Oh so the oil is why we are making a big deal about Georgia. Now I do understand that the Russians are concerned about oil, too. However, Georgia is next door and there are ethnic Russians in the disputed border lands Georgia is trying to invade. I'd say Russia has more legitimate interest in the area than the US, which is essentially only about oil. Sadly the US especially with Bush-McCain has no leg to stand on when it comes to opposing this Russian aggression. >>><<< ...The provocation is real, but the Georgian President is rash to believe this is a war he can win or that the West wants it. Both George Bush and John McCain have visited Georgia, made glowing speeches praising Saakashvili and were rewarded with the Order of St George. But Bush, at least in public, is now bound to be cautious, calling for a ceasefire. The reaction in much of Europe will be much less forgiving. Even before this crisis, a number of governments, notably France and Germany, were reporting 'Georgia fatigue'. Though they broadly wished the Saakashvili government well, they did not buy the line that he was a model democrat - the sight last November of his riot police tear-gassing protesters in Tbilisi and smashing up an opposition TV station dispelled that illusion. And they have a long agenda of issues with Russia, which they regard as more important than the post-Soviet quarrel between Moscow and Tbilisi. Paris and Berlin will now say they were right to urge caution on Georgia's Nato ambitions at the Bucharest Nato summit. Both sides are behaving badly. It is outrageous that Russia is seizing the chance to attack Georgian towns and airfields. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/10/georgia.russia
Wait a minute... Aren't the lands in question Georgian land that have attempted to (successfully for some time now) break away and now Georgia is trying to retake them? That isn't exactly invading. These are basically self governed provinces of Georgia.
Who are the leaders of the South Ossetia separatist movement and have they ever had a vote to sanction repatriation into Russia. I don't have any illusions about Georgia's rights to control South Ossetia either but I think the people and soldiers in this are just pawns. For Russia this is clearly a case of tit-for tat over Kosovo. The US orchestrated the separation of Kosovo from the Russian ally Serbia and provided the precedent for the repatriation of South Ossetia. It's a win/win for Russia since they get geopolitical revenge and it plays right into their hands for wanting to have a monopoly over Europe's energy supply. There is no downside to their actions. The US should have seen this move coming as a result of Kosovo and either admitted Georgia and the Ukraine to NATO...in which case this might have been the trigger to WW3.... or accepted a more low key autonomy, more on the Taiwan scale.
They've actually tried really, really hard. But the US doesn't have absolute control over NATO, and the Germans aren't keen on the idea and have regularly blocked both countries from membership.
I guess exactly this scenario is why they opposed it. NATO is great when it's you facing the bear but you don't want to be obligated when some other tinhorn is poking it.
Sort of these lands were never really governed by Georgia at all and the main currency in those areas were Russian.... Georgia overplayed it's hand and now it is paying the price.....they should have left well enough alone. DD
I think that might be an apt comparison...what I want to know is have their troops gone beyond Sourther Ossetia into Georgia? If not....just let them have Souther Ossetia if the people there want to be part of Russia, let em. DD
No. Russia has no historic ethnic claim on South Ossetia. It doesn't mean anything to them. A better way to describe it would be Russia is using South Ossetia as a vehicle to express their frustration with the West for Kosovo. But South Ossetia fundamentally means nothing to Russian national history or identity. The only Russians who live there were forcibly relocated by Soviet Era social planning. It might be described as Georgia's Kosovo, but even that would be not particularly valid. For instance, Georgians haven't spent the better part of two decades trying to ethnically cleanse Russians from South Ossetia, and the Georgians have always been willing to allow Ossetians autonomy under Georgia.
What is going to be the fall out as far as US-Russia relations are concerned? It seems like this relationship is a bit broken at the moment and this whole debacle is a step backwards. If this thing really started with Georgia shelling Southern Ossetia and, as Putin claims, this amounts to Georgia taking out villages (like Saddam once did), then I have a hard time siding with Georgia on this. They started it. What did they expect from Russia when this started? Or, what did they expect from the West? The impression I get is we are supporting Georgia on this no matter what...just because they are a democracy. I'm not even clear what the real facts are cause, as you know, both sides will say whatever is in their interests at times like these. If Russia is really using this as a pretense to take over Georgia and overthrow their democratic government, then I doubt there is much of anything anyone else can do to stop it.
A good article that ties in a lot of things including Darfur, Georgia and other conflicts as basically conflicts over resources between the US, China, Russia and others. Written in May it warns of the situation in Georgia The New Geopolitics of Energy By Michael T. Klare This article appeared in the May 19, 2008 edition of The Nation. May 1, 2008 (Long article, but some excerpts) ************** ... These and other efforts by Russia and China, combined with stepped-up US military aid to states in the region, are part of a larger, though often hidden, struggle to control the flow of oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea basin to markets in Europe and Asia. And this struggle, in turn, is but part of a global struggle over energy. The great risk is that this struggle will someday breach the boundaries of economic and diplomatic competition and enter the military realm. This will not be because any of the states involved make a deliberate decision to provoke a conflict with a competitor--the leaders of all these countries know that the price of violence is far too high to pay for any conceivable return. The problem, instead, is that all are engaging in behaviors that make the outbreak of inadvertent escalation ever more likely. These include, for example, the deployment of growing numbers of American, Russian and Chinese military instructors and advisers in areas of instability where there is every risk that these outsiders will someday be caught up in local conflicts on opposite sides. This risk is made all the greater because intensified production of oil, natural gas, uranium and minerals is itself a source of instability, acting as a magnet for arms deliveries and outside intervention. The nations involved are largely poor, so whoever controls the resources controls the one sure source of abundant wealth. This is an invitation for the monopolization of power by greedy elites who use control over military and police to suppress rivals. The result, more often than not, is a wealthy strata of crony capitalists kept in power by brutal security forces and surrounded by disaffected and impoverished masses, often belonging to a different ethnic group--a recipe for unrest and insurgency. This is the situation today in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, in Darfur and southern Sudan, in the uranium-producing areas of Niger, in Zimbabwe, in the Cabinda province of Angola (where most of that country's oil lies) and in numerous other areas suffering from what's been called the "resource curse." The danger, of course, is that the great powers will be sucked into these internal conflicts. This is not a far-fetched scenario; the United States, Russia and China are already providing arms and military-support services to factions in many of these disputes. The United States is arming government forces in Nigeria and Angola, China is aiding government forces in Sudan and Zimbabwe, and so on. An even more dangerous situation prevails in Georgia, where the United States is backing the pro-Western government of President Mikhail Saakashvili with arms and military support while Russia is backing the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia plays an important strategic role for both countries because it harbors the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, a US-backed conduit carrying Caspian Sea oil to markets in the West. There are US and Russian military advisers/instructors in both areas, in some cases within visual range of each other. It is not difficult, therefore, to conjure up scenarios in which a future blow-up between Georgian and separatist forces could lead, willy-nilly, to a clash between American and Russian soldiers, sparking a much greater crisis. It is essential that America reverse the militarization of its dependence on imported energy and ease geopolitical competition with China and Russia over control of foreign resources. Because this would require greater investment in energy alternatives, it would also lead to an improved energy economy at home (with lower prices in the long run) and a better chance at overcoming global warming. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080519/klare
CNN is reporting that Russia has advanced into Georgia primary. The president has called all troops back to defend the capital.
looks like the russians mean to occupy all of Georgia: http://www.transatlanticpolitics.co...-conquer-entire-georgia-tbilisi-under-attack/
