
Gerard, the prior history of the Milosevic regime and the smaller-scale ethnic cleansing that preceded the bombing makes it pretty obvious that the ethnic cleansing was planned well in advance – as does the fact that it’s pretty much physically impossible to move 500,000 people in a matter of days without extensive planning and preapration.
Pr Q says:
As if Russia, as either the Steamroller or the Red Peril, ever needed a foreign precedent – let alone a recent US one – to invade a neighbouring country. They have been doing it constantly for about a millenium.
Thats how come the leaders of Russia came to control 1/6 of the worlds land surface. They just kept on rolling until they ran out of room or came up against a tougher customer.
And its not as if the interim b/w the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 911 attacks sinalled a stop to Russian militarism. Yugoslavia and Chechnya anyone?
In fact recent American militarism, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, have little in common with the Russian actions in the Caucasus. Iraq-attack was a regime change to enlist a client state. Afghan-attack was a punitive mission. Which has developed into an open-ended commitment to stabilise Pakistan.
I am betting the Russians will not likely attempt to install a client-state regime in Georgia. Probably try a Finland-style solution.
What the Georgian war does do, from the point of social analysis, is to re-emphasise the lethal nature of intra-state ethnic conflict, especially in the context of regional hegemons and their fifth columnists. They are like long-running sores in the body politic, that just keep on festering, regularly breaking out into full-blown infection.
Ethnic separatists or sectarian disputes seem to be a necessary, and frequently sufficient, condition for military conflict in the post-Cold War era.
Inter-state economic disputes can be rationally resolved by concession. Intra-state ethnic conflicts tend to be resolved by cleansing or genocide.
Lesson: In this country we must never allow the liberal fetish for ethnic identity politics to metastasize into ethnic militancy. National unity is our most precious form of political asset.
I believe that there is not a single topic that Jack cannot turn towrds his on-going ethnic/immigration obsession.
# Michael Says: August 13th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Google gives 258,000 page hits for the search string “Georgia + Ethnic + Conflict”. So perhaps I am not the only one examining this issue who dwells on this “obsession”. Which, FMPOV, is with integration, not immigration, per se.
Speaking of embarassing political obsessions and the “ethnic question”, I see that the Northern Territories intervention has reduced the incidence of STDs amongst children.
Still lamenting Howard’s heavy handed approach, eh Michael? There’s still time to admit you were wrong on this issue and salvage some personal honour from the general political fall-out.
And typing “John Howard serial killer” into Google turns up 171,000 page hits.
Also Jack despite the headline in the Australian, the writer (and you)are committing the logical error known as prost hoc ergo proctor hoc.
Considering that one of the components of the intervention was supposed to be large-scale health checks on Aboriginal children, you’d expect the number of cases of venereal disease diagnosed to increase.
Unless, you know, the change in the number of diagnoses was statistically insignifcant and/or there was a massive beat-up abouy the alleged level of sexual abuse in inidgenosu communities.
Oh and let’s note that over a decade into Howard’s administration:
“Diagnoses of STIs in the Aboriginal population was massively higher than for other ethnic groups, the surveillance report said.
The rate of notification of gonorrhoea among Aboriginal people in the Territory was 51.7 times the national rate.
Among the non-Aboriginal population, the rate of gonorrhoea notification last year in the Territory was twice the national average. Among the cases of syphilis diagnosed last year, 90per cent of new diagnoses occurred in the Aboriginal population, whose rate of syphilis infection was 26.9 times the non-Aboriginal rate.”
Oh and Jack if we’re goign to resort to argument by link:
http://news.smh.com.au/national/aborigines-healthier-living-in-country-20080811-3td3.html
Aborigines are healthier, happier and cost governments less money when they are living on their traditional lands, according to new research.
Keeping Aboriginal people actively involved in homeland settlements also offers significant benefits to the environment, said senior economist David Campbell.
“We’re finding clear evidence that working `on country’ has benefits for the health of Aboriginal people and for the nation,” said Dr Campbell from the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre.
Returning to Georgia for the moment, the Russians are continuing to advance despite the supposed ceasefire.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g8-DEMtAE9q4i4ySQ0eV_qZefmRQD92HD0HO0
“at the expense of any likelihood of being treated as a friend by the rest of Europe, not to mention the US.”
Anyone who has been following the politics of this region closely enough would realise that this statement is way off the mark. The US hostility to Russia is hidden to the general public but easily visible if you look closely enough. It is well understood in Russia that US friendship to Russia is a laughable concept (for this US administration, at least, but probably for the next one too)
“That won’t stop them selling oil and gas, for example, but I imagine most of Russia’s customers will now be willing to offer a premium to alternative suppliers. Implicitly, that means a discount on the price received by Russia”
That’s an economist view of the situation. The reality is that Russia is well on the way to producing a gas cartel that will reduce Europe’s choice to essentially just Russia. Sending in the troops was part of the same geostrategic thinking that got them their strong position in gas today. Geostrategic logic means there will be no discount.
I also agree that this is a regrettable development but not surprising. I question if it will cost Russia that much. The trouble is, US policy has been so hostile to them that they probably felt they had little to lose. Europe will still be anxious to keep the peace. We also shouldn’t underestimate the power of resentment. When Gorbachev was last in Australia a few years ago he made some prescient statements about the sort of precedent unilateral action in Iraq represented. He was right. We can hardly expect
Russia to care about international opinion now when the most powerful nation hasn’t for 8 years.
I don’t pretend that Putin is anything other than a ruthless politician but he has been handed the perfect excuse to do what he wanted anyway and grabbed it. Putin did his masters thesis on the geopolitics of the oil and gas industry – he knows what he is doing! By contrast we have hamfisted Georgian and US presidents. The statements by Bush and Cheney since the crisis have also been incredibly unhelpful, simply faning the flames of Russian nationalism and actually helping Putin domestically. They are idiots.
The Olympics start and so does a war in Georgia so our front pages are taken up with sports people.
The two events are enough to show that authoritarian regimes don’t really care about the average citizen as they play out their power games. It is a lesson to those of us in the west who underestimate the motives, values and pride of other nation’s regimes as they will mask their true intentions behind smoke and mirrors.