Georgia, Russia, the U.S., the CIS, and Brinkmanship

In posts past, we talked about what’s going on in Georgia and the Soviet Uni… (oops!) Russia. Basically Georgia tried to snuggle up to NATO, and got smacked down. Hard… Now we have pretty clear info indicating that the USSR… (oops!) Russia has deployed SS-21 missiles into S. Ossetia (http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iiba8YaYXz88Y9n9OQBVKp9ofSig). If this is true, and it probably is, Russia can now reach out and touch Tbilisi. Checkmate. For all intents and purposes, the ten-member CIS is now the 9-member CIS.

And what can the U.S. do? Well, as Gerry suggested earlier, we could rattle our “rocket saber” and threaten to take our space program and go home. (Love them mixed metaphors!) But just as Gerry noted in the previous post, that plan probably wouldn’t work.

How about trying to bounce Russia out of the G8, and the WTO? Yeah, that would sting, but their reserves of natural gas and oil would see them through.

In the real world, there may be only one other alternative. (Aside from just letting the former Soviet Union yet again bully its way to “history’s unmarked grave of distorted lies”… Hopefully the next time it will stay buried. ) Nope… Our only real chance to stand up to Russia might well be to actively pursue the goal of making another member (Ukraine) of the CIS 9 a member in NATO PDQ. But that bit of brinkmanship is fraught with very tangible peril… “Ice Cold” Putin is not “Blow Hard” Khrushchev. In 2008, If America and “The Motherland” come nose to nose, someone will blink, and it won’t be Russia.

Perhaps now would be a good time to take comfort in our anti-missile deal with Poland, and let everything else cool down a bit.

A good read on all this is:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2008/05/mil-080514-rferl01.htm

Alan Speakman

What is Russia Doing?

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer agrees…

There is justifiable concern regarding Russia and Georgia… But what is really going on here? 

Well, let’s start at the beginning… The old joke goes, “How can you tell a politician is lying? Check to see if his lips are moving…” In the case of Russian/Soviet politicians, a more appropriate answer to the joke might be, Check to see if his lips are moving and there are a ton of dead innocents. (From the gulags to East Berlin to Chernobyl, to the Kursk to… Just take your pick.) But what’s going on here? 

First a bit of a backdrop… 

Focus on South Ossetia and Abkhazia – “regions” of Georgia… Russia and Georgia have been fussing over these areas since 1991 (the breakup of the USSR). Basically, sizeable populations in both regions consider themselves Russian, Georgian, Ossetian, or Abkhaz. As with all disagreements of this sort, “ethnic cleansing” and “peacekeepers” were thrown into the mix. In 1992, Georgia attempted to solidify the territory within its border and moved towards the South Ossetian town of Tskhinvali. Russia took a rather dim view of this and warned Georgia to retreat, or risk the bombing of the Georgian city of Tbilisi (the capitol of Georgia and facilitator to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline). Then-Georgian President, Eduard Shevardnaze (remember him?) made the smart move and withdrew. Since then, it’s been a bit of a pissing contest between Russia, Georgia, and the two quasi-independent republics.

Now let’s fast-forward to August 7, 2008 (day prior to the start of the Olympics, by the way)… The Georgians again attacked, and this time took control of Tskhinvali. But why did they do this? Odds are they were simply trying (again) to solidify their country, and in doing so perhaps be finally drawn to the warm bosom of NATO. It wasn’t a bright move, but understandable nonetheless. (See http://www.hetq.am/eng/politics/8284/ and various wikipedia entries for more info on this.) 

All righty then, backdrop out of the way… What in the name of Yakov Smirnoff is Russia doing?

• Well, these two regions (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) do have sizable populations that still consider themselves Russian. The Russians claim to be looking out for these people, and perhaps they actually are. But there’s far more involved here…
• This is Russia’s “letter to the world” that seldom wrote to her lately. From 2006 to 2007, Russia’s GDP rose a remarkable 8.1% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia#Economy). Think of it as a sort of, “I’m back…”
• Depending upon whom you listen to, Russia provides between 25% – 40% of Europe’s natural gas and oil. In a world of diminishing fossil fuel supplies, from an economic standpoint Russia is starting to carry a very big stick. Putin is simply reminding folks of that fact.
• Russia wants to send a message to its old CIS buddies… (CIS is the “Commonwealth of Independent States”. Depending on how you define them, these are the 10 former Soviet Republics: Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine). And that message is quite clear – nothing is final.
• How can Putin resist sticking his thumb in Dubya’s eye just one more time? There they are in Beijing, trapped in hopelessly awkward photo ops. Putin, the ex-KGB master, and Bush the recovering alcoholic who truly wants to believe in the God-given potential for decency in the souls of all men. (Heck, Bush 43 said that he could even see it in Vladimir… Ouch.)
• There is a saying in Russia, “Nothing is worth the blood of a child…” Keep in mind all of Ossetia is touchy stuff after the murder of 350 people, (half of them children) in Beslan, N. Ossetia back in 2004 by Muslim Chechens… But regardless of who slaughtered those people, Russia and Putin are still very volatile concerning an upset in any of Ossetia, North or South.
• And finally, there is oil, (again). Four major pipelines run through South Ossetia. If Putin were to stop that oil flow for good, that would mean a decrease in the world supply by roughly 1 million barrels/day. That’s not a huge dent in our global consumption of roughly 85 millions of barrels/day. However, Right now, all told, we’re at a capacity of 87 million barrels of oil/day… Things are getting tight, and Russia knows it.

 So are the Russian politicians lying? Of course they are, and innocents are being targeted. But the other factors cited above need to be taken into consideration… After kicking some serious butt in S. Ossetia, Russia may or may not stand down. But the message is very clear. Russia is back, and she’s the power player in her region. And there isn’t a damned thing that America or the EU can do about it.

If nothing else, this underscores the naiveté of American comfort-born politics in a very brutal world. Where have you gone Colin Powell? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you…

 Alan Speakman