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Perusing the latest news on the Russo-Georgian War via the always excellent\u00a0SWJ Blog<\/strong><\/a>, I fear some of my analysis from the other day <\/a>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.\u00a0 If something constructive in terms of statesmanship\u00a0is to be done to end the crisis, we ought to move toward doing it while the Georgian Army is still intact.<\/p>\n \u00a0Western bluster <\/a>is not going to help\u00a0Saakashvili\u00a0as much as would quietly\u00a0putting 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\u00a0and 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<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0But doing\u00a0that would require that the Europeans – the\u00a0nations that wanted the BTC pipeline, after all –\u00a0rapidly act as a diplomatic united front\u00a0with Washington and accept some risk of retaliation – say, a 100 %\u00a0increase of gas prices by Gazprom.<\/p>\n Kudos to President Sarkozy ‘s<\/strong> efforts\u00a0but I’m not holding my breath on that one.<\/p>\n Adam Elkus<\/a><\/strong> suggested that we may be seeing an example of military theorist Frank Hoffman’s<\/strong> hybrid war <\/a>in action. Possibly. Or we may see a\u00a0combined arms version of an EBO attack <\/a>by Moscow against the Georgian state. The critical variable will be if the Russians\u00a0try for an occupation of Georgia proper, which will likely result in an open-source\u00a0insurgency<\/a>,\u00a0or if they are engaged in what used to be called a “punitive expedition” and intend a prompt departure while they are still ahead.<\/p>\n Addendum:<\/strong><\/p>\n In addition to linking to me ( gracias!) Galrahn<\/strong> is chasing down some very interesting rumors regarding Israelis and also of threatened executions of POWs.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Addendum II.<\/strong><\/p>\n Discussion at Small Wars Council <\/strong><\/a>rises to the occasion.<\/p>\n Addendum III.<\/strong><\/p>\n Registan<\/a><\/strong> has a series of informative posts and lively commenters (some anti-Barnett mania as well). Dr. Dan Nexon<\/strong> has a good post <\/a>up at Duck of Minerva<\/a><\/strong> with a priceless quote:<\/p>\n “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\u00a0when carrying out proxy operations. It’s almost as if there’s a rule somewhere forbidding the raising of “What if ”\u00a0 questions during the interagency process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Perusing the latest news on the Russo-Georgian War via the always excellent\u00a0SWJ 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.\u00a0 If something constructive in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,334,87,178,39,88,91,86,127,530,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diplomacy","category-europe","category-foreign-policy","category-geopolitics","category-military","category-putin","category-russia","category-siloviki","category-strategy","category-strategy-and-war","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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