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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!

In mt previous  post, The Reading List of Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, I asked for reader suggestions on new additions to the list and you responded both here and at Chicago Boyz. Here is what you offered up:

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations  [ Jeremiah ]

War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage  [ Wiggins ]

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game  [ Wiggins ]

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference  [ Glenn ]

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking   [  Glenn ]

Explaining Chaos  [ Munzenberg ]

From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation  [ Munzenberg ]

The Devil in the Details: Asymptotic Reasoning in Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence (Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Science)                        [  Munzenberg  ]

Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization  [ Eddie – can’t find his second rec on Amazon]

Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web Application   [ Jeffrey ]

The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman                  [ Jeffrey ]

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable      [ Adrian – this was also a Hammes rec that I missed in my last post]

Gödel, Escher, Bach. Ein Endloses Geflochtenes Band.      [ Adrian ]

Daemon             [ Arherring ]

Halting State (Ace Science Fiction)    [ Arherring ]

The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War                   [ A.E. ]

City Fights: Selected Histories of Urban Combat from World War II to Vietnam   [ A.E. ]

Criminal-States and Criminal-Soldiers       [ A.E. ]

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets    [ David Foster ]

The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth                  [ David Foster ]

Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work (Financial Times Prentice Hall Books.)   [ David Foster ]

The Age of Discontinuity: Guidelines to Our Changing Society      [ David Foster ]

The Logic Of Failure: Recognizing And Avoiding Error In Complex Situations  [ David Foster ]

Order Out of Chaos   [ Shannon Love ]

And here are mine:

Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century  

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (Strategy and History Series) 

UPDATE:

Blogfriend and cybersecurity expert Gunnar Peterson steps up with his own list.