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Kana’an – The e-Bulletin
النشرة األلكترونية كنعان
Volume VIII – Issue 1623
11 August 2008
Suggested Readings
The War in Georgia
Geopolitics, US Elections, Israeli Involvement …and more
http://www.kanaanonline.org/articles/01623.pdf
Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gg.html
A Note from Kana’an
Following are some suggested readings exploring various aspects of the current
“Georgian-Russian” war as well as some contextual observations that might be
useful in understanding the conflict.
This war is taking place in the context of hegemonic provocative US
geopolitics:
- The installation of anti-missile system that the US wants to
deploy in Eastern Europe;
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- Role of US military bases in Georgia (i.e. very close to Russia);
- Continuous US attempts to bring the former Soviet Republics
into the sphere of its control and influence.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and Socialist Bloc, many nations and
ethnic minorities suffered greatly, among them Ossetians, but also Iraqis,
Palestinians, Afghans, and many others.
- The conditions under which many ethnic communities live in
Eastern Europe have deteriorated after the collapse of the
Socialist Bloc. In many cases these communities lost their
autonomous and semi-autonomous status, which meant the loss
of their culture, language and rights that were previously
protected.
- When Georgia became independent after the dissolution of
USSR, it imposed the obligatory use of the Georgian language in
government offices, and the prohibition of regional parties in
elections, and elimination of South Ossetian autonomy.
Being a small country (population of 4,630,8416 with a small military force
compared to Russia), and being dependent on Russia for gas and energy, it is
unlikely that Georgia would take such a move without counting on or
expecting US/West support.
Additionally, Georgia is an important territory through which oil is
shipped, with access to the Caspian and pipeline networks.
It is then in this context that the following question arises: Did Georgia
miscalculate the Russian response or relied on the support of the US/West?
The current Georgian government has aligned itself from the very beginning
with Washington and is also seeking to join the NATO.
It is interesting to note that although the U.S. claims to be neutral in the
conflict, it has agreed to redeploy about 2000 Georgian troops from Iraq back
to Georgia and to demand that Russian forces withdraw.
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(***)
Getting Georgia's War On
By Mark Ames
Source: The Nation
August 8, 2008
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080818/ames
The outbreak of war in Georgia on Friday offers a disturbing and somewhat surreal
taste of what to expect from John McCain should he become our nation's
Commander in Chief. As the centuries-old ethnic animosities between Georgia and
Ossetia boiled over into another armed conflict, drawing in neighboring Russia,
McCain issued a stark-raving statement from Des Moines that is disturbingly
reminiscent of the language used in the lead-up to NATO's war against Yugoslavia in
1999, a war McCain zealously pushed for:
"We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council to assess
Georgia's security and review measures NATO can take to contribute to stabilizing
this very dangerous situation," McCain said.
Calling on NATO to "stabilize this dangerous situation" is not going down well with
Russia, where images of dead Russian peacekeepers and of frightened Ossetian
refugees streaming across its borders have put the country in a very vengeful mood.
It's hard to imagine what measures NATO could take under a McCain presidency, but
in the mind of a man who thinks US troops should stay in Iraq for 100 years, and who
runs around singing "Bomb Bomb Iran!" it's not hard to guess--and even harder not
to be horrified by what it may mean come January 2009, should he win.
McCain's call to NATO-ize the war is not only frightening, it's also delusional: both
NATO and US forces are already stretched beyond the breaking point, even by Joint
Chief of Staff chairman Michael Millen's own recent assessment.
But McCain's brain remains undeterred by reality, a fact that became painfully clear
today in Des Moines when he also demanded, "The US should immediately convene
an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to call on Russia to
reverse course."
The problem with McCain's bold demand about going to the UN is that Russia
already tried doing exactly what McCain called for--and got rejected by McCain's
neocon pals in the Bush Administration. Early this morning, Russia convened an
emergency session of the UN Security Council, calling on both sides to immediately
cease hostilities, return to the negotiating table and renounce the use of force--but the
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last part about renouncing the use of force is exactly what Georgia's president Mikhail
Saakashvili refuses to do.
The Bush Administration showed that it too has no patience with crunchy "renounce
the use of force" resolutions. According to a Reuters report from earlier in the day:
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 United States, Britain and some
other members backed the Georgians in rejecting a phrase in the three-sentence draft
statement that would have required both sides "to renounce the use of force," council
diplomats said.
The meaning of this is clear: the United States and Britain are backing Saakashvili's
invasion. Why would we back Saakashvili's reckless war, when last year even Bush was
denouncing the Pinochet-wannabe's violent attack on his own people during a
peaceful opposition protest in Georgia's capital, as well as shutting down the
opposition media and exiling of political opponents? That would be a brain-teaser if
the last seven years hadn't answered this question so many painful times already.
But with McCain, answering this is a little trickier. When he issued today's Des
Moines statement calling for Russia to do what Russia already did a few hours earlier,
you have to ask yourself: either McCain's short-term memory is totally shot, encased
in an impenetrable tomb of aluminum-zirconium plaque... or worse, McCain simply
doesn't give a damn about reality, he just wants to get Georgia's war on, as badly as
Saakashvili does.
The awful truth is probably a combination of the two, which is the worst of all
worlds, considering McCain's raving Russophobia, and his campaign team's financial
and ideological ties to Saakashvili. As has been reported, McCain's top foreign policy
advisor, neocon Randy Scheunemann, has a long financial relationship with
Saakashvili to lobby his interests in the United States.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
In 2005, Mr. Scheunemann asked Sen. McCain to introduce a Senate resolution
expressing support for peace in the Russian-influenced region of South Ossetia that
wants to break away from Georgia, the records show.
Such resolutions of Senate support are symbolic but helpful to countries in their
diplomatic relations. The Senate approved Sen. McCain's resolution in December
2005, and the Georgian Embassy posted the text on its Web site.
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Sen. McCain has endorsed Georgia's goal of entering NATO, a matter for which the
country hired Mr. Scheunemann to lobby. In 2006, Senator McCain gave a speech at
the Munich Conference on Security in Germany in which he said "Georgia has
implemented far-reaching political, economic, and military reforms" and should enter
NATO, a text of his speech on the conference Web site shows.
Scheunemann, a bearded, pear-faced gun geek who looks like what might have
happened to a GI Joe doll if it had spent years stuffing its face at pricey restaurants
while power-schmoozing politicians and petty dictators, also worked for recently-
disgraced Bush fundraiser Stephen Payne, lobbying for his Caspian Alliance oil
business. The Caspian oil pipeline runs through Georgia, the main reason that country
has tugged the heartstrings of neocons and oil plutocrats for at least a decade or more.
In 2006, McCain visited Georgia and denounced the South Ossetian separatists,
proving that Scheunemann wasn't wasting his Georgian sponsor's money. At a speech
he gave in a Georgian army base in Senaki, McCain declared that Georgia was
America's "best friend," and that Russian peacekeepers should be thrown out.
Today, Georgian forces from that same Senaki base are part of the invasion force into
South Ossetia, an invasion that has left scores--perhaps hundreds--of dead locals, at
least ten dead Russian peacekeepers, and 140 million pissed-off Russians calling for
blood.
Lost in all of this is not only the question of why America would risk an apocalypse to
help a petty dictator like Saakashvili get control of a region that doesn't want any part
of him. But no one's bothering to ask what the Ossetians themselves think about it, or
why they're fighting for their independence in the first place. That's because the
Georgians--with help from lobbyists like Scheunemann--have been pushing the line
that South Ossetia is a fiction, a construct of evil Kremlin neo-Stalinists, rather than a
people with a genuine grievance.
A few years ago, I had an Ossetian working as the sales director for my now-defunct
newspaper, The eXile. After listening to me rave about how much I always (and still
do) like the Georgians, he finally lost it and told me another side to Georgian history,
explaining how the Georgians had always mistreated the Ossetians, and how the
South Ossetians wanted to reunite with North Ossetia in order to avoid being
swallowed up, and how this conflict goes way back, long before the Soviet Union
days. It was clear that the Ossetian-Georgian hatred was old and deep, like many
ethnic conflicts in this region. Indeed, a number of Caucasian ethnic groups still
harbor deep resentment towards Georgia, accusing them of imperialism, chauvinism
and arrogance.
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One example of this can be found in historian Bruce Lincoln's book, Red Victory, in
which he writes about the period of Georgia's brief independence from 1917 to 1921,
a time when Georgia was backed by Britain:
the Georgian leaders quickly moved to widen their borders at the expense of their
Armenian and Azerbaijani neighbors, and their territorial greed astounded foreign
observers. 'The free and independent socialist democratic state of Georgia will always
remain in my memory as a classic example of an imperialist small nation," one British
journalist wrote.... "Both in territory snatching outside and bureaucratic tyranny inside,
its chauvinism was beyond all bounds."
On Thursday, following intense Georgian shelling and katyusha rocketing into
Tskhinvali, refugees streamed out of South Ossetia telling reporters that the
Georgians had completely leveled entire villages and most of Tskhinvali, leaving "piles
of corpses" in the streets, over 1,000 by some counts. Among the dead are at least ten
Russian peacekeepers, who fell after their base was attacked by Georgian forces.
Reports also say that Georgian forces destroyed a hotel where Russian journalists
were staying.
In response, Russian jets bombed Georgian positions both inside South Ossetia and
into Georgia proper, attacking one base where American military instructors are
quartered (no Americans were reported hurt). By mid-afternoon Moscow time, as
local television showed burning homes and Ossetian women and children huddling in
bomb shelters, armored Russian columns were crossing into Georgian territory, and
Georgia's President called for a total mobilization of military-aged men for war with
Russia.
The invasion was backed up by a PR offensive so layered and sophisticated that I
even got an hysterical call today from a hedge fund manager in New York, screaming
about an "investor call" that Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze made this
morning with some fifty leading Western investment bank managers and analysts. I've
since seen a J.P. Morgan summary of the conference call, which pretty much reflects
the talking points later picked up by the US media.
These kinds of conference calls are generally conducted by the heads of companies in
order to give banking analysts guidance. But as the hedge fund manager told me
today, "The reason Lado did this is because he knew the enormous PR value that
Georgia would gain by going to the money people and analysts, particularly since
Georgia is clearly the aggressor this time." As a former investment banker who
worked in London and who used to head the Bank of Georgia, Gurgenidze knew
what he was doing. "Lado is a former banker himself, so he knew that by framing the
conflict for the most influential bankers and analysts in New York, that these power
bankers would then write up reports and go on CNBC and argue Lado Gurgenidze's
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talking points. It was brilliant, and now you're starting to see the American media shift
its coverage from calling it Georgia invading Ossetian territory, to the new spin, that
it's Russian imperial aggression against tiny little Georgia."
The really scary thing about this investor conference call is that it suggests real
planning. As the hedge fund manager told me, "These things aren't set up on an
hour's notice."
Where this war is leading is impossible to say, but as Iraq and Afghanistan, not to
mention Chechnya, have shown, wars have a funny way of lasting longer, costing
more in money and lives, and snuffing out whatever individual liberties the affected
populations may have. As good as this war is for Saakashvili, who has become
increasingly unpopular at home and abroad, or for McCain, whose poll numbers seem
to rise every time the plaque devours another lobe of his brain, it also bodes well for
the resurgent Prime Minister Putin, who seems to have become increasingly peeved
with his hand-picked successor, President Dmitry Medvedev's flickering
independence and his liberalizer shtick. There's nothing like a good war to snuff out
an uppity sois-disant liberal who's getting in your way--even McCain can still grasp this
concept.
As I'm filing this, Russian forces are battling to take back Tskhinvali, while Saakashvili
has been alternately claiming to have pulled his forces back, or that his forces are in
full control of the city and defeating the Russians. Meanwhile, Georgia has been on a
massive, successful, multi-layered PR offensive in the West, helped by years of
cultivating people like John McCain as well as the army of neocons and old cold
warriors who naturally gravitate to a fight with Russia.
Mark Ames is the editor of Moscow's alternative paper The eXile. He is the author of
Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and
Beyond (Soft Skull) and The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia (Grove).
(***)
A Dirty Adventure
Comments posted by Richard
Source: American Leftist
http://www.amleft.blogspot.com/
A Dirty Adventure (Part 1)
Georgia invades South Ossetia:
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Georgia launched a major military offensive Friday to retake the breakaway province
of South Ossetia, prompting Moscow to send tanks into the region in a furious
response that threatens to engulf Georgia, a staunch U.S. ally, and Russia in all-out
war.
Hundreds were reported dead in the worst outbreak of hostilities since the province
won de facto independence in a war against Georgia that ended in 1992. Witnesses
said the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali was devastated.
"I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings, in cars," said Lyudmila
Ostayeva, 50, who had fled with her family to Dzhava, a village near the border with
Russia. "It's impossible to count them now. There is hardly a single building left
undamaged."
And the Russians respond:
The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday afternoon that it would protect Russian
citizens in the territory and Russian peacekeepers who came under fire in Tskhinvali.
“The Georgian leadership has unleashed a dirty adventure,” the ministry said in a
statement, posted on its Web site. “The blood shed in South Ossetia will remain on
the conscience of these people and their entourage. We will not allow anyone to do
harm to our peacekeepers and citizens of the Russian Federation.”
But are Georgians solely responsible for this dirty adventure? One wonders, especially in
light of this passage from the Associated Press article, a fact conveniently omitted from
New York Times coverage:
More than 1,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers were at the base last month to teach
combat skills to Georgian troops. Georgia has about 2,000 troops in Iraq, making it
the third-largest contributor to coalition forces after the U.S. and Britain.
The White House on Friday urged Russia and Georgia to peacefully resolve their
dispute over South Ossetia.
"We urge restraint on all sides — that violence would be curtailed and that direct
dialogue could ensue in order to help resolve their differences," White House
spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.
Curiously, the US is not capable of condemning a Georgian invasion and Guernica
like air attack upon Tskhinvali, but then, that would be expecting a lot after US
Marines just got done training Georgian forces. Instead, the White House just urges
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restraint, which is what it usually does when an ally has launched an attack and the
other side moves to defend itself.
The Russians have been angry for quite awhile about proposals to admit Georgia into
NATO. Now, Georgian troops have attacked South Ossetia, an ethnic enclave of
Russians, after having been trained by the US. The Russians no doubt believe, with
good reason, that the US greenlighted the invasion. If I were Georgian, I'd be very
concerned, because it is probable that the Russians are about to teach them a terrible
lesson about the consequences of hubris.
A Dirty Adventure (Part 2)
Friday, August 08, 2008
Turns out the that Israelis have been supplying the US trained Georgian army with
weapons. It was reported that they stopped such sales a few days ago:
Israel has decided to halt all sales of military equipment to Georgia because of
objections from Russia, which is locked in a feud with its tiny Caucasus neighbor,
defense officials said Tuesday.
The officials said the freeze was partially intended to give Israel leverage with Moscow
in its attempts to persuade Russia not to ship arms and equipment to Iran. They
spoke on condition of anonymity as Israel does not officially publish details of its
arms sales.
Russia has repeatedly refused to comment on reports its is selling S-300 air defense
missiles to Iran.
Among items Israel has been selling to Tbilisi are pilotless drone aircraft. Russian
fighters shot one down in May, according to UN observers.
Other types of weaponry include the following:
. . . . Israel has also been supplying Georgia with infantry weapons and electronics for
artillery systems, and has helped upgrade Soviet-designed Su-25 ground attack jets
assembled in Georgia, according to Koba Liklikadze, an independent military expert
based in Tbilisi. Former Israeli generals also serve as advisers to the Georgian military.
Interesting. Israeli arms sales to Georgia are purportedly halted, and the Georgians
invade South Ossetia in less than a week. There are also reports today that the
Georgians have shot down Russian aircraft, which brings this story from April to the
top of the queue:
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Russia asked Israel last week whether it had supplied Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(UAVs) to Georgia, for it to use in military operations against secessionists from
Abkhazia.
An Israeli security source confirmed that the UAVs being used by Georgia are
manufactured by Israeli firm Elbit. A diplomatic source in Jerusalem said that the
Russians did not have proof of this, however, and that the request for clarifications
was based on suspicions. He added that Israel does not sell any attack weapons to
countries that border with Russia and only sells them defensive equipment.
Georgia accused Russia of using a MiG-29 to shoot down one of its UAVs over
Abkhazia and produced a video to back up its claim. The video was shot by the UAV
seconds before it was shot down, and it shows a MiG-29. Georgia's president said he
spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin and demanded an end to the "unjustified
aggression against Georgia's sovereign territory."
Of course, the subject that keeps intruding into this saga is Iran. Is the Georgian
invasion of South Ossetia meant to pressure the Russians into severing economic and
military ties with the Iranians? The Israelis supposedly halted arms sales to Georgia in
an effort to persuade the Russians to refuse to supply Iran with a new air defense
system. Did that effort fail, or was it merely a pretense before the launching of the
Georgian invasion?
Perhaps, the invasion has also been prompted by competition between the US, Russia
and Europe over access to natural reserves in the Caucasus. Along these lines,
consider this July 30th article by former Indian diplomat M K Bhadrakumar:
From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the
weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic
turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The
United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question
now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy
market.
Gazprom, Russia's energy leviathan, signed two major agreements in Ashgabat on
Friday outlining a new scheme for purchase of Turkmen gas. The first one elaborates
the price formation principles that will be guiding the Russian gas purchase from
Turkmenistan during the next 20-year period. The second agreement is a unique one,
making Gazprom the donor for local Turkmen energy projects. In essence, the two
agreements ensure that Russia will keep control over Turkmen gas exports.
The consequences for the US are reportedly significant:
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Until fairly recently Moscow was sensitive about the European Union's opposition to
the idea of a gas cartel. (Washington has openly warned that it would legislate against
countries that lined up behind a gas cartel). But high gas prices have weakened the
European Union's negotiating position.
The agreements with Turkmenistan further consolidate Russia's control of Central
Asia's gas exports. Gazprom recently offered to buy all of Azerbaijan's gas at
European prices. (Medvedev visited Baku on July 3-4.) Baku will study with keen
interest the agreements signed in Ashgabat on Friday. The overall implications of
these Russian moves are very serious for the US and EU campaign to get the
Nabucco gas pipeline project going.
Nabucco, which would run from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Rumania and
Hungary, was hoping to tap Turkmen gas by linking Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan via
a pipeline across the Caspian Sea that would be connected to the pipeline networks
through the Caucasus to Turkey already existing, such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
pipeline.
But with access denied to Turkmen gas, Nabucco's viability becomes doubtful. And,
without Nabucco, the entire US strategy of reducing Europe's dependence on Russian
energy supplies makes no sense. Therefore, Washington is faced with Hobson's
choice. Friday's agreements in Ashgabat mean that Nabucco's realization will now
critically depend on gas supplies from the Middle East - Iran, in particular. Turkey is
pursuing the idea of Iran supplying gas to Europe and has offered to mediate in the
US-Iran standoff.
The geopolitics of energy makes strange bedfellows. Russia will be watching with
anxiety the Turkish-Iranian-US tango. An understanding with Iran on gas pricing,
production and market-sharing is vital for the success of Russia's overall gas export
strategy. But Tehran visualizes the Nabucco as its passport for integration with
Europe. Again, Russia's control of Turkmen gas cannot be to Tehran's liking. Tehran
had keenly pursed with Ashgabat the idea of evacuation of Turkmen gas to the world
market via Iranian territory.
Curiouser and curiouser. The thread that emerges from Bhadrakumar's analysis,
however, is the urgency for the US (and the Israelis) to act quickly to disrupt Russia's
ability to bring natural gas from Turkmenistan to the European market. Otherwise,
the US will be forced, to the great dismay of Israel, to broker a deal with Iran so as
obtain access to Iranian natural gas to break the Russian monopoly.
Hence, we now see a Georgian invasion of South Ossetia about a week after the
Russian announcement of its natural gas agreements with Turkmenistan. The invasion
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of South Ossetia may well be a strong signal that the US prefers confrontation with
the Russians over negotiating a new commercial relationship with the Iranians. In
other words, it suggests that the US still sees war as the ultimate solution of its
disagreements with them.
The invasion also suggests that the US is incapable of choosing an ally in the region,
and persists in the hope that it can economically and militarily dominate both the
Russians and the Iranians, and through them, just about every country in Central Asia.
Such arrogance is likely to be ruinous for all involved. A dirty adventure, indeed.
(Hat tip to Big Bopper for pointing out the Israeli connection.)
A Dirty Adventure (Part 3)
Saturday, August 09, 2008
A good column on the situation by Mark Ames, posted on The Nation website, if one
has the patience to sift through the obligatory The Nation requirement that about half
of it serve the purpose of implicitly promoting Obama by attacking McCain on the
subject:
Today, Georgian forces from that same Senaki base are part of the invasion force into
South Ossetia, an invasion that has left scores--perhaps hundreds--of dead locals, at
least ten dead Russian peacekeepers, and 140 million pissed-off Russians calling for
blood.
Lost in all of this is not only the question of why America would risk an apocalypse to
help a petty dictator like Saakashvili get control of a region that doesn't want any part
of him. But no one's bothering to ask what the Ossetians themselves think about it, or
why they're fighting for their independence in the first place. That's because the
Georgians--with help from lobbyists like Scheunemann--have been pushing the line
that South Ossetia is a fiction, a construct of evil Kremlin neo-Stalinists, rather than a
people with a genuine grievance.
A few years ago, I had an Ossetian working as the sales director for my now-defunct
newspaper, The eXile. After listening to me rave about how much I always (and still
do) like the Georgians, he finally lost it and told me another side to Georgian history,
explaining how the Georgians had always mistreated the Ossetians, and how the
South Ossetians wanted to reunite with North Ossetia in order to avoid being
swallowed up, and how this conflict goes way back, long before the Soviet Union
days. It was clear that the Ossetian-Georgian hatred was old and deep, like many
ethnic conflicts in this region. Indeed, a number of Caucasian ethnic groups still
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harbor deep resentment towards Georgia, accusing them of imperialism, chauvinism
and arrogance.
One example of this can be found in historian Bruce Lincoln's book, Red Victory, in
which he writes about the period of Georgia's brief independence from 1917 to 1921,
a time when Georgia was backed by Britain:
the Georgian leaders quickly moved to widen their borders at the expense of their
Armenian and Azerbaijani neighbors, and their territorial greed astounded foreign
observers. 'The free and independent socialist democratic state of Georgia will always
remain in my memory as a classic example of an imperialist small nation," one British
journalist wrote.... "Both in territory snatching outside and bureaucratic tyranny inside,
its chauvinism was beyond all bounds."
On Thursday, following intense Georgian shelling and katyusha rocketing into
Tskhinvali, refugees streamed out of South Ossetia telling reporters that the
Georgians had completely leveled entire villages and most of Tskhinvali, leaving "piles
of corpses" in the streets, over 1,000 by some counts. Among the dead are at least ten
Russian peacekeepers, who fell after their base was attacked by Georgian forces.
Reports also say that Georgian forces destroyed a hotel where Russian journalists
were staying.
In response, Russian jets bombed Georgian positions both inside South Ossetia and
into Georgia proper, attacking one base where American military instructors are
quartered (no Americans were reported hurt). By mid-afternoon Moscow time, as
local television showed burning homes and Ossetian women and children huddling in
bomb shelters, armored Russian columns were crossing into Georgian territory, and
Georgia's President called for a total mobilization of military-aged men for war with
Russia.
The invasion was backed up by a PR offensive so layered and sophisticated that I
even got an hysterical call today from a hedge fund manager in New York, screaming
about an "investor call" that Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze made this
morning with some fifty leading Western investment bank managers and analysts. I've
since seen a J.P. Morgan summary of the conference call, which pretty much reflects
the talking points later picked up by the US media.
These kinds of conference calls are generally conducted by the heads of companies in
order to give banking analysts guidance. But as the hedge fund manager told me
today, "The reason Lado did this is because he knew the enormous PR value that
Georgia would gain by going to the money people and analysts, particularly since
Georgia is clearly the aggressor this time." As a former investment banker who
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worked in London and who used to head the Bank of Georgia, Gurgenidze knew
what he was doing. "Lado is a former banker himself, so he knew that by framing the
conflict for the most influential bankers and analysts in New York, that these power
bankers would then write up reports and go on CNBC and argue Lado Gurgenidze's
talking points. It was brilliant, and now you're starting to see the American media shift
its coverage from calling it Georgia invading Ossetian territory, to the new spin, that
it's Russian imperial aggression against tiny little Georgia."
The really scary thing about this investor conference call is that it suggests real
planning. As the hedge fund manager told me, "These things aren't set up on an
hour's notice."
Are Wall Street fund managers and investors stupid enough to believe that a new Cold
War is a good idea? Evidently so. Because that's the objective of the Georgian
leadership and their American and Israeli supporters in the defense and intelligence
services. As for the rest of us, they could care less. Why should they? We haven't done
anything for a quite awhile to compel them to do so. We can, however, be certain that
we will hear very little of the fact that the Georgian military has been trained by the
US (so far, only in the context of allying fears that some US officers may have been
killed or wounded during a Russian air attack), and nothing about the sales of Israeli
weapons to Georgia.
One gets the troubling sense that the US, France and Britain, among others, are going
to adopt the same response that they did after the Israel conducted a campaign of air
strikes upon Lebanon around this same time in the summer of 2006: use the United
Nations to pressure the side subject to the attack to make concessions to the
aggressor. The Lebanese victims of Israeli airstrikes, over 1,300 people, plus the
prospect of subsequent deaths and injuries as a result of cluster bombs, meant
nothing to them in the face of more cynical, abstract, geopolitical concerns of the
imperialist kind, and the lives of South Ossetians will be equally irrelevant..
(***)
War in the Caucasus
Source: Wall Street Journal
August 9, 2008; Page A10
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121824156547126077.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
"War has started," Vladimir Putin said yesterday as Georgian and Russian forces
fought over the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia. War is certainly what
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the two countries have seemed to want for some time, and the chances of avoiding a
drawn-out conflict now are slim.
It's unclear at this stage which side is more at fault for the current fighting. Georgia
says it moved on the South Ossetian city of Tskhinvali yesterday after rebels there
broke a cease-fire. But President Mikheil Saakashvili has long pledged to retake South
Ossetia and another separatist area, Abkhazia, and may have underestimated
Moscow's reaction.
Within hours, Russian tanks crossed the border to bolster Russian "peacekeepers"
who have been stirring up trouble in the two regions. Georgia says Russian airplanes
bombed Tskhinvali, reversing some Georgian army gains there, as well as air fields in
nonseparatist areas. The Georgian air force claims to have shot down at least five
Russian planes.
The biggest question now is whether Moscow will simply try to restore the previous
status quo in South Ossetia -- with Russia and the rebels controlling most of the
territory -- or go further and crush Georgia while deposing Mr. Saakashvili. Russian
state TV yesterday reported that Georgian soldiers had killed at least 10 Russian
troops and were "finishing off" wounded Russians, a worrisome sign that the Kremlin
is trying to inflame public opinion ahead of a major operation. The markets clearly
think this is more than a blip; the benchmark Russian stock index shed 6.5% to hit its
lowest level since November 2006.
Speaking on CNN yesterday, Mr. Saakashvili compared Russia's actions to "the attack
into Afghanistan, in 1979. It's like Czechoslovakia when Soviet and Russian tanks
moved in. If they get away with this in Georgia, the world will be in trouble."
He's right about Russian ambitions in his region, but the West has already shown its
unwillingness to push back against Moscow in the Caucasus. When the U.S. proposed
NATO "membership action plans" for Georgia and Ukraine at an April summit in
Bucharest, Germany vetoed the move. Berlin didn't want to anger Moscow, a fact that
the Russians surely noticed as they contemplated when, or if, to move against the
government of Mr. Saakashvili, who they have long despised as a reformer outside of
the Kremlin's orbit.
Western leaders should have seen this coming. Russia has baited the hot-tempered
Georgian leader with trade and travel embargoes as well as saber-rattling. Georgia has
had to tolerate a few thousand Russian troops on its soil -- only Moscow recognizes
the self-declared independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And in April, Russia
downed a Georgian drone over Abkhaz -- that is, Georgian -- air space. Russia in
recent years has also granted citizenship to the separatists. That looks like
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premeditation now: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pledged yesterday to
"protect the lives and dignity of Russian citizens, no matter where they are located."
Perhaps Mr. Saakashvili finally snapped and acted first here, as the Kremlin insists. If
so, it was a huge mistake, as he has picked a fight with a much larger opponent and
damaged his country's chances of joining NATO. The West may support Georgia's
territorial integrity, but no one wants war with Russia.
Now it's up to NATO and especially the U.S. to persuade both sides to stand down.
President Bush discussed the hostilities with Mr. Putin yesterday in Beijing, where
they are attending the Olympics. The prime minister needs to hear that using Ossetia
as a pretext for imperialism will have consequences for Russia's relationship with the
West.
(***)
Putin wins (probably)
Posted by lenin
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Source: Lenin’s Tomb Blog
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/08/putin-wins-probably.html
It is obvious by now that Georgia is going to suffer a humiliating loss, even with
extensive Western backing. Not only is its weary army fighting Russian troops, but
they are also being battered by attacks from independence fighters in Abkhazia. The
Russian press have openly spoken of annexing Abkhazia. For example, Alexander
Bobkov in the Russkii Kurier summarised some of the common Russian press
perceptions about the region - dispelling worries that it is a "purely Muslim republic"
or that annexing it would stimulate a war with the EU and US, and pointing out the
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economic benefits of "210 kilometers of sub-tropical Black Sea coastline". Since the
region has already declared itself independent of Georgia, and has suffered
international isolation and blockade as a result, it may even welcome integration into
Russia so that it is part of a recognised world power with an accessible economy.
Russia is already devoting aid to the region in anticipation of future tax receipts.
Meanwhile, Putin's forces are systematically taking out economic and military targets
in Georgia, including the Black Sea port of Poti. Georgia claims Russia is preparing an
invasion - probably an exaggeration, but I wouldn't be surprised to see thousands of
Russian troops being stationed around the seceding regions. If the Bush
administration did endorse Saakashvili's actions, it blundered horribly, and Russia may
well end up with an expanded territory in a geo-economically prized region.
Even if Bush was somehow taken by surprise, which I think is unlikely, there is no
doubt that the US government and its supporters are now throwing their weight
decisively behind Georgia, and are about to get a bloody nose for their trouble. Russia
has sought a peace deal through the UN Security Council, but "council concluded it
was at a stalemate after the United States, Britain and some other members backed the
Georgians in rejecting a phrase in the three-sentence draft statement that would have
required both sides “to renounce the use of force,” council diplomats said." That's
fairly clear, isn't it? Georgia and its backers are being absolutely intransigent, refusing
to withdraw Georgian troops from South Ossetia, where - not that you would know it
from much of the reporting - they are actually carrying out serious atrocities. So when
the Observer and papers like it say the "world pleads for peace", they aren't being
strictly up-front with us. Georgia is claiming this morning to have withdrawn all
troops from South Ossetia. I doubt that is the case - why reject a bilateral ceasefire at
the UN, only to engage in a unilateral one the next day? But to the extent that this
reflects Georgia's weakness, it surely augurs their imminent defeat.
You have to wonder how far the US is prepared to take this - they aren't going to
commit troops and, no matter how much Saakashvili may wish it, NATO is not going
to overstretch itself even further. There are also rumours going around sites like
DEBKAFile and other sites that Israeli advisors are assisting the Georgian side of the
conflict. Yossi Melman of Ha'aretz has apparently supported this claim. It is no secret
that there are Israeli military advisors in Georgia, but Israel has a delicate relationship
with Russia that it doesn't want to upset. That is presumably why Israel froze defense
sales to Georgia on Tuesday. Israel is clearly far more beholden to the US than to
Russia, but I suspect the Bush administration would rather Israel stayed out of any
explicit involvement. So, unless I drastically underestimate the Georgian military, I
can't see any other outcome than a decisive Russian victory here.
Incidentally, just so that this point isn't lost in the deliberately confusing reportage.
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Yes, Russian jets are attacking Georgian targets and killing civilians. Yes, the reported
civilian casualties "on both sides" is reported to be over 2,000. What is quite often not
stated or just gently skated over in the reporting, so laden with images of Georgian
dead and wounded, is that the estimate of 2,000 civilian deaths comes from the
Russian government and it applies overwhelmingly to the Georgian attacks on South
Ossetia on Friday. In fact, this is the basis for Vladimir Putin's claims of a "genocide"
against South Osettians by the Georgians (is he deliberately referencing the ICTY
judgment about Srebrenica here?). The Georgian side, by contrast, claims 129 deaths
of both soldiers and civilians. So, if Russian figures are good enough to reference, why
is the source of the figures and their context obscured? Why is being made to look as
if Russian forces are behind most of those alleged deaths? Doesn't this just amount to
a whitewash of the actions of the Georgian army in South Ossetia? And why not
mention 30,000 refugees too?
(***)
“GEORGIA: AVOIDING WAR IN SOUTH OSSETIA”
ICG Report - 26 November 2004
In November 2004 the International Crisis Group, ICG, (an NGO likely dominated
by Western imperialist powers), prepared a report entitled:
“GEORGIA: AVOIDING WAR IN SOUTH OSSETIA” (ICG Europe Report
N°159, 26 November 2004).
The full text of the report can be found here:
<http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/UNTC/UNPAN01922
4.pdf
The Report concludes its Executive Summary with Recommendations to the
Government of Georgia and the de facto Government of South Ossetia, the
Government of Russia, the Joint Control Commission (JCC), the OSCE and its
Member States, the European Union, the United States Government, and to the
Wider International Community.
In its recommendations to the United States Government, the report states:
“22. Secure commitments when donating military equipment or ammunition to the Georgian
military that these will not be used for offensive actions in the South Ossetian or Abkhaz
disputes and extend USAID programs and funding to support confidence-building
measures between Ossetians and Georgians.”
____________
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