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A new paradigm for a post-imperial world

Posts Tagged ‘georgia south ossetia’

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That Was No Small War in Georgia — It Was the Beginning of the End of the American Empire

Posted by seumasach on December 15, 2008

Mark Ames

Radar

13th December, 2008

Tskhinvali, South Ossetia — On the sunny afternoon of August 14, a Russian army colonel named Igor Konashenko is standing triumphantly at a street corner at the northern edge of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, his forearm bandaged from a minor battle injury. The spot marks the furthest point of the Georgian army’s advance before it was summarily crushed by the Russians a few days earlier. “Twelve Georgian battalions invaded Tskhinvali, backed by columns of tanks, armored personal carriers, jets, and helicopters,” he says, happily waving at the wreckage, craters, and bombed-out buildings around us. “You see how well they fought, with all their great American training — they abandoned their tanks in the heat of the battle and fled.”

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Support for Russia at SCO Summit

Posted by seumasach on August 30, 2008

 

Vladimir Radyuhin

The Hindu

29th August, 2008

 
United stand: (From left) Presidents Nursultan Nazarbayev (Kazakhstan), Hu Jintao (China), Kurmanbek Bakiyev (Kyrgyzstan), Emomali Rakhmon (Tajikistan), Dmitry Medvedev (Russia) and Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan) in Dushanbe on Thursday.

MOSCOW: Russia has won crucial support for its peace efforts in South Ossetia from China and other allies in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

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OSCE report points finger at Georgia for S. Ossetia crisis

Posted by seumasach on August 30, 2008

 

BERLIN, August 30 (RIA Novosti) – The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has accumulated evidence pointing to “numerous wrong decisions” made by Georgian leaders that led to a military crisis with Russia, Der Spiegel said on Saturday.

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Russia remains a Black Sea power

Posted by seumasach on August 29, 2008

“The Montreal Convention assures the free passage of Russian warships through the Straits of Bosphorous. Under the circumstances, NATO’s grandiose schemes to occupy the Black Sea as its private lake seem outlandish now. There must be a lot of egg on the faces of the NATO brains in Brussels and their patrons in Washington and London.”

The reason being , as we have been at pains to point out, that the whole Georgia operation, from the US point of view, was concerned, not with the realities of geopolitics but with saving the knecks of Cheney and co. It may seem remarkable that thousands of lives were sacrificed, a key US ally was humiliated and all foreign policy rationality abandoned just to save a few war criminals from the dock, but such is the reality of politics at the end of empire.

M K Bhadrakumar

Asia Times

30th August, 2008

If the struggle in the Caucasus was ever over oil and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) agenda towards Central Asia, the United States suffered a colossal setback this week. Kazakhstan, the Caspian energy powerhouse and a key Central Asian player, has decided to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Russia over the conflict with Georgia, and Russia’s de facto control over two major Black Sea ports has been consolidated. 

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US military delivers Georgia aid

Posted by seumasach on August 25, 2008

 

Saun Walker

Independent

Tblisi

24th August, 2008

The US military came within 60 miles of the Russian army yesterday in Georgia as an American warship arrived in the Black Sea port of Batumi to deliver humanitarian aid to the embattled Caucasus country.

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Marching through Georgia

Posted by seumasach on August 22, 2008

Iraq-war.ru

Bring the good old bugle, boys, we’ll sing another song;
Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along,
Sing it as we used to sing it, fifty thousand strong,
While we were marching through Georgia.

“Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the jubilee!
“Hurrah! Hurrah! The Flag that makes you free!”
So we sang the chorus from South Ossetia to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.
How the darkeys shouted when they heard the joyful sound!
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found!
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground,
While we were marching through Georgia.

“Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the jubilee!
“Hurrah! Hurrah! The Flag that makes you free!”
So we sang the chorus from South Ossetia to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.
Yes, and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears,
When they saw the honored Flag they had not seen for years;
Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in cheers,
While we were marching though Georgia.

“Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the jubilee!
“Hurrah! Hurrah! The Flag that makes you free!”
So we sang the chorus from South Ossetia to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.
“Putin’s dashing Russian boys will never reach the coast!”
So the saucy Rebels said, and ’twas a handsome boast;
Had they not forgot, alas! to reckon with the host,
While we were marching through Georgia.

“Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the jubilee!
“Hurrah! Hurrah! The Flag that makes you free!”
So we sang the chorus from South Ossetia to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.
So we made a thoroughfare for Freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude, three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain,
While we were marching through Georgia.

“Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the jubilee!
“Hurrah! Hurrah! The Flag that makes you free!”
So we sang the chorus from South Ossetia to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.

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Diplomatic rubble

Posted by seumasach on August 20, 2008

Eric Walberg

Australia.to

20th August, 2008

Russia’s firm response to the Georgian gamble in Ossetia is being interpreted in various ways, but the reality is clear, says Eric Walberg

Analogies of the Ossetia fiasco and its fallout with past events are coming thick and fast. Condoleezza Rice — bless her heart — says, “This is no longer 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia.” James Townsend, a former Pentagon official now with the Atlantic Council, compared the situation to Hungary in 1956.

 

In both cases, the Russians being, well, the Russians. Neocon Charles Krauthammer says Georgia needs “the equivalent of the Berlin air lift.” The Baltic statelets and Poland go back further yet, arguing it is a replay of Hitler and Stalin’s invasions of their territory, prompting Poland to quickly sign on the dotted line for US missiles (against the Iranians, of course).

But the most telling analogy is with Iraq and its ill-fated invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait indeed had been a province administered from Baghdad for millennia, so Saddam Hussein understandably coveted it, as Saakashvili does Ossetia. Hussein was convinced that the US had given him the green light after he had spent 10 years fighting the US’s latest bete noire, Iran , just as Saakashvili was given a similar ambivalent go-ahead to invade Ossetia . Even Townsend admits, “I think they misunderstand our eagerness and enthusiasm and think we are going to be behind them for anything.” Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said it best: “It is hard to imagine that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili embarked on this risky venture without some sort of approval from the side of the United States.”

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Kaczynski and Sarkozy: war and peace

Posted by seumasach on August 19, 2008

“As Polish prime minister from in 2003-2004, Leszek Miller coordinated Poland’s entry into the EU. The day after Poland was admitted to the European family of nations, he resigned under pressure from his opponents.”

(Leszek Miller for RIA Novosti) – Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili decided to become a hero on the Olympics opening day. To guarantee success, he drafted 100,000 reservists to fight a 70,000-strong republic.

Instead of looking for ways of peaceful settlement with the unruly Abkhazia and South Ossetia, he provoked a bloody conflict which took hundreds of lives. Saakashvili wanted to consolidate his positions in his own country. Having started the war, he did not expect to be its main victim. Meanwhile, he could see it all in advance. A mere 25% of South Ossetia’s population is Georgian and the rest are Ossetians with Russian passports. Moreover, Ossetians remember how Georgians seized their territory by force after the Soviet Union’s disintegration.

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Georgia: the super cop vanishes

Posted by seumasach on August 18, 2008

“According to the International Herald Tribune, an unnamed United Nations official is said to have joked that the U.S. was happy to let Georgia lose South Ossetia as long as Russia voted in favour of censuring Iran. Had the U.S. won decisive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it would not find itself caught in this complex web of linkage between Iran and the imbroglio in the Caucasus. Mr. Putin is taking full advantage of Washington’s dependence on Russia to solve two international problem cases — Iran and North Korea — and extracting his pound of flesh against Georgia.”

The writer overestimates America’s hand: the quid pro quo consists not in Russia allowing the US to isolate Iran but in allowing the US to extricate itself from Iraq without total loss of credibility. Russia is steadily strengthening its links with Iran and could not conceivably allow it to be bombed.

Sreeram Chaulia

The Hindu

As Russia carries its overwhelming response to Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia into Georgian territory, the United States is appealing for restoration of Georgia’s territorial integrity. This is the same U.S. which, a few months ago, was overeager to bless Kosovo as an independent state at the cost of Serbia’s territorial integrity. Just as Washington paid little heed to Moscow’s protests at that time over the illegality of Kosovo’s stateh ood, Moscow is now rebutting in the same vein that there is no question of South Ossetia and Abkhazia being returned to Georgian suzerainty.

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McCain’s Georgian Hyperbole

Posted by seumasach on August 18, 2008

“Exaggerating threats is a feature, not a bug, of McCainite neoconservatism, and reveals much about what kind of president he’d make.”

Actually, it reveals a lot more what it takes to become president, and McCain, the master of the external menace, may well be in poll position with his slogan “We’re all Georgians now!” The resemblance of these moves to the film “Wag the dog” has already been noted. Too much can be made of US foreign policy ambition: with disaster all round from Iraq and Afghanistan to Wall Street, US politics now is more about “saving ass” than “kicking ass.”

Matt Welch

Reason

18th August

On Thursday of last week, Republican presidential nominee John McCain said that Russia’s invasion of Georgia was “the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War.” This is most certainly not true, at least according to the last two decades’ worth of foreign policy assessments from one John McCain.

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China seeks Caucasian crisis windfall

Posted by seumasach on August 18, 2008

M.K.Bhadrakumar

Asia Times

A geopolitical convulsion measuring six points on the Richter scale is bound to produce aftershocks. The reverberations of the conflict in the Caucasus are beginning to be felt. We may be unwittingly bidding farewell to the “war on terror”. In any case, the international community has lost interest in Osama bin Laden.

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