From today's NYT news analysis:
Other diplomats worried that both Mr. Saakashvili's persona and his platforms presented an implicit challenge to the Kremlin, and that Mr. Saakashvili made himself a symbol of something else: Russia's suspicion about American intentions in the Kremlin's old empire. They worried that he would draw the United States and Russia into arguments that the United States did not want.This feeling was especially true among Russian specialists, who said that, whatever the merits of Mr. Saakashvili's positions, his impulsiveness and nationalism sometimes outstripped his common sense.
The risks were intensified by the fact that the United States did not merely encourage Georgia's young democracy, it helped militarize the weak Georgian state.
In his wooing of Washington as he came to power, Mr. Saakashvili firmly embraced the missions of the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. At first he had almost nothing practical to offer. Georgia's military was small, poorly led, ill-equipped and weak.
But Mr. Saakashvili's rise coincided neatly with a swelling American need for political support and foreign soldiers in Iraq. His offer of troops was matched with a Pentagon effort to overhaul Georgia's forces from bottom to top.
At senior levels, the United States helped rewrite Georgian military doctrine and train its commanders and staff officers. At the squad level, American marines and soldiers trained Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of battle.
Georgia, meanwhile, began re-equipping its forces with Israeli and American firearms, reconnaissance drones, communications and battlefield-management equipment, new convoys of vehicles and stockpiles of ammunition.
Let's think about this. Georgia was until relatively recently part of the Soviet Russian empire. It breaks away and achieves its independence after the USSR collapsed. But it remains geographically on Russia's border. In time, Russia's Cold War enemy, the United States, begins developing close relations with Georgia as a counterweight to Moscow. The US begins training and equipping the Georgian military, and the US president openly advocates for Georgia to join a military alliance originally conceived as a front against the Soviet empire.
How does that look from Moscow? Well, how did it look from Washington when, in the 1980s, the revolutionary government of Nicaragua, which is not even as geographically proximate to the US as Georgia is to Russia, began accepting Soviet aid and aligning itself as a Soviet proxy in America's backyard? Nicaragua was never part of the United States (one way in which it's unlike Georgia), but if Moscow had trained its military, provided the Nicaraguans with weapons, and advocated at the highest levels Nicaragua joining the Warsaw Pact -- well, how do you think Washington would have taken that?
As it was, the Soviets didn't go nearly that far with Nicaragua, but the US launched a guerrilla war against their Sandinista proxies. Well and good. The US did have a vital national interest in keeping the Soviets out of our backyard. But let's keep this example in mind as we discern the justification for Russia's aggressive move against Georgia. Russia may be behaving badly, but it's behaving like a normal great power.
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I wanted to mention one more thing. People keep bringing up Serbia as a parallel example, and again I don't think that applies as a good analogy.
When you have a country that sets up death camps and murders 8,000 men, as Serbia did in Srebernika (sorry for the mis-spelling), you pretty much lose the right to object when people don't want to live in your neighborhood. Those were clearly documented attrocities with mass graves. There is no such thing going on in Georgia to my knowledge.
From today's New York Times, an opinion editorial on how Russia allegedly provoked this crisis to have a pretext for invasion (I'm not saying this is 100% correct either - just to show there are more than one story being told about how this started):
"Russia Blames the Victim"
But the truth is that for the past several months, Russia, not Georgia, has been stoking tensions in South Ossetia and another of Georgia’s breakaway areas, Abkhazia. After NATO held a summit in Bucharest, Romania, in April — at which Georgia and Ukraine received positive signs of potential membership — then-President Vladimir Putin of Russia signed a decree effectively treating Abkhazia and South Ossetia as parts of the Russian Federation. This was a direct violation of Georgia’s territorial integrity.
It came after years of growing Russian efforts to assert control over these regions, for example, by distributing Russian passports to citizens and arranging the appointment of Russians to the territories’ governments. Mr. Putin, who is now Russia’s prime minister, oversaw a build-up of Russian “peacekeeping” forces in Abkhazia, which was clearly intended to provoke Georgia into a military response.
Yet Georgia showed restraint — in large part because Mr. Saakashvili understood that military adventurism would harm his NATO prospects. Moscow, in turn, transferred its efforts to South Ossetia, where pro-Russian rebels carried out attacks on Georgian forces and villages, finally provoking the response that Moscow had sought as a pretext to intervene.
I don't think I can post a link, but it's over at the NYTimes today. Rod could do so if he wished....
And furthermore, from today's NY Post - hope some of you over in Russia are reading these, as your government is clearly lying to you:
Let's be clear: For all that US commentators and diplomats are still chattering about Russia's "response" to Georgia's actions, the Kremlin spent months planning and preparing this operation. Any soldier above the grade of private can tell you that there's absolutely no way Moscow could've launched this huge ground, air and sea offensive in an instantaneous "response" to alleged Georgian actions.
As I pointed out Saturday, even to get one armored brigade over the Caucasus Mountains required extensive preparations. Since then, Russia has sent in the equivalent of almost two divisions - not only in South Ossetia, the scene of the original fighting, but also in separatist Abkhazia on the Black Sea coast.
The Russians also managed to arrange the instant appearance of a squadron of warships to blockade Georgia. And they launched hundreds of air strikes against preplanned targets.
Vlad Putin as Defender of the Orthodox Faith???? Bwahahahaha! Rombald, you come up with some of the funniest stuff I've ever heard. Oh yeah, I can see the churches of Poland (Katyn Forrest), Ukraine (The Holodomor), Georgia (current events), Hungary, the "lands of the Czechs and Slovaks", etc. voluntarily lining up behind Russia's leadership - in a dope dream. And if the Russian-derived Orthodox jurisdictions in America (ROCOR, OCA, etc.) started taking a pro-Russian line, they'd start hemorrhaging converts (and cradle Orthodox) to the Greeks and the Antiochians.
Seriously, if the Slavic world is so enamored with Russia's leadership, why are they all trying to get into NATO? Because they don't see Russia as a protector. They hate Russia and all things Russian, and for damnned good reason.
It's possible that Western Europe no longer has enough spine to stand up and defend themselves. Their futile attempts to appease the Muslims they've let into their midst are a source of concern. However, I wouldn't be asking them to go start a war with Russia. All we need from them is military and economic containment of Russia, along the lines of Cold War I policies.
Japan, however, is another breed of cat. If nothing else, she understands that alliance with America has freed her to spend more money on civilian economic development.
Regarding China, who would replace the US as a market for Chinese goods? A unilateral US ban on Chinese imports would cause an economic crash in China to rival the Great Depression. And if that were insufficient deterrent, the US Navy could completely close off the sea lanes to Chinese commerce. No tankers coming in, no container ships full of manufactured goods going out.
Sorry, but until such time as the Russians go therough an institutional equivalent of a denazification program vis-a-vis communists, you are shilling for Communists, Dreher.
Putin loves Stalin and misses the USSR. Is it an surprise that his troops are on the outskirts of Gori, Stalin's home?
And what interests does it serve to allow Russia and Iran to divy up Caspian energy reserves.
Realism is a cute theology for college professors and those in the State Department waiting for a Saudi paycheck. But in the real world, ideology and religion matter.
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