Abkhazia is getting into the act because the Georgians are occupied.
Georgia shouldn’t have moved without ground attack aircraft and effective anti-aircraft protection. They should have sealed the tunnel and the roads into Abkhazia before doing anything else, and they lack that basic capability. It was stupid to believe that the Russians wouldn’t use airpower.
I think you’re right on this being a mirror of Kosovo, but the Russians may not stop with that now that the Georgians have pulled back.
The Georgians have a chance on a one-on-one ground campaign on their side of the mountains, but they need anti-air and anti-ship protection before they do anything again.
]]>Where it gets scary is if Russia decides to deviate from the Kosovo playbook. My bet is that they don’t. Their whole goal is payback at a low risk to Russia. Going beyond the Kosovo playbook would create risk for Russia, and that’s not acceptable (Russian paranoia, remember?). But their thought process is that if this playbook was acceptable for U.S. actions in the former Yugoslavia, it’s acceptable for Russian actions in the former Soviet Union. And they’re probably right — just as the U.S. brushed off Russian objections to their actions in the former Yugoslavia, Russia is doing the same thing to U.S. objections, and the response to having objections brushed off is likely to be… more objections. Because it simply doesn’t make any sense to start WWIII over a breakaway province today, any more than it did in 1999 when Putin was on the other side of that equation.
Oh, regarding “hits near oil facilities”, beware of attaching too much importance to any “facts” reported by the propaganda ministries of Georgia and Russia. Where both agree that something happened, you can attach a good likelihood that it really happened. Otherwise, there are no independent journalists on the ground so there’s at least a 75% chance that anything you hear from the propaganda ministries is about as real as Iraq’s WMD. We’ll find out more when the fighting stops and independent journalists can move around the country. Until then… well. Not really.
– Badtux the Geopolitical Penguin
]]>Georgia is recalling its Brigade from Iraq to provide more firepower, and apparently the US is going to provide transportation.
There have been hits near key oil facilities, so things could get nasty.
]]>My guess is that the Russians aren’t going to do this (i.e., make like Mongols). They are chess players, not football players. They had pushed a pawn forward — their “peacekeepers” in South Ossetia. Georgia sent a knight to take it. And now Russia just shipped in a bishop backed by a rook. The next move is going to be Georgia’s, and Russia is bettering that Georgia is the one that’s going to back down. But if they don’t… well. There’s always the Mongol option. And by now it should be starting to dawn upon Saakashvili that all he’s going to get from the West is some hand-wringing and platitudes…
Thus my prediction of the eventual outcome. I think Russia is quite happy with where this puts them. It’s just another move in a long chess game with the West, and one where the sacrifice of few dozen “peacekeepers” was well worth what they get in return — a chance to rub the West’s nose in the mud for meddling in the former Yugoslavia by setting up the “Kosovo Scenario” once more except this time with the West being the inevitable loser. A pity about all those dead people though…
– Badtux the Geopolitical Penguin
]]>This isn’t going anywhere good for Georgia, and Putin is going to rub NATO’s nose in it as payback for Kosovo. If a vote was good enough for Kosovo, it’s good enough for Ossetia.
It’s a matter of who loses the least, and at this point it’s Russia, but this will affect the other republics. They may not be as willing to go along after what happened to Georgia. China may pick up some support in Central Asia.
]]>My best guess is that Russia is going to finish kicking the Georgians out of South Ossetia, then set their troops on the border with the rest of Georgia and claim that they’re just peace keepers and call for a ceasefire while saying that the fate of South Ossetia should be settled via political measures rather than via force of arms. Things will settle down to the two sides lobbing occasional mortar shells and rockets at each other, and that will be that. And the Western powers will go along with it, because who wants to go to war with Russia? And eventually Saakashvili is going to end up going the way of pretty much any Western-backed leader in the area… either leaving on a jet plane to the West in the face of massive discontent over how he “lost” South Ossetia, or with his head added to a bonfire after his government is overthrown.
Saakashvili made a big mistake thinking he could get Western support for retaking South Ossetia by force. Europe isn’t going there, and the U.S. can’t — the U.S. has no troops left, they’re 100% committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end, the only support Saakashvili will get is diplomatic, and a buncha diplomats wringing their hands helplessness aren’t going to change the facts on the ground. Eventually everybody is just going to pretend that Russia is telling the truth about only being “peace-keepers” to “assure a political rather than military solution to the problem of South Ossetia”, and things will get back to normal. Except for the families of those who’ve died in this useless and stupid war, of course. But then, who thinks about them?
– Badtux the Cynical Penguin
]]>