While it’s undoubted that Russia overstepped its bounds in advancing into Georgia the extent it did (though it is useful to remember who thought they’d “occupy” the country and who was saying they’d just reach in and eventually withdraw again), there remains still too much lionizing of Georgia and its president. As Sean-Paul Kelley helpfully noted:
But there it is, on the record: the implication is that the US gave him a green light and he ‘gave the order.’ It doesn’t get much clearer than that. Georgia picked a fight it was unprepared to finish and is still acting pretty belligerent, to boot. Not a good combination. I’d not be surprised if the Russians decided the lesson hadn’t quite been learned. And next time it might be a lot uglier. Georgia should take Josh’s advice: they would be “ill-advised to act as if they are anything but beaten.” And I’d add, they need to learn how to get along with their giant next door neighbor.
That’s, umm, a different Josh. But the point is the same, and it largely confirms much of our early speculation that the U.S. probably bears some degree of culpability for this war, and that it might have even been an attempt by the administration to start a new proxy war.
But we won’t really know, probably ever. Still, the very salient fact that Georgia started a war it could not possibly finish is one any analyst of the situation should not forget. Unfortunately, many seem to.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor.
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Right before the latest flare up in South Ossetia between Georgia and Russia there were some military exercises in the same area!
In the second half of July 2008 the Russians ran a military exercise, code-named Caucasus 2008, near the Russian-Georgian border. The Russian exercise scenario included a counterattack in support of Russian “peacekeepers” after they had come under (unspecified) attack, with additional aims to protect Russian citizens and provide humanitarian assistance, and involved approximately 8,000 troops.
Interestingly enough, in response Georgian troops conducted an exercise of their own at the same time. Code-named Immediate Response 2008, it also included a thousand U.S. troops, along with smaller contingents from the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.
There has been a lot of back and forth in the press and on many blogs, etc. re who “started” the war. One argument by the “Russia started the war” side that I’ve seen has been “the Russians must have been planning this, how else could they have mobilized so quickly in response?”
Well, they had just war gamed the entire episode a week before!! This raises the question of how smart it was of President Saakashvili to send in Georgian troops at this juncture, and why/how he could have been surprised by the Russian response! An “immediate response,” as it were…
http://ph2dot1.blogspot.com/2008/08/immediate-response.html
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/08/the-truth-about-1.php
Meh, that’s wonderful propaganda. I’ll get to that soon.
I think one can have the reasonable discussion about whether arming and training Georgia was a great idea, and about whether the West shouldn’t have played this in terms of Realpolitik, simply respecting Russia’s sensitivities (or, if you will, sphere of influence).
However, being on the ground and pretty abreast of political developments, I cannot see how the US in any way wanted this war (as a proxy war, or anything). In fact, they did their best to try and stop Saakashvili (including, it appears, on the very night when the Georgians began moving). As has also transpired, Washington went into a sort of shock over that weekend, struggling to articulate a response. See also the ICG report on this. And, and, and…
So, there are good questions to consider, but the US encouraging Georgia to go into conflict isn’t a worthwhile debate.