Recommended Reading
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.
August 10th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Probably worth watching, blog monitoring cyber-warfare (but above my technical grade):
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http://rbnexploit.blogspot.com/
August 10th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
This blog is probably worth watching, it is monitoring the cyber-warfare aspect:
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http://rbnexploit.blogspot.com/
August 10th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I think the second alternative that you’ve presented–that the Russians will forcibly remove the Saakashvili government–is quite unlikely especially since they can achieve all of thier objectives by the first method at very little cost.
August 10th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
[…] Zenpundit for links to some of the most valuable blognotes about the […]
August 10th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
And what would stop the Russians from doing the same to Georgia’s pipelines? Saakashvili’s gamble (and perhaps Washington’s, if the reports they green-lighted this nonsense have any merit) failed miserably. Now we get to deal with the aftermath, whatever it may be.
August 10th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Hi Charles,
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Much thanks – will check it out.
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Hi Dave,
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Never said it would be wise, simply possible given a big does of nationalistic hubris. Bismarck had to talk Wilhelm of Prussia ( later Kaiser Wilhelm I) out of trying to gobble up much of Austria-Hungary when the King got carried away after winning the brief Austro-Prussian War over Schleswig-Holstein and Confederation of the Rhine issues. There’s a lot of siloviki and generals feeling their oats right now.
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Hi Eddie,
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The Russians are already targeting Georgian pipelines. A way of zinging the Europeans for supporting Saakashvili and trying to EUropeanize Georgia and detach it from the "near abroad" zone.
August 10th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Zen,
Any chance the EUros treat this seriously enough to consider risking good relations with the Russians by taking a stronger tack on everything from native energy development to defense budgets?
August 10th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Eddie,
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Not if it involves any kind of sacrifice, no. Ironic, given the EU was supporting the Georgians with as much enthusiasm as the U.S., if not more. Europe is hooked on Russian natural gas, as Reagan warned they would be ( he was much derided as a neanderthal for that by both Europeans and our clever NYT intelligentsia at the time – but he was right and they were wrong – as on most issues). Russia will do whatever it can to block a "southern route" for Central Asian gas or oil pipelines from the ‘Stans that would avoid Russian territory and dilute their leverage.
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Sarkozy will probably make some kind of a valiant effort to round up a "strong statement" but the EU member states that lack direct experience with Russia will balk at doing anything that might cause them to pay higher energy prices.
August 11th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Thank you Zen. I suppose Merkel won’t have much to say and do even less.
August 11th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Then again, given the role the US has played leading up to this, as well as Russia’s decision to take it beyond the stated military objectives, the US could as well start supplying weapons and other armaments to Georgia if Russia wants to turn it into an invasion…. The potential boldness/stupidity/brilliance (sometimes all at once) of the Bush Admin can’t surely be not a factor soon enough.
August 11th, 2008 at 2:26 am
Merkel has a solid character, but to put it in perspective, Germany produces 600 billion cubic feet of natural gas…..but imports 3 Trillion cubic feet annually. About half of that is from Russia, making Gazprom Germany’s most important energy supplier. Nuff said there.
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Putin may go the distance with Georgia because he has the key players checkmated and is going to take special pleasure in making Saakashvili twist in the wind in order to cause vicarious squirming in Brussells and Washington, both of whom have been caught here with their pants down. This was well planned by Putin and they’ve probably been waiting for a suitable pretext for some time now.
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"The potential boldness/stupidity/brilliance (sometimes all at once) of the Bush Admin can’t surely be not a factor soon enough."
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The best "bold" move would not be to do something to escalate the Georgian situation which should be played to salvage at this point, but to do something unexpected and unrelated that creates distraction and confusion in Moscow.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:01 am
Useful roundup, thanks.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Because I am getting TV from Moscow, I’m able to get pretty rapid updates of the situation.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:49 am
Gracias Lewis!
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Josh – like your masthead reference to Montesquieu. Everyone should read Spirit of the Laws at some point in their intellectual life.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I’ve put in my two cents <a href="http://rethinkingsecurity.typepad.com/rethinkingsecurity/2008/08/report-russia-georgia.html">here</a>.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Oops, html error. Correct link is here (for some reason HTML editor in comment box not working) http://tinyurl.com/5p3yv5
August 11th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Zen, I can’t believe you actually make this suggestion, of covert operations by Georgians on Russian territory. It’s irresponsible, at the very least. For someone who understands how foreign intelligence works you’re incredibly loose-tongued. There are already reports of <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/2006/intell-060929-voa01.htm">arrests of so-called Georgian spies</a> – do you have any idea how serious it is? The scenario you suggest so lightly inevitably starts a witchhunt in Russia, in the manner of 1930’s. Do youi understand that lives of real peopleare at risk?
Do you want to take that responsibility on you?
I can’t believe you could do such a stupid thing
August 11th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Tatyana,
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Do you really believe that I have suggested something here unknown to intelligence and military professionals in Russia or Georgia? Or to anyone even fairly well versed in the literature of military strategy or history ? These things have already been considered and most likely wargamed multiple times prior to the onset of hostilities by more countries than just Russia and Georgia. The question for the Georgians in terms of systems disruption are their capabilities and the costs of their very limited set of options. It’s not going to be a picnic if the Russians believe that there is no deterrent against their marching into Georgia proper ( aside from a bloody guerilla war).
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Go read Brave New War. I haven’t mentioned a bare fraction of the possible angles here.
August 11th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Do you want to take a chance? They are not very well organized, not as well as CIA, f.ex – and we all saw in recent years what a mess that agency is.
Wargamed or not, now’s not the time to open your mouth on public blog , when Russian intelligence actively harvest blogosphere.
You have no experience in dealing with them, you never lived under the net – but you’re not the one who’s going to suffer, other people might.
I will go read what I want to read, definitely not some spy games literature. But I know enough not to say thing that might hurt somebody during open military operations.
This is not a game, Zen. People die.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:05 am
" will go read what I want to read, definitely not some spy games literature"
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Ouch! Sorry John!
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Heh. If John Robb wrote spy literature he’d probably have made a lot more money on his book and gotten a big movie deal by now. I’ll just leave things at that.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
I frankly doubt that Putin cares about any of our opinions about what the Georgians should or shouldn’t have done. If he takes any of our scribblings on the Internets seriously, the guy has much bigger problems to deal with than Georgia.
BTW, William Gibson novels kind of approximate John Robb’s writings in a fictional sense, although they lack the gritty touch that would be needed to do justice to stories of insurgent warfare and criminal netwar.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
A.E. – the fact that there are miriads of Russian trolls descended all of a sudden – and in all the right places (blogs that people read, points of public discussion and opinion exchange), sowing disinformation should tell you something about level of interest and methods of propaganda employed by the Russian side. There are other purposes they plough the waves for, though. In any case – would you rather guess or think that irresponsible rambling from the armchair might hurt someone on active duty? Are you prepared to take that chance?
Can’t help but remark – oh gods, there is no bigger fool than an encyclopedically-educated fool.
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Please ignore this post… I am using this year-old post and comment space for a test, to find out:
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does a single period cause a paragraph break in these comments?
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or can I use an HTML "p" in carrets?
<p>
and will an HTML "blockquote" macro work? <blockquote>Eh?</blockquote>We’ll see…
June 13th, 2011 at 2:29 am
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