Promoting "Democracy" in Georgia. - Dallas-Mavs.com Forums

Arne · 08-27-2008, 06:21 AM

Quote:

Disarm: The Lesson of the Georgia Fiasco

Daily Article by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. | Posted on 8/22/2008

George Bush, with the clock ticking down the last months of his presidency, nearly started yet another war that might have escalated in the manner of World War I: a diplomatic failure backed by arms that resulted in a superpower clash.

It is a wonder that the world has survived his "war on terror," which turned out to be a war on American liberty and anyone in the world who got on his nerves. His confrontation with Russia in defense of a belligerent little client state of the United States could have sealed his fate and ours too.

We need to examine Bush's actions and see how the United States nearly stumbled into a calamity. For in the last weeks, we have gained a picture of the future with this continued push for a secure American world empire with its endless webs of payments, relationships, jockeying for power and treasure, and a diplomatic corps honeycombed with belligerents and lobbyists for foreign governments. The peace, such as it is, can be shattered through small screw-ups that will end in massive death.

Make no mistake about it: the flare-up was caused entirely by US diplomatic failures. You wouldn't know this, however, if all you did was watch television news. Fox and CNN have portrayed Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili as a benevolent leader of a "young democracy" struggling in the shadow of the mighty bear Russia.

In fact, Saakashvili was elected on a "National Movement" ticket with a centralizing, revanchist platform of retaking the autonomous provinces in the Caucasus, and he has ruled this country the size of South Carolina with an iron fist under a state of emergency for years. He had every intention of ruling these non-Georgian peoples who do not want to be ruled by him, as even the CIA admits. As for his domestic program, it has consisted mostly of cracking down on tax evasion and beefing up state coffers.

After smashing the province Ajaria in 2004 following his rigged election, and then crushing Kodori Gorge in Abhkazia (which even has a separate language) in 2006, he moved on to South Ossetia (which also has its own language) this year, where Ossetians and Russians live and Russian peacekeepers patrol.

A young democracy? Ossetians never voted for Saakashvili. But he insisted on ruling them anyway, moving militarily and bombing the capital in the middle of peace talks on the opening day of the Olympics.

Tin-pot, fascist minidictators like this are a dollar a dozen, and such territorial disputes will always be with us. The critical question is, what gave Saakashvili the confidence that he could pull this off? He believed that the United States would back him as a quid pro quo for his having sent troops to Iraq. The United States responded to his cooperation in Iraq — sending Georgian citizens to kill and be killed — by sending him military training support and guns and bombs, and wining and dining him in Washington.

In all the confusion of the last days, there is no question, then, that Georgia was the aggressor in South Ossetia. Russia responded within its sphere of influence both against Georgia but mostly against an incredible show of arrogance by the Bush administration. According to the New York Times, which interviewed many officials who refused to be named, the Bush administration began backpedalling very quickly, claiming that they never gave permission to Georgia to crush any separatist movement.

But by that time, the politics began. In a very scary editorial and series of speeches, John McCain all but threatened nuclear war against Russia, failing to mention that his own foreign policy adviser was a paid lobbyist for Georgia. Had McCain had his way, the United States very well might have a hot war going on right now on the Russian border, fighting for the privilege of a dictator to crush the rights of South Ossetians to their own self-determination.

No doubt that had the conflict continued — and it still might — we would have been told that we were fighting for the rights of the poor Georgian people against Russian imperialism. The American media, even before looking at the facts, had already decided who wore the halo and who wore the horns in this struggle, giving loving interviews to liars of all stripes, so long as they took the US line.

None of which is to say that Russia wears the halo and Georgia the horns. In war, blood ends up on the hands of everyone involved, and there is no shortage of evidence to prove the case against any and all governments involved.

What we need to fix on here are the first principles. It's an upside-down world, not all that different from the one that existed at the start of World War I, another conflict that was said to be about fighting against aggression and for democracy and self-determination. As Francis Neilson said in his 1915 classic How Diplomats Make War, "No country thinks of putting these principles into practice, but somehow they seem to be worth fighting for."

If we are to follow Neilson further, we will see that in his lessons of the start of that war, he takes aim at a central pillar of diplomacy then and now, namely the claim that the proliferation of arms guarantees the peace. He quotes Richard Cobden: "the greatest evil connected with these rival armaments is that they destroy the strongest motives for peace."

So it has been in these diplomatic games played by our rulers. They believe they are controlling the world, when suddenly they are controlled by events. Then they rope the rest of us into it, following the usual plan of war: forcing the rest of us to adopt the government's view of who is wearing the halos and horns, regardless of the facts:

"Governments have made the war; only the peoples can make an unarmed peace."
During a war it is no easy task to prevent your sympathy clouding your reason. The whole social system seems to be organized against any individual attempt to concentrate the attention dominantly upon the causes of the war. Governments, churches, theatres, the press, and local authorities, direct their efforts, in the main, warwards; the whole thought of society and commerce seems to be occupied with war; and all desire to question the reasons given by statesmen for participating in the war must be suppressed. It has been ruled already by certain 'leaders of thought' that it is unwise, unpatriotic, and un-English, to suspect the motives of Governments, or waver for a moment in swearing wholehearted allegiance to the authorities: you must think only of the war. If you dare ask for the truth, you are helping the enemy; if you suggest an early peace, you are hindering the militarists who desire no peace until their enemy is utterly crushed. Insidious, bewildering, and plausible, are the reasons given by statesmen and journalists for inflicting a humiliating defeat; without it, they tell us we must not hope for disarmament. No patriot is supposed to ask if disarmament is at all probable. No one must ask if a single statesman really believes such a blessing will follow if the enemy be annihilated.

In just a few short days recently, we started this whole process beginning to play itself out, in an ominous sign for the future. But it is a future that can change. As Neilson wrote, "Citizens who desire peace can indulge in no greater folly than that which is summed up in the phrase, 'the best way to preserve peace is to prepare for war.' … Governments have made the war; only the peoples can make an unarmed peace."

Link: http://www.mises.org/story/3083

rabbitproof · 08-28-2008, 01:08 PM

Not sure this is the thread for it.. but democracy is apparently one reason why Russia think the Georgian conflict went down (and not the Georgia or South Ossetia democracy you think it would be):

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he suspected someone in the United States provoked the conflict in Georgia in an attempt to help a candidate in the U.S. presidential election.

"It is not just that the American side could not restrain the Georgian leadership from this criminal act. The American side in effect armed and trained the Georgian army," Putin said in an interview with CNN, part of which was broadcast on Russian state television.

"Why ... seek a difficult compromise solution in the peacekeeping process? It is easier to arm one of the sides and provoke it into killing another side. And the job is done.

"... The suspicion arises that someone in the United States especially created this conflict with the aim of making the situation more tense and creating a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of U.S. president."

---

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080828/...setia_putin_dc

The Presidential race did get closer afterwards....

Flacolaco · 08-28-2008, 01:20 PM

Yeah, McCain texted Georgian president Saakashvili, and he said "Like u shud totally attack South Ossetia!" and Saakashvili said "OMG U R totaly rite!"

rabbitproof · 08-28-2008, 01:23 PM

LOL!

McCain probably didn't do anything... but did GWB say "we got yer back...." and over-promise to the Georgians?

The White House did take a very soft stance early on in the conflict.

DirkFTW · 08-28-2008, 01:24 PM

The CNN article provides some other context. Poor Putin's out in his playground with his tanks, but nobody else wants to play in his bloody games.

Quote:

Also Thursday Putin announced economic measures which he said were unrelated to the fighting with Georgia. Nineteen U.S. poultry meat companies would be banned from exporting their products to Russia because they had failed health and safety tests, and 29 other companies had been warned to improve their standards or face the same ban, Putin said.

Putin said Russia's health and agricultural ministries had randomly tested the poultry products and found them to be full of antibiotics and arsenic.

While Putin repeated that the bans were not related to the Georgian conflict, they indicate the measures some Western countries -- particularly in Europe -- fear if Russia goes on a diplomatic offensive.

Russia is trying to counterbalance mounting pressure from the West over its military action in Georgia and its recognition of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

But Russia's hopes of winning international support for its actions in Georgia were dashed Thursday, when China and other Asian nations expressed concern about tension in the region.

The joint declaration from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, said the countries hoped any further conflict could be resolved peacefully. Video Watch more on rising tensions between Russia and the West. »

"The presidents reaffirmed their commitment to the principles of respect for historic and cultural traditions of every country and efforts aimed at preserving the unity of a state and its territorial integrity," the declaration said, The Associated Press reported.

"Placing the emphasis exclusively on the use of force has no prospects and hinders a comprehensive settlement of local conflicts," AP reported the group as saying.

CNN Link

rabbitproof · 08-28-2008, 01:27 PM

Makes sense.

China understands if they back South Ossetia ceding from Georgia, they'll look like hypocrites with Tibet/Taiwan...

92bDad · 08-28-2008, 01:35 PM

Amazing...articles quoting CNN and the NY Times.

How about finding some CREDIBLE news sources.

CNN and NY Times are such leftist propoganda machines that they no longer carry any weight. It's all about left media strategy to create and further build a negative perseption of President Bush and any Republican leadership.

It's also a poor way of knee jerk reaction without concerning themselves with the consequences of what they are reporting, let alone the facts or lack thereof used in these stories.

CNN and NY Times are Spin Kings using selective truth to create stories that will no doubt get an emotional reaction out of people in hopes of driving them to a Communistic Liberal candidate.

Underdog · 08-28-2008, 01:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 92bDad

Amazing...articles quoting CNN and the NY Times.

How about finding some CREDIBLE news sources.

CNN and NY Times are such leftist propoganda machines that they no longer carry any weight. It's all about left media strategy to create and further build a negative perseption of President Bush and any Republican leadership.

It's also a poor way of knee jerk reaction without concerning themselves with the consequences of what they are reporting, let alone the facts or lack thereof used in these stories.

CNN and NY Times are Spin Kings using selective truth to create stories that will no doubt get an emotional reaction out of people in hopes of driving them to a Communistic Liberal candidate.

When you don't have anything to say about the topic, attack the source...

I don't see what Russia's war has to do with our election - this skirmish will probably be over before November (is anyone even resisting anymore?)

92bDad · 08-28-2008, 01:49 PM

The Source is Georgia and neither you nor I are on the ground and know what is going on.

So we have to rely on "Media" - The two media outlets quoted, I simply do NOT trust, I never have and it will take a lot of work for these organizations to get me to trust them.

CNN and NY Times are well known as Liberal spin tanks. They rarely give the other side of a story, rather they do a great job of Story TELLING so that the reader or intended audience will form the opinion that they want them to. They use words in such a way as to promote their own ideas of how the world should be.

The do NOT use the same words for Left or Right political officials and thus I don't believe the things they say.

I've seen how they report on Iraq versus what I hear from soldiers on the ground in Iraq and from what I have observed they are two separate stories. The Soldiers clearly see and tell the story of success, while places like CNN and NY Times spin everything in Iraq in a negative way.

Now the story comes out about Georgia and the spin is that someone in the U.S. triggered this attack.

I'm sick and tired of the Media trying to blame everything on the U.S. If they don't like our country then MOVE AWAY!!!

Maybe I can start a new website called www.MOVEAWAY.org

It can give a clear plan for liberals to move out of American and into other liberal societies, leaving us conservatives to fend for ourselves, something that I am certain we would enjoy doing!!!

Underdog · 08-28-2008, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 92bDad

It can give a clear plan for liberals to move out of American and into other liberal societies, leaving us conservatives to fend for ourselves, something that I am certain we would enjoy doing!!!

Wow, this kind of talk sounds familiar...

dalmations202 · 08-28-2008, 02:37 PM

Who to believe? the writer of this propaganda piece?
the government propaganda machine?

The liberal democratic propaganda machine?
The conservative republican propaganda machine?

The communistic Russian propaganda machine?
The "want to control South Ossetia" Georgian propaganda machine?

The communistic China propaganda machine?
The European (we really want to rule the world again) propaganda machine?

Too many sides to ever get to the TRUTH, IMO. And unfortunately all of them will LIE to you to your face -- if they think they can profit from it.

MavsWiLLHaVeRinGs · 08-28-2008, 02:59 PM

I hear they fight dogs over there....

Arne · 08-28-2008, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dalmations202

Who to believe? the writer of this propaganda piece?
the government propaganda machine?

The liberal democratic propaganda machine?
The conservative republican propaganda machine?

The communistic Russian propaganda machine?
The "want to control South Ossetia" Georgian propaganda machine?

The communistic China propaganda machine?
The European (we really want to rule the world again) propaganda machine?

Too many sides to ever get to the TRUTH, IMO. And unfortunately all of them will LIE to you to your face -- if they think they can profit from it.

Well, ask anyone in this administration if Georgia tried to take over South Ossetia or not. No one will lie to you. They will just make it look as if that was a good thing or whatever. But still, the information is out there all one has to do is to unwrap it out of the propaganda.

DirkFTW · 08-28-2008, 04:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MavsWiLLHaVeRinGs

I hear they fight dogs over there....

...and lots of Falcons fans?

Arne · 08-28-2008, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 92bDad

The Source is Georgia and neither you nor I are on the ground and know what is going on.

So we have to rely on "Media" - The two media outlets quoted, I simply do NOT trust, I never have and it will take a lot of work for these organizations to get me to trust them.

CNN and NY Times are well known as Liberal spin tanks. They rarely give the other side of a story, rather they do a great job of Story TELLING so that the reader or intended audience will form the opinion that they want them to. They use words in such a way as to promote their own ideas of how the world should be.

The do NOT use the same words for Left or Right political officials and thus I don't believe the things they say.

I've seen how they report on Iraq versus what I hear from soldiers on the ground in Iraq and from what I have observed they are two separate stories. The Soldiers clearly see and tell the story of success, while places like CNN and NY Times spin everything in Iraq in a negative way.

Now the story comes out about Georgia and the spin is that someone in the U.S. triggered this attack.

I'm sick and tired of the Media trying to blame everything on the U.S. If they don't like our country then MOVE AWAY!!!

Maybe I can start a new website called www.MOVEAWAY.org

It can give a clear plan for liberals to move out of American and into other liberal societies, leaving us conservatives to fend for ourselves, something that I am certain we would enjoy doing!!!

More empty words.

DirkFTW · 08-28-2008, 04:27 PM

Quote:

How the Georgian Conflict Really Started
By MELIK KAYLAN
August 28, 2008; Page A15

Tbilisi

'Anybody who thinks that Moscow didn't plan this invasion, that we in Georgia caused it gratuitously, is severely mistaken," President Mikheil Saakashvili told me during a late night chat in Georgia's presidential palace this weekend.

"Our decision to engage was made in the last second as the Russian tanks were rolling -- we had no choice," Mr. Saakashvili explained. "We took the initiative just to buy some time. We knew we were not going to win against the Russian army, but we had to do something to defend ourselves."

I had just returned from Gori, which was still under the shadow of Russian occupation. I'd learned there on the ground how Russia has deployed a highly deliberate propaganda strategy in this war. Some Georgian friends sneaked me into town unnoticed past the Russian armored checkpoints via a little used tractor path. We noted that, during the day, the tanks on Gori's streets withdrew from the streets to the hills. Apparently, the Russians thought this gave the impression, to any foreign eyewitnesses they chose to let through, of a town not so much occupied as stabilized and made peaceful.

However, if you stayed overnight after observers left, as I did with various locals, you could hear and glimpse the tanks in the dark growling back into town and roaming around. A serious curfew kicked in at sundown, and the streets turned instantly lethal, not least because the tanks allowed in marauding irregulars -- Cossacks, South Ossetians, Chechens and the like -- to do the looting in a town that the Russians had effectively emptied. Now that the Russians have made a big show of moving out in force -- but only to a point some miles to the other side of Gori toward South Ossetia -- they've left behind a resonating threat in the population's memory, a feeling they could return at any moment.

The damage in Gori's civilian areas, like the Stalin-era neighborhood of Combinaty, give the lie to claims made by Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in these pages that Russian forces "acted efficiently and professionally" to achieve "clear and legitimate objectives." Either that, or they fully intended -- as a "legitimate" objective -- to flatten civilian streets in order to sow fear, drive out innocents and create massive refugee outflows.

Gori's refugees are now flooding back. Many have returned also to Poti, a port city near Abkhazia, and far more strategic than Gori because it serves as a trading lifeline for Georgia and potentially offers future access to NATO ships. The Russians are digging in around the town and in the port area itself, and refusing to budge as the world looks on.

"I got a call from the minister of defense that Russian tanks, some 200, were massing to enter Tskhinvali from North Ossetia," Mr. Saakashvili told me. "I ignored it at first, but reports kept coming in that they had begun to move forward. In fact, they had mobilized reserves several days ahead of time."

This was precisely the kind of information that the Russians have suppressed and the world press continues to ignore, despite decades of familiarity with Kremlin disinformation methods. "We subsequently found out from pilots we shot down," said Mr. Saakashvili, "that they'd been called up three days before from places like Moscow. We had intelligence coming in ahead of time but we just couldn't believe it. Also, in recent weeks, the separatists had intensified artillery barrages and were shooting our soldiers. I'd kept telling our guys to stay calm. Actually we had most of our troops down near Abkhazia where we expected the real trouble to start. I can tell you that if we'd intended to attack, we'd have withdrawn our best-trained forces from Iraq up front."

According to the Georgian president, the Russians had been planning an invasion of his country for weeks -- even months -- ahead of time: "Some months ago, I was warned by Western leaders in Dubrovnik to expect an attack this summer," he explained. "Mr. Putin had already threatened me in February, saying we would become a protectorate of Russia. When I met Mr. Medvedev in June, he was very friendly. I saw him again in July and he was a changed man, spooked, evasive. He tried to avoid me. He knew something by then. I ask everyone to consider, what does it mean when hundreds of tanks can mobilize and occupy a country within two days? Just the fuelling takes that long. They were on their way. Would we provoke a war while all our Western friends are away on vacation? Be sensible."

I put it to Mr. Saakashvili that there was also the question of why now? Why did the Russians not act before or later? It was a matter, he said, of several factors coming together: the useful distractions of the Beijing Olympics and the U.S. elections, the fact that it took Mr. Putin this long to consolidate power, the danger that tanks would bog down in the winter.

But two factors above all sealed Georgia's fate this summer, it seems. In April, NATO postponed the decision to admit Georgia into the organization until its next summit in October. Mr. Saakashvili believes Moscow felt it had one last chance to pre-empt Georgia's joining NATO.

Finally, he says, the invasion had to be done before the situation in Iraq got any better and freed up U.S. forces to act elsewhere -- a matter not simply of U.S. weakness but of increasing U.S. strength. "If America thinks it is too weak to do anything about Georgia," said Mr. Saakashvili, "you should understand how the Russians see it, how much Moscow respects a strong United States -- or at least a U.S. that believes in its own strength."

Mr. Kaylan is a New York-based writer who has reported often from Georgia.

Wall Street Journal Link

While obviously from an interested party, the President of Georgia makes some good points:
1. Their best were in Iraq. Kind of a crappy plan to launch a military offensive with such a large chunk of your military missing.
2. The Russians were fast in responding with quite a lot of stuff.

92bDad · 08-28-2008, 04:40 PM

Now we are getting somewhere.

Let's see what we do know...The Russians attacked.

Now we have a report that their was some level of intelligence that points to this be a pre-planned attack, coming out of Russia.

This is from someone who is actually LOCATED in Georgia.

So this is a conflict between Russia and Georgia.

Why does this become a political issue in the USA.

Oh wait, it appears that Russia decided to attack, before there was MORE positive progress in Iraq and that America would have the confidence to support Georgia and avoid any type of battle all together.

Coming from a reporter on the ground, and through the Wall Street Journal...this appears to be credible reporting.

alexamenos · 08-28-2008, 04:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arne

....But still, the information is out there all one has to do is to unwrap it out of the propaganda.

I think this is true as well -- The NY Times, for instance, will give you the facts "2 & 2". What the NY Times can't seem to do is take 2 & 2 and get to 4. Many of the pieces are there, you just have to read past the jingoism and deeply rooted "Liberal" (ie, Republicrat) biases.

As for Georgia....this looks to me like a squabble between two countries over a piece of dirt about the size of Oklahoma. I actually read a really interesting article on the region last week -- there are little 50 or so languages spoken in and immediatley around the Caucasus area, and the cultural differences between the groups are vast. Many S. Ossetians hate Georgians so much that they will go to great lengths to pretend not to speak Georgian (whatever it's called) even when they do.

cheers

dalmations202 · 08-28-2008, 04:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arne

Well, ask anyone in this administration if Georgia tried to take over South Ossetia or not. No one will lie to you. They will just make it look as if that was a good thing or whatever. But still, the information is out there all one has to do is to unwrap it out of the propaganda.

The information is there, but it depends on which side you are looking at it from as to whether it was right.

Was Georgia wrong? probably
Was the US behind it? unknown, but possible Were they backing the Georgians? unknown, but possible

Was the Russians response wrong? probably
Was the first post piece that was written -- written to "put down" the Bush administration? YES

Was that piece 100% true? that depends on where you set, and how you see it.

Do most all stories have a slant, and have an agenda? YES

It just all depends on where you are sitting at, and how you view things.

Arne · 08-28-2008, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dalmations202

The information is there, but it depends on which side you are looking at it from as to whether it was right.

Was Georgia wrong? probably
Was the US behind it? unknown, but possible Were they backing the Georgians? unknown, but possible

Was the Russians response wrong? probably
Was the piece that was written -- written to "put down" the Bush administration? YES

Was the piece 100% true? that depends on where you set, and how you see it.

Do most all stories have a slant, and have an agenda? YES

It just all depends on where you are sitting at, and how you view things.

Now if you have as a fact that Georgia tried to go into a territory that didn't wat to be ruled by them, then you're a step closer to the truth than 95% of all the media I've read in the last few days. Then you can look at Russia's reaction from another point of view then to just assume that they did it without reason, just like the media assumes.

All of these things are pretty clear to me. Now, if you want to bring in the US government into the equation, you'll probably need to do some more research. Still, you're closer to the truth than anybody who accepted the administrations story.

Just having the facts right will always lead to better decisions, in my opinion. Just compare all of the media headlines to what acutally happened and you'll see that most of the media doesn't have to lie in order to paint a completely inaccurate picture. They just have to state some of the things that happened and don't state some of the other things that happened.

DirkFTW · 08-28-2008, 05:21 PM

August 8 article from 2007. In Civ, I believe this process is called a culture flip.

Quote:

Georgia Offers Evidence That Russia Fired Missile

MOSCOW, Aug. 8 — The Republic of Georgia presented what it called a mounting body of evidence today that a Russian warplane had entered deep into its airspace and fired an air-to-ground missile. It said it was seeking a special session of the United Nations Security Council to address the incident.

...

In March, a guided missile and a barrage of unguided rockets struck remote villages late at night in the Kodori Gorge, the only area of the Russian-backed separatist region of Abkhazia that is under Georgian control. More than 50 witnesses reported the sound of helicopters during the attack, which Georgia said flew in from a Russian base.

Russia denied involvement in that attack as well, though United Nations investigators issued a report this summer that strongly suggested a Russian role.

That report fell short of directly accusing Russia, in part because Russia did not cooperate fully with investigators and no radar record was available.

The latest missile, however, was fired by an aircraft that flew near a main highway outside Tbilisi, an area with radar coverage.

Georgia said it had collected radar records from both its civilian and military air controllers that clearly show an aircraft enter from Russia, fly to the area of the strike, then turn around and fly back into Russia.

...

NYTimes Link

DirkFTW · 08-28-2008, 05:21 PM

.

dalmations202 · 08-29-2008, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arne

Now if you have as a fact that Georgia tried to go into a territory that didn't wat to be ruled by them, then you're a step closer to the truth than 95% of all the media I've read in the last few days. Then you can look at Russia's reaction from another point of view then to just assume that they did it without reason, just like the media assumes.

All of these things are pretty clear to me. Now, if you want to bring in the US government into the equation, you'll probably need to do some more research. Still, you're closer to the truth than anybody who accepted the administrations story.

Just having the facts right will always lead to better decisions, in my opinion. Just compare all of the media headlines to what acutally happened and you'll see that most of the media doesn't have to lie in order to paint a completely inaccurate picture. They just have to state some of the things that happened and don't state some of the other things that happened.

The problem starts with your first sentence. "Georgia tried to go into a territory that didn't want to be ruled by them."

Who said that? The papers? the current governing people of that area? the farmers? the laborers? the WHO?

I know people that live in the US, will not leave, but don't want to be ruled by the US Government. I know people that are thankful for the US Government. I know many others that at least seem to want to be ruled by the US Government since they are crossing the boarder at an alarming rate.
Ask of each group, and you will get a differing answer -- then you can report that the the people there don't want to be ruled by "XXXXXXXX".

I don't think you can find the truth, unless you actually pick a side to believe what is written, or you know someone in the region who actually knows first hand. Even then you get the spin of what that person(s) put out, and their views.

alexamenos · 08-29-2008, 09:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dalmations202

The problem starts with your first sentence. "Georgia tried to go into a territory that didn't want to be ruled by them."

Who said that? The papers? the current governing people of that area? the farmers? the laborers? the WHO?

From everything I read, S. Ossetians didn't want to be ruled by Georgians. They're culturally (linguistically) very different from Georgians, and by and large they seem not to like each other very much.

Perhaps there were some ethnic Georgians in the region that wanted the Georgian goverment, and perhaps there were others that wanted Georgia just as there might be some morons in the US who think we'd all be better off if the UN had greater say in our borders, but still I think it's fair and accurate to say that "Georgia tried to go into a territory that didn't want to be ruled by them."

dalmations202 · 08-29-2008, 10:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexamenos

From everything I read, S. Ossetians didn't want to be ruled by Georgians. They're culturally (linguistically) very different from Georgians, and by and large they seem not to like each other very much.

Perhaps there were some ethnic Georgians in the region that wanted the Georgian goverment, and perhaps there were others that wanted Georgia just as there might be some morons in the US who think we'd all be better off if the UN had greater say in our borders, but still I think it's fair and accurate to say that "Georgia tried to go into a territory that didn't want to be ruled by them."

I am going to say you are probably correct here. The problem is with perspective, and who's perspective.

Let's face it --- in general terms NO one wants to be ruled. Women don't -- see Roe vs Wade. Children don't -- set in at any high school for a week for proof. Men don't either.

That doesn't mean that "whomever is governing them" is actually wrong here. (Pick which either side you like.)

jefelump · 08-29-2008, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexamenos

From everything I read, S. Ossetians didn't want to be ruled by Georgians. They're culturally (linguistically) very different from Georgians, and by and large they seem not to like each other very much.

Perhaps there were some ethnic Georgians in the region that wanted the Georgian goverment, and perhaps there were others that wanted Georgia just as there might be some morons in the US who think we'd all be better off if the UN had greater say in our borders, but still I think it's fair and accurate to say that "Georgia tried to go into a territory that didn't want to be ruled by them."

I agree with dalmations that you are most likely right here. However, wasn't S. Ossetia already located within the legally recognized borders of Georgia? If that's the case, they were already ruled by the Georgian government, just as the "lawless" regions of Pakistan are still in Pakistan.

I see this as being similar to the US Civil War. The South tried to leave and govern themselves, and the North stopped them.

dalmations202 · 08-29-2008, 11:15 AM

Another very interesting article from another perspective altogether. One that is quite possibly closer to Truth as well.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Georgia and Kosovo: A Single Intertwined Crisis

By George Friedman

The Russo-Georgian war was rooted in broad geopolitical processes. In large part it was simply the result of the cyclical reassertion of Russian power. The Russian empire — czarist and Soviet — expanded to its borders in the 17th and 19th centuries. It collapsed in 1992. The Western powers wanted to make the disintegration permanent. It was inevitable that Russia would, in due course, want to reassert its claims. That it happened in Georgia was simply the result of circumstance.

There is, however, another context within which to view this, the context of Russian perceptions of U.S. and European intentions and of U.S. and European perceptions of Russian capabilities. This context shaped the policies that led to the Russo-Georgian war. And those attitudes can only be understood if we trace the question of Kosovo, because the Russo-Georgian war was forged over the last decade over the Kosovo question.

Yugoslavia broke up into its component republics in the early 1990s. The borders of the republics did not cohere to the distribution of nationalities. Many — Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and so on — found themselves citizens of republics where the majorities were not of their ethnicities and disliked the minorities intensely for historical reasons. Wars were fought between Croatia and Serbia (still calling itself Yugoslavia because Montenegro was part of it), Bosnia and Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia. Other countries in the region became involved as well.

One conflict became particularly brutal. Bosnia had a large area dominated by Serbs. This region wanted to secede from Bosnia and rejoin Serbia. The Bosnians objected and an internal war in Bosnia took place, with the Serbian government involved. This war involved the single greatest bloodletting of the bloody Balkan wars, the mass murder by Serbs of Bosnians.

Here we must pause and define some terms that are very casually thrown around. Genocide is the crime of trying to annihilate an entire people. War crimes are actions that violate the rules of war. If a soldier shoots a prisoner, he has committed a war crime. Then there is a class called "crimes against humanity." It is intended to denote those crimes that are too vast to be included in normal charges of murder or rape. They may not involve genocide, in that the annihilation of a race or nation is not at stake, but they may also go well beyond war crimes, which are much lesser offenses. The events in Bosnia were reasonably deemed crimes against humanity. They did not constitute genocide and they were more than war crimes.

At the time, the Americans and Europeans did nothing about these crimes, which became an internal political issue as the magnitude of the Serbian crimes became clear. In this context, the Clinton administration helped negotiate the Dayton Accords, which were intended to end the Balkan wars and indeed managed to go quite far in achieving this. The Dayton Accords were built around the principle that there could be no adjustment in the borders of the former Yugoslav republics. Ethnic Serbs would live under Bosnian rule. The principle that existing borders were sacrosanct was embedded in the Dayton Accords.

In the late 1990s, a crisis began to develop in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Over the years, Albanians had moved into the province in a broad migration. By 1997, the province was overwhelmingly Albanian, although it had not only been historically part of Serbia but also its historical foundation. Nevertheless, the Albanians showed significant intentions of moving toward either a separate state or unification with Albania. Serbia moved to resist this, increasing its military forces and indicating an intention to crush the Albanian resistance.

There were many claims that the Serbians were repeating the crimes against humanity that were committed in Bosnia. The Americans and Europeans, burned by Bosnia, were eager to demonstrate their will. Arguing that something between crimes against humanity and genocide was under way — and citing reports that between 10,000 and 100,000 Kosovo Albanians were missing or had been killed — NATO launched a campaign designed to stop the killings. In fact, while some killings had taken place, the claims by NATO of the number already killed were false. NATO might have prevented mass murder in Kosovo. That is not provable. They did not, however, find that mass murder on the order of the numbers claimed had taken place. The war could be defended as a preventive measure, but the atmosphere under which the war was carried out overstated what had happened.

The campaign was carried out without U.N. sanction because of Russian and Chinese opposition. The Russians were particularly opposed, arguing that major crimes were not being committed and that Serbia was an ally of Russia and that the air assault was not warranted by the evidence. The United States and other European powers disregarded the Russian position. Far more important, they established the precedent that U.N. sanction was not needed to launch a war (a precedent used by George W. Bush in Iraq). Rather — and this is the vital point — they argued that NATO support legitimized the war.

This transformed NATO from a military alliance into a quasi-United Nations. What happened in Kosovo was that NATO took on the role of peacemaker, empowered to determine if intervention was necessary, allowed to make the military intervention, and empowered to determine the outcome. Conceptually, NATO was transformed from a military force into a regional multinational grouping with responsibility for maintenance of regional order, even within the borders of states that are not members. If the United Nations wouldn't support the action, the NATO Council was sufficient.

Since Russia was not a member of NATO, and since Russia denied the urgency of war, and since Russia was overruled, the bombing campaign against Kosovo created a crisis in relations with Russia. The Russians saw the attack as a unilateral attack by an anti-Russian alliance on a Russian ally, without sound justification. Then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin was not prepared to make this into a major confrontation, nor was he in a position to. The Russians did not so much acquiesce as concede they had no options.

The war did not go as well as history records. The bombing campaign did not force capitulation and NATO was not prepared to invade Kosovo. The air campaign continued inconclusively as the West turned to the Russians to negotiate an end. The Russians sent an envoy who negotiated an agreement consisting of three parts. First, the West would halt the bombing campaign. Second, Serbian army forces would withdraw and be replaced by a multinational force including Russian troops. Third, implicit in the agreement, the Russian troops would be there to guarantee Serbian interests and sovereignty.

As soon as the agreement was signed, the Russians rushed troops to the Pristina airport to take up their duties in the multinational force — as they had in the Bosnian peacekeeping force. In part because of deliberate maneuvers and in part because no one took the Russians seriously, the Russians never played the role they believed had been negotiated. They were never seen as part of the peacekeeping operation or as part of the decision-making system over Kosovo. The Russians felt doubly betrayed, first by the war itself, then by the peace arrangements.

The Kosovo war directly effected the fall of Yeltsin and the rise of Vladimir Putin. The faction around Putin saw Yeltsin as an incompetent bungler who allowed Russia to be doubly betrayed. The Russian perception of the war directly led to the massive reversal in Russian policy we see today. The installation of Putin and Russian nationalists from the former KGB had a number of roots. But fundamentally it was rooted in the events in Kosovo. Most of all it was driven by the perception that NATO had now shifted from being a military alliance to seeing itself as a substitute for the United Nations, arbitrating regional politics. Russia had no vote or say in NATO decisions, so NATO's new role was seen as a direct challenge to Russian interests.

Thus, the ongoing expansion of NATO into the former Soviet Union and the promise to include Ukraine and Georgia into NATO were seen in terms of the Kosovo war. From the Russian point of view, NATO expansion meant a further exclusion of Russia from decision-making, and implied that NATO reserved the right to repeat Kosovo if it felt that human rights or political issues required it. The United Nations was no longer the prime multinational peacekeeping entity. NATO assumed that role in the region and now it was going to expand all around Russia.

Then came Kosovo's independence. Yugoslavia broke apart into its constituent entities, but the borders of its nations didn't change. Then, for the first time since World War II, the decision was made to change Serbia's borders, in opposition to Serbian and Russian wishes, with the authorizing body, in effect, being NATO. It was a decision avidly supported by the Americans.

The initial attempt to resolve Kosovo's status was the round of negotiations led by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari that officially began in February 2006 but had been in the works since 2005. This round of negotiations was actually started under U.S. urging and closely supervised from Washington. In charge of keeping Ahtisaari's negotiations running smoothly was Frank G. Wisner, a diplomat during the Clinton administration. Also very important to the U.S. effort was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried, another leftover from the Clinton administration and a specialist in Soviet and Polish affairs.

In the summer of 2007, when it was obvious that the negotiations were going nowhere, the Bush administration decided the talks were over and that it was time for independence. On June 10, 2007, Bush said that the end result of negotiations must be "certain independence." In July 2007, Daniel Fried said that independence was "inevitable" even if the talks failed. Finally, in September 2007, Condoleezza Rice put it succinctly: "There's going to be an independent Kosovo. We're dedicated to that." Europeans took cues from this line.

How and when independence was brought about was really a European problem. The Americans set the debate and the Europeans implemented it. Among Europeans, the most enthusiastic about Kosovo independence were the British and the French. The British followed the American line while the French were led by their foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who had also served as the U.N. Kosovo administrator. The Germans were more cautiously supportive.

On Feb. 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence and was recognized rapidly by a small number of European states and countries allied with the United States. Even before the declaration, the Europeans had created an administrative body to administer Kosovo. The Europeans, through the European Union, micromanaged the date of the declaration.

On May 15, during a conference in Ekaterinburg, the foreign ministers of India, Russia and China made a joint statement regarding Kosovo. It was read by the Russian host minister, Sergei Lavrov, and it said: "In our statement, we recorded our fundamental position that the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo contradicts Resolution 1244. Russia, India and China encourage Belgrade and Pristina to resume talks within the framework of international law and hope they reach an agreement on all problems of that Serbian territory."

The Europeans and Americans rejected this request as they had rejected all Russian arguments on Kosovo. The argument here was that the Kosovo situation was one of a kind because of atrocities that had been committed. The Russians argued that the level of atrocity was unclear and that, in any case, the government that committed them was long gone from Belgrade. More to the point, the Russians let it be clearly known that they would not accept the idea that Kosovo independence was a one-of-a-kind situation and that they would regard it, instead, as a new precedent for all to follow.

The problem was not that the Europeans and the Americans didn't hear the Russians. The problem was that they simply didn't believe them — they didn't take the Russians seriously. They had heard the Russians say things for many years. They did not understand three things. First, that the Russians had reached the end of their rope. Second, that Russian military capability was not what it had been in 1999. Third, and most important, NATO, the Americans and the Europeans did not recognize that they were making political decisions that they could not support militarily.

For the Russians, the transformation of NATO from a military alliance into a regional United Nations was the problem. The West argued that NATO was no longer just a military alliance but a political arbitrator for the region. If NATO does not like Serbian policies in Kosovo, it can — at its option and in opposition to U.N. rulings — intervene. It could intervene in Serbia and it intended to expand deep into the former Soviet Union. NATO thought that because it was now a political arbiter encouraging regimes to reform and not just a war-fighting system, Russian fears would actually be assuaged. To the contrary, it was Russia's worst nightmare. Compensating for all this was the fact that NATO had neglected its own military power. Now, Russia could do something about it.

At the beginning of this discourse, we explained that the underlying issues behind the Russo-Georgian war went deep into geopolitics and that it could not be understood without understanding Kosovo. It wasn't everything, but it was the single most significant event behind all of this. The war of 1999 was the framework that created the war of 2008.

The problem for NATO was that it was expanding its political reach and claims while contracting its military muscle. The Russians were expanding their military capability (after 1999 they had no place to go but up) and the West didn't notice. In 1999, the Americans and Europeans made political decisions backed by military force. In 2008, in Kosovo, they made political decisions without sufficient military force to stop a Russian response. Either they underestimated their adversary or — even more amazingly — they did not see the Russians as adversaries despite absolutely clear statements the Russians had made. No matter what warning the Russians gave, or what the history of the situation was, the West couldn't take the Russians seriously.

It began in 1999 with war in Kosovo and it ended in 2008 with the independence of Kosovo. When we study the history of the coming period, the war in Kosovo will stand out as a turning point. Whatever the humanitarian justification and the apparent ease of victory, it set the stage for the rise of Putin and the current and future crises.

dalmations202 · 08-29-2008, 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefelump

I agree with dalmations that you are most likely right here. However, wasn't S. Ossetia already located within the legally recognized borders of Georgia? If that's the case, they were already ruled by the Georgian government, just as the "lawless" regions of Pakistan are still in Pakistan.

I see this as being similar to the US Civil War. The South tried to leave and govern themselves, and the North stopped them.

Ah yes, but Kosovo......................

DirkFTW · 08-29-2008, 12:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dalmations202

Ah yes, but Kosovo......................

There's the rub. The situation seems quite parallel. It is truly sad though because something HAD to be done in Kosovo... if you read about what the Serbians did to those people, military action needed to be taken earlier.

One difference is that technically NATO went into Kosovo, not just the United States.

dalmations202 · 08-29-2008, 01:46 PM

More Perspective-------------

The Real World Order
August 18, 2008 | 1835 GMT

By George Friedman

On Sept. 11, 1990, U.S. President George H. W. Bush addressed Congress. He spoke in the wake of the end of Communism in Eastern Europe, the weakening of the Soviet Union, and the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. He argued that a New World Order was emerging: “A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor, and today that new world is struggling to be born. A world quite different from the one we’ve known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.”

After every major, systemic war, there is the hope that this will be the war to end all wars. The idea driving it is simple. Wars are usually won by grand coalitions. The idea is that the coalition that won the war by working together will continue to work together to make the peace. Indeed, the idea is that the defeated will join the coalition and work with them to ensure the peace. This was the dream behind the Congress of Vienna, the League of Nations, the United Nations and, after the Cold War, NATO. The idea was that there would be no major issues that couldn’t be handled by the victors, now joined with the defeated. That was the idea that drove George H. W. Bush as the Cold War was coming to its end.

Those with the dream are always disappointed. The victorious coalition breaks apart. The defeated refuse to play the role assigned to them. New powers emerge that were not part of the coalition. Anyone may have ideals and visions. The reality of the world order is that there are profound divergences of interest in a world where distrust is a natural and reasonable response to reality. In the end, ideals and visions vanish in a new round of geopolitical conflict.

The post-Cold War world, the New World Order, ended with authority on Aug. 8, 2008, when Russia and Georgia went to war. Certainly, this war was not in itself of major significance, and a very good case can be made that the New World Order actually started coming apart on Sept. 11, 2001. But it was on Aug. 8 that a nation-state, Russia, attacked another nation-state, Georgia, out of fear of the intentions of a third nation-state, the United States. This causes us to begin thinking about the Real World Order.

The global system is suffering from two imbalances. First, one nation-state, the United States, remains overwhelmingly powerful, and no combination of powers are in a position to control its behavior. We are aware of all the economic problems besetting the United States, but the reality is that the American economy is larger than the next three economies combined (Japan, Germany and China). The U.S. military controls all the world’s oceans and effectively dominates space. Because of these factors, the United States remains politically powerful — not liked and perhaps not admired, but enormously powerful.

The second imbalance is within the United States itself. Its ground forces and the bulk of its logistical capability are committed to the Middle East, particularly Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States also is threatening on occasion to go to war with Iran, which would tie down most of its air power, and it is facing a destabilizing Pakistan. Therefore, there is this paradox: The United States is so powerful that, in the long run, it has created an imbalance in the global system. In the short run, however, it is so off balance that it has few, if any, military resources to deal with challenges elsewhere. That means that the United States remains the dominant power in the long run but it cannot exercise that power in the short run. This creates a window of opportunity for other countries to act.

The outcome of the Iraq war can be seen emerging. The United States has succeeded in creating the foundations for a political settlement among the main Iraqi factions that will create a relatively stable government. In that sense, U.S. policy has succeeded. But the problem the United States has is the length of time it took to achieve this success. Had it occurred in 2003, the United States would not suffer its current imbalance. But this is 2008, more than five years after the invasion. The United States never expected a war of this duration, nor did it plan for it. In order to fight the war, it had to inject a major portion of its ground fighting capability into it. The length of the war was the problem. U.S. ground forces are either in Iraq, recovering from a tour or preparing for a deployment. What strategic reserves are available are tasked into Afghanistan. Little is left over.

As Iraq pulled in the bulk of available forces, the United States did not shift its foreign policy elsewhere. For example, it remained committed to the expansion of democracy in the former Soviet Union and the expansion of NATO, to include Ukraine and Georgia. From the fall of the former Soviet Union, the United States saw itself as having a dominant role in reshaping post-Soviet social and political orders, including influencing the emergence of democratic institutions and free markets. The United States saw this almost in the same light as it saw the democratization of Germany and Japan after World War II. Having defeated the Soviet Union, it now fell to the United States to reshape the societies of the successor states.

Through the 1990s, the successor states, particularly Russia, were inert. Undergoing painful internal upheaval — which foreigners saw as reform but which many Russians viewed as a foreign-inspired national catastrophe — Russia could not resist American and European involvement in regional and internal affairs. From the American point of view, the reshaping of the region — from the Kosovo war to the expansion of NATO to the deployment of U.S. Air Force bases to Central Asia — was simply a logical expansion of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a benign attempt to stabilize the region, enhance its prosperity and security and integrate it into the global system.

As Russia regained its balance from the chaos of the 1990s, it began to see the American and European presence in a less benign light. It was not clear to the Russians that the United States was trying to stabilize the region. Rather, it appeared to the Russians that the United States was trying to take advantage of Russian weakness to impose a new politico-military reality in which Russia was to be surrounded with nations controlled by the United States and its military system, NATO. In spite of the promise made by Bill Clinton that NATO would not expand into the former Soviet Union, the three Baltic states were admitted. The promise was not addressed. NATO was expanded because it could and Russia could do nothing about it.

From the Russian point of view, the strategic break point was Ukraine. When the Orange Revolution came to Ukraine, the American and European impression was that this was a spontaneous democratic rising. The Russian perception was that it was a well-financed CIA operation to foment an anti-Russian and pro-American uprising in Ukraine. When the United States quickly began discussing the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO, the Russians came to the conclusion that the United States intended to surround and crush the Russian Federation. In their view, if NATO expanded into Ukraine, the Western military alliance would place Russia in a strategically untenable position. Russia would be indefensible. The American response was that it had no intention of threatening Russia. The Russian question was returned: Then why are you trying to take control of Ukraine? What other purpose would you have? The United States dismissed these Russian concerns as absurd. The Russians, not regarding them as absurd at all, began planning on the assumption of a hostile United States.

If the United States had intended to break the Russian Federation once and for all, the time for that was in the 1990s, before Yeltsin was replaced by Putin and before 9/11. There was, however, no clear policy on this, because the United States felt it had all the time in the world. Superficially this was true, but only superficially. First, the United States did not understand that the Yeltsin years were a temporary aberration and that a new government intending to stabilize Russia was inevitable. If not Putin, it would have been someone else. Second, the United States did not appreciate that it did not control the international agenda. Sept. 11, 2001, took away American options in the former Soviet Union. No only did it need Russian help in Afghanistan, but it was going to spend the next decade tied up in the Middle East. The United States had lost its room for maneuver and therefore had run out of time.

And now we come to the key point. In spite of diminishing military options outside of the Middle East, the United States did not modify its policy in the former Soviet Union. It continued to aggressively attempt to influence countries in the region, and it became particularly committed to integrating Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, in spite of the fact that both were of overwhelming strategic interest to the Russians. Ukraine dominated Russia’s southwestern flank, without any natural boundaries protecting them. Georgia was seen as a constant irritant in Chechnya as well as a barrier to Russian interests in the Caucasus.

Moving rapidly to consolidate U.S. control over these and other countries in the former Soviet Union made strategic sense. Russia was weak, divided and poorly governed. It could make no response. Continuing this policy in the 2000s, when the Russians were getting stronger, more united and better governed and while U.S. forces were no longer available, made much less sense. The United States continued to irritate the Russians without having, in the short run, the forces needed to act decisively.

The American calculation was that the Russian government would not confront American interests in the region. The Russian calculation was that it could not wait to confront these interests because the United States was concluding the Iraq war and would return to its pre-eminent position in a few short years. Therefore, it made no sense for Russia to wait and it made every sense for Russia to act as quickly as possible.

The Russians were partly influenced in their timing by the success of the American surge in Iraq. If the United States continued its policy and had force to back it up, the Russians would lose their window of opportunity. Moreover, the Russians had an additional lever for use on the Americans: Iran.

The United States had been playing a complex game with Iran for years, threatening to attack while trying to negotiate. The Americans needed the Russians. Sanctions against Iran would have no meaning if the Russians did not participate, and the United States did not want Russia selling advance air defense systems to Iran. (Such systems, which American analysts had warned were quite capable, were not present in Syria on Sept. 6, 2007, when the Israelis struck a nuclear facility there.) As the United States re-evaluates the Russian military, it does not want to be surprised by Russian technology. Therefore, the more aggressive the United States becomes toward Russia, the greater the difficulties it will have in Iran. This further encouraged the Russians to act sooner rather than later.

The Russians have now proven two things. First, contrary to the reality of the 1990s, they can execute a competent military operation. Second, contrary to regional perception, the United States cannot intervene. The Russian message was directed against Ukraine most of all, but the Baltics, Central Asia and Belarus are all listening. The Russians will not act precipitously. They expect all of these countries to adjust their foreign policies away from the United States and toward Russia. They are looking to see if the lesson is absorbed. At first, there will be mighty speeches and resistance. But the reality on the ground is the reality on the ground.

We would expect the Russians to get traction. But if they don’t, the Russians are aware that they are, in the long run, much weaker than the Americans, and that they will retain their regional position of strength only while the United States is off balance in Iraq. If the lesson isn’t absorbed, the Russians are capable of more direct action, and they will not let this chance slip away. This is their chance to redefine their sphere of influence. They will not get another.

The other country that is watching and thinking is Iran. Iran had accepted the idea that it had lost the chance to dominate Iraq. It had also accepted the idea that it would have to bargain away its nuclear capability or lose it. The Iranians are now wondering if this is still true and are undoubtedly pinging the Russians about the situation. Meanwhile, the Russians are waiting for the Americans to calm down and get serious. If the Americans plan to take meaningful action against them, they will respond in Iran. But the Americans have no meaningful actions they can take; they need to get out of Iraq and they need help against Iran. The quid pro quo here is obvious. The United States acquiesces to Russian actions (which it can’t do anything about), while the Russians cooperate with the United States against Iran getting nuclear weapons (something Russia does not want to see).

One of the interesting concepts of the New World Order was that all serious countries would want to participate in it and that the only threat would come from rogue states and nonstate actors such as North Korea and al Qaeda. Serious analysts argued that conflict between nation-states would not be important in the 21st century. There will certainly be rogue states and nonstate actors, but the 21st century will be no different than any other century. On Aug. 8, the Russians invited us all to the Real World Order.

alexamenos · 09-02-2008, 10:42 AM

just read a fairly interesting article on the subject, so i had to pick it back up...and since the subject of the article was a favorite pet subject of mine regarding the:

Quote:

...appalling abuse of language [and the] distorting effects of ideology and propaganda.

so....

Quote:

I see this as being similar to the US Civil War. The South tried to leave and govern themselves, and the North stopped them.

A more apt analogy...a very apt analogy as I think about it...is greater Kurdistan. There we have Kurds in Iraq who are in Iraq because a bunch of wankers once upon a time drew national boundaries in way that completely disregarded custom, culture, language and ethnicity.

Much like the S. Ossetians....who have not in any meaningful sense been ruled by the *central* government of Georgia in over a decade

I just don't find it a remotely compelling argument to say that the government of Georgia was completely right in its attempts subjugate the people of S. Ossetia because some commie bureaucrat drew the maps that way 30 or 40 years ago when Georgia was part of the USSR.

So, truthfully, I don't give a flip about this little squabble one way or the other, except the extent to which neocons in our midst are so quick to draw things in the starkest of black and white terms.....

.....Evil Russia practices it's expansionist ways as it stops democracy from flourishing in a soveriegn state....

this is entirely the frame even though NATO is arguably the expansionist and Georgia is certainly attempting to thwart democracy in S. Ossetia.

Anyhoo....Russia is still a considerable player on the world stage, it will have it's spear of influence and it's spear of influence is bound to include former Soviet States. The folks who wish to respond to this bombastically and insanely (ie, John McCain) have far too high of an opinion of themselves and US military might.

DirkFTW · 09-02-2008, 12:34 PM

NATO is an organization that Georgia chooses to join (and NATO is willing to accept as a member). It's not quite the same as Russian tanks going past South Ossetia and into Georgia... and then calling for the resignation of Georgia's government leaders.

But, I do agree with you somewhat on the democracy aspect. From a purely democratic standpoint, if South Ossetians wish to declare their independence, democracy would encourage the government and the world to placate that desire. And even if the South Ossetians want to rejoin Russia rather than rule themselves, this too can arguably be supported under democracy.

I think this type of foreign policy is kind of problematic, especially when used to dissect nations. I wonder where we draw the line. If Hawaii wants to be liberated, can it be? If heavily armed people living in a compound in middle America declare their independence, can they? Do they have to declare independent governance, or can they simultaneously express independence and a desire to be ruled by another foreign government?

alexamenos · 09-02-2008, 01:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DirkFTW

If Hawaii wants to be liberated, can it be? If heavily armed people living in a compound in middle America declare their independence, can they? Do they have to declare independent governance, or can they simultaneously express independence and a desire to be ruled by another foreign government?

They can if they have the military might or backing, otherwise they can't.

Going back to the US Civil War...

...the southern states argued that they entered the Union voluntarily as free and sovereign states and that they should be end the Union in the same fashion -- they argued that government rests on the consent of the governed, a well-respected principle of the time, and that to the extent they withdrew their consent the Federal Government lost it's jurisdiction.

...the northern states argued that they had the bigger military, a bigger economic base, and hence the ability to beat the southern states into submission if the southern states didn't do as told.

At the end fo the day, the Northern States were objectively correct -- it was superior military might that settled the question once and for all, and the quaint notion that good government rests on the consent of the governed is little more than a comforting lie some tell themselves.

dalmations202 · 09-02-2008, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexamenos

They can if they have the military might or backing, otherwise they can't.

Going back to the US Civil War...

...the southern states argued that they entered the Union voluntarily as free and sovereign states and that they should be end the Union in the same fashion -- they argued that government rests on the consent of the governed, a well-respected principle of the time, and that to the extent they withdrew their consent the Federal Government lost it's jurisdiction.

...the northern states argued that they had the bigger military, a bigger economic base, and hence the ability to beat the southern states into submission if the southern states didn't do as told.

At the end fo the day, the Northern States were objectively correct -- it was superior military might that settled the question once and for all, and the quaint notion that good government rests on the consent of the governed is little more than a comforting lie some tell themselves.

There is a certain truth to all of this.

Then since the North won, Lincoln is painted as the HERO.

If they would have lost, Lincoln would have been seen as traitorous to the constitution which he totally went against when it came to states rights.

Isn't it funny how the winning team is usually seen as the right one. Heck the US totally destroyed the native Indians -- broke treaties, killed their families, kicked them off their land, etc --- but we still live the way we do today because they did.

"He who carries the biggest stick" and " to the victor, belong the spoils" come to mind.

alexamenos · 09-02-2008, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dalmations202

Then since the North won, Lincoln is painted as the HERO.

If they would have lost, Lincoln would have been seen as traitorous to the constitution which he totally went against when it came to states rights.

Yeah, but more than that I guess I'm saying that by definition a Nation is a geographic area where one institution has a monopoly in violence. In the US that institution is the Federal Government, hence what Lincoln did, for better or worse, was truly to make several independent States which were not so United into one Nation.

Arne · 09-10-2008, 11:05 AM

Ron Paul on giving a billion in foreign (militay) aid to a country that spends 70% on its military:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygg2u...es/022776.html

rabbitproof · 09-10-2008, 10:55 PM

Russia sending bombers to Hugo's house:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080911/...ezuela_bombers

CARACAS, Venezuela - Two Russian strategic bombers landed in Venezuela on Wednesday as part of military maneuvers, President Hugo Chavez said, welcoming the unprecedented deployment at a time of increasing tensions between Moscow and the U.S.

The Venezuelan leader said the two Russian Tu-160 bombers will conduct maneuvers and that he hopes to "fly one of those things" himself.

Russian military analysts said it was the first time Russian strategic bombers have landed in the Western Hemisphere since the Cold War. The provocative foray into Venezuela was certain to add to the strain in U.S.-Russian relations created over Russia's war in Georgia.