Vladimir Tecumseh Putin
This season rose revolutions bleed red. This is Vladimir Putin's gambit: Direct confrontation and force
Georgia Fight Spreads, Moscow Issues Ultimatum - NYTimes.com. Demonstrating that he is intent on not just being a leader determined to stop what centrifugal forces would tear Russia apart, but to wind the clock back mightily. And in definite terms it is Putin not Medvedev. The Tsar still reigns. This only delays the day when Russia will still have to confront that inevitable crisis of authoritarian rule, transition. If not by election, then to your blood, to a tyrant, or to the deluge. The particular ground for this confrontation, South Ossetia, confused me. I thought the Russians and Georgians were fighting over a place that had beach resorts (Abkhazia). Well, its both really and more besides
Russia's aim in Georgia battle was strategic - Los Angeles Times:.
The simple reason Russia did this is because they could
Russia Vows to Support Two Enclaves. in Retort to Bush - NYTimes.com:. To send a message to all the former Soviets and Warsaw Pact states that had the temerity to go their own way, grow ties to the west, particularly the ones that signaled that they might join NATO. The violence and odious use of para-militaries, a calculated thumb in the west's eye. Here recall Kosova, Bosnia, and our position there that paramilitary group activities constituted war crimes.
This will have little effect Putin's on increasing ambition to rebuild a Russian sphere of influence, to place Russia back on a path of independent destiny. The cyber attacks leading this and other signs in this particular case hint strongly that this was not an ad hoc incident that spun out of control, but a carefully planned provocation. How strong is Putin's position, How far does energy wealth get him? The control that Gazprom and other energy entities gives him is very real, the economies, the winter heating of vast swaths of northern and central europe are dependent on it. People come to the oil-haves with their lists of needs. How strong is the Russian military (regionally if not OOA). Not very, really. However, adjacency is a force-multiplier, they were able to put 25 thousand troops against 9 thousand easily. I heard a panel (on a radio show) this week full of people dismissing Russia's capabilities, essentially arguing against the current operation. This went on until someone on the panel reminded them they had already done it. It was a fait accompli. For a few seconds at least the panel was very quiet. The way forward now is to consolidate on the alarm that this has engendered.
The other side of this coin is how weakened are we? Militarily distracted and exhausted by Iraq and Afghanistan. How abused and over-extended are our intelligence capabilities. Especially as we try to gin up the potential for a war with Iran. Amidst all the rhetoric and saber rattling. I want to give rhetoric games a quick review. Keep it to words. Leave it so that the other fellow ends up saying all the stupid stuff. Why is our rhetoric so out of line with our available responses? Whatever happened to walk softly and carry a big stick. I guess when you have no stick, you talk smack. Candidate McCains's posturing on this is for domestic consumption only. He has no hidden reserve of answers, no divisions in his pocket, no ethical stance against invasions, regime change, when they can be effected. He bought the Bush administration's imperial nihilism and now he owns it. Amid the calls for action, I want to give diplomacy its due. Against the slander that all talk is Sudetan and forever Munich. Properly done diplomacy will remove war from an opponent's repertoire of rational options before they seriously consider them. The US's reasoning seems limited to Secretary Rice's position that 'this isn't 1968' (or even presumably 1978) That these days Russia wants to be part of the world system rather than outside it, and the US still owns that. There is the neo conservative angle. The confederacy of Cheneys has not gone away they have just been working quieter. "The Georgian leadership is a special project for the United States," the Russians say. Saakashvili has been a favorite, a close ally of the administration's political and economic agendas, and dependable. However, Ambassador Khalilzad's almost stuttering interview on NPR about Saakashvili's move into South Ossetia and the Russian invasion that followed was a sign that that he at least was caught unprepared for how things unfolded. I read that while President Bush was still in China, Dick Cheney was phoning Saakashvili. It makes you wonder what they were telling the Georgians. Not so much that we were telling them to try to retake South Ossetia or giving them green lights, but we were giving them no caution or reason for caution. This bear baiting in Georgia Ukraine Azerbaijan Uzbekistan Poland, born of some notion that we won the cold war in some definitive and absolute fashion, beyond the crass and ossified old Soviet system finally crumbling away under its own sick weight. That we were handed by Athena the right to impose terms and rule singly, globally. Was this necessary or wise? What else is involved?
Ordo quod obses, order and security. These are the real watchwords of our times. Democracy: the unencumbered aspirational charge of the people to rule their own destiny, when you can get any one to even take that notion seriously comes in a distant second.
Both sides wanted this war. But as Donald Rumsfeld once sourly noted you have to fight a war with the army you have. In parallel observation, the war you get is never the same or as enterprisingly exciting as the war you wanted. It cannot be otherwise, war is a pas-de-deux of mutual exclusivity. There are few victories in war and even they are all hollow by portion. Consider this when reading the Washington Post's predictable wrapped-in-the-cloak-of-freedom editorial
Blaming Democracy washingtonpost.com
The fundamental principle at stake in Georgia. Compare and contrast with Andrew Bachevich
Russia's payback | csmonitor.com and Fred Kaplan's commentary
The Bush administration's feckless response to the Russian invasion of Georgia, - Slate Magazine:. Who are the leveler heads? If we had truly cared about Georgian freedom we could have ensured it with more care and turned aside this Finland-ization. We are left now with what appears as the rebuilding the warm safety of the cold war through negligence and ignorant intent, as though the Global Long war On Terror (Glot) was just too complicated. Talking about freedom is easy and means little. Only what freedom is needed to keep the global factories humming is the freedom that will be received. What is being lost is the idea that there is anything more to the life of the ordinary man that being obedient producers and consumers. I caught a little of Naomi Klein on Democracy Now on Friday I recognize what forms her view of China the Model, the new marketized order and security state
China's All-Seeing Eye : Rolling Stone:, the erosion of the standards of human rights. The question is, are we confronting this, looking the other way, or taking notes.
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