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That Old War Song Keeps Georgia on my Mind
By mickielynn on 2008-08-27 00:42:20
Since the Georgian invasion of the breakaway province of South Ossetia, on August 7, 2008, and Russia's disproportionate
response, we've received several questions about why peace advocates seem to be ignoring this situation.
Personally, my heart aches for all of the innocent civilians who have been killed, injured, terrified and displaced by this
small but violent war. The deaths of soldiers on both sides is a sad and unjustifiable loss. At root, this is a fight for control
over energy resources and also (by proxy) for economic and military dominance in the region.
In spite of the belligerent rhetoric of the Bush administration, President, Nicolas Sarkozy of France with the help of others in
the EU, managed to negotiate a cease fire and a six point settlement that may lead to the withdrawal of Russian troops. (At
the time of this blog entry a complete, agreed upon pull back to pre-war positions had not yet
happened). Negotiations succeeded in ending 10 days of bombing, looting and killing, within South Ossetia and Georgian
territory, and allowing an exchange of prisoners.
So now we're all waiting to see what plays out on the stage of the Republic of Georgia and in the separatist, Russian aligned
provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It's not possible to understand just what happened in Georgia and South Ossetia
without understanding the larger political and historical context.
Now I think that Vladimir Putin is a brutal man, with a "Cold War" mentality. His response to Georgian President Mikheil
Saakashvili's ill advised invasion of South Ossetia was way out of proportion. By pushing the Georgian army out of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia and invading deep into Georgian territory while unleashing paramilitary forces, Russia wreaked
uncalled for violence and destruction. [Prime Minister Putin is mentioned, rather than Russian President Dimitry Medvedev,
because most people believe that Russia is now basically led by its Prime Minister. ]
This is a good place to look at an earlier trip by Karl Rove (the in contempt of Congress colleague of Vice President Richard
Cheney). Rove met with Mikheil Saakashvili before the invasion took place. We don't have a transcript of the conversation,
but given past history, we could speculate that a promise of tangible US support may have played a part as a catalyst for
the reckless invasion that opened this military conflict
Here's some recent history of the situation between Russia, the United States and NATO after the breakup of the Soviet
Union. There are several ways that the US has treated Russia with arrogance and a lack of understanding about the
consequences of pushing and humiliating them. We've decided that there is only one "superpower" in the world right now so
we can do as we please and other nations had better like it ov else. But Russia is a proud nation and still has many nuclear
weapons (intended originally for MAD, mutually assured deterence).
By trying to deploy our so called "missile defense shield" ("son of star wars") in Russia's backyard... with radar installations
in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland... we are pushing against an already defensive, but not defenseless
nation. The threats that Russia recently made against Poland indicate the potential seriousness of such a
confrontation. Planned deployment of this system (which consistently failed to actually work in previous testing) is highly
reminiscent of the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis which brought us right to the terrifying brink of a nuclear war.
The current administration insists that this array of weapons is a defense against the possible threat of attack by "rogue
nations." But everyone knows that the components can quickly be turned into a first strike weapon that could be used to
threaten or even attack Russia. Pushing up against the nuclear armed borders of an already anxious former cold war
adversary is just insane!
It's not surprising that Russia is angry at former Soviet Union members for aiding and abetting this. The Bush
administration's dogged attempts to deploy this non-working system follows several other broken nuclear related promises
including revoking the anti-ballistic missile treaty, attempts to manufacture and test new varieties of nuclear weapons, and
nuclear cooperation with non-signatories of the non-proliferation treaty such as Israel, India and Pakistan.
A second very serious provocation by the United States and the European Union is the attempt to expand NATO right up to
(and past) the line that Russia feels offers it a buffer zone of security and territorial integrity. This line that we're stepping
over includes The Georgian Republic and the Ukraine. NATO is primarily a treaty involving mutual military assistance.
Expanding it so close to Russia increases suspicion and isolation which can lead to the kinds of overreactions that we've just
seen in Georgia.
There's too little space in this blog to explore it all. For a more in depth look at these issues you can listen to a recent radio
program There's also an excellent blog discussion under the link to the audio.
Ongoing economic provocations have raised the stakes in Georgia. One reason why Russia wants to maintain a very close
presence, or even alliances, in the separatist areas is a response to the US and the EU plan to replace the pipeline that brings
oil and natural gas to Europe from the resource rich regions of the Caspian sea. Currently, there is a pipeline that runs
through Russia. The EU wants to build their own pipeline that will run through Georgia instead. Russia's abundant energy
resources provide a lot of economic power in the world. In the face of a threat to Russian control over the export of its own
resources, Russia wants to establish a zone of allied territories from which it can discourage such a plan.
Chess is what we used to think of when we analyzed the interactions between Russia and the United States. Recent moves
by the United States more closely resemble a game of Go, where stones are used to surround and capture the territory of
your "opponent."
Unfortunately this is no game. We're already watching the suffering of the people who live in the territories where the
conflict is being acted out. There can be no peace in the region until serious negotiations involving the United States,
Russia, representatives of the European Union and each of the former Soviet states in the region take place to solve these
nuclear, territorial, and energy conflicts.
