(…who only occasionally knows what I’m talking about).
Down in the comments on Georgia, I suggested sending in a hospital plane and unarmed troops.
Austin Bay has an interesting piece on his proposed response to a Georgia-type event…and kind of agrees with me (in a more knowledgeable way):
The fictional reply: Insert a Peacekeeping Brigade (PKB). Call it a Peacekeeping Organization (PKO) if you want to give it an extra diplomatic smudge.
A peacekeeping brigade comprises at least two engineer battalions with attached military police, medical, Civil Affairs, signal units and lots of media connectivity. Cameras matter. Add State Department personnel. Add Special Forces with their linguistic talents and a light infantry battalion for local security. Embed non-governmental organizations with the guts to participate and promise support to NGOs who choose to operate on their own but would accept clean water and blankets. Why, Mr. President, you can help the human shields. Aren’t they heading for Georgia to stop a super-power invasion? Tell the human shields our peacekeeping outfit will give them MREs and bandaids while they chain themselves to Georgian churches to protect them from Russian bombs.
Insert the PKB in a Russo-Georgia type situation and the emerging democracy gets on-the-ground support. The PKB is not an offensive military force, but an airborne brigade at the end of a long logistical tether isn’t either. The PKB serves as a military-diplomatic “transition signal” – Texas Hold’em and the emerging democracy get some of the value of a combat speed bump, while reducing though not eliminating the risks of inserting combat forces.
There’s more, as well as a really good analysis of the problem we face…
Bay’s article is long on tactics and short– very short– on strategy.
Ask yourself a cold, hard question, everyone who wants to intervene in Georgia, or draw a hard line with Russia: Iraq? Or Georgia?
Because anyone who wants to continue to oppose Russia needs to understand that something. Contrary to most of the nalyses and punditry (that I’ve read, anyway) the Russian response to pressure is not limited to Georgia. It’s not even limited to the Ukraine and other FSU states. The Russians, by virtue of their connections with and ability to embolden Iran, have the ability to at the very least make Iraq unstable again, if not outright completely untenable.
Here’s how I think it’s going to go down:
1) The Georgians have already been effectively forced to negotiate with the Russians on the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They were forced into this by NATO member France, under Sarkozy’s auspices; it’s not like we’ve Chirac bacstabbing us, any more. And for added insult to injury, the Russians are saying they won’t negotiate with Saakashvili. They’ll come around eventually, after making clear that this is not really a negotiation.
2) We’ll send in some humanitarian relief, basically as a fig leaf for ourselves. We’re not going to kick the Russians out of South Ossetia, nor Abkhazia, nor are we going to get all up in the Russian troops’ faces and try to roll them out of Georgia.
3) Whatever it looks like on paper, the Russians are going to end up controlling South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
4) Whatever it looks like on paper, the Russians are very damn likely going to end up with a restructured Georgian government to suit their needs. The Georgians may do that themselves, as a ‘fuck you’ to the man who led them into a completely unwinnable war.
5) We’re gonna hope real hard that we can lock down Iraq with sufficient strength and speed that, by the time Russia goes after the Ukraine, we’ll be able to protect them without also sacrificing Iraq.
And we’re going to do this because we know– we know— that the Russians have the will and the means to fuck up Iraq, big time, and we have very little in the way of actually stopping them in Georgia even if that weren’t true.
Credit where credit is due– the Russians may be bastards about this, but they planned it, timed it, and executed it well. Analyze the situation as it is, not as it morally should be. Otherwise, you’ll end up doing even more damage to yourself in the process.
so is this youre blog, now, armed liberal? whered all those right wing guys go?
Anyway, as to the above. First the goal here isnt so much to restore the status quo ante in S Ossetia (much less to really create Georgian control) as it is to keep Saak in power. That would defeat the message of submission to Russian power that Putin wants to send.
And humanitarian relief, as well as political support matter to that.
Just as we have little leverage on Russia in Georgia, I doubt they have that much in Iraq. First, I dont think they have the level of control over Iran as implied above, and Iran has its own agenda in Iraq. And the Iraqis have managed to hold off the Iranians.
I’d like to believe you’re right, Liberalhawk, but I’m not sure I buy it.
I agree that Iran has its own agenda in Iraq. But that agenda is to get the most control and security that they can out of Iraq. Any assistance that Russia gives them to withstand the United States translates almost directly into a motive to be less conciliatory on the subject of Iraq. That’s a relatively simple calculation.
The Russians don’t need to control Iran, all they need to do is influence it. This they can do with money, with refined products, with advanced anti-aircraft devices, with nuclear weapons assistance, etc. There are cases to be made for and against all of these, but none of them are trivial. All of them increase the United States’ uncertainty individually, and together, they increase the uncertainty substantially. I also don’t think the Iraqis managed to hold off the Iranians; I believe the Iranians have allowed it to happen… under a cost/benefit analysis that did not include substantial Russian interest.
In the short term, I expect to see a lot of people very rapidly picking sides and locking down gains, or trying to lock down gains, as the Russians re-shuffle the deck. We’re seeing that in Poland, with the missile shield deal. We’re seeing that in the Ukraine, as Yuschenko tries to act tough. It’ll be fascinating to see how that plays out in Iran– my hunch is that they’ll drive a harder deal, but they’ll have the incentive to drive it instead of their usual jerking us around– but it’ll take six months to a year to get it all implemented behind the scenes, stable, and routine. We’ll have the incentive to drive it and lock it down, too.
_Whatever it looks like on paper, the Russians are going to end up controlling South Ossetia and Abkhazia._
I’m not sure that the best outcome for Georgia is losing South Ossetia completely so long as Georgia can seal the border. The uncertainty surrounding the issue seems to be destibilizing Georgia (which I see as the main Russian objective). Russia has been sending gas and other goods into S.O. to support a black market that is undermining the Georgian economy. S.O. doesn’t seem to have any industry, minerals, goods.
On the other side of the scale we have national pride (no what would expect a country to give up a piece of itself) and some notion of strategic depth. I think recent events show that Georgia lacks strategic depth *with* South Ossetia.
I’m not sure that the best outcome for Georgia is losing South Ossetia completely so long as Georgia can seal the border.
Do you mean “isn’t”?
That sentence seems to oppose the rest of your response. At any rate, I’ve had similar thoughts, but I don’t know enough to really have an opinion.
“Down in the comments on Georgia, I suggested sending in a hospital plane and unarmed troops.”
Yes what we need is US citizens being held hostage again in that part of the world.
I think Russians are basically OK, but not always, and this is a regime that thinks massive polonium poisoning _on British soil_ is the right response to accusations. In relation to the assassination of journalists and other measures to intimidate critics, it can be said that what were once scandals are now policies.
It’s not the right time to rest a lot of weight on Russia’s reluctance to strike down the unarmed. When the right time would be, I don’t know. But definitely not now.
Yeah, Marcus that sentence sucked. Let me restate:
I am not convinced that America has any interest in the fate of South Osseteria;
America has an interest in Georgia not being “Finlandized;”
It’s quite possible that this interest would best be promoted by seding South Osseteria to the Russians.
“This they can do with money, with refined products, with advanced anti-aircraft devices, with nuclear weapons assistance, etc. ”
Im not saying that Russia cant do things wrt Iran that can hurt us. I just dont see those things as having a direct effect on Iraq. I dont think Irans power in Iraq is constrained by their lack of anti air systems, etc etc. Or even of money. My sense is that theyve tried to do all they can, and theyve been constrained largely by intra Shiite politics, the reality that most iraqi shiites dont like Iranian influence, that whatever countervailing advantagve they got from the personal popularity of Sadr was offset by the misrule of his forces, and ultimately by the military and political recovery of the Iraqi state. The notion that Russian support would encourage them to do more in IRaq seems driven by the idea that they have voluntarily reduced their profile in Iraq, and I dont really buy THAT.
As for iran itself, yes its a dilemma. Im not sure the antiair systems are THAT big in issue. IF it comes to war, we are pretty good at knocking out anti-air systems, and they should be the least of our worries, as compared to oil prices, political blowback, etc. OTOH our current strategy is to avoid war by using sanctions to squeeze the Iranian polity and lever them towards a compromise. Russia can obviously throw a monkey wrench into that – OTOH Russias record in the past in support of that strategy, is, to put it most charitably, mixed and grudging.
_”IGOETI, Georgia (Reuters) – A Russian military convoy advanced to within 55 km (30 miles) of Tbilisi on Friday, from the Russian-occupied town of Gori inside Georgia proper, a Reuters witness said._
_The incursion marked the closest troops have come to the Georgian capital, and coincided with a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to push a French-brokered peace plan to end the Russia-Georgia conflict.”_
“Reuters”:http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSLF7284720080815?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true
As i’ve been saying- reports of this advance being over are greatly premature. The Russians are liars, have lied again and again in this crisis. Have lied brazenly, _knowing_ their lies would be revealed within hours. Everything they say is for affect, affect on _us._ Because some of us are only too eager to believe them, because it makes things simpler and doesnt require anything of us. If nothing else, the Russians are making chumps of us on the media front.
_TRILLIAN: “A second later and they would have been dead.”_
_ZAPHOD: “Yeah, so if you’d taken the trouble to think about the problem a bit longer it would have gone away.”_
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Beeblebrox school of problem solving is very much at work in Georgia right now.
#10 from Mark Buehner:
bq. The Russians are liars, have lied again and again in this crisis. Have lied brazenly, _knowing_ their lies would be revealed within hours.
That’s part of their military style, from the rise of Muscovy on. It’s not because we are suckers, though we are, or because of Vlad Putin.
In war, everybody tough enough to be worth worrying about has their quirks, usually for straightforward historic and geographic reasons. Nobody is just a perfect gentleman all the time. And these quirks are not the same: everybody doesn’t drop their gloves and get mean in the same way. The Mongols were not beatable if you stuck out your chest and jaw, and put up your dukes like an honest man; and fighting the Mongols other than in a spirit of doing absolutely anything it took to win and avoid the practically genocidal Mongol victory celebrations was not an option for sane men. So the lesson that _war is a realm of fraud and force_) sunk in very early in Russia.