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The dead waved no flags
The immediate outcome of the offensive, which had been launched just after midnight by Georgia's president Mikheil Saakashvili against the 'breakaway republic' of South Ossetia, could hardly be in doubt. Though Georgia's population of under five million is small, it massively outnumbers the 75,000 South Ossetians. Further, as Edward Lucas noted in The Times:
Thanks to American military aid, Georgia's 18,000-strong armed forces are the best-trained and equipped fighting force in the Caucasus.
This aid included huge supplies of equipment. According to an Interfax-AVN report:
Massive deliveries of armaments and military hardware are an add-on factor of the Georgian intensified activities in South Ossetia, a high-ranking military diplomat told Interfax-AVN in Moscow on Thursday [7th August].
"A number of Western nations and Ukraine have sold or donated about 400 tanks, armored vehicles, 150 artillery weapons and mortars and dozens of combat helicopters to Georgia in the past few years. The massive deliveries destabilize the regional situation and provoke Georgian authorities to resolve conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia by force," the source said.
According to the official information of the Russian Defense Ministry, Georgia has received 206 tanks, including 175 from NATO member countries; 186 armored vehicles (including 126 from NATO); 79 artillery weapons (67 from NATO); 25 helicopters (twelve from NATO); 70 mortars; ten anti-aircraft missile systems; eight unmanned reconnaissance aircraft of the Israeli make; and other armaments. In addition, NATO supplied four warplanes to Georgia.
Georgia's armed forces were also trained and advised by the USA. During the three weeks preceding the offensive against South Ossetia, over one thousand US troops were deployed in Georgia to give intensive training to the Georgian military, supplementing the 127 instructors and advisors who are placed there on a 'semi-permanent basis'. On Saturday 10th August, the USA's military newspaper Stars and Stripes reassured its readers of the safety of the American personnel:
Fighting has erupted between Georgia, a staunch U.S. ally, and Russia over the breakaway province of South Ossetia, but none of the U.S. personnel in Georgia appear to be at risk.
There are 127 U.S. military trainers there, of whom about 35 are civilian contractors, according to Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.
All are safe and accounted for, according to United States European Command.
“They are safe and not engaged (in this conflict),” said Lt. Col. John Dorrian, EUCOM spokesman [...]
With respect to the fighting, Barker said EUCOM intends to stay on the sidelines.
"We're going to watch and see how this unfolds," Barker said.In addition to the trainers, 1,000 soldiers from the Vicenza, Italy-based Southern European Task Force (Airborne) and the Kaiserslautern-based 21st Theater Sustainment Command, along with Marine reservists with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines out of Ohio, and the state of Georgia’s Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry recently participated in “Immediate Response 2008.”
Though the training exercise ended Thursday, soldiers are still in the country, though nowhere near the conflict, according to EUCOM’s Lt. Cmdr. Corey Barker. The Marines have already left.
At mid-day on Friday 8th August, it seemed that the preparations had paid off; Mikheil Saakashvili had achieved an audacious and stunningly successful coup de force. Most of the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali was reduced to rubble following a massive bombardment by rockets, artillery and aircraft. Hundreds were were dead or badly wounded, and the survivors among the civilian population were hiding in their cellars, had fled to the forests, or were heading north for sanctuary in Russia. Georgia's president made an announcement on television:
"Georgian forces are controlling the entire territory of South Ossetia except Java," a village north of the separatist capital of Tskhinvali, Saakashvili said. "We are fully controlling Tskhinvali," he added.
In Tblisi, thousands of Georgians rejoiced in their president's fulfillment of his election commitment to quell the 'rebel province'. Tony Karon reported for Time magazine:
...the lightning offensive appeared to have put Georgia back in charge of the breakaway region, and made good on Saakashvili's campaign promise. The offensive touched off wild celebrations in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. "Georgians are by nature extremely patriotic and this event has galvanized them together," David Womble, National director of WorldVision, a Christian humanitarian NGO with operations in the country, told TIME. At one point, he said, thousands and thousands of cars filled the streets of the capital, honking their horns and with their passengers waving Georgian flags. Says Womble, "It was as if Georgia had won the World Cup and was celebrating."
So far, the war had yielded corpses only in South Ossetia. The dead, who included ethnic Georgians as well as Ossetians and Russians, were not waving flags.
It was during the celebrations in Tbilisi that a long column of Russian armoured vehicles emerged from the mouth of the Roki Tunnel, and rolled towards the ruined city of Tskhinvali.
The decision taken by Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev was one of monumentous importance- that Russia would, for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, send its troops to fight beyond its borders; and not only this- but to take on, and defeat in warfare, a state whose armed forces were trained, advised and financed by the United States of America, a state which was sponsored for future NATO membership by the USA, a state which had the diplomatic backing of the USA for its military actions.
The economist Paul Krugman, a former advisor to President Bill Clinton, remarked in the New York Times on August 14th:
"...the war in Georgia... mark[s] the end of the Pax Americana — the era in which the United States more or less maintained a monopoly on the use of military force."
The sovereignty of power
Until now, the USA has also 'more or less maintained' another monopoly which is very relevant to the matter of Georgia and South Ossetia.
A notable feature of this war has been the apparent conversion of the USA- following its long history of undermining, bombing and invading other countries; including the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and its recent recognition of 'independent' Kosovo- to the loftly and irrevokable principles of national sovereignty and integrity. In fact the USA has never rejected these principles per se; rather, it has applied them only as and when they have been useful in promoting the single over-riding principle, that of US advantage and domination.
Thus, following the break-up of Yugoslavia, the USA with the support of its NATO allies did not allow the ethnic Serbian areas within Bosnia to achieve independence from Bosnia. That aspiration of the Bosnian Serbs was refused because it would have strengthened Serbia; and for reasons which included the affinity of the Serbs with Russia, one of the USA's objectives in the Balkans was to isolate and weaken Serbia.
And in the same spirit, the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo was facilitated in achieving de-facto separation from the rest of Serbia by means of a three month aerial bombing campaign. When in February 2008 the USA and its NATO partners formalised their military defeat of Serbia by recognising Kosovo as an independent state, Vladimir Putin issued the following warning, as quoted by the International Herald Tribune:
"The Kosovo precedent is a terrifying precedent. It in essence is breaking open the entire system of international relations that have prevailed not just for decades but for centuries. And it without a doubt will bring on itself an entire chain of unforeseen consequences," he said in televised comments.
Those who have recognized Kosovo "are miscalculating what they are doing. In the end, this is a stick with two ends and that other end will come back to knock them on the head someday," he said.
The USA has the special privilege of being able to pick and choose when to apply, and when not to apply, the principles of national sovereignty and integrity because it is the most powerful country in the world. But Russia, though still very weak in comparison to the United States, is getting stronger.
One of the the parallels between the ethnic and national conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and those in the former Soviet Union is the extent of US interference. Another is the way that, with the collapse of a multi-national socialist state, groups of people who had for decades lived in fairly amicable peace with each other suddenly became deadly enemies. In his penetrating analysis of the issues involved in the war in Georgia, Andrew Murray observes:
Conventional wisdom will put the conflict down to “enduring … territorial and ethnic hatreds,” in the Sunday Telegraph’s words, or “historic grudges,” in those of The Observer. These are convenient liberal bromides — the real enduring tradition here is great-power rivalry.In fact, Ossetians and Georgians rubbed along all right in Soviet times, at least in part because neither was in a position to lord it over the other. South Ossetians could form part of Soviet Georgia while their kin on the other side of the barrier of the Caucasus mountains in North Ossetia could be a constituent element of Soviet Russia because they were all, ultimately, Soviet. And people of all the various nationalities of Georgia intermingled with little friction.
That was before the break-up of the Soviet Union and Georgia attaining first its independence and, more recently, the status of fully fledged US satellite.
The present border between Russia and Georgia made sense as an administrative boundary because of the position of the Caucasus mountains, and in any case South Ossetia had the status of autonomous district within the USSR. In Soviet times it was not envisaged that this boundary would become an international frontier; and when it did, it bisected the area inhabited by the Ossetian people.
As the USSR began to disintegrate, the Ossetians living in Georgian territory perceived themselves to be victimised by the Georgian authorities, which declared Georgian to be the principal language of the country, abolished the autonomous status of South Ossetia, and banned South Ossetian political parties from standing in elections to the Georgian parliament. Following a series of bloody clashes between 1989 and 1992, South Ossetia achieved a government with de-facto independence from Georgia.
As Andrew Murray notes, the Georgian / Ossetian conflict is one of several which remain unsolved in the area of the former USSR:
...in many cases, the formerly internal borders between Soviet republics do not work as interstate boundaries. They are a consequence of the indecent haste with which Boris Yeltsin and his cronies liquidated the Soviet Union the better to get their hands on the levers of power in Russia.
Not only are there national minorities, often Russian, now in the “wrong” state, there are also peoples who, having neither the means nor even the aspiration to set up fully fledged nation states of their own, felt much more at ease in a large multinational federation than they do in a smaller nation state dominated by a single national group.
Since one of the undoubted successes of the nationalities policy of the Soviet Union was its promotion of the cultural, linguistic and educational development of each ethnic group, no matter how small or how historically marginalised it had been, all now have both an enhanced awareness of their distinctive rights and the means of articulating them.
This could all be resolved peacefully were the US not hell-bent on using every difficulty and difference as a lever to keep its putative Russian rival weak and “in its box."
The brilliant mistake
Having the benefit of hindsight, Western commentators now regard Mikheil Saakashvili's full-scale assault on South Ossetia on 8th August as a dreadful 'miscalculation'; some also remark on the stunningly effective strategy and tactics of Russia's leadership. Under the headline 'Vladimir Putin's mastery checkmates the West', Michael Binyon wrote in The Times:
Vladimir Putin lost several pawns on the chessboard - Kosovo, Iraq, Nato membership for the Baltic states, US renunciation of the ABM treaty, US missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. But he waited.
The trap was set in Georgia. When President Saakashvili blundered into South Ossetia, sending in an army to shell, kill and maim on a vicious scale (against US advice and his promised word), Russia was waiting.
It was not only Mr Saakashvili who thought that he had the distraction of the Olympics to cover him; the Kremlin also knew that Mr Bush was watching basketball, and, in the longer term, that the US army was fully engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. From the day that the Russian tank brigade raced through the tunnel into South Ossetia, Russia has not made one wrong move. Mr Bush's remarks yesterday notwithstanding, In five days it turned an overreaching blunder by a Western-backed opponent into a devastating exposure of Western impotence, dithering and double standards on respecting national sovereignty (viz Iraq).
The attack was short, sharp and deadly - enough to send the Georgians fleeing in humiliating panic, their rout captured by global television.
If Georgia was a trap, it was one which Russia gave the USA the opportunity to avoid. Though sudden, the Georgian assault on South Ossetia was hardly a surprise to those who were paying attention. Four days before the attack, RIA-Novosti carried the following report:
MOSCOW August 4- Russia counts on the United States to exert a positive influence on Georgia following the latest surge in violence in the breakaway province of South Ossetia, a Russian diplomat said on Monday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin's statement follows a warning from the Russian ministry that South Ossetia is on the brink of a large-scale military conflict, and Moscow's claim that Georgia is aggravating the situation through excessive use of force. At least six people were killed late on Friday and early on Saturday in clashes between South Ossetian and Georgian forces.
Karasin, speaking after a phone conversation with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, said: "The Russian side expressed deep concern over the latest surge in tensions around South Ossetia, the unlawful buildup of Georgia's military presence in the region, and the intensive construction of fortifications."
"Russia has already urged Tbilisi to take a responsible approach, and it also counts on constructive cooperation from Washington," he said.
Two days later, the South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity spoke with the ambassador of the USA's main ally, Britain. According to RIA-Novosti:
TSKHINVALI, August 6- The leader of Georgia's rebel province of South Ossetia said on Wednesday that Georgia is planning a full-scale invasion of the region before the start of September [...]
Eduard Kokoity told British Ambassador to Georgia Denis Keefe: "We have indisputable evidence that a large-scale military operation will start here by September. This is Georgia's plan currently being implemented by [President Mikheil] Saakashvili's regime."
When assessing the idea, as implied by an editorial in the Guardian, that the key players in the US leadership were taken by surprise by the Georgian attack, one should also take into account the presence within the Georgian military of the US advisors. Reporting on an interview for Der Spiegel by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on 16th August, Reuters paraphrased one of his remarks as follows:
He doubted the United States, a strong ally of Georgia, was not informed about the initial Georgian offensive given that it has military advisers stationed in Tbilisi.
Michael Binyon, Tony Karon and other intelligent Western commentators have asserted- without disclosing their sources- that the USA had advised Saakashvili not to make his attack. Failure- especially a military failure with what appear to be enormous negative consequences- is an orphan, and it is likely that some officials in the Pentagon have been giving 'off-record' briefings to journalists that their man in Tblisi was not following the script when he launched his assault.
But the demeanour of Mikheil Saakashvili throughout the conflict has been that of an employee who is inspired by the firm belief that his actions were undertaken with the full support of his employer.
It should also be borne in mind that the current US administration does not speak with a single voice. It is headed by a fading, lame-duck president; and unlike his predecessors Reagan and Clinton, George W. Bush even in his more illustrious days was never a leader. He once declared that he was "the decider"- this was true to the extent that he officiated between the competing factions within his administration;
at his best and worst, he was a man who could simplify the agenda of the dominant faction into a comic book story of Good versus Evil, thereby winning the support of a populus horrified by the 9/11 atrocity for the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Writing in the Globe and Mail, Misha Glenny suggests that in starting the war, Saakashvili was acting at the behest of US Vice President Dick Cheney, the leader of the most extreme neo-con faction within the United States administration.
Setting aside the question of whether Saakashvili received a specific signal from the USA that he should open fire on Tskhinvali, could the USA have prevented him from doing so? That question can only be answered in the affirmative. If the US authorities had told Mr Saakashvili privately that were he to attack South Ossetia, that would result in the termination of military aid and the end of US sponsorship for NATO membership, he would not have launched his assault. If the US authorities had made even a mild public statement indicating that the United States would disapprove of a Georgian attack on South Ossetia, Saakashvili would not have launched his assault.
Even by daybreak on 8th August, with Tskhinvali already partially destroyed by Georgian bombardment, it would not have been too late to avert the further escalation of the conflict. Russia's initial response to the Georgian attack was to convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council, where it sought support for a resolution calling for an end to the fighting and a commitment that the dispute would be resolved only by peaceful means. The Independent reported:
At the request of Russia, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency session in New York but failed to reach consensus early Friday on a Russian-drafted statement.
The council concluded it was at a stalemate after the US, Britain and some other members backed the Georgians in rejecting a phrase in the three-sentence draft statement that would have required both sides [the Georgians and the South Ossetians] "to renounce the use of force," council diplomats said.
By rejecting the Russian motion, the USA and Britain sent a clear message to Saakashvili that he had permission to continue the military operation. It is as yet unclear how many people died in this war; but however many they are, the US government, and to an extent also the UK government, bears the main responsibility for their deaths.
Birds of prey
The chips have only just begun to fall, and the international consequences which will follow from the events of 8th August 2008 cannot be predicted with confidence. Will the US authorites be able to deliver on their threat to punish Russia for its crime of defending South Ossetia and de-commissioning the Georgian armed forces? Will NATO close ranks against Russia, or will the division within it, between the USA and Britain on one side and France and Germany on the other, open wider?
In his Globe and Mail article, Misha Glenny noted the impact which the Georgian debacle is likely to have on US politics:
For the Bush administration (or for its hawks at least), the Georgian mistake presents an opportunity - let us recast Russia as a threat to global stability and a potential enemy. Predictably, the toughest response to the Russian invasion came from Mr. Cheney on Sunday [...] Mr. Cheney has been spoiling for a fight with the Russians for a couple of years, and he and his allies have seized upon Georgia's and Ukraine's stated aims to join NATO as a way of riling Moscow. By cranking up the dispute with Russia over NATO, Mr. Cheney is also shifting the political debate in the United States away from the state of the economy and toward the issue of national security.
If the presidential election is fought on the former issue, Democratic candidate Barack Obama is a shoo-in. But if the central issue is national security and who would be best at dealing with a major crisis like Georgia, then his Republican opponent John McCain has to be the favourite. Mr. McCain's response to the Georgia crisis was almost as tough as Mr. Cheney's, perhaps explained in part by the fact his chief foreign policy adviser worked as a former lobbyist for the Georgian government.
To which it should be added that Mr Obama's response to the Georgia crisis was almost as 'tough' as Mr McCain's. Barack Obama cannot afford to be seen as 'weak on Russia'.
Misha Glenny concluded:
Whether Georgia was defeated by the Russians or lost by the neo-cons, a touch of diplomatic sobriety on both sides would be a welcome development if the Georgian conflict is not to mark a very dangerous new phase in the development of global politics - serial confrontation between the West and Russia.
The war in Georgia, between a proxy of the USA and an increasingly powerful rival to the USA, was the first military battle of the new phase in global politics. China, currently in strategic alliance with Russia, is also becoming more powerful.
Among the immediate consequences of the Georgian debacle was the rapid conclusion by the US and Poland of the deal, which had been delayed in negotiations for 18 months, to construct the USA's forward-based 'missile defense' installation in Poland.
Nobody except the public believes the cover story that this installation is intended to defend the United States against Iran.
Indeed, we should hope for a touch of sobriety. But the hawks- or perhaps we should call them the vultures- have a different aspiration.