zenpundit.com

I had actually intended to post briefly on the implications of the Russo-Georgian War for State vs. State warfare and 4GW but today’s reactions by the Bush administration and Senators McCain and Obama are a more important concern. The United States has no strategic policy in regard to Russia – and if the statements of the candidates for president are to be believed – we won’t have one in the next four years either.

President Bush, speaking today:

….As I have made clear, Russia’s ongoing action raise serious questions about its intentions in Georgia and the region. In recent years, Russia has sought to integrate into the diplomatic, political, economic, and security structures of the 21st century. The United States has supported those efforts. Now Russia is putting its aspirations at risk by taking actions in Georgia that are inconsistent with the principles of those institutions. To begin to repair the damage to its relations with the United States, Europe, and other nations, and to begin restoring its place in the world, Russia must keep its word and act to end this crisis.

The President is alluding to Russia’s G-8 membership, the WTO, the OECD and similarly prestigious diplomatic entities. The strong emphasis Bush placed upon the need for Russian adherence to the cease-fire agreement and extending humanitarian aid was very well placed from the perspective of a moral level of conflict. The cancellation of  American participation in a scheduled Russian-NATO meeting was also appropriate ( no allies signed on to that very minor reprimand). Though we need to be honest here, the dispatch of U.S. military personnel to deliver humanitarian aid is meant as a “tripwire” against a resumption of a full-bore Russian onslaught into Georgia, not just to hand out MRE’s and bottled water to displaced villagers. It’s a very serious move ( and unaccompanied as far as I am aware by German, French or other NATO troops – if I am wrong, please correct me).

Let’s be perfectly clear: the Russian Army’s invasion of Georgia was carried out in trademark Russian fashion, brutally with obvious disregard for civilian casualties and reports of casual murders and looting by Russian soldiers. The only noteworthy exception to their usual, thuggish, performance here has been the swift accomplishment of all military objectives and total rout of the enemy army. Not since special KGB commandos seized the Tajbeg Palace in Kabul and assassinated a Prime Minister in 1979 has a Russian military operation been carried out so flawlessly. 

As a result, many people in European capitals, the State Department, the IC and the Pentagon have egg on their faces right now.  A lot of serious VIPs have been embarrassed by a client ( Saakashvili and company) who performed so poorly in this debacle – at every level that matters – that much of their previous professional advice and opinions regarding said client in retrospect look like hopelessly incompetent bullshit. These VIP’s are faced with two choices: circle the wagons around their naked emperor and try to find some kind of bow to put on this disaster or candidly admit that they horribly misjudged the entire situation to their superiors and reassess the policy in regards to Georgia from scratch.

Guess which route we are going today ?

Now to be fair, many of the actions taken by the President are sound and wise ones. Russia needs to feel significant pushback here and Bush is doing that very firmly and responsibly – and without much help from our allies other than President Sarkozy. The problem is that these are ad hoc reactions – flailing about frantically because in truth the United States has had no strategic policy toward Russia or any objective that gets much further than pleasing insider interests who are squealing loudest to the administration or the Congress. Not decommissioning Russian nukes fast enough ? Look no further than American uranium company lobbies. In regards to Kosovo or Georgia, that would be the EU. What? Isn’t Saakashvili America’s “special project” ( to quote Russia’s Foreign Minister – some Putin toady, name unimportant, he warms a chair). Well, not really. My friend Dave Schuler has an outstanding post on Europe’s stake in Georgia. It’s a lot larger than is ours:

….Germany’s ties with Georgia are, if anything, closer. Georgia is Germany’s fifth largest trading partner. I presume that much of this trade is a consequence of Georgia’s two pipelines. Energy independence is as much a political hot topic in Germany as it is here but the term means mostly not being so terribly dependent on Russia. The path to greater energy independence for Germany lies through Georgia.

….In 2007 FDI in Georgia exceeded the $1 billion mark. A substantial proportion of that was EU countries.

[ Ed. Note: The above quote is in error – Georgia is not Germany’s fifth largest trading partner – thank you to b and Annie for the correction] 

Would any reader care to hazard a guess as to the number of German troops expected to be standing next to American soldiers in Georgia delivering humanitarian aid ? This is not to knock the Germans per se as to point out that the United States carrying all of the water for Europe and absorbing all of the friction in return for nothing doesn’t make a whole lot of strategic sense.  Europe is safe,  wealthy and grown-up and not shy about pressing their collective economic interests but slow to accept all of the responsibilities they ask of the United States and our own State Department is a reflexive enabler of the extended European adolescence. Leadership in an alliance does not always mean being the other guy’s doormat.

Deciding what our long-term interests are in the region and what our relationship with Russia should be is something seventeen years overdue and presidential candidates who have no clue, left to their own devices, of what to do or, who take foreign policy advice from a paid agent of a foreign government, worry the hell out of me.

UPDATE:

Fabius Maximus had some recommended posts on Russia-Georgia worth sharing that I’d like to add here along with a few others I caught this morning:

Stratfor   War Nerd   Helena Cobban  Joshua Foust   Glittering Eye   Coming Anarchy   Robert Kaplan (Hat tip CA)

Whirledview   SWJ Blog    Global Guerillas   Selil Blog   Andrew Sullivan

Perusing the latest news on the Russo-Georgian War via the always excellent SWJ Blog, I fear some of my analysis from the other day will come to pass, simply because the only restraint on Putin’s disposition to use force against Georgia thus far is Putin’s self-restraint. Of which I’m not seeing much.  If something constructive in terms of statesmanship is to be done to end the crisis, we ought to move toward doing it while the Georgian Army is still intact.

 Western bluster is not going to help Saakashvili as much as would quietly putting the squeeze on the far-flung economic interests of the siloviki clique in Putin’s inner circle, or of the Russian state itself. That would be a practical and proportionately useful response to signal displeasure with Moscow’s actions. Far moreso than invoking comparisons with Hitler or Saddam Hussein or other rhetorical nonsense by folks who know better.  But doing that would require that the Europeans – the nations that wanted the BTC pipeline, after all – rapidly act as a diplomatic united front with Washington and accept some risk of retaliation – say, a 100 % increase of gas prices by Gazprom.

Kudos to President Sarkozy ‘s efforts but I’m not holding my breath on that one.

Adam Elkus suggested that we may be seeing an example of military theorist Frank Hoffman’s hybrid war in action. Possibly. Or we may see a combined arms version of an EBO attack by Moscow against the Georgian state. The critical variable will be if the Russians try for an occupation of Georgia proper, which will likely result in an open-source insurgency, or if they are engaged in what used to be called a “punitive expedition” and intend a prompt departure while they are still ahead.

Addendum:

In addition to linking to me ( gracias!) Galrahn is chasing down some very interesting rumors regarding Israelis and also of threatened executions of POWs. 

Addendum II.

Discussion at Small Wars Council rises to the occasion.

Addendum III.

Registan has a series of informative posts and lively commenters (some anti-Barnett mania as well). Dr. Dan Nexon has a good post up at Duck of Minerva with a priceless quote:

“We don’t look very good,” said a former Pentagon official long involved in Georgia. “We’ve been working on [Georgia] for four years and we’ve failed. Everyone’s guilty. But Putin is playing his cards brilliantly. He knows exactly what he’s doing and the consequences are all negative.”

That kind of truth telling is good. The fact is that if you look at Georgia and the U.S. backed Ethiopian intervention, there seems to be a systemic failure to anticipate and plan a response for the likely eventualities when carrying out proxy operations. It’s almost as if there’s a rule somewhere forbidding the raising of “What if ”  questions during the interagency process.

Georgia on my Mind: A Russian Round-up:

Thomas P.M. Barnett – Putin picks his moment on Georgia  and Actually, it was Georgia’s timing … and  Answering the inevitable question on Russia

Glittering Eye – South Ossetia (Updated) and The European Decision on Georgia (Updated)

Chicago Boyz – The Children of the Mountains Are Wild…

SWJ Blog – Flash Point: South Ossetia (9 -10 August)

Whirledview – News From Places You May Never Have Heard Of – Updated 8/9/08 and 8/10/08

Danger Room – Did the U.S. prep Georgia for War with Russia? and Russia’s Full Scale Invasion of Georgia

War is Boring – Russia’s Air Blitz over Georgia

tdaxp – How serious is the Russian invasion of Georgia? and McCain for Georgia, Obama for Russia

Fabius Maximus –  The Russia-Georgia war threatens one of the world’s oil arteries

Kings of War – Global patterns, local anomalies

Outside the Beltway – Kosovo and South Ossetia

Sic Semper Tyrannis – 5th Generation Warfare in Georgia?

Belgravia Dispatch – Georgia On My Mind

That’s it!

UPDATE: 

Some analysis: The Bush administration and the EU should really be psychologically prepared for Russia to attempt to “pull a Chechnya” or a “Czechosolavakia” here and try to topple Saakashvili’s government either by inflicting enough serious military reverses that Saakashvili is removed by Georgian  insiders looking to make peace with Putin or perhaps by an old fashioned conquest and installation of a puppet government.  The puppet state will have a short shelf-life and no international recognition ( except Russia and Belarus) but that will be cold comfort for Saakashvili.

Saakashvili’s options are few here. No foreign country is going to ride to his rescue. He can surrender by submitting to all of Putin’s demands, in which case he’s finished politically.  If Saakashvili wishes to strike back hard at Russia his best options are hitting Russia in the pocketbook by sending  covert-ops to sabotage Russian natural gas pipelines and power grids in Moscow and St. Petersburg but ultimately he will still need to negotiate a deal afterwards.  If Saakashvili hopes to avoid being removed from power he ought to arm as many able-bodied Georgian men as possible for a guerilla campaign ( the Russians are not respecting civilians anyway, so there’s little to lose here) to supplemernt the regular army and security forces.

Forces poorly correlated for the Georgians.

UPDATE II. :

Galrahn is doing an excellent job covering the war from a naval perspective

UPDATE III:

An old-time blogfriend,  New Yorker in DC merits a shout out with “Update on the Russo-Georgian crisis“. He’s spot on. Moscow has been bitten by the “mission creep” bug in Ossetia.

Working on multiple posts and several projects. Something up later today…..

Austin Bay scored an interview recently with General David Petraeus. For those newer readers not familiar with Austin, he’s a long time blogfriend ( one of my earliest; if I recall correctly, we were also on the H-Diplo listserv together in the pre-blogging era), an author, professor, journalist and Iraq war veteran, where as a colonel in the Army Reserves he commanded an armored unit and was awarded the Bronze Star.

The video of the interview is here ( registration required for the full interview).

A PajamasMedia podcast of the interview can be found here.

Several blog posts by Bay with excerpts from the interview:

Terror Connects to Crime In Iraq: Analysis by General David Petraeus

General Petraeus: “….We have, in fact, put considerable emphasis on how Al-Qaeda, in Iraq, generates resources. And they do it, again, like a mafia does, that we would be familiar with. It’s through extortion of successful businesses; extortion of money for protection rackets, or what have you; insisting that a cell phone business, for example, give them a cut of their profits or they’ll blow the cell phones down – cell phone towers down; taking a cut out of the cement business, the real estate business, the financial businesses, and so forth.
And you see the same on the militia side; although, again, much reduced now and they don’t control the port of Umm Qasr anymore. They don’t control various other elements that they did control until about six to eight months ago.
So progress there. And then beyond that, certainly corruption is a concern and a problem and one that the Iraqis have very much recognized and about which they’re very concerned. They’ve launched an anti-corruption program.
But this is going to be a serious issue. There is considerable money. There is a very young and still very much developing government largely led by individuals who – very good people and good leaders of opposition parties for many years but have not necessarily exercised strategic leadership in the past and very much growing into their jobs but with bureaucracies that are still very much developing as well.”

UPDATE 2: An Interview With General David Petraeus

AUSTIN BAY: Gen. David Petraeus, let’s pick up on your rheostat analogy. You’re giving us a conditions-based approach to assessing victory in a very intricate, complex and long struggle. Now this is an incremental victory-one step up; a half-step back. Enemy action results in a coalition response; coalition actions result in an enemy response. That’s war among human beings. It strikes me that some of those conditions include a sovereign Iraq that is largely responsible for its own internal security, but is also a United States ally. These are some of the conditions mentioned in the Update Strategic Overwatch video at the ArenaUSA.com. That said; if you would, please comment on a sovereign Iraq emerging as a US ally.

Did you get a chance to look at that video?

GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS: Just briefly, I’m afraid, Austin. But let me just come back to what you just said because the way you stated that is exactly right. It is incremental, and it does have fits and starts. It is this exercise of pushing the stone up a hill, a Sisyphean endeavor at times where you do make two steps up and one step back. Sometimes you get one step up and two steps back.
But, overall, over the course of the past year or so, really since the start of the surge of offenses in particular, that was the large comprehensive offensive launched in June 2007 when we had all of the surge brigades on the ground, since that time, there has been a fairly steady degree of improvement week in/week out, month in/month out. Certainly, again, there have been flare-ups at times. The militia counterattacks, when Prime Minister al-Maliki ordered Iraqi forces and the Basra, were really quite a substantial – more than a flare-up.
But, over time, those were dealt with, more than dealt with, in fact, and very severe losses inflicted on the militia.

 Somehow,  in addition to reporting, Austin  finds the time to write novels,  a syndicated column, blog, give TV interviews and teach undergraduates. I am feeling quite lazy in comparison. LOL!