Full Version: Russia starts full-scale Georgia invasion
Common Ground Common Sense > Issues that Affect Our Lives > Foreign Policy and National Defense > Foreign Policy & National Defense Issues Archive
As mentioned, I am curious to see how they comport themselves in the coming weeks.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=5563394&page=1
Sarkozy Arrives in Moscow to Mediate Crisis
Russia Says Georgian President Should Leave Office
By CLARISSA WARD
TBILISI, Georgia Aug. 12, 2008
The president of Russia decided today that his tanks and air raids had dished out enough punishment to the country of Georgia and called a halt to five days of devastating attacks.
Russia has ordered an end to military operations in Georgia.
President Dmitry Medvedev ended the onslaught against the former Soviet republic, just as French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Moscow to mediate a truce between the two countries.
But Russian forces had already kicked Georgian troops out of the breakaway province of South Ossetia, surged across the border on two fronts to seize Georgian towns, police stations and military bases, and pounded military installations deep inside Georgia with swarms of warplanes.
Before peace talks began, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia would not deal with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvilli, a staunch U.S. ally, and said that Saakashvili should leave office.
In calling an end to the Russian assault, Medvedev told Russian TV, "The security of our peacekeepers and civilians has been restored. The aggressor has been punished and suffered very significant losses."
He also gave a blunt warning to Georgia by publicly ordering Russia's defense minister to be ready to resume attacks, "If there are any emerging hotbeds of resistance or any aggressive actions, you should take steps to destroy them."
Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze told Reuters that Russian jets were still on the attack, bombing two Georgian villages just outside the South Ossetia border.
"We will need more evidence, everyone in this situation needs a signed binding agreement," Gurgenidze said.
Medvedev said any final deal must include Georgia withdrawing all of its troops from South Ossetia and promising not to use violence to settle the dispute over its rebel province.
He also insisted that Russian troops would remain in South Ossetia and in a second breakaway Georgian province of Abkhazia, and that both provinces should be able to decide whether they want to be part of Georgia or join Russia.
Saakashvili responded to Medvedev defiantly, saying he would declare South Ossetia and Abkhazia to be "occupied territories."
"No matter what they do, no matter how much they bomb us, no matter how much they cripples us, Georgia will never surrender," Saakashvili vowed. He charged that Putin and Medvedev want to restore the Soviet Union, which once ruled over Georgia.
"We should never go back to the Soviet Union," Saakashvili declared.
In the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, the streets were packed with people waving red and white Georgian flags, chanting anti-Russian slogans and listening to speakers denounce the Russian offensive. The crowd became angry when a speaker announced that Russians were bombing villages in the north despite the cease-fire, although there was no way to confirm the allegation.
In the hours before the cease-fire, however, Russia's military was busy. A Reuters correspondent reported bombs landing near him in the town of Gori shortly before the cease-fire took effect. A reporter for ABC News said that outside of the town of Gori were signs of a hasty retreat by Georgian troops, the road littered with abandoned military equipment, including tanks.
Russia also launched a last-minute offensive against Georgian troops clinging to a section of Abkhazia, a second province that has effectively split away from Georgia with Russian approval. An Associated Press reporter said he counted 135 Russian military vehicles, including tanks, headed for the region today.
With the guns finally silent, the two sides began to assess the human toll.
Russia estimated that more than 1,600 people have been killed in South Ossetia since Friday, most of them Ossetians with Russian passports. The figures could not be independently confirmed, but refugees said hundreds had been killed.
The United Nations estimated that the five days of fighting left nearly 100,000 people homeless by either destroying their homes or sending them fleeing for safety. The UN said it sent the first of two humanitarian flights into Georgia carrying enough food and supplies for 30,000 people.
Political tensions remained high.
Poland's president and the leaders of four ex-Soviet republics headed to Georgia for a meeting with Saakashvili to send a signal of solidarity with Tbilisi.
"We may say that the Russian state has once again shown its face, its true face," said Poland's Lech Kaczynski, who will be joined by counterparts from Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine and Latvia.
President George W. Bush sternly warned Russia on Monday in a Rose Garden news conference to end its "brutal escalation" of violence.
"Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century," Bush said.
The fighting erupted last week when Georgia moved to regain control of South Ossetia. The province, which has a largely Russian population, broke away from Georgia in the 1990s and has had Russia's blessing since then. A second province, Abkhazia, followed suit.
Georgian troops were able to quickly move into the South Ossetian capital, but Russian tanks and planes promptly chased them out.
The crisis threatened to draw Western countries into the conflict. Georgia is an ally of the Bush administration and has sought membership in NATO.
The West also was concerned because vital oil pipelines run through Georgia. Any disruptions of those pipelines could send world oil prices upwards again.
As a precaution, the British oil company BP shut down its Georgia pipeline today. There are no reports of any damage to pipelines in Georgia.
So who shut down the pipe line? I heard today it had been shut down. No bombing on pipeline so OIL 9000 barrels a day is still the primary issue!
QUOTE(cutecat @ Aug 12 2008, 09:58 AM) 
So who shut down the pipe line? I heard today it had been shut down. No bombing on pipeline so OIL 9000 barrels a day is still the primary issue!
One pipeline (biggest) closed by PKK bombing in Turkey last week, other closed as a precaution with some unconfirmed reports it was hit by a bomb after being closed. NG pipeline operational but deliveries to Armenia cut 30%.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...1831523,00.html
Volunteering to Kill Georgians
Monday, Aug. 11, 2008
By JOHN WENDLE / VLADIKAVKAZ
The Vladikavkaz City Recruiting Center in the Russian territory of North Ossetia lies just outside the main town, through a tall, steel gate. Inside, along a small driveway overlapped by tall pines, lie a parking lot, pavilion and fruit orchard. A low, two-story concrete building with peeling paint serves as the recruiting center. Men in clean, dark green fatigues organize would-be recruits. They are mostly men in their 50s and 60s who have already served but are too old now. Lots of gray hair and mustaches, gold teeth and cigarettes.
Around the courtyard, the potential recruits, men of all ages, squat and stand. There are half a dozen in their 20s; at least twice as many older men, some as old as 50. A group of 10 Cossacks — in their traditional blue breeches with a wide red stripe down the side, green tunic bedecked in medals and tall black riding boots — forms to one side. One man has a curled handlebar mustache and watery pale-blue eyes. The men in this group won't talk to the press and keep walking off to stand and talk in a circle in the orchard. But one told a reporter earlier that he had come all the way from Siberia to serve in the Russian operations across the border in Georgia and its breakaway region South Ossetia. They look like a rough, hard bunch.
A tall, athletic Serb in his mid-40s, with blue eyes and curly long blond hair, comes into the courtyard. He walks over to the group of Cossacks, picks the oldest one out of the group and gives him a big hug and a kiss on each cheek. According to two of the men in the courtyard, the Serb, who is wearing new fatigues and slightly worn Asolo hiking boots, had fought Bosnia and is now there to fight in South Ossetia and Georgia. He may have fought in Chechnya, but no one will say. I talk to him for a moment. He speaks some English but is more comfortable in his lightly accented Russian. "I've come to fight in South Ossetia alongside the Russians," he says.
The older men in the group of would-be recruits sit in a row on a bench smoking cigarettes. Some carry plastic red-white-and-blue-striped rice bags. The few recruiters who agree to be interviewed tell similar stories. They accuse the American and Western press of lying about the events in Georgia. No one believes that the Russians have invaded Georgia and that Tbilisi and other cities have been bombed. Because the Russian press has not reported it, they say, it cannot be true. A rumor widely circulated is that black soldiers have been spotted fighting on the Georgian side. This is seen as incontrovertible evidence that America is helping Georgia with military aid. There is widespread, anti-American sentiment here.
That's one of the reasons men continue to trudge into the recruitment center as the morning unfolds. "Hopefully I will go to serve tomorrow," says Ramaz Kuchiev, 27, who has arrived from Mazdok, a city in North Ossetia. "Probably we will go to Tskhinvali. There is a group of 50 of us that are prepared to serve right now." Kuchiev has amber eyes and a calm but intense demeanor. He served his two years in the Russian army at a base near Moscow. Now he is unemployed; he is wearing a bright red shirt and pointy black shoes. "I want to go to Tskhinvali. The Georgians shot small children there. I want to go kill Georgians."
Volunteering to Kill Georgians
Monday, Aug. 11, 2008
By JOHN WENDLE / VLADIKAVKAZ
The Vladikavkaz City Recruiting Center in the Russian territory of North Ossetia lies just outside the main town, through a tall, steel gate. Inside, along a small driveway overlapped by tall pines, lie a parking lot, pavilion and fruit orchard. A low, two-story concrete building with peeling paint serves as the recruiting center. Men in clean, dark green fatigues organize would-be recruits. They are mostly men in their 50s and 60s who have already served but are too old now. Lots of gray hair and mustaches, gold teeth and cigarettes.
Around the courtyard, the potential recruits, men of all ages, squat and stand. There are half a dozen in their 20s; at least twice as many older men, some as old as 50. A group of 10 Cossacks — in their traditional blue breeches with a wide red stripe down the side, green tunic bedecked in medals and tall black riding boots — forms to one side. One man has a curled handlebar mustache and watery pale-blue eyes. The men in this group won't talk to the press and keep walking off to stand and talk in a circle in the orchard. But one told a reporter earlier that he had come all the way from Siberia to serve in the Russian operations across the border in Georgia and its breakaway region South Ossetia. They look like a rough, hard bunch.
A tall, athletic Serb in his mid-40s, with blue eyes and curly long blond hair, comes into the courtyard. He walks over to the group of Cossacks, picks the oldest one out of the group and gives him a big hug and a kiss on each cheek. According to two of the men in the courtyard, the Serb, who is wearing new fatigues and slightly worn Asolo hiking boots, had fought Bosnia and is now there to fight in South Ossetia and Georgia. He may have fought in Chechnya, but no one will say. I talk to him for a moment. He speaks some English but is more comfortable in his lightly accented Russian. "I've come to fight in South Ossetia alongside the Russians," he says.
The older men in the group of would-be recruits sit in a row on a bench smoking cigarettes. Some carry plastic red-white-and-blue-striped rice bags. The few recruiters who agree to be interviewed tell similar stories. They accuse the American and Western press of lying about the events in Georgia. No one believes that the Russians have invaded Georgia and that Tbilisi and other cities have been bombed. Because the Russian press has not reported it, they say, it cannot be true. A rumor widely circulated is that black soldiers have been spotted fighting on the Georgian side. This is seen as incontrovertible evidence that America is helping Georgia with military aid. There is widespread, anti-American sentiment here.
That's one of the reasons men continue to trudge into the recruitment center as the morning unfolds. "Hopefully I will go to serve tomorrow," says Ramaz Kuchiev, 27, who has arrived from Mazdok, a city in North Ossetia. "Probably we will go to Tskhinvali. There is a group of 50 of us that are prepared to serve right now." Kuchiev has amber eyes and a calm but intense demeanor. He served his two years in the Russian army at a base near Moscow. Now he is unemployed; he is wearing a bright red shirt and pointy black shoes. "I want to go to Tskhinvali. The Georgians shot small children there. I want to go kill Georgians."
This is a pipeline war. Georgia was stupid enough to start the fighting. Now the pipeline is in danger. Another dumb Bush adventure in any case.
Is there any proof that this is due to Bush's influence? I don't like him, but I would not attribute powers or influence to him that I doubt he has.
Yet one must look at who started the war. The Georgia people made the first military move. They are Bush clients. Bush did not know? We will see. In any case both Obama and McCain do not know enough of the inside facts to make serious comment. What if the Russians were justified? That makes someone supporting Bush look stupid just like as in Iraq.
QUOTE(david sobien @ Aug 13 2008, 12:16 AM)
Yet one must look at who started the war. The Georgia people made the first military move. They are Bush clients. Bush did not know? We will see. In any case both Obama and McCain do not know enough of the inside facts to make serious comment. What if the Russians were justified? That makes someone supporting Bush look stupid just like as in Iraq.
I think the Russians were justified.
And I think Bush was in the Olympics (looking drunk) as an alibi, just like he was in the schoolhouse on 9-11
this whole thing was just a show
and a distraction of another theft
While Bush and the media tell you to look one way, something is happening unseen.
If Bush did not know, then Cheney knows exactly what went down. As they wanted it too.
And if they messed up, wait and see the real story...something might be an illusion and not transparent.
When a crisis breaks during a presidential campaign, there is risk that campaign rhetoric can muddy the waters for diplomats working to resolve the crisis. Both candidates need to be circumspect so that US diplomacy can speak with one voice.
In this particular crisis, at this point, there's too much confusion on the ground to make pronouncements about who is the aggressor. What is clear is that Russian troops have moved into Georgian territory in force and Georgian troops and civilians have taken heavy casualties. Diplomatic efforts are struggling to achieve a cease fire and secure a withdrawal of Russian troops.
The candidates need to support these diplomatic efforts and move on to other issues in the campaign. When the dust settles later in the fall, debate about US foreign policy in the Caucuses would be more appropriate.
In this particular crisis, at this point, there's too much confusion on the ground to make pronouncements about who is the aggressor. What is clear is that Russian troops have moved into Georgian territory in force and Georgian troops and civilians have taken heavy casualties. Diplomatic efforts are struggling to achieve a cease fire and secure a withdrawal of Russian troops.
The candidates need to support these diplomatic efforts and move on to other issues in the campaign. When the dust settles later in the fall, debate about US foreign policy in the Caucuses would be more appropriate.
QUOTE(Istoodforu @ Aug 13 2008, 08:39 AM)
When a crisis breaks during a presidential campaign, there is risk that campaign rhetoric can muddy the waters for diplomats working to resolve the crisis. Both candidates need to be circumspect so that US diplomacy can speak with one voice.
In this particular crisis, at this point, there's too much confusion on the ground to make pronouncements about who is the aggressor. What is clear is that Russian troops have moved into Georgian territory in force and Georgian troops and civilians have taken heavy casualties. Diplomatic efforts are struggling to achieve a cease fire and secure a withdrawal of Russian troops.
The candidates need to support these diplomatic efforts and move on to other issues in the campaign. When the dust settles later in the fall, debate about US foreign policy in the Caucuses would be more appropriate.
In this particular crisis, at this point, there's too much confusion on the ground to make pronouncements about who is the aggressor. What is clear is that Russian troops have moved into Georgian territory in force and Georgian troops and civilians have taken heavy casualties. Diplomatic efforts are struggling to achieve a cease fire and secure a withdrawal of Russian troops.
The candidates need to support these diplomatic efforts and move on to other issues in the campaign. When the dust settles later in the fall, debate about US foreign policy in the Caucuses would be more appropriate.
I agree.
A Path to Peace in the Caucasus
By Mikhail Gorbachev
Tuesday, August 12, 2008; A13
MOSCOW -- The past week's events in South Ossetia are bound to shock and pain anyone. Already, thousands of people have died, tens of thousands have been turned into refugees, and towns and villages lie in ruins. Nothing can justify this loss of life and destruction. It is a warning to all.
The roots of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia's separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy. This turned out to be a time bomb for Georgia's territorial integrity. Each time successive Georgian leaders tried to impose their will by force -- both in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, where the issues of autonomy are similar -- it only made the situation worse. New wounds aggravated old injuries.
Nevertheless, it was still possible to find a political solution. For some time, relative calm was maintained in South Ossetia. The peacekeeping force composed of Russians, Georgians and Ossetians fulfilled its mission, and ordinary Ossetians and Georgians, who live close to each other, found at least some common ground.
Through all these years, Russia has continued to recognize Georgia's territorial integrity. Clearly, the only way to solve the South Ossetian problem on that basis is through peaceful means. Indeed, in a civilized world, there is no other way.
The Georgian leadership flouted this key principle.
What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against "small, defenseless Georgia" is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity.
Mounting a military assault against innocents was a reckless decision whose tragic consequences, for thousands of people of different nationalities, are now clear. The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force. Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of U.S. instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of NATO membership, emboldened Georgian leaders into thinking that they could get away with a "blitzkrieg" in South Ossetia.
In other words, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was expecting unconditional support from the West, and the West had given him reason to think he would have it. Now that the Georgian military assault has been routed, both the Georgian government and its supporters should rethink their position.
Hostilities must cease as soon as possible, and urgent steps must be taken to help the victims -- the humanitarian catastrophe, regretfully, received very little coverage in Western media this weekend -- and to rebuild the devastated towns and villages. It is equally important to start thinking about ways to solve the underlying problem, which is among the most painful and challenging issues in the Caucasus -- a region that should be approached with the greatest care.
When the problems of South Ossetia and Abkhazia first flared up, I proposed that they be settled through a federation that would grant broad autonomy to the two republics. This idea was dismissed, particularly by the Georgians. Attitudes gradually shifted, but after last week, it will be much more difficult to strike a deal even on such a basis.
Old grievances are a heavy burden. Healing is a long process that requires patience and dialogue, with non-use of force an indispensable precondition. It took decades to bring to an end similar conflicts in Europe and elsewhere, and other long-standing issues are still smoldering. In addition to patience, this situation requires wisdom.
Small nations of the Caucasus do have a history of living together. It has been demonstrated that a lasting peace is possible, that tolerance and cooperation can create conditions for normal life and development. Nothing is more important than that.
The region's political leaders need to realize this. Instead of flexing military muscle, they should devote their efforts to building the groundwork for durable peace.
Over the past few days, some Western nations have taken positions, particularly in the U.N. Security Council, that have been far from balanced. As a result, the Security Council was not able to act effectively from the very start of this conflict. By declaring the Caucasus, a region that is thousands of miles from the American continent, a sphere of its "national interest," the United States made a serious blunder. Of course, peace in the Caucasus is in everyone's interest. But it is simply common sense to recognize that Russia is rooted there by common geography and centuries of history. Russia is not seeking territorial expansion, but it has legitimate interests in this region.
The international community's long-term aim could be to create a sub-regional system of security and cooperation that would make any provocation, and the very possibility of crises such as this one, impossible. Building this type of system would be challenging and could only be accomplished with the cooperation of the region's countries themselves. Nations outside the region could perhaps help, too -- but only if they take a fair and objective stance. A lesson from recent events is that geopolitical games are dangerous anywhere, not just in the Caucasus.
The writer was the last president of the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and is president of the Gorbachev Foundation, a Moscow think tank. A version of this article, in Russian, will be published in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper tomorrow.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1101372_pf.html
By Mikhail Gorbachev
Tuesday, August 12, 2008; A13
MOSCOW -- The past week's events in South Ossetia are bound to shock and pain anyone. Already, thousands of people have died, tens of thousands have been turned into refugees, and towns and villages lie in ruins. Nothing can justify this loss of life and destruction. It is a warning to all.
The roots of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia's separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy. This turned out to be a time bomb for Georgia's territorial integrity. Each time successive Georgian leaders tried to impose their will by force -- both in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, where the issues of autonomy are similar -- it only made the situation worse. New wounds aggravated old injuries.
Nevertheless, it was still possible to find a political solution. For some time, relative calm was maintained in South Ossetia. The peacekeeping force composed of Russians, Georgians and Ossetians fulfilled its mission, and ordinary Ossetians and Georgians, who live close to each other, found at least some common ground.
Through all these years, Russia has continued to recognize Georgia's territorial integrity. Clearly, the only way to solve the South Ossetian problem on that basis is through peaceful means. Indeed, in a civilized world, there is no other way.
The Georgian leadership flouted this key principle.
What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against "small, defenseless Georgia" is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity.
Mounting a military assault against innocents was a reckless decision whose tragic consequences, for thousands of people of different nationalities, are now clear. The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force. Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of U.S. instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of NATO membership, emboldened Georgian leaders into thinking that they could get away with a "blitzkrieg" in South Ossetia.
In other words, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was expecting unconditional support from the West, and the West had given him reason to think he would have it. Now that the Georgian military assault has been routed, both the Georgian government and its supporters should rethink their position.
Hostilities must cease as soon as possible, and urgent steps must be taken to help the victims -- the humanitarian catastrophe, regretfully, received very little coverage in Western media this weekend -- and to rebuild the devastated towns and villages. It is equally important to start thinking about ways to solve the underlying problem, which is among the most painful and challenging issues in the Caucasus -- a region that should be approached with the greatest care.
When the problems of South Ossetia and Abkhazia first flared up, I proposed that they be settled through a federation that would grant broad autonomy to the two republics. This idea was dismissed, particularly by the Georgians. Attitudes gradually shifted, but after last week, it will be much more difficult to strike a deal even on such a basis.
Old grievances are a heavy burden. Healing is a long process that requires patience and dialogue, with non-use of force an indispensable precondition. It took decades to bring to an end similar conflicts in Europe and elsewhere, and other long-standing issues are still smoldering. In addition to patience, this situation requires wisdom.
Small nations of the Caucasus do have a history of living together. It has been demonstrated that a lasting peace is possible, that tolerance and cooperation can create conditions for normal life and development. Nothing is more important than that.
The region's political leaders need to realize this. Instead of flexing military muscle, they should devote their efforts to building the groundwork for durable peace.
Over the past few days, some Western nations have taken positions, particularly in the U.N. Security Council, that have been far from balanced. As a result, the Security Council was not able to act effectively from the very start of this conflict. By declaring the Caucasus, a region that is thousands of miles from the American continent, a sphere of its "national interest," the United States made a serious blunder. Of course, peace in the Caucasus is in everyone's interest. But it is simply common sense to recognize that Russia is rooted there by common geography and centuries of history. Russia is not seeking territorial expansion, but it has legitimate interests in this region.
The international community's long-term aim could be to create a sub-regional system of security and cooperation that would make any provocation, and the very possibility of crises such as this one, impossible. Building this type of system would be challenging and could only be accomplished with the cooperation of the region's countries themselves. Nations outside the region could perhaps help, too -- but only if they take a fair and objective stance. A lesson from recent events is that geopolitical games are dangerous anywhere, not just in the Caucasus.
The writer was the last president of the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and is president of the Gorbachev Foundation, a Moscow think tank. A version of this article, in Russian, will be published in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper tomorrow.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1101372_pf.html
So - The Russians accepted the cease fire, yet they are still blowing up ships and moving their armor divisions to within 20 miles of the Capital of Georgia... I don't think the Russians are going to budge until Misha resigns.
QUOTE(Terra @ Aug 13 2008, 12:31 PM)
So - The Russians accepted the cease fire, yet they are still blowing up ships and moving their armor divisions to within 20 miles of the Capital of Georgia... I don't think the Russians are going to budge until Misha resigns.
They'll budge without the resignation, but Misha is making up most of the action (like the tanks and looting in Gori that the residents and reporters there couldn't find any evidence of) and he's now saying he won't abide by the cease fire. He lied about where the bombers were flying from (he KNEW it wasn't Armenia) trying to get more support from Azerbaijan and Turkey, I'd demand proof if he called g4a a liar. Misha just has to accept they got their tail kicked and STFU instead of trying to restart hostilities because he got some sympathy.
This is all about Putin and showing his power -- flexing his muscle -- whacking into line an arrogant child...
Georgia a policy debacle for US
Thomas Meaney and Harris Mylonas
August 13, 2008 - 12:00AM
AdvertisementBacking rebel movements, as in Kosovo, sets a dangerous precedent.
FOR the coolest composure while going to war, the gold medal goes to Vladimir Putin. At the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing, the Russian leader maintained his characteristic calm — giving a firm salute to the Russian athletes marching by — while he arranged for another kind of march into the disputed territory of South Ossetia.
It's clear that Mr Putin considers this payback time, not only for Georgia, Russia's meddlesome neighbour to the south, but also for President George Bush.
In February, Mr Bush and most leaders in Europe backed the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, which Mr Putin vociferously opposed. At the time US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave the assurance that "Kosovo cannot be seen as precedent for any other situation in the world today".
But precedent is just what it set. By the same logic that led to partition of Kosovo — a region that suffered terribly under Serbian rule — Putin hopes to sever South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia and bring them back into the Russian orbit of influence. He is effectively using our own medicine against us.
To avoid conflict and carnage like this in the future, the United States and the world community need a more consistent platform when it comes to fledgling independence movements. Why does the US support movements in some places, such as Kosovo, and thwart them in others, such as South Ossetia?
Like every great power, the US chooses to support self-determination movements that destabilise its competitors (Russia, China, Iran) and oppose the ones backed by them. This has always been a central tenet of realism in foreign policy.
But it is also a Pandora's box. If the US opts not to respect the principle of sovereignty, it encourages other powers to do the same, thus undermining state sovereignty the world over.
As long as the international community continues to reward some self-determination movements and deny others, the leaders of such movements will continue to appeal to the highest bidder.
The people of South Ossetia knew that if they provoked Georgia, they would also provoke Russia to come to the rescue.
If the US wants to prolong its global influence and enhance the legitimacy of international institutions, it should send a clear message that partition is never an answer.
It must work within existing borders and encourage world leaders to make their ethnic minorities equal partners in government, rather than backing rebels who pursue states within states like a succession of Russian dolls.
In the long run, US inconsistency jeopardises the possibility of ethnic pluralism becoming a universal ideal and a workable solution for multi-ethnic societies.
As citizens of a nation that was founded on the principle of self-determination, Americans are understandably uncomfortable about depriving others of that right.
The case for preserving state sovereignty has always had less appeal for Americans than the allure of an independence movement. But while its own independence was based on a doctrine of individual rights, the vast majority of self-determination movements today are based on ethnic group rights.
Groups as divergent as the Kurds and the Tibetans have made repeated appeals for self-governance in the past decade. But the urgency of their calls relies less on any liberal principle than on the sheer fact of their ethnic preponderance in their regions and the violence they have endured.
So what do we do when ethnic minorities such as the South Ossetians, Abkhazians, Kurds, Bosnians or Kosovo Albanians are forcefully repressed by their respective host states?
The world community has an obligation to protect them, of course. But it's far from clear that backing self-determination movements and partitioning existing states is the best policy.
Ironically, history shows that insecure host states are more likely to consider ethnic cleansing as a solution whenever an internationally backed movement for a new state emerges.
The unintended consequences of ethnic partitions have typically brought more violence, more
inter-state conflict and more self-determination movements. Our best bet is therefore to work with the borders we have, not the borders we want.
Thomas Meaney is a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University. Harris Mylonas is a PhD candidate in political science at Yale.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/georgia-a...80812-3u4w.html
Georgia a policy debacle for US
Thomas Meaney and Harris Mylonas
August 13, 2008 - 12:00AM
AdvertisementBacking rebel movements, as in Kosovo, sets a dangerous precedent.
FOR the coolest composure while going to war, the gold medal goes to Vladimir Putin. At the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing, the Russian leader maintained his characteristic calm — giving a firm salute to the Russian athletes marching by — while he arranged for another kind of march into the disputed territory of South Ossetia.
It's clear that Mr Putin considers this payback time, not only for Georgia, Russia's meddlesome neighbour to the south, but also for President George Bush.
In February, Mr Bush and most leaders in Europe backed the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, which Mr Putin vociferously opposed. At the time US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave the assurance that "Kosovo cannot be seen as precedent for any other situation in the world today".
But precedent is just what it set. By the same logic that led to partition of Kosovo — a region that suffered terribly under Serbian rule — Putin hopes to sever South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia and bring them back into the Russian orbit of influence. He is effectively using our own medicine against us.
To avoid conflict and carnage like this in the future, the United States and the world community need a more consistent platform when it comes to fledgling independence movements. Why does the US support movements in some places, such as Kosovo, and thwart them in others, such as South Ossetia?
Like every great power, the US chooses to support self-determination movements that destabilise its competitors (Russia, China, Iran) and oppose the ones backed by them. This has always been a central tenet of realism in foreign policy.
But it is also a Pandora's box. If the US opts not to respect the principle of sovereignty, it encourages other powers to do the same, thus undermining state sovereignty the world over.
As long as the international community continues to reward some self-determination movements and deny others, the leaders of such movements will continue to appeal to the highest bidder.
The people of South Ossetia knew that if they provoked Georgia, they would also provoke Russia to come to the rescue.
If the US wants to prolong its global influence and enhance the legitimacy of international institutions, it should send a clear message that partition is never an answer.
It must work within existing borders and encourage world leaders to make their ethnic minorities equal partners in government, rather than backing rebels who pursue states within states like a succession of Russian dolls.
In the long run, US inconsistency jeopardises the possibility of ethnic pluralism becoming a universal ideal and a workable solution for multi-ethnic societies.
As citizens of a nation that was founded on the principle of self-determination, Americans are understandably uncomfortable about depriving others of that right.
The case for preserving state sovereignty has always had less appeal for Americans than the allure of an independence movement. But while its own independence was based on a doctrine of individual rights, the vast majority of self-determination movements today are based on ethnic group rights.
Groups as divergent as the Kurds and the Tibetans have made repeated appeals for self-governance in the past decade. But the urgency of their calls relies less on any liberal principle than on the sheer fact of their ethnic preponderance in their regions and the violence they have endured.
So what do we do when ethnic minorities such as the South Ossetians, Abkhazians, Kurds, Bosnians or Kosovo Albanians are forcefully repressed by their respective host states?
The world community has an obligation to protect them, of course. But it's far from clear that backing self-determination movements and partitioning existing states is the best policy.
Ironically, history shows that insecure host states are more likely to consider ethnic cleansing as a solution whenever an internationally backed movement for a new state emerges.
The unintended consequences of ethnic partitions have typically brought more violence, more
inter-state conflict and more self-determination movements. Our best bet is therefore to work with the borders we have, not the borders we want.
Thomas Meaney is a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University. Harris Mylonas is a PhD candidate in political science at Yale.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/georgia-a...80812-3u4w.html
QUOTE(tomhye @ Aug 13 2008, 12:37 PM)
QUOTE(Terra @ Aug 13 2008, 12:31 PM)
So - The Russians accepted the cease fire, yet they are still blowing up ships and moving their armor divisions to within 20 miles of the Capital of Georgia... I don't think the Russians are going to budge until Misha resigns.
They'll budge without the resignation, but Misha is making up most of the action (like the tanks and looting in Gori that the residents and reporters there couldn't find any evidence of) and he's now saying he won't abide by the cease fire. He lied about where the bombers were flying from (he KNEW it wasn't Armenia) trying to get more support from Azerbaijan and Turkey, I'd demand proof if he called g4a a liar. Misha just has to accept they got their tail kicked and STFU instead of trying to restart hostilities because he got some sympathy.
Umm Tom, I'm watching the news with live reporters from Europe - as I'm sure you are. Those cameras aren't lying as to where they are, you can see the landmarks and the Russian tanks...
QUOTE(Terra @ Aug 13 2008, 12:42 PM)
QUOTE(tomhye @ Aug 13 2008, 12:37 PM)
QUOTE(Terra @ Aug 13 2008, 12:31 PM)
So - The Russians accepted the cease fire, yet they are still blowing up ships and moving their armor divisions to within 20 miles of the Capital of Georgia... I don't think the Russians are going to budge until Misha resigns.
They'll budge without the resignation, but Misha is making up most of the action (like the tanks and looting in Gori that the residents and reporters there couldn't find any evidence of) and he's now saying he won't abide by the cease fire. He lied about where the bombers were flying from (he KNEW it wasn't Armenia) trying to get more support from Azerbaijan and Turkey, I'd demand proof if he called g4a a liar. Misha just has to accept they got their tail kicked and STFU instead of trying to restart hostilities because he got some sympathy.
Umm Tom, I'm watching the news with live reporters from Europe - as I'm sure you are. Those cameras aren't lying as to where they are, you can see the landmarks and the Russian tanks...
The Russian tank movements don't violate the cease fire and the reporters who are with them don't see it the way you do, it's scouting to prepare for agreements on the demilitarized area.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gDNLWfQ...T_6oVwD92HIM080
Russian troops roll into strategic Georgian city
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and MATTI FRIEDMAN – 1 hour ago
OUTSIDE GORI, Georgia (AP) — Russian troops and paramilitaries rolled into the strategic Georgian city of Gori on Wednesday, apparently violating a truce designed to end the conflict that has uprooted tens of thousands and scarred the Georgian landscape.
In Washington, President Bush said the United States planned a massive humanitarian effort involving American ships and aircraft, includiung a C-17 military cargo plane loaded with supplies that landed on Wednesday.
He said Russia must ensure that "all lines of communication and transport, including seaports, roads and airports," remain open to let deliveries and civilians through.
Georgian officials said Gori, a central hub on Georgia's main east-west highway, was looted and bombed by the Russians before they left later in the day and camped nearby.
Moscow denied the accusations, but it appeared to be on a technicality: a BBC reporter in Gori reported that Russians tanks were in the streets as their South Ossetian separatist allies seized Georgian cars, looted Georgian homes and then set some homes ablaze.
"Russia has treacherously broken its word," Georgia's Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia said Wednesday in Tbilisi, the capital.
An AP reporter saw dozens of trucks and armored vehicles leaving Gori, roaring southeast. Soldiers waved at journalists and one soldier jokingly shouted to a photographer: "Come with us, beauty, we're going to Tbilisi!"
But the convoy turned north and left the highway about an hour's drive from the Georgian capital, and set up camp a mile off the road. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russian troops were near Gori to secure weapons left behind by the Georgians.
To the west, Russian-backed Abkhazian separatists pushed Georgian troops out of Abkhazia and even moved into Georgian territory itself, defiantly planting a flag over the Inguri River and laughing that retreating Georgians had received "American training in running away."
The developments came less than 12 hours after Georgia's president said he accepted a cease-fire plan brokered by France. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that Russia was halting military action because Georgia had paid enough for its attack last Thursday on South Ossetia.
Bush said he was skeptical that Moscow was honoring the cease-fire.
"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," Bush said.
The EU peace plan calls for both sides to retreat to the positions they held prior to the outbreak of fighting late Thursday. That phrasing apparently would allow Georgian forces to return to the positions they held in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and clearly obliges Russia to leave all parts of Georgia except South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili criticized Western nations for failing to help Georgia, a U.S. ally that has been seeking NATO membership.
"I feel that they are partly to blame," he said Wednesday. "Not only those who commit atrocities are responsible ... but so are those who fail to react. In a way, Russians are fighting a proxy war with the West through us."
Russian at first denied that tanks were even in Gori but video footage proved otherwise.
About 50 Russian tanks entered Gori in the morning, according to Lomaia. The city of 50,000 lies 15 miles south of South Ossetia, where much of the fighting has taken place.
Some of the Russian units that later left to camp outside the city were camouflaged with foliage. The convoy was mainly support vehicles, including ambulances, although there were a few heavy cannons. There were about 100 combat troops and another 100 medics, drivers and other support personnel.
About six miles away from the camp, about 80 well-equipped Georgian soldiers were forming what appeared to be a new frontline, armed with pistols, shoulder-launched anti-tank rockets and Kalashnikovs.
Sporadic clashes continued in South Ossetia where Russians responded to Georgian snipers.
Georgia borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia and was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Russia has handed out passports to most in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and stationed peacekeepers in both regions since the early 1990s. Georgia wants the Russian peacekeepers out, but Medvedev has insisted they stay.
Russia's Lavrov lashed back after Bush's comments Wednesday, calling Georgia's leadership "a special project of the United States. And we understand that the United States is worried about its project."
He was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that at some point, the United States will have to choose: "either support for a virtual project, or real partnership on issues that really demand collective action," referring to U.S. cooperation with Russia in the U.N. Security Council on Iran and other world tension spots.
Meanwhile, Georgia's security chief also said Russian forces targeted three Georgian Coast Guard boats in the Black Sea port of Poti, and Georgian television showed boats ablaze in the harbor.
Bush expressed concern that Russian forces have entered and taken positions in Poti, that Russian armored vehicles are blocking access to that port, and that Russia is blowing up Georgian vessels.
Lavrov denied that Russian troops were anywhere near the city.
In the west, Georgian troops acknowledged Wednesday they had completely pulled out of a small section of Abkhazia they had controlled.
"This is Abkhazian land," one separatist told an AP reporter over the Inguri River, saying they were laying claim to historical Abkhazian territory.
The fighters had moved across a thin slice of land dotted with Georgian villages.
"The border has been along this river for 1,000 years," separatist official Ruslan Kishmaria told the AP on Wednesday. He said Georgia would have to accept the new border.
Nogovitsyn admitted Wednesday that Russian peacekeepers had disarmed Georgian troops in Kodori — the same peacekeepers that Georgia wants withdrawn.
Abkhazia lies close to the heart of many Russians. Its Black Sea coast was a favorite vacation spot in Soviet times and the province is just down the coast from Sochi, the Russian resort that will host the 2014 Olympics.
For several days, Russian troops held the western town of Zugdidi near Abkhazia, controlling the region's main highway. An AP reporter saw a convoy of 13 Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers in Zugdidi's outskirts Wednesday. Later in the day, Georgian officials said the Russians pulled out of Zugdidi.
"They just don't want freedom, and that's why they want to stamp on Georgia and destroy it," he declared to thousands at a jam-packed square in Tbilisi.
Leaders of five former Soviet bloc states — Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine — also appeared at the rally and spoke out against Russian domination.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko issued a decree Wednesday saying that Russian navy ships deployed to the Georgian coast will need authorization to return to the navy base Russia leases from Ukraine.
The World Food Program sent 34 tons of high-energy biscuits Wednesday help the tens of thousands uprooted by the fighting.
Russia has accused Georgia of killing more than 2,000 people, mostly civilians, in South Ossetia. The claim couldn't be independently confirmed, but witnesses who fled the area over the weekend said hundreds had died.
Georgia says at least 175 Georgians have died in Russian air and ground attacks.
The Russia-Georgia dispute also reached the international courts, with the Georgian security council saying it had sued Russia for alleged ethnic cleansing.
The rights group Human Rights Watch said Wednesday it has witnessed South Ossetian fighters looting ethnic Georgians' houses and has recorded multiple accounts of Georgian militias intimidating ethnic Ossetians. The report was important independent confirmation of the claims by each side in the Russia-Georgia conflict.
At the Beijing Olympics, Georgian women rallied Wednesday to beat their Russian counterparts in beach volleyball, the first head-to-head clash of the two nations.
"Russia and Georgia are actually friends. People are friends," said the Georgian beach volleyball team leader, Levan Akhtulediani. "But you know, it's not, in the 21st century, to bomb a neighbor country, it's not a good idea."
"I say once again, its better to compete on the field rather than outside the field," he added.
------------------
It's only scouting when they don't loot and burn YOUR house.
Calling Mr. Chamberlain...
Russian troops roll into strategic Georgian city
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and MATTI FRIEDMAN – 1 hour ago
OUTSIDE GORI, Georgia (AP) — Russian troops and paramilitaries rolled into the strategic Georgian city of Gori on Wednesday, apparently violating a truce designed to end the conflict that has uprooted tens of thousands and scarred the Georgian landscape.
In Washington, President Bush said the United States planned a massive humanitarian effort involving American ships and aircraft, includiung a C-17 military cargo plane loaded with supplies that landed on Wednesday.
He said Russia must ensure that "all lines of communication and transport, including seaports, roads and airports," remain open to let deliveries and civilians through.
Georgian officials said Gori, a central hub on Georgia's main east-west highway, was looted and bombed by the Russians before they left later in the day and camped nearby.
Moscow denied the accusations, but it appeared to be on a technicality: a BBC reporter in Gori reported that Russians tanks were in the streets as their South Ossetian separatist allies seized Georgian cars, looted Georgian homes and then set some homes ablaze.
"Russia has treacherously broken its word," Georgia's Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia said Wednesday in Tbilisi, the capital.
An AP reporter saw dozens of trucks and armored vehicles leaving Gori, roaring southeast. Soldiers waved at journalists and one soldier jokingly shouted to a photographer: "Come with us, beauty, we're going to Tbilisi!"
But the convoy turned north and left the highway about an hour's drive from the Georgian capital, and set up camp a mile off the road. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russian troops were near Gori to secure weapons left behind by the Georgians.
To the west, Russian-backed Abkhazian separatists pushed Georgian troops out of Abkhazia and even moved into Georgian territory itself, defiantly planting a flag over the Inguri River and laughing that retreating Georgians had received "American training in running away."
The developments came less than 12 hours after Georgia's president said he accepted a cease-fire plan brokered by France. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that Russia was halting military action because Georgia had paid enough for its attack last Thursday on South Ossetia.
Bush said he was skeptical that Moscow was honoring the cease-fire.
"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," Bush said.
The EU peace plan calls for both sides to retreat to the positions they held prior to the outbreak of fighting late Thursday. That phrasing apparently would allow Georgian forces to return to the positions they held in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and clearly obliges Russia to leave all parts of Georgia except South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili criticized Western nations for failing to help Georgia, a U.S. ally that has been seeking NATO membership.
"I feel that they are partly to blame," he said Wednesday. "Not only those who commit atrocities are responsible ... but so are those who fail to react. In a way, Russians are fighting a proxy war with the West through us."
Russian at first denied that tanks were even in Gori but video footage proved otherwise.
About 50 Russian tanks entered Gori in the morning, according to Lomaia. The city of 50,000 lies 15 miles south of South Ossetia, where much of the fighting has taken place.
Some of the Russian units that later left to camp outside the city were camouflaged with foliage. The convoy was mainly support vehicles, including ambulances, although there were a few heavy cannons. There were about 100 combat troops and another 100 medics, drivers and other support personnel.
About six miles away from the camp, about 80 well-equipped Georgian soldiers were forming what appeared to be a new frontline, armed with pistols, shoulder-launched anti-tank rockets and Kalashnikovs.
Sporadic clashes continued in South Ossetia where Russians responded to Georgian snipers.
Georgia borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia and was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Russia has handed out passports to most in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and stationed peacekeepers in both regions since the early 1990s. Georgia wants the Russian peacekeepers out, but Medvedev has insisted they stay.
Russia's Lavrov lashed back after Bush's comments Wednesday, calling Georgia's leadership "a special project of the United States. And we understand that the United States is worried about its project."
He was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that at some point, the United States will have to choose: "either support for a virtual project, or real partnership on issues that really demand collective action," referring to U.S. cooperation with Russia in the U.N. Security Council on Iran and other world tension spots.
Meanwhile, Georgia's security chief also said Russian forces targeted three Georgian Coast Guard boats in the Black Sea port of Poti, and Georgian television showed boats ablaze in the harbor.
Bush expressed concern that Russian forces have entered and taken positions in Poti, that Russian armored vehicles are blocking access to that port, and that Russia is blowing up Georgian vessels.
Lavrov denied that Russian troops were anywhere near the city.
In the west, Georgian troops acknowledged Wednesday they had completely pulled out of a small section of Abkhazia they had controlled.
"This is Abkhazian land," one separatist told an AP reporter over the Inguri River, saying they were laying claim to historical Abkhazian territory.
The fighters had moved across a thin slice of land dotted with Georgian villages.
"The border has been along this river for 1,000 years," separatist official Ruslan Kishmaria told the AP on Wednesday. He said Georgia would have to accept the new border.
Nogovitsyn admitted Wednesday that Russian peacekeepers had disarmed Georgian troops in Kodori — the same peacekeepers that Georgia wants withdrawn.
Abkhazia lies close to the heart of many Russians. Its Black Sea coast was a favorite vacation spot in Soviet times and the province is just down the coast from Sochi, the Russian resort that will host the 2014 Olympics.
For several days, Russian troops held the western town of Zugdidi near Abkhazia, controlling the region's main highway. An AP reporter saw a convoy of 13 Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers in Zugdidi's outskirts Wednesday. Later in the day, Georgian officials said the Russians pulled out of Zugdidi.
"They just don't want freedom, and that's why they want to stamp on Georgia and destroy it," he declared to thousands at a jam-packed square in Tbilisi.
Leaders of five former Soviet bloc states — Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine — also appeared at the rally and spoke out against Russian domination.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko issued a decree Wednesday saying that Russian navy ships deployed to the Georgian coast will need authorization to return to the navy base Russia leases from Ukraine.
The World Food Program sent 34 tons of high-energy biscuits Wednesday help the tens of thousands uprooted by the fighting.
Russia has accused Georgia of killing more than 2,000 people, mostly civilians, in South Ossetia. The claim couldn't be independently confirmed, but witnesses who fled the area over the weekend said hundreds had died.
Georgia says at least 175 Georgians have died in Russian air and ground attacks.
The Russia-Georgia dispute also reached the international courts, with the Georgian security council saying it had sued Russia for alleged ethnic cleansing.
The rights group Human Rights Watch said Wednesday it has witnessed South Ossetian fighters looting ethnic Georgians' houses and has recorded multiple accounts of Georgian militias intimidating ethnic Ossetians. The report was important independent confirmation of the claims by each side in the Russia-Georgia conflict.
At the Beijing Olympics, Georgian women rallied Wednesday to beat their Russian counterparts in beach volleyball, the first head-to-head clash of the two nations.
"Russia and Georgia are actually friends. People are friends," said the Georgian beach volleyball team leader, Levan Akhtulediani. "But you know, it's not, in the 21st century, to bomb a neighbor country, it's not a good idea."
"I say once again, its better to compete on the field rather than outside the field," he added.
------------------
It's only scouting when they don't loot and burn YOUR house.
Calling Mr. Chamberlain...
http://www.crn.com/security/210003057
Russian Cyber Attacks Shut Down Georgian Websites
By Stefanie Hoffman, ChannelWeb
7:22 PM EDT Tue. Aug. 12, 2008
Following just six days after the initiation of the Georgia-Russian conflict, the Georgian Internet became the target of a coordinated cyber attack, which compromised several government Websites with defacement and Denial of Service attacks, crippling the nation's ability to disseminate information.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's site was defaced, integrating his image with those of Hitler. The sabotage was followed by a DDoS attack that left the presidential site inaccessible.
Denial of service attacks are conducted when a coordinated network of computers sends multiple requests to a given server or computer at exactly the same time, which subsequently shuts down the targeted computer under the barrage of incoming requests.
Meanwhile, Georgian news sites and other popular information forums were also blocked during the attack.
"As more government services move toward the Internet, you end up with more exposure to these types of attack, whether it was an organization and executed by government or criminal elements acting at somebody's direction," said Kevin Newmeyer, worldwide principal for strategic security and counter terrorism for security company Unisys. "It's hard to prove it was a government-directed operation."
The attacks ultimately prompted the Georgian governmental sites to switch to U.S. based hosts, while Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs moved to a blogspot account.
The exact sources of the attacks are yet unknown. Experts say that some ISPs appear to be sourced in Russia, and some speculate that the Russian government had used its resources to fund the attack, which was launched the day before Russia drove tanks into South Ossetia.
Other unconfirmed reports suggest that members of the cybercrime organization Russian Business Network are responsible for the coordinated sabotage of the Georgian Websites.
"It looks like it was coming from Russia, or is it a co-opted server that wasn't properly patched, with people taking over the computer and doing things with it?" said Newmeyer. "With the Russian Business Network, you can rent out a server or a botnet for a number of hours. You pay your cyber gold and these transactions happen offshore. That's one of the challenges that governments face."
Other experts, such as Paul Ferguson, advanced threats researchers for Trend Micro, maintained that the actual RBN ISP has long been shut down, disbanding into less obvious activity spread all over the globe.
The first of the coordinated cyber attacks against Georgia was detected in July, weeks before Russia launched its military intervention. Experts say that attacks launched in tandem with military conflict will likely increase as more global infrastructure is controlled by the Internet.
While experts hesitate to call the Georgia attack an act of cyber terrorism, most agree that it was part of a strategic campaign to eliminate Georgia's ability to disseminate information.
"It's a brute force attack, one that goes all the way back to the Mafiaboy attacks of 2000," said David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro. "This is not a verifiable cyber war, but it is clearly a step in that direction."
The attacks recall a similar cyber attack in Estonia in April of 2007, when government, parliament, and newspaper sites, as well as numerous online banking operations were shut down after a conflict that resulted in the removal of several Russian World War II monuments. However, experts contend that the recent information attack on Georgian Websites was more coordinated, professional and sophisticated in nature than last year's attack on Estonia infrastructure.
"The Estonia incident was more what I would call hactivism, more of an attack by impassioned amateurs," said Ferguson. "This is a professional attack, and it is vastly more serious."
---------------------
Okay Ukrane, and other neighbors...when the cyber attacks start -
start calling for support. Who do y'all think would respond? Bush? Obama?
Who ya gonna call? Who ya gonna call - an ally...an American commander-in-chief?
Russian Cyber Attacks Shut Down Georgian Websites
By Stefanie Hoffman, ChannelWeb
7:22 PM EDT Tue. Aug. 12, 2008
Following just six days after the initiation of the Georgia-Russian conflict, the Georgian Internet became the target of a coordinated cyber attack, which compromised several government Websites with defacement and Denial of Service attacks, crippling the nation's ability to disseminate information.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's site was defaced, integrating his image with those of Hitler. The sabotage was followed by a DDoS attack that left the presidential site inaccessible.
Denial of service attacks are conducted when a coordinated network of computers sends multiple requests to a given server or computer at exactly the same time, which subsequently shuts down the targeted computer under the barrage of incoming requests.
Meanwhile, Georgian news sites and other popular information forums were also blocked during the attack.
"As more government services move toward the Internet, you end up with more exposure to these types of attack, whether it was an organization and executed by government or criminal elements acting at somebody's direction," said Kevin Newmeyer, worldwide principal for strategic security and counter terrorism for security company Unisys. "It's hard to prove it was a government-directed operation."
The attacks ultimately prompted the Georgian governmental sites to switch to U.S. based hosts, while Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs moved to a blogspot account.
The exact sources of the attacks are yet unknown. Experts say that some ISPs appear to be sourced in Russia, and some speculate that the Russian government had used its resources to fund the attack, which was launched the day before Russia drove tanks into South Ossetia.
Other unconfirmed reports suggest that members of the cybercrime organization Russian Business Network are responsible for the coordinated sabotage of the Georgian Websites.
"It looks like it was coming from Russia, or is it a co-opted server that wasn't properly patched, with people taking over the computer and doing things with it?" said Newmeyer. "With the Russian Business Network, you can rent out a server or a botnet for a number of hours. You pay your cyber gold and these transactions happen offshore. That's one of the challenges that governments face."
Other experts, such as Paul Ferguson, advanced threats researchers for Trend Micro, maintained that the actual RBN ISP has long been shut down, disbanding into less obvious activity spread all over the globe.
The first of the coordinated cyber attacks against Georgia was detected in July, weeks before Russia launched its military intervention. Experts say that attacks launched in tandem with military conflict will likely increase as more global infrastructure is controlled by the Internet.
While experts hesitate to call the Georgia attack an act of cyber terrorism, most agree that it was part of a strategic campaign to eliminate Georgia's ability to disseminate information.
"It's a brute force attack, one that goes all the way back to the Mafiaboy attacks of 2000," said David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro. "This is not a verifiable cyber war, but it is clearly a step in that direction."
The attacks recall a similar cyber attack in Estonia in April of 2007, when government, parliament, and newspaper sites, as well as numerous online banking operations were shut down after a conflict that resulted in the removal of several Russian World War II monuments. However, experts contend that the recent information attack on Georgian Websites was more coordinated, professional and sophisticated in nature than last year's attack on Estonia infrastructure.
"The Estonia incident was more what I would call hactivism, more of an attack by impassioned amateurs," said Ferguson. "This is a professional attack, and it is vastly more serious."
---------------------
Okay Ukrane, and other neighbors...when the cyber attacks start -
start calling for support. Who do y'all think would respond? Bush? Obama?
Who ya gonna call? Who ya gonna call - an ally...an American commander-in-chief?
Bush is YOUR president still
so I think if something happens before Jan.20,2009, you gotta call them
I would have figured you already knew that, but then the last 8 years have shown the average person doesn't know the rules
so I think if something happens before Jan.20,2009, you gotta call them
I would have figured you already knew that, but then the last 8 years have shown the average person doesn't know the rules
News Flash! I did not support Bush.
EIther election. Spin until you are dizzy.
EIther election. Spin until you are dizzy.
QUOTE(Indianhead @ Aug 13 2008, 05:05 PM)
http://www.crn.com/security/210003057
Russian Cyber Attacks Shut Down Georgian Websites
By Stefanie Hoffman, ChannelWeb
7:22 PM EDT Tue. Aug. 12, 2008
Following just six days after the initiation of the Georgia-Russian conflict, the Georgian Internet became the target of a coordinated cyber attack, which compromised several government Websites with defacement and Denial of Service attacks, crippling the nation's ability to disseminate information.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's site was defaced, integrating his image with those of Hitler. The sabotage was followed by a DDoS attack that left the presidential site inaccessible.
Denial of service attacks are conducted when a coordinated network of computers sends multiple requests to a given server or computer at exactly the same time, which subsequently shuts down the targeted computer under the barrage of incoming requests.
Meanwhile, Georgian news sites and other popular information forums were also blocked during the attack.
"As more government services move toward the Internet, you end up with more exposure to these types of attack, whether it was an organization and executed by government or criminal elements acting at somebody's direction," said Kevin Newmeyer, worldwide principal for strategic security and counter terrorism for security company Unisys. "It's hard to prove it was a government-directed operation."
The attacks ultimately prompted the Georgian governmental sites to switch to U.S. based hosts, while Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs moved to a blogspot account.
The exact sources of the attacks are yet unknown. Experts say that some ISPs appear to be sourced in Russia, and some speculate that the Russian government had used its resources to fund the attack, which was launched the day before Russia drove tanks into South Ossetia.
Other unconfirmed reports suggest that members of the cybercrime organization Russian Business Network are responsible for the coordinated sabotage of the Georgian Websites.
"It looks like it was coming from Russia, or is it a co-opted server that wasn't properly patched, with people taking over the computer and doing things with it?" said Newmeyer. "With the Russian Business Network, you can rent out a server or a botnet for a number of hours. You pay your cyber gold and these transactions happen offshore. That's one of the challenges that governments face."
Other experts, such as Paul Ferguson, advanced threats researchers for Trend Micro, maintained that the actual RBN ISP has long been shut down, disbanding into less obvious activity spread all over the globe.
The first of the coordinated cyber attacks against Georgia was detected in July, weeks before Russia launched its military intervention. Experts say that attacks launched in tandem with military conflict will likely increase as more global infrastructure is controlled by the Internet.
While experts hesitate to call the Georgia attack an act of cyber terrorism, most agree that it was part of a strategic campaign to eliminate Georgia's ability to disseminate information.
"It's a brute force attack, one that goes all the way back to the Mafiaboy attacks of 2000," said David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro. "This is not a verifiable cyber war, but it is clearly a step in that direction."
The attacks recall a similar cyber attack in Estonia in April of 2007, when government, parliament, and newspaper sites, as well as numerous online banking operations were shut down after a conflict that resulted in the removal of several Russian World War II monuments. However, experts contend that the recent information attack on Georgian Websites was more coordinated, professional and sophisticated in nature than last year's attack on Estonia infrastructure.
"The Estonia incident was more what I would call hactivism, more of an attack by impassioned amateurs," said Ferguson. "This is a professional attack, and it is vastly more serious."
---------------------
Okay Ukrane, and other neighbors...when the cyber attacks start -
start calling for support. Who do y'all think would respond? Bush? Obama?
Who ya gonna call? Who ya gonna call - an ally...an American commander-in-chief?
Russian Cyber Attacks Shut Down Georgian Websites
By Stefanie Hoffman, ChannelWeb
7:22 PM EDT Tue. Aug. 12, 2008
Following just six days after the initiation of the Georgia-Russian conflict, the Georgian Internet became the target of a coordinated cyber attack, which compromised several government Websites with defacement and Denial of Service attacks, crippling the nation's ability to disseminate information.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's site was defaced, integrating his image with those of Hitler. The sabotage was followed by a DDoS attack that left the presidential site inaccessible.
Denial of service attacks are conducted when a coordinated network of computers sends multiple requests to a given server or computer at exactly the same time, which subsequently shuts down the targeted computer under the barrage of incoming requests.
Meanwhile, Georgian news sites and other popular information forums were also blocked during the attack.
"As more government services move toward the Internet, you end up with more exposure to these types of attack, whether it was an organization and executed by government or criminal elements acting at somebody's direction," said Kevin Newmeyer, worldwide principal for strategic security and counter terrorism for security company Unisys. "It's hard to prove it was a government-directed operation."
The attacks ultimately prompted the Georgian governmental sites to switch to U.S. based hosts, while Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs moved to a blogspot account.
The exact sources of the attacks are yet unknown. Experts say that some ISPs appear to be sourced in Russia, and some speculate that the Russian government had used its resources to fund the attack, which was launched the day before Russia drove tanks into South Ossetia.
Other unconfirmed reports suggest that members of the cybercrime organization Russian Business Network are responsible for the coordinated sabotage of the Georgian Websites.
"It looks like it was coming from Russia, or is it a co-opted server that wasn't properly patched, with people taking over the computer and doing things with it?" said Newmeyer. "With the Russian Business Network, you can rent out a server or a botnet for a number of hours. You pay your cyber gold and these transactions happen offshore. That's one of the challenges that governments face."
Other experts, such as Paul Ferguson, advanced threats researchers for Trend Micro, maintained that the actual RBN ISP has long been shut down, disbanding into less obvious activity spread all over the globe.
The first of the coordinated cyber attacks against Georgia was detected in July, weeks before Russia launched its military intervention. Experts say that attacks launched in tandem with military conflict will likely increase as more global infrastructure is controlled by the Internet.
While experts hesitate to call the Georgia attack an act of cyber terrorism, most agree that it was part of a strategic campaign to eliminate Georgia's ability to disseminate information.
"It's a brute force attack, one that goes all the way back to the Mafiaboy attacks of 2000," said David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro. "This is not a verifiable cyber war, but it is clearly a step in that direction."
The attacks recall a similar cyber attack in Estonia in April of 2007, when government, parliament, and newspaper sites, as well as numerous online banking operations were shut down after a conflict that resulted in the removal of several Russian World War II monuments. However, experts contend that the recent information attack on Georgian Websites was more coordinated, professional and sophisticated in nature than last year's attack on Estonia infrastructure.
"The Estonia incident was more what I would call hactivism, more of an attack by impassioned amateurs," said Ferguson. "This is a professional attack, and it is vastly more serious."
---------------------
Okay Ukrane, and other neighbors...when the cyber attacks start -
start calling for support. Who do y'all think would respond? Bush? Obama?
Who ya gonna call? Who ya gonna call - an ally...an American commander-in-chief?
That's another reason why I push for an old fashioned radio net backup for the current Military Comm systems in use by the United States. Denial of service won't touch the internet the military uses but, ya know, we got to talk to the civilians occasionally.
Our VHF radios stayed up during Katrina when all the UHF ones went down.
So while they are trying to force every law enforcment agency into strictly 700MHz
we are retaining our 154MHz stuff too, not matter what they say. The higher freqs
have smaller ranges because of trees etc. and rely on cables...bad during flooding.
Meanwhile...
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gDNLWfQ...T_6oVwD92I46782
Russia: 'Forget' Georgian territorial integrity
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA – 1 hour ago
GORI, Georgia (AP) — Russia's foreign minister declared Thursday that the world "can forget about" Georgia's territorial integrity, and American and Georgian officials said Russia appeared to be targeting military infrastructure — including radars and patrol boats at a Black Sea naval base and oil hub.
An AP Television News crew in the oil port city of Poti saw one destroyed Georgian military boat, and two Russian armored vehicles and two Russian transport trucks. Soldiers who identified themselves as Russian peacekeepers blocked the crew from going further.
Russia's president met in the Kremlin with the leaders of Georgia's two separatist provinces — a clear sign that Moscow could absorb the regions. The comments from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared to come as a challenge to the United States, where President Bush has called for Russia to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia."
The Russian refusal to withdraw from Georgia presents a challenge to the cease-fire agreement designed to end seven days of fighting. The EU-sponsored accord had envisioned Russian and Georgian forces returning to their original positions.
In Washington, an American official said Russia appears to be sabotaging airfields and other military infrastructure as its forces pull back. The U.S. official described eyewitnesses accounts for The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The official said the Russian strategy seems like a deliberate attempt to cripple the already battered Georgian military.
The United States poured aid into the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Thursday and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice launched emergency talks in France aimed at heading off a wider conflict.
Russia's deputy chief of General Staff Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn said he was not sure that the U.S. planes carried exclusively humanitarian cargo. "It causes our concern," he said.
At least 20 explosions were heard near Gori, along with small-arms fire. It could not immediately be determined if the blasts were a renewal of fighting between Georgian and Russian forces, but they sounded similar to mortar shells and occurred after a tense confrontation between Russian and Georgian troops on the edge of the city.
The strategically located city is 15 miles south of South Ossetia, the Russian-backed separatist region where Russian and Georgian forces fought a five-day battle. Russian troops entered Gori on Wednesday, after the two sides signed the cease-fire.
In Washington, a Pentagon official said U.S. intelligence had assessed that the number of Russians in Gori was small — about 100 to 200 troops. But the Russian presence in Gori, only 60 miles west of Tbilisi, was viewed as a demonstration of the vulnerability of the capital.
Nogovitsyn said Russian troops went to Gori to establish contact with local civilian administration and take control over military depots left behind by the Georgian forces. "The abandoned weapons needed protection," he said.
Georgian government officials who went into the city for the possible handover left unexpectedly around midday, followed by a checkpoint confrontation outside Gori which ended when Russian tanks sped toward the area and Georgian police quickly retreated.
A Russian general in Gori had said Wednesday it would take at least two days to leave the city.
Besides the hundreds killed since hostilities broke out, the United Nations estimates 100,000 Georgians have been uprooted; Russia says some 30,000 residents of South Ossetia fled into the neighboring Russian province of North Ossetia.
Russian troops also appeared to be settling in elsewhere in Georgia outside the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
"One can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity because, I believe, it is impossible to persuade South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree with the logic that they can be forced back into the Georgian state," Lavrov told reporters.
The White House bluntly rejected Lavrov's message.
"Our position on Georgia's territorial integrity is not going to change no matter what anybody says," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Thursday. "And so I would consider that to be bluster from the foreign minister of Russia. We will ignore it."
Georgia's coast guard said Russian troops had burned patrol boats and destroyed radars and other equipment at the port city of Poti, home to Georgia's main naval base and a major hub for oil exports to Europe. The APTN crew saw one destroyed boat, about 60 feet long.
On Poti's outskirts, the APTN crew followed a different convoy of Russian troops as they searched a forest for Georgian military equipment.
Nogovitsyn avoided comment on the Russian presence in Poti, saying only that Russian forces were operating within their "area of responsibility."
Another APTN camera crew saw Russian soldiers and military vehicles parked Thursday inside the Georgian government's elegant, heavily-gated residence in the western town of Zugdidi. Some of the soldiers wore blue peacekeeping helmets, others wore green camouflage helmets, all were heavily armed. The scene underlined how closely the soldiers Russia calls peacekeepers are allied with its military.
"The Russian troops are here. They are occupying," Ygor Gegenava, an elderly Zugdidi resident told the APTN crew. "We don't want them here. What we need is friendship and good relations with the Russian people."
Georgia, bordering the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia, was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.
A steady, dejected trickle of Georgian refugees fled the front line in overloaded cars, trucks and tractor-pulled wagons, heading to Tbilisi on the road from Gori. One Soviet-era car carried eight people, including a mother and a baby in the front seat. The open back door of a small blue van revealed at least a dozen people crowded inside.
The Russian General Prosecutor's office on Thursday said it has formally opened a genocide probe into Georgian treatment of South Ossetians. For its part, Georgia this week filed a suit against Russia in the International Court of Justice, alleging murder, rape and mass expulsions in both provinces.
More homes in deserted ethnic Georgian villages were apparently set ablaze Wednesday, sending clouds of smoke over the foothills north of Tskhinvali, capital of breakaway South Ossetia.
One Russian colonel, who refused to give his name, blamed the fires on looters.
Those with ethnic Georgian backgrounds who have stayed behind — like 70-year-old retired teacher Vinera Chebataryeva — seem increasingly unwelcome in South Ossetia.
As she stood sobbing in her wrecked apartment near the center of Tskhinvali, Chebataryeva said a skirmish between Ossetian soldiers and a Georgian tank had gouged the two gaping shell holes in her wall, bashing in her piano and destroying her furniture.
Janna Kuzayeva, an ethnic Ossetian neighbor, claimed the Georgian tank fired the shell at Chebataryeva's apartment.
"We know for sure her brother spied for Georgians," said Kuzayeva. "We let her stay here, and now she's blaming everything on us."
North of Tskhinvali, a number of former Georgian communities have been abandoned in the last few days. "There isn't a single Georgian left in those villages," said Robert Kochi, a 45-year-old South Ossetian.
But he had little sympathy for his former Georgian neighbors. "They wanted to physically uproot us all," he said. "What other definition is there for genocide?"
-------------------------
My addition:
http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext.htm
The crime of "genocide" defined in internation law :
Article II describes two elements of the crime of genocide:
1) the mental element, meaning the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", and
2) the physical element which includes five acts described in sections a, b, c, d and e. A crime must include both elements to be called "genocide."
(a) Killing members of the group;
(
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
© Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
So while they are trying to force every law enforcment agency into strictly 700MHz
we are retaining our 154MHz stuff too, not matter what they say. The higher freqs
have smaller ranges because of trees etc. and rely on cables...bad during flooding.
Meanwhile...
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gDNLWfQ...T_6oVwD92I46782
Russia: 'Forget' Georgian territorial integrity
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA – 1 hour ago
GORI, Georgia (AP) — Russia's foreign minister declared Thursday that the world "can forget about" Georgia's territorial integrity, and American and Georgian officials said Russia appeared to be targeting military infrastructure — including radars and patrol boats at a Black Sea naval base and oil hub.
An AP Television News crew in the oil port city of Poti saw one destroyed Georgian military boat, and two Russian armored vehicles and two Russian transport trucks. Soldiers who identified themselves as Russian peacekeepers blocked the crew from going further.
Russia's president met in the Kremlin with the leaders of Georgia's two separatist provinces — a clear sign that Moscow could absorb the regions. The comments from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared to come as a challenge to the United States, where President Bush has called for Russia to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia."
The Russian refusal to withdraw from Georgia presents a challenge to the cease-fire agreement designed to end seven days of fighting. The EU-sponsored accord had envisioned Russian and Georgian forces returning to their original positions.
In Washington, an American official said Russia appears to be sabotaging airfields and other military infrastructure as its forces pull back. The U.S. official described eyewitnesses accounts for The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The official said the Russian strategy seems like a deliberate attempt to cripple the already battered Georgian military.
The United States poured aid into the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Thursday and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice launched emergency talks in France aimed at heading off a wider conflict.
Russia's deputy chief of General Staff Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn said he was not sure that the U.S. planes carried exclusively humanitarian cargo. "It causes our concern," he said.
At least 20 explosions were heard near Gori, along with small-arms fire. It could not immediately be determined if the blasts were a renewal of fighting between Georgian and Russian forces, but they sounded similar to mortar shells and occurred after a tense confrontation between Russian and Georgian troops on the edge of the city.
The strategically located city is 15 miles south of South Ossetia, the Russian-backed separatist region where Russian and Georgian forces fought a five-day battle. Russian troops entered Gori on Wednesday, after the two sides signed the cease-fire.
In Washington, a Pentagon official said U.S. intelligence had assessed that the number of Russians in Gori was small — about 100 to 200 troops. But the Russian presence in Gori, only 60 miles west of Tbilisi, was viewed as a demonstration of the vulnerability of the capital.
Nogovitsyn said Russian troops went to Gori to establish contact with local civilian administration and take control over military depots left behind by the Georgian forces. "The abandoned weapons needed protection," he said.
Georgian government officials who went into the city for the possible handover left unexpectedly around midday, followed by a checkpoint confrontation outside Gori which ended when Russian tanks sped toward the area and Georgian police quickly retreated.
A Russian general in Gori had said Wednesday it would take at least two days to leave the city.
Besides the hundreds killed since hostilities broke out, the United Nations estimates 100,000 Georgians have been uprooted; Russia says some 30,000 residents of South Ossetia fled into the neighboring Russian province of North Ossetia.
Russian troops also appeared to be settling in elsewhere in Georgia outside the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
"One can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity because, I believe, it is impossible to persuade South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree with the logic that they can be forced back into the Georgian state," Lavrov told reporters.
The White House bluntly rejected Lavrov's message.
"Our position on Georgia's territorial integrity is not going to change no matter what anybody says," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Thursday. "And so I would consider that to be bluster from the foreign minister of Russia. We will ignore it."
Georgia's coast guard said Russian troops had burned patrol boats and destroyed radars and other equipment at the port city of Poti, home to Georgia's main naval base and a major hub for oil exports to Europe. The APTN crew saw one destroyed boat, about 60 feet long.
On Poti's outskirts, the APTN crew followed a different convoy of Russian troops as they searched a forest for Georgian military equipment.
Nogovitsyn avoided comment on the Russian presence in Poti, saying only that Russian forces were operating within their "area of responsibility."
Another APTN camera crew saw Russian soldiers and military vehicles parked Thursday inside the Georgian government's elegant, heavily-gated residence in the western town of Zugdidi. Some of the soldiers wore blue peacekeeping helmets, others wore green camouflage helmets, all were heavily armed. The scene underlined how closely the soldiers Russia calls peacekeepers are allied with its military.
"The Russian troops are here. They are occupying," Ygor Gegenava, an elderly Zugdidi resident told the APTN crew. "We don't want them here. What we need is friendship and good relations with the Russian people."
Georgia, bordering the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia, was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.
A steady, dejected trickle of Georgian refugees fled the front line in overloaded cars, trucks and tractor-pulled wagons, heading to Tbilisi on the road from Gori. One Soviet-era car carried eight people, including a mother and a baby in the front seat. The open back door of a small blue van revealed at least a dozen people crowded inside.
The Russian General Prosecutor's office on Thursday said it has formally opened a genocide probe into Georgian treatment of South Ossetians. For its part, Georgia this week filed a suit against Russia in the International Court of Justice, alleging murder, rape and mass expulsions in both provinces.
More homes in deserted ethnic Georgian villages were apparently set ablaze Wednesday, sending clouds of smoke over the foothills north of Tskhinvali, capital of breakaway South Ossetia.
One Russian colonel, who refused to give his name, blamed the fires on looters.
Those with ethnic Georgian backgrounds who have stayed behind — like 70-year-old retired teacher Vinera Chebataryeva — seem increasingly unwelcome in South Ossetia.
As she stood sobbing in her wrecked apartment near the center of Tskhinvali, Chebataryeva said a skirmish between Ossetian soldiers and a Georgian tank had gouged the two gaping shell holes in her wall, bashing in her piano and destroying her furniture.
Janna Kuzayeva, an ethnic Ossetian neighbor, claimed the Georgian tank fired the shell at Chebataryeva's apartment.
"We know for sure her brother spied for Georgians," said Kuzayeva. "We let her stay here, and now she's blaming everything on us."
North of Tskhinvali, a number of former Georgian communities have been abandoned in the last few days. "There isn't a single Georgian left in those villages," said Robert Kochi, a 45-year-old South Ossetian.
But he had little sympathy for his former Georgian neighbors. "They wanted to physically uproot us all," he said. "What other definition is there for genocide?"
-------------------------
My addition:
http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext.htm
The crime of "genocide" defined in internation law :
Article II describes two elements of the crime of genocide:
1) the mental element, meaning the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", and
2) the physical element which includes five acts described in sections a, b, c, d and e. A crime must include both elements to be called "genocide."
(a) Killing members of the group;
(
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; © Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
QUOTE(Marine @ Aug 13 2008, 08:36 PM)
QUOTE(Indianhead @ Aug 13 2008, 05:05 PM)
http://www.crn.com/security/210003057
Russian Cyber Attacks Shut Down Georgian Websites
By Stefanie Hoffman, ChannelWeb
7:22 PM EDT Tue. Aug. 12, 2008
Following just six days after the initiation of the Georgia-Russian conflict, the Georgian Internet became the target of a coordinated cyber attack, which compromised several government Websites with defacement and Denial of Service attacks, crippling the nation's ability to disseminate information.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's site was defaced, integrating his image with those of Hitler. The sabotage was followed by a DDoS attack that left the presidential site inaccessible.
Denial of service attacks are conducted when a coordinated network of computers sends multiple requests to a given server or computer at exactly the same time, which subsequently shuts down the targeted computer under the barrage of incoming requests.
Meanwhile, Georgian news sites and other popular information forums were also blocked during the attack.
"As more government services move toward the Internet, you end up with more exposure to these types of attack, whether it was an organization and executed by government or criminal elements acting at somebody's direction," said Kevin Newmeyer, worldwide principal for strategic security and counter terrorism for security company Unisys. "It's hard to prove it was a government-directed operation."
The attacks ultimately prompted the Georgian governmental sites to switch to U.S. based hosts, while Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs moved to a blogspot account.
The exact sources of the attacks are yet unknown. Experts say that some ISPs appear to be sourced in Russia, and some speculate that the Russian government had used its resources to fund the attack, which was launched the day before Russia drove tanks into South Ossetia.
Other unconfirmed reports suggest that members of the cybercrime organization Russian Business Network are responsible for the coordinated sabotage of the Georgian Websites.
"It looks like it was coming from Russia, or is it a co-opted server that wasn't properly patched, with people taking over the computer and doing things with it?" said Newmeyer. "With the Russian Business Network, you can rent out a server or a botnet for a number of hours. You pay your cyber gold and these transactions happen offshore. That's one of the challenges that governments face."
Other experts, such as Paul Ferguson, advanced threats researchers for Trend Micro, maintained that the actual RBN ISP has long been shut down, disbanding into less obvious activity spread all over the globe.
The first of the coordinated cyber attacks against Georgia was detected in July, weeks before Russia launched its military intervention. Experts say that attacks launched in tandem with military conflict will likely increase as more global infrastructure is controlled by the Internet.
While experts hesitate to call the Georgia attack an act of cyber terrorism, most agree that it was part of a strategic campaign to eliminate Georgia's ability to disseminate information.
"It's a brute force attack, one that goes all the way back to the Mafiaboy attacks of 2000," said David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro. "This is not a verifiable cyber war, but it is clearly a step in that direction."
The attacks recall a similar cyber attack in Estonia in April of 2007, when government, parliament, and newspaper sites, as well as numerous online banking operations were shut down after a conflict that resulted in the removal of several Russian World War II monuments. However, experts contend that the recent information attack on Georgian Websites was more coordinated, professional and sophisticated in nature than last year's attack on Estonia infrastructure.
"The Estonia incident was more what I would call hactivism, more of an attack by impassioned amateurs," said Ferguson. "This is a professional attack, and it is vastly more serious."
---------------------
Okay Ukrane, and other neighbors...when the cyber attacks start -
start calling for support. Who do y'all think would respond? Bush? Obama?
Who ya gonna call? Who ya gonna call - an ally...an American commander-in-chief?
Russian Cyber Attacks Shut Down Georgian Websites
By Stefanie Hoffman, ChannelWeb
7:22 PM EDT Tue. Aug. 12, 2008
Following just six days after the initiation of the Georgia-Russian conflict, the Georgian Internet became the target of a coordinated cyber attack, which compromised several government Websites with defacement and Denial of Service attacks, crippling the nation's ability to disseminate information.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's site was defaced, integrating his image with those of Hitler. The sabotage was followed by a DDoS attack that left the presidential site inaccessible.
Denial of service attacks are conducted when a coordinated network of computers sends multiple requests to a given server or computer at exactly the same time, which subsequently shuts down the targeted computer under the barrage of incoming requests.
Meanwhile, Georgian news sites and other popular information forums were also blocked during the attack.
"As more government services move toward the Internet, you end up with more exposure to these types of attack, whether it was an organization and executed by government or criminal elements acting at somebody's direction," said Kevin Newmeyer, worldwide principal for strategic security and counter terrorism for security company Unisys. "It's hard to prove it was a government-directed operation."
The attacks ultimately prompted the Georgian governmental sites to switch to U.S. based hosts, while Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs moved to a blogspot account.
The exact sources of the attacks are yet unknown. Experts say that some ISPs appear to be sourced in Russia, and some speculate that the Russian government had used its resources to fund the attack, which was launched the day before Russia drove tanks into South Ossetia.
Other unconfirmed reports suggest that members of the cybercrime organization Russian Business Network are responsible for the coordinated sabotage of the Georgian Websites.
"It looks like it was coming from Russia, or is it a co-opted server that wasn't properly patched, with people taking over the computer and doing things with it?" said Newmeyer. "With the Russian Business Network, you can rent out a server or a botnet for a number of hours. You pay your cyber gold and these transactions happen offshore. That's one of the challenges that governments face."
Other experts, such as Paul Ferguson, advanced threats researchers for Trend Micro, maintained that the actual RBN ISP has long been shut down, disbanding into less obvious activity spread all over the globe.
The first of the coordinated cyber attacks against Georgia was detected in July, weeks before Russia launched its military intervention. Experts say that attacks launched in tandem with military conflict will likely increase as more global infrastructure is controlled by the Internet.
While experts hesitate to call the Georgia attack an act of cyber terrorism, most agree that it was part of a strategic campaign to eliminate Georgia's ability to disseminate information.
"It's a brute force attack, one that goes all the way back to the Mafiaboy attacks of 2000," said David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro. "This is not a verifiable cyber war, but it is clearly a step in that direction."
The attacks recall a similar cyber attack in Estonia in April of 2007, when government, parliament, and newspaper sites, as well as numerous online banking operations were shut down after a conflict that resulted in the removal of several Russian World War II monuments. However, experts contend that the recent information attack on Georgian Websites was more coordinated, professional and sophisticated in nature than last year's attack on Estonia infrastructure.
"The Estonia incident was more what I would call hactivism, more of an attack by impassioned amateurs," said Ferguson. "This is a professional attack, and it is vastly more serious."
---------------------
Okay Ukrane, and other neighbors...when the cyber attacks start -
start calling for support. Who do y'all think would respond? Bush? Obama?
Who ya gonna call? Who ya gonna call - an ally...an American commander-in-chief?
That's another reason why I push for an old fashioned radio net backup for the current Military Comm systems in use by the United States. Denial of service won't touch the internet the military uses but, ya know, we got to talk to the civilians occasionally.
I think this is a very legitimate point.
QUOTE(Indianhead @ Aug 14 2008, 11:02 AM)
[color="#000080"][b]Our VHF radios stayed up during Katrina when all the UHF ones went down.
So while they are trying to force every law enforcment agency into strictly 700MHz
we are retaining our 154MHz stuff too, not matter what they say. The higher freqs
have smaller ranges because of trees etc. and rely on cables...bad during flooding.
So while they are trying to force every law enforcment agency into strictly 700MHz
we are retaining our 154MHz stuff too, not matter what they say. The higher freqs
have smaller ranges because of trees etc. and rely on cables...bad during flooding.
I've been pounding this topic for going on two years with the Texas Guard.
For anybody who don't know nothing about radio let me give y'all an example which you can relate to. Your TV set has two bands chanels 2-13 run on the VHF band and all those pip squeak stations run on all those other chanels above that which happen to be UHF. Now, there is a reason why the networks choose VHF over UHF when they decided to establish an affiliate in your town. That's cause VHF pushes the signal through bad weather better than does UHF. I could bore you to tears talking about signal attenuation and radio frequencies so I won't. Just remember UHF don't work so good when it's raining and when a huricane hits what's it likely to do?
QUOTE(Marine @ Aug 14 2008, 11:45 AM)
QUOTE(Indianhead @ Aug 14 2008, 11:02 AM)
[color="#000080"][b]Our VHF radios stayed up during Katrina when all the UHF ones went down.
So while they are trying to force every law enforcment agency into strictly 700MHz
we are retaining our 154MHz stuff too, not matter what they say. The higher freqs
have smaller ranges because of trees etc. and rely on cables...bad during flooding.
So while they are trying to force every law enforcment agency into strictly 700MHz
we are retaining our 154MHz stuff too, not matter what they say. The higher freqs
have smaller ranges because of trees etc. and rely on cables...bad during flooding.
I've been pounding this topic for going on two years with the Texas Guard.
For anybody who don't know nothing about radio let me give y'all an example which you can relate to. Your TV set has two bands chanels 2-13 run on the VHF band and all those pip squeak stations run on all those other chanels above that which happen to be UHF. Now, there is a reason why the networks choose VHF over UHF when they decided to establish an affiliate in your town. That's cause VHF pushes the signal through bad weather better than does UHF. I could bore you to tears talking about signal attenuation and radio frequencies so I won't. Just remember UHF don't work so good when it's raining and when a huricane hits what's it likely to do?
As I said, it sounds legitimate and one would think that your superiors would make a point of advising not only their higher ups, but also their legislators regarding the need for such a system...
We can't all have satellite phones...
Though with radio you still need antennae
I root for the Russians.
If Bush is on the Georgia side, there must be a reason.
If only that fact is known, then...
That is reason enough to be on the other side.
QUOTE(graham4anything @ Aug 14 2008, 02:44 PM)
I root for the Russians.
If Bush is on the Georgia side, there must be a reason.
If only that fact is known, then...
That is reason enough to be on the other side.
If Bush is on the Georgia side, there must be a reason.
If only that fact is known, then...
That is reason enough to be on the other side.
I think that the issues here are not as black and white as Bush and the neocons are saying, but that sounds like a pretty dumb reason to be for the Russians Graham. I think that you are smarter than that.
At the very least the Russians are hardly being angels here, it seems like they are definitely bullying the Georgians more than would make the point that they cannot just waltz in and take over South Ossetia.
My friend just e-mailed this to me...
My sister actually heard this while standing in line:
I overheard a woman tell her friend, "I was all confused when I heard Russia was invading Georgia. Then my husband explained about the country."
Apparently she thought there were tanks headed down Peachtree St....
My sister actually heard this while standing in line:
I overheard a woman tell her friend, "I was all confused when I heard Russia was invading Georgia. Then my husband explained about the country."
Apparently she thought there were tanks headed down Peachtree St....
QUOTE(graham4anything @ Aug 14 2008, 12:44 PM)
I root for the Russians.
If Bush is on the Georgia side, there must be a reason.
If only that fact is known, then...
That is reason enough to be on the other side.
If Bush is on the Georgia side, there must be a reason.
If only that fact is known, then...
That is reason enough to be on the other side.
Bush is still in a Cold War mindset. He still thinks Russia is an evil country like Reagan says despite his seeing into Putin's soul...talk about misjudging character...he really gave us some insight into his ability to assess people...
This is why he supports Georgia because its a thorn in Russia's side...
QUOTE(tazvil04 @ Aug 14 2008, 03:43 PM)
My friend just e-mailed this to me...
My sister actually heard this while standing in line:
I overheard a woman tell her friend, "I was all confused when I heard Russia was invading Georgia. Then my husband explained about the country."
Apparently she thought there were tanks headed down Peachtree St....
My sister actually heard this while standing in line:
I overheard a woman tell her friend, "I was all confused when I heard Russia was invading Georgia. Then my husband explained about the country."
Apparently she thought there were tanks headed down Peachtree St....
Well if that ever happens I hope that they don't do anything to Varsity's, which serves big, wonderful hamburgers.
QUOTE(graham4anything @ Aug 13 2008, 04:06 PM)
Bush is YOUR president still
so I think if something happens before Jan.20,2009, you gotta call them
I would have figured you already knew that, but then the last 8 years have shown the average person doesn't know the rules
so I think if something happens before Jan.20,2009, you gotta call them
I would have figured you already knew that, but then the last 8 years have shown the average person doesn't know the rules
Bush is OUR president still despite the fact that few/none of us voted for him...
QUOTE(Arneoker @ Aug 14 2008, 01:46 PM)
QUOTE(tazvil04 @ Aug 14 2008, 03:43 PM)
My friend just e-mailed this to me...
My sister actually heard this while standing in line:
I overheard a woman tell her friend, "I was all confused when I heard Russia was invading Georgia. Then my husband explained about the country."
Apparently she thought there were tanks headed down Peachtree St....
My sister actually heard this while standing in line:
I overheard a woman tell her friend, "I was all confused when I heard Russia was invading Georgia. Then my husband explained about the country."
Apparently she thought there were tanks headed down Peachtree St....
Well if that ever happens I hope that they don't do anything to Varsity's, which serves big, wonderful hamburgers.
Russian like to eat too...I can imagine they would keep it and add an exotic vodka bar...
QUOTE(tazvil04 @ Aug 14 2008, 03:43 PM)
My friend just e-mailed this to me...
My sister actually heard this while standing in line:
I overheard a woman tell her friend, "I was all confused when I heard Russia was invading Georgia. Then my husband explained about the country."
Apparently she thought there were tanks headed down Peachtree St....
My sister actually heard this while standing in line:
I overheard a woman tell her friend, "I was all confused when I heard Russia was invading Georgia. Then my husband explained about the country."
Apparently she thought there were tanks headed down Peachtree St....
QUOTE(Arneoker @ Aug 14 2008, 12:19 PM)
QUOTE(graham4anything @ Aug 14 2008, 02:44 PM)
I root for the Russians.
If Bush is on the Georgia side, there must be a reason.
If only that fact is known, then...
That is reason enough to be on the other side.
If Bush is on the Georgia side, there must be a reason.
If only that fact is known, then...
That is reason enough to be on the other side.
I think that the issues here are not as black and white as Bush and the neocons are saying, but that sounds like a pretty dumb reason to be for the Russians Graham. I think that you are smarter than that.
At the very least the Russians are hardly being angels here, it seems like they are definitely bullying the Georgians more than would make the point that they cannot just waltz in and take over South Ossetia.
Actually what reached the Russians is the world considering them to have overreacted, had the US started out with an honest position (they were right to honor their obligation to step in and stop the invasion and massacre despite constant provocations by both sides), expressed concern over bombing the bases, expressed alarm over them going more than a handful of km into Georgia then expressed outrage at seizing Georgian cities it would've been more effective and put a muzzle on Mouthy Misha.
QUOTE(tazvil04 @ Aug 14 2008, 12:45 PM)
QUOTE(graham4anything @ Aug 14 2008, 12:44 PM)
I root for the Russians.
If Bush is on the Georgia side, there must be a reason.
If only that fact is known, then...
That is reason enough to be on the other side.
If Bush is on the Georgia side, there must be a reason.
If only that fact is known, then...
That is reason enough to be on the other side.
Bush is still in a Cold War mindset. He still thinks Russia is an evil country like Reagan says despite his seeing into Putin's soul...talk about misjudging character...he really gave us some insight into his ability to assess people...
This is why he supports Georgia because its a thorn in Russia's side...
Everybody in the region knows the Rose Revolution was a black op, we back Misha because we put him in power.
Sounds like to me this president of Georgia thought he was Bush. He thought he purchased McCain for $200,000 and could do anything he wished. Sounds like this guy is as dumb as Bush also. But Russia had more tanks then he did. Did he not know that?
Gorbachev brought up some very thought provoking concepts during the interview. One of them being that the US over the years has armed Georgia with a huge arsenal of missles and high tech military weaponry, far more than they ever needed - and that if the US and other allies and not done this what has been happening now probably wouldn't have happened at all. No full transcript of the interview, but I thought it was a good one. Misha looked and sounded like the wild one - at least to me.
Gorbachev: Georgia started conflict in S. Ossetia
Georgian leaders may be blaming Russia for the conflict raging in South Ossetia, but former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said Thursday "there is no doubt" that Georgia provoked the clash.
Mikhail Gorbachev told CNN's Larry King that Russia called extra troops into Georgia to stem violence.
Gorbachev told CNN's Larry King that Russia moved additional forces into South Ossetia in response to "devastation" in the South Ossetia city of Tskhinvali.
"This was the use of sophisticated weapons against a small town, against a sleeping people. This was a barbaric assault," said Gorbachev, the last president of the former Soviet Union.
But Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who also appeared on CNN's "Larry King Live" Thursday, said he was "profoundly shocked" that Mikhail Gorbachev would use a television appearance "for basically vindicating lies and deceptions."
Last week, Georgia said it launched an operation into South Ossetia after a cease-fire was broken with artillery fire from Russian separatists that killed 10 people including civilians and peacekeepers. It accused Russia, which also has peacekeepers in the region, of backing the separatists.
Hours later, the Russian news agency Interfax reported that Russian authorities said 10 Russian peacekeepers had been killed and 30 wounded in an attack by Georgians.
"Western television didn't show what happened in Tskhinvali," Gorbachev said. "Only now they're beginning to show some pictures of the destruction. So this looks to me like it was a well-prepared project. And with any outcome, they wanted to put the blame on Russia." Video Watch Gorbachev discuss "barbaric assault" »
He called Georgia's claims that Russia is attempting to dismantle its democracy "all lies from beginning to end."
In response, Saakashvili expressed disappointment with the sentiments from Gorbachev, who he said he once respected.
"This is the man, Mr. Gorbachev, who helped to, you know, bring down KGB kingdom. And he is the one who is, you know, justifying what the KGB people are doing right now in my country," Saakashvili said.
"Shame on him. Shame on you, Mr. Gorbachev, for perpetuating the very regime you helped to defeat and you fought against as the head of the Soviet Union."
Gorbachev also said the United States is jeopardizing its fragile relationship with Russia by backing Georgia. Video Watch Gorbachev discuss U.S.-Russia relations »
"There is a chance for our two countries to develop a new agenda for cooperation so as to promote both U.S. and Russia interests, and the interests of other countries, and the interests of stability, particularly in the hotspots in different continents," said Gorbachev, who won the Nobel Peace Price in 1990.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/14...view#cnnSTCText
Gorbachev: Georgia started conflict in S. Ossetia
Georgian leaders may be blaming Russia for the conflict raging in South Ossetia, but former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said Thursday "there is no doubt" that Georgia provoked the clash.
Mikhail Gorbachev told CNN's Larry King that Russia called extra troops into Georgia to stem violence.
Gorbachev told CNN's Larry King that Russia moved additional forces into South Ossetia in response to "devastation" in the South Ossetia city of Tskhinvali.
"This was the use of sophisticated weapons against a small town, against a sleeping people. This was a barbaric assault," said Gorbachev, the last president of the former Soviet Union.
But Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who also appeared on CNN's "Larry King Live" Thursday, said he was "profoundly shocked" that Mikhail Gorbachev would use a television appearance "for basically vindicating lies and deceptions."
Last week, Georgia said it launched an operation into South Ossetia after a cease-fire was broken with artillery fire from Russian separatists that killed 10 people including civilians and peacekeepers. It accused Russia, which also has peacekeepers in the region, of backing the separatists.
Hours later, the Russian news agency Interfax reported that Russian authorities said 10 Russian peacekeepers had been killed and 30 wounded in an attack by Georgians.
"Western television didn't show what happened in Tskhinvali," Gorbachev said. "Only now they're beginning to show some pictures of the destruction. So this looks to me like it was a well-prepared project. And with any outcome, they wanted to put the blame on Russia." Video Watch Gorbachev discuss "barbaric assault" »
He called Georgia's claims that Russia is attempting to dismantle its democracy "all lies from beginning to end."
In response, Saakashvili expressed disappointment with the sentiments from Gorbachev, who he said he once respected.
"This is the man, Mr. Gorbachev, who helped to, you know, bring down KGB kingdom. And he is the one who is, you know, justifying what the KGB people are doing right now in my country," Saakashvili said.
"Shame on him. Shame on you, Mr. Gorbachev, for perpetuating the very regime you helped to defeat and you fought against as the head of the Soviet Union."
Gorbachev also said the United States is jeopardizing its fragile relationship with Russia by backing Georgia. Video Watch Gorbachev discuss U.S.-Russia relations »
"There is a chance for our two countries to develop a new agenda for cooperation so as to promote both U.S. and Russia interests, and the interests of other countries, and the interests of stability, particularly in the hotspots in different continents," said Gorbachev, who won the Nobel Peace Price in 1990.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/14...view#cnnSTCText
QUOTE(amy @ Aug 14 2008, 08:44 PM)
QUOTE(tazvil04 @ Aug 14 2008, 03:43 PM)
My friend just e-mailed this to me...
My sister actually heard this while standing in line:
I overheard a woman tell her friend, "I was all confused when I heard Russia was invading Georgia. Then my husband explained about the country."
Apparently she thought there were tanks headed down Peachtree St....
My sister actually heard this while standing in line:
I overheard a woman tell her friend, "I was all confused when I heard Russia was invading Georgia. Then my husband explained about the country."
Apparently she thought there were tanks headed down Peachtree St....
LOL --
I love all the Bush Administration rhetoric about not just invading sovereign nations...
What about Iraq and Afghanistan?
What about Iraq and Afghanistan?
August 16, 2008
Bush, Decrying ‘Bullying,’ Calls for Russia to Leave Georgia
By ELLEN BARRY AND GRAHAM BOWLEY
MOSCOW — Condemning as unacceptable what he called Russia’s “bullying and intimidation,” President Bush on Friday said Russia must withdraw its troops from all of Georgian territory and said the United States would stand with Georgia in the conflict.
“Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected,” he said.
Tensions have risen sharply in the last 24 hours, as the Russian president and foreign minister made it clear they would support separatist efforts by two breakaway Georgian territories and as the specter of a resurgent Russia helped persuade Poland to agree to a long-stalled deal on an American missile defense system.
Mr. Bush spoke as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the Georgian capital on Friday to hold talks with Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany met with the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev. Praising the small nation as a “courageous democracy” that has provided troops to support the American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Bush said, “The people of Georgia have cast their lot with the free world, and we will not cast them aside.”
In some of his strongest language yet on the war that flared up a week ago, Mr. Bush said in a brief statement at the White House, “Moscow must honor its commitment to withdraw its forces from all Georgian territory.”
Mr. Bush said that the cold war was over and that Russia had damaged its credibility and standing in the international order. Russia now had to “put itself back on the path of responsible nations,” Mr. Bush said.
Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has forced the start of a wholesale reassessment of American dealings with Russia, according to senior Bush administration officials, and jeopardized talks on everything from halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions to reducing strategic arsenals to cooperation on missiles defenses.
The conflict punctuated a stark turnabout in the administration’s view of Vladimir V. Putin, the president turned prime minister whom President Bush has repeatedly described as a trustworthy friend. Now Mr. Bush’s aides complain that Russian officials have been misleading or at least evasive about Russia’s intentions in Georgia.
“Russia’s behavior over the past week has called into question the entire premise of that dialogue and has profound implications for our security relationship going forward, both bilaterally and with NATO,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said at the Pentagon on Thursday. “If Russia does not step back from its aggressive posture and actions in Georgia, the U.S.-Russian relationship could be adversely affected for years to come.”
The unspoken new danger is that a cooling relationship could cost the administration any hope of working closely with Russia on some of its topmost priorities, like controlling nuclear proliferation, countering terrorism or resolving the problems of the Middle East.
If Russia and the United States rarely have acted as allies during Mr. Bush’s presidency, they also have rarely allowed disagreements to undermine what Mr. Bush considered one of his bedrock diplomatic relationships. After their first meeting in 2001, Mr. Bush said famously that he had looked into the eyes of Mr. Putin and “got a sense of his soul.”
Mr. Bush has pursued policies that Mr. Putin vigorously opposed, including supporting the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, a Russian ally, expanding NATO to include some former Soviet bloc nations and stationing elements of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
But the two worked closely together to battle terrorism. Administration officials said Mr. Putin generally cooperated in efforts to curtail nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.
Only four months ago, Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin met in Sochi and signed a “framework agreement” that pledged cooperation on a variety of diplomatic and security matters and declared that “the era in which the United States and Russia considered one another an enemy or strategic threat has ended.” Mr. Gates, along with Ms. Rice, traveled twice to Moscow in the past year for discussions on that agreement, which has now been overshadowed by the war and appears unlikely to progress any time soon, if ever.
Mr. Bush has not directly addressed his relationship with Mr. Putin or his successor, Mr.. Medvedev, and his aides declined on Thursday to discuss his personal views. But he has bluntly warned Russia that it risked losing its international standing.
After postponing a trip to his ranch in Texas by a day, Mr. Bush went to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va., for a briefing on the situation in Georgia.
“Got a lot of folks, smart folks, analyzing the situation on the ground and, of course, briefing us on different possibilities that could develop in the area and the region,” he said, flanked by the agency’s director, Michael V. Hayden, and his deputy, Stephen R. Kappes.
He reiterated his call “for the territorial integrity of Georgia to be respected and the cease-fire agreement to be honored.”
Both Georgia and Russia took steps back from open conflict on Thursday, with Russia largely ending air operations over Georgia and preparing to withdraw at least some of the troops its had moved inside the country, Mr. Gates said.
But the issue of Georgia’s territorial integrity appeared increasingly uncertain after Mr. Medvedev met with the leaders of two separatist regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. His foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, declared that Georgia “can forget about” reclaiming sovereignty over the regions.
Mr. Bush rescheduled his departure for Texas for Friday. Ms. Rice, he said, would brief him after returning from her trip to France and Georgia intended to show American support for Mr. Saakashvili.
For a second day, an American C-17 cargo plane arrived in Georgia bearing relief supplies, encountering no interference from Russian forces. Mr. Bush ordered the military-run operation on Wednesday, setting up what administration officials described as a direct challenge to Russia to keep its promise to allow humanitarian aid. A small team of Pentagon officials arrived to assess how best to funnel relief supplies to those wounded or displaced by the conflict.
Mr. Gates and Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon briefing that American forces had the right to self-defense but that said he did not anticipate that they would have to resort to force to distribute the medicine and shelters.
Mr. Gates stressed that he was not predicting a return to the cold war, and he said that over all the United States response to the crisis had been restrained.
“The United States spent 45 years working very hard to avoid a military confrontation with Russia,” Mr. Gates said. “I see no reason to change that approach today.”
Mr. Gates is one of the administration’s experts on Soviet and Russian policies and previously served as the director of central intelligence while spending his career studying the Kremlin and its efforts to exert influence around the world.
“What happens in the days and months to come will determine the future course of U.S.-Russian relations,” he said. “But by the same token, my personal view is that there needs to be some consequences for the actions that Russia has taken against a sovereign state.”
The United States has already canceled outright or withdrawn from several military exercises that were to have included Russian forces in the coming days, the first concrete, punitive steps taken by the administration. In addition, Mr. Gates said, the Defense Department “will re-examine the entire gamut of our military-to-military activities with Russia and will make changes as necessary and appropriate, depending on Russian actions in the days ahead.”
The Russian government unleashed its military into Georgia to accomplish two goals, Mr. Gates said: to punish Georgia for trying to integrate with the West and to warn other nations in the former Soviet sphere of influence against closer ties with Washington and its NATO allies.
“My view is that the Russians — and I would say principally Prime Minister Putin — is interested in reasserting Russia’s, not only Russia’s great power or superpower status, but in reasserting Russia’s traditional spheres of influence,” he said. “My guess is that everyone is going to be looking at Russia through a different set of lenses as we look ahead.”
Mr. Gates’s remarks, while critical of Mr. Putin, also included an implicit rebuke of any effort to base American policy solely on a perceived friendship within the Kremlin. At the Pentagon, Mr. Gates was asked whether he trusted Mr. Putin anymore, and he paused before responding.
“‘Anymore’ is an interesting add,” he said. “I have never believed that one should make national security policy on the basis of trust. I think you make national security policy based on interests and on realities.”
Ellen Barry reported from Moscow and Graham Bowley from New York. Steven Lee Myers and Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington, and Tom Rachman from Paris.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/world/eu...amp;oref=slogin
Bush, Decrying ‘Bullying,’ Calls for Russia to Leave Georgia
By ELLEN BARRY AND GRAHAM BOWLEY
MOSCOW — Condemning as unacceptable what he called Russia’s “bullying and intimidation,” President Bush on Friday said Russia must withdraw its troops from all of Georgian territory and said the United States would stand with Georgia in the conflict.
“Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected,” he said.
Tensions have risen sharply in the last 24 hours, as the Russian president and foreign minister made it clear they would support separatist efforts by two breakaway Georgian territories and as the specter of a resurgent Russia helped persuade Poland to agree to a long-stalled deal on an American missile defense system.
Mr. Bush spoke as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the Georgian capital on Friday to hold talks with Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany met with the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev. Praising the small nation as a “courageous democracy” that has provided troops to support the American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Bush said, “The people of Georgia have cast their lot with the free world, and we will not cast them aside.”
In some of his strongest language yet on the war that flared up a week ago, Mr. Bush said in a brief statement at the White House, “Moscow must honor its commitment to withdraw its forces from all Georgian territory.”
Mr. Bush said that the cold war was over and that Russia had damaged its credibility and standing in the international order. Russia now had to “put itself back on the path of responsible nations,” Mr. Bush said.
Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has forced the start of a wholesale reassessment of American dealings with Russia, according to senior Bush administration officials, and jeopardized talks on everything from halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions to reducing strategic arsenals to cooperation on missiles defenses.
The conflict punctuated a stark turnabout in the administration’s view of Vladimir V. Putin, the president turned prime minister whom President Bush has repeatedly described as a trustworthy friend. Now Mr. Bush’s aides complain that Russian officials have been misleading or at least evasive about Russia’s intentions in Georgia.
“Russia’s behavior over the past week has called into question the entire premise of that dialogue and has profound implications for our security relationship going forward, both bilaterally and with NATO,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said at the Pentagon on Thursday. “If Russia does not step back from its aggressive posture and actions in Georgia, the U.S.-Russian relationship could be adversely affected for years to come.”
The unspoken new danger is that a cooling relationship could cost the administration any hope of working closely with Russia on some of its topmost priorities, like controlling nuclear proliferation, countering terrorism or resolving the problems of the Middle East.
If Russia and the United States rarely have acted as allies during Mr. Bush’s presidency, they also have rarely allowed disagreements to undermine what Mr. Bush considered one of his bedrock diplomatic relationships. After their first meeting in 2001, Mr. Bush said famously that he had looked into the eyes of Mr. Putin and “got a sense of his soul.”
Mr. Bush has pursued policies that Mr. Putin vigorously opposed, including supporting the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, a Russian ally, expanding NATO to include some former Soviet bloc nations and stationing elements of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
But the two worked closely together to battle terrorism. Administration officials said Mr. Putin generally cooperated in efforts to curtail nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.
Only four months ago, Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin met in Sochi and signed a “framework agreement” that pledged cooperation on a variety of diplomatic and security matters and declared that “the era in which the United States and Russia considered one another an enemy or strategic threat has ended.” Mr. Gates, along with Ms. Rice, traveled twice to Moscow in the past year for discussions on that agreement, which has now been overshadowed by the war and appears unlikely to progress any time soon, if ever.
Mr. Bush has not directly addressed his relationship with Mr. Putin or his successor, Mr.. Medvedev, and his aides declined on Thursday to discuss his personal views. But he has bluntly warned Russia that it risked losing its international standing.
After postponing a trip to his ranch in Texas by a day, Mr. Bush went to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va., for a briefing on the situation in Georgia.
“Got a lot of folks, smart folks, analyzing the situation on the ground and, of course, briefing us on different possibilities that could develop in the area and the region,” he said, flanked by the agency’s director, Michael V. Hayden, and his deputy, Stephen R. Kappes.
He reiterated his call “for the territorial integrity of Georgia to be respected and the cease-fire agreement to be honored.”
Both Georgia and Russia took steps back from open conflict on Thursday, with Russia largely ending air operations over Georgia and preparing to withdraw at least some of the troops its had moved inside the country, Mr. Gates said.
But the issue of Georgia’s territorial integrity appeared increasingly uncertain after Mr. Medvedev met with the leaders of two separatist regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. His foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, declared that Georgia “can forget about” reclaiming sovereignty over the regions.
Mr. Bush rescheduled his departure for Texas for Friday. Ms. Rice, he said, would brief him after returning from her trip to France and Georgia intended to show American support for Mr. Saakashvili.
For a second day, an American C-17 cargo plane arrived in Georgia bearing relief supplies, encountering no interference from Russian forces. Mr. Bush ordered the military-run operation on Wednesday, setting up what administration officials described as a direct challenge to Russia to keep its promise to allow humanitarian aid. A small team of Pentagon officials arrived to assess how best to funnel relief supplies to those wounded or displaced by the conflict.
Mr. Gates and Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon briefing that American forces had the right to self-defense but that said he did not anticipate that they would have to resort to force to distribute the medicine and shelters.
Mr. Gates stressed that he was not predicting a return to the cold war, and he said that over all the United States response to the crisis had been restrained.
“The United States spent 45 years working very hard to avoid a military confrontation with Russia,” Mr. Gates said. “I see no reason to change that approach today.”
Mr. Gates is one of the administration’s experts on Soviet and Russian policies and previously served as the director of central intelligence while spending his career studying the Kremlin and its efforts to exert influence around the world.
“What happens in the days and months to come will determine the future course of U.S.-Russian relations,” he said. “But by the same token, my personal view is that there needs to be some consequences for the actions that Russia has taken against a sovereign state.”
The United States has already canceled outright or withdrawn from several military exercises that were to have included Russian forces in the coming days, the first concrete, punitive steps taken by the administration. In addition, Mr. Gates said, the Defense Department “will re-examine the entire gamut of our military-to-military activities with Russia and will make changes as necessary and appropriate, depending on Russian actions in the days ahead.”
The Russian government unleashed its military into Georgia to accomplish two goals, Mr. Gates said: to punish Georgia for trying to integrate with the West and to warn other nations in the former Soviet sphere of influence against closer ties with Washington and its NATO allies.
“My view is that the Russians — and I would say principally Prime Minister Putin — is interested in reasserting Russia’s, not only Russia’s great power or superpower status, but in reasserting Russia’s traditional spheres of influence,” he said. “My guess is that everyone is going to be looking at Russia through a different set of lenses as we look ahead.”
Mr. Gates’s remarks, while critical of Mr. Putin, also included an implicit rebuke of any effort to base American policy solely on a perceived friendship within the Kremlin. At the Pentagon, Mr. Gates was asked whether he trusted Mr. Putin anymore, and he paused before responding.
“‘Anymore’ is an interesting add,” he said. “I have never believed that one should make national security policy on the basis of trust. I think you make national security policy based on interests and on realities.”
Ellen Barry reported from Moscow and Graham Bowley from New York. Steven Lee Myers and Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington, and Tom Rachman from Paris.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/world/eu...amp;oref=slogin
QUOTE(tazvil04 @ Aug 15 2008, 07:57 AM)
US Appeasement, Russia and Georgia
Written by: BayouBuzz Staff
Buzz Right Back----E-Mail a Friend----Print Page
http://www.bayoubuzz.com/News/World/Europe...orgia__7298.asp
By Christopher Tidmore
The inhabitants of a small province on the periphery of Europe overwhelmingly sought annexation by their ethnic brethren across the border. They felt little kinship with the small nation to which they were attached, and could see no reason why they should be reunited with their nationalist kin.
The Prime Minister of the adjoining nation mounted his troops to “liberate” these people from the “autocratic” rule of the democratic nation under which they were forced to live. The leaders of Europe and America argued what right did they have to deny national self-determination?
Of course, the small province was a predominantly mountainous region, once occupied allowed the rest of nation--including the national capital less 60 miles away--to be shelled and quickly thereafter conquered.
Neville Chamberlain’s justification that the West should not go to war for the Sudetenland, an ethnically German alcove whose populace eagerly desired Nazi annexation, seemed surprisingly reasonable at the time. The public remained unaware that the mountainous border region contained the Czechoslovak Army’s defensive installations. The Treaty of Versailles had transferred the Germanic enclave specifically to provide the Czechs and Slovaks with a natural wall that they could defend against a numerically superior German invasion force.
Chamberlain reasoned that this vague notion of geographic security would not raise enough popular support for conflict against a well armed enemy. Moreover, the British people were tired of war, not just due to the Great War twenty years previous, but Imperial brushfire conflicts in Iraq, throughout the Middle East, and in the Indian Raj’s Northwest Province (today’s Afghanistan/Pakistan border) that had absorbed British lives and monies for almost a decade.
In transferring those mountainous regions, Chancellor Hitler would be satisfied that he could negotiate with the West, and would think twice before seeking any other territory--particularly those German speaking regions in Poland that he talked about all the time--and would have no justification to block the supply of petroleum that from Romania upon which the rest of Europe desperately depended.
PM Chamberlain, the scion of an American mother and a famous political dynasty, just could not understand that Hitler was not alone in his desire to expand the borders. The German people, having faced hyperinflation, economic collapse, and the loss of much of their empire and world position, had something to prove. They were a major power, and the world would take notice or else.
Just over four years ago, as Vladimir Putin was tightening his grip, I recounted in this newspaper the Independence Day “celebrations” in St. Petersburg's Palace Square. With the flags of the Russian Federation streaming and bands issuing forth the national anthem with honor guard salutes, virtually no one bothered to show up to see the festivities, to participate in any way.
It was June 12, independence day for the Russian Federation, and no one appeared to care. For an otherwise deeply patriotic country, the attitude seemed odd, except when one considers from whom the Russians celebrated the split.
"Independence from who?" said Mikhail, a guide at the nearby Hermitage Museum recounted to The Louisiana Weekly. "Independence from ourselves? June 12th celebrates independence from the Soviet Union. Everyone wanted independence from us. So, nobody cares [in Russia]. Just a day off from work."
The Russian people, even the most anti-communist amongst them, had no interest in celebrating the anniversary on which the vast majority consider that their country shamefully self-destructed. Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest tragedy in Russian history”, and a majority of popular opinion has consistently agreed, craving the restoration of an empire and an epoch when the world trembled at their nation’s military might.
For example, the first symbol that greets a visitor as he enters Russia is a double-headed eagle gilded in gold. Any student of modern history knows the emblem represented the autocratic rule of the Romanov Dynasty for 300 years, yet today it has supposedly returned as the symbol of a free and democratic Russia.
On top of buildings from Red Square to the Maranesky Theater, the Red Stars of Communism were replaced with the golden double eagle. Instead of the union of the Orthodox Church and the monarchy, which the two heads meant under the Tsars, the government proclaims that the two eagles signify the union of European and Asiatic Russia.
One wisecracker jokingly called it the “union of the Government and the mafia“, but there was little doubt that the average citizen took it seriously. One felt a popular desire existed on the most basic, individual level to harken back to the time of the Romanovs, when Russia was an unabashed Empire, as an almost golden age.
For a country that emerged so recently from tyranny to almost palatably romanticize another previous age of tyrannical rules disturbs and perplexes Westerners. There is even an active effort to have the last Tsar Nicholas II canonized as a saint. (The original article is available at http://www.louisianaweekly.com/weekly/news...te.pl?20040628o ).
Consequently, Putin and his pet president will not face any domestic calls to withdraw from South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The public approves of the reality that control of those mountainous regions leaves the road to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, open, with no defensible landmarks or instillations. In fact, the Russian military has outdone the Wehrmacht by capturing the port city of Gori (appropriately, Stalin’s birthplace), effectively cutting Georgia in two and blocking the flow of petroleum from the Caspian Sea and Kazakhstan.
There is more oil in those two regions, according to some estimates, that what remains under the sands of Saudi Arabia. Wiping away the only pro-Western free market Democracy allows Russia to put a stranglehold on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
Make no mistake. Putin’s dual requirements for peace of annexing South Ossetia and Abkhazia and deposing Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, a pro-American reformer who “brought on the invasion” in the Russian Prime Minister’s words by modestly requesting to join NATO and the European Union, would block Europe’s and America’s only Russian-free petrol source in Central Asia.
Installation of pro-Putin puppet regime in Georgia, the Russian Prime Minister’s direct intention in refusing to talk in any way to Saakashvili, would bring long term economic effects to the West that would rival the 1970s OPEC oil shocks.
Moreover, it would send a message to Russia that it can encourage liberation movements in any former Soviet Republic of its choice. Just as Hitler’s real intention was annexation of the Danzig Corridor and most of Poland, Russia wants at least Eastern Ukraine back in its orbit. If NATO concedes Georgia‘s autonomy, the Western Allies could quickly find themselves in a 21st proxy-conflict version of the Crimean War, with Putin’s Russia again seeking hegemony over all the waterways of the Black Sea. As Lord Palmerston put it, the difference of Russia with or without the Crimea is the difference between an Empire and a merely annoying autocracy.
Plus, the United States which has spent the last decade spreading the word that Democratic reform will bring backwards states into the modern family of nation’s would see its words rendered to complete hypocrisy.
The example of Georgia under Saakashvili which at great domestic cost joined international conventions and institutions affecting arbitration, accounting and ownership; enhanced property rights; changed local securities law so corporate insiders could not expropriate minority investors; pursued free-trade agreements with their regional trading partners; instituted true multiparty democracy; and pursued defensive alliance with the West, that example of democratic reform would be an international joke with long term repercussions for U.S. Foreign Policy.
Who would trust the United States to follow its rhetoric with action? The Kurds, who have worked on our behalf to unite Iraq, would simply walk away from the bickering Shia and Sunni Arabs in favor of their own homeland. Not only would Ukraine frightened of invasion turn away from America and Europe, but Central Asian republics might accept vassal status knowing that America would do little to keep the oil flowing and their independence assured.
In a way, the Bush Administration inadvertently brought the resurgent Imperial Russia upon the world. When Russian cyber attacked Estonia for this pro-US position on missile defense, the White House made only a token protest. When Germany blocked Georgian NATO membership out of fear of losing Russian oil, President Bush did not offer unilateral commitments to Georgia’s security.
However, the major mistake that the Bush Administration allow came from the most noble of intentions and was shared by not only John McCain but Barack Obama. When the Kosovar Albanians sought independence, we supported their efforts, and recognized their fledgling Republic.
Our reasons were justifiable. National self-determination has been an integral part of U.S. Foreign Policy since Woodrow Wilson, but the dismemberment of Serbia on ethnic grounds opened the door for the Russians to do the same in Georgia (and in time the Serbians in Bosnia).
Putin, who massacred the Muslims of Chechnya when they sought ethnic freedom, had no problem in hypocritically using America’s high-minded internationalism against the West. The Russian enclaves simply wanted to be reunited with the Rodina, the motherland, afterall. Wasn’t Putin’s picture flying from banners across South Ossetia with the words “Our President”?
Aren’t the same banners flying in Eastern Ukraine right now?
Simply excluding Russia from the G-8 or removing its seat on the NATO council as most have suggested will not be enough. Putin will see such attempts as pathetic as Hitler did when the League of Nations condemned he and Mussolini. And, Putin will just use Russia’s veto to block any UN Security Council resolutions or punitive action.
Instead, President Bush’s final diplomatic initiative should be an immediate invitation for Georgia, Ukraine, and any former Soviet Central Asian Republic to join NATO. If the Germans or the French block the move on petroeconomic grounds, the United States should unilaterally make defense commitments to Georgia, and demand Russian withdrawal from the disputed provinces.
Should Putin’s Army ignore these threats and march on Tbilisi, seeking to remove President Saakashvili, George Bush should make clear in no uncertain terms that the United States will arm any resistance movement. As the Georgians displayed to other invaders throughout history, they are as capable as the Afghanis in making Russians bleed.
Lastly, the United States should station part of the Atlantic Fleet off the coast of the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, with corresponding ground forces on the borders.
This small Baltic, warm water port and its surrounding farms were annexed by Stalin from conquered Axis territory after World War II. Modern Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus land lock Kaliningrad from the Russian Federation. We must make it clear if Russia seeks to make border changes in Georgia, on vague historical grounds, NATO will gladly restore part of Prussia to Germany--or to Poland or Lithuania.
Tyrants respect only strength. It is past time to show some.
When Chamberlain brought home the Munich Agreement to the British House of Commons, Winston Churchill said prophetically, but to much public condemnation at the time, "You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war."
It is a choice President Bush has to make in the coming days.
Christopher Tidmore is a contributor to Bayoubuzz. The opinion was first published in the Louisiana Weekly.
Written by: BayouBuzz Staff
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http://www.bayoubuzz.com/News/World/Europe...orgia__7298.asp
By Christopher Tidmore
The inhabitants of a small province on the periphery of Europe overwhelmingly sought annexation by their ethnic brethren across the border. They felt little kinship with the small nation to which they were attached, and could see no reason why they should be reunited with their nationalist kin.
The Prime Minister of the adjoining nation mounted his troops to “liberate” these people from the “autocratic” rule of the democratic nation under which they were forced to live. The leaders of Europe and America argued what right did they have to deny national self-determination?
Of course, the small province was a predominantly mountainous region, once occupied allowed the rest of nation--including the national capital less 60 miles away--to be shelled and quickly thereafter conquered.
Neville Chamberlain’s justification that the West should not go to war for the Sudetenland, an ethnically German alcove whose populace eagerly desired Nazi annexation, seemed surprisingly reasonable at the time. The public remained unaware that the mountainous border region contained the Czechoslovak Army’s defensive installations. The Treaty of Versailles had transferred the Germanic enclave specifically to provide the Czechs and Slovaks with a natural wall that they could defend against a numerically superior German invasion force.
Chamberlain reasoned that this vague notion of geographic security would not raise enough popular support for conflict against a well armed enemy. Moreover, the British people were tired of war, not just due to the Great War twenty years previous, but Imperial brushfire conflicts in Iraq, throughout the Middle East, and in the Indian Raj’s Northwest Province (today’s Afghanistan/Pakistan border) that had absorbed British lives and monies for almost a decade.
In transferring those mountainous regions, Chancellor Hitler would be satisfied that he could negotiate with the West, and would think twice before seeking any other territory--particularly those German speaking regions in Poland that he talked about all the time--and would have no justification to block the supply of petroleum that from Romania upon which the rest of Europe desperately depended.
PM Chamberlain, the scion of an American mother and a famous political dynasty, just could not understand that Hitler was not alone in his desire to expand the borders. The German people, having faced hyperinflation, economic collapse, and the loss of much of their empire and world position, had something to prove. They were a major power, and the world would take notice or else.
Just over four years ago, as Vladimir Putin was tightening his grip, I recounted in this newspaper the Independence Day “celebrations” in St. Petersburg's Palace Square. With the flags of the Russian Federation streaming and bands issuing forth the national anthem with honor guard salutes, virtually no one bothered to show up to see the festivities, to participate in any way.
It was June 12, independence day for the Russian Federation, and no one appeared to care. For an otherwise deeply patriotic country, the attitude seemed odd, except when one considers from whom the Russians celebrated the split.
"Independence from who?" said Mikhail, a guide at the nearby Hermitage Museum recounted to The Louisiana Weekly. "Independence from ourselves? June 12th celebrates independence from the Soviet Union. Everyone wanted independence from us. So, nobody cares [in Russia]. Just a day off from work."
The Russian people, even the most anti-communist amongst them, had no interest in celebrating the anniversary on which the vast majority consider that their country shamefully self-destructed. Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest tragedy in Russian history”, and a majority of popular opinion has consistently agreed, craving the restoration of an empire and an epoch when the world trembled at their nation’s military might.
For example, the first symbol that greets a visitor as he enters Russia is a double-headed eagle gilded in gold. Any student of modern history knows the emblem represented the autocratic rule of the Romanov Dynasty for 300 years, yet today it has supposedly returned as the symbol of a free and democratic Russia.
On top of buildings from Red Square to the Maranesky Theater, the Red Stars of Communism were replaced with the golden double eagle. Instead of the union of the Orthodox Church and the monarchy, which the two heads meant under the Tsars, the government proclaims that the two eagles signify the union of European and Asiatic Russia.
One wisecracker jokingly called it the “union of the Government and the mafia“, but there was little doubt that the average citizen took it seriously. One felt a popular desire existed on the most basic, individual level to harken back to the time of the Romanovs, when Russia was an unabashed Empire, as an almost golden age.
For a country that emerged so recently from tyranny to almost palatably romanticize another previous age of tyrannical rules disturbs and perplexes Westerners. There is even an active effort to have the last Tsar Nicholas II canonized as a saint. (The original article is available at http://www.louisianaweekly.com/weekly/news...te.pl?20040628o ).
Consequently, Putin and his pet president will not face any domestic calls to withdraw from South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The public approves of the reality that control of those mountainous regions leaves the road to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, open, with no defensible landmarks or instillations. In fact, the Russian military has outdone the Wehrmacht by capturing the port city of Gori (appropriately, Stalin’s birthplace), effectively cutting Georgia in two and blocking the flow of petroleum from the Caspian Sea and Kazakhstan.
There is more oil in those two regions, according to some estimates, that what remains under the sands of Saudi Arabia. Wiping away the only pro-Western free market Democracy allows Russia to put a stranglehold on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
Make no mistake. Putin’s dual requirements for peace of annexing South Ossetia and Abkhazia and deposing Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, a pro-American reformer who “brought on the invasion” in the Russian Prime Minister’s words by modestly requesting to join NATO and the European Union, would block Europe’s and America’s only Russian-free petrol source in Central Asia.
Installation of pro-Putin puppet regime in Georgia, the Russian Prime Minister’s direct intention in refusing to talk in any way to Saakashvili, would bring long term economic effects to the West that would rival the 1970s OPEC oil shocks.
Moreover, it would send a message to Russia that it can encourage liberation movements in any former Soviet Republic of its choice. Just as Hitler’s real intention was annexation of the Danzig Corridor and most of Poland, Russia wants at least Eastern Ukraine back in its orbit. If NATO concedes Georgia‘s autonomy, the Western Allies could quickly find themselves in a 21st proxy-conflict version of the Crimean War, with Putin’s Russia again seeking hegemony over all the waterways of the Black Sea. As Lord Palmerston put it, the difference of Russia with or without the Crimea is the difference between an Empire and a merely annoying autocracy.
Plus, the United States which has spent the last decade spreading the word that Democratic reform will bring backwards states into the modern family of nation’s would see its words rendered to complete hypocrisy.
The example of Georgia under Saakashvili which at great domestic cost joined international conventions and institutions affecting arbitration, accounting and ownership; enhanced property rights; changed local securities law so corporate insiders could not expropriate minority investors; pursued free-trade agreements with their regional trading partners; instituted true multiparty democracy; and pursued defensive alliance with the West, that example of democratic reform would be an international joke with long term repercussions for U.S. Foreign Policy.
Who would trust the United States to follow its rhetoric with action? The Kurds, who have worked on our behalf to unite Iraq, would simply walk away from the bickering Shia and Sunni Arabs in favor of their own homeland. Not only would Ukraine frightened of invasion turn away from America and Europe, but Central Asian republics might accept vassal status knowing that America would do little to keep the oil flowing and their independence assured.
In a way, the Bush Administration inadvertently brought the resurgent Imperial Russia upon the world. When Russian cyber attacked Estonia for this pro-US position on missile defense, the White House made only a token protest. When Germany blocked Georgian NATO membership out of fear of losing Russian oil, President Bush did not offer unilateral commitments to Georgia’s security.
However, the major mistake that the Bush Administration allow came from the most noble of intentions and was shared by not only John McCain but Barack Obama. When the Kosovar Albanians sought independence, we supported their efforts, and recognized their fledgling Republic.
Our reasons were justifiable. National self-determination has been an integral part of U.S. Foreign Policy since Woodrow Wilson, but the dismemberment of Serbia on ethnic grounds opened the door for the Russians to do the same in Georgia (and in time the Serbians in Bosnia).
Putin, who massacred the Muslims of Chechnya when they sought ethnic freedom, had no problem in hypocritically using America’s high-minded internationalism against the West. The Russian enclaves simply wanted to be reunited with the Rodina, the motherland, afterall. Wasn’t Putin’s picture flying from banners across South Ossetia with the words “Our President”?
Aren’t the same banners flying in Eastern Ukraine right now?
Simply excluding Russia from the G-8 or removing its seat on the NATO council as most have suggested will not be enough. Putin will see such attempts as pathetic as Hitler did when the League of Nations condemned he and Mussolini. And, Putin will just use Russia’s veto to block any UN Security Council resolutions or punitive action.
Instead, President Bush’s final diplomatic initiative should be an immediate invitation for Georgia, Ukraine, and any former Soviet Central Asian Republic to join NATO. If the Germans or the French block the move on petroeconomic grounds, the United States should unilaterally make defense commitments to Georgia, and demand Russian withdrawal from the disputed provinces.
Should Putin’s Army ignore these threats and march on Tbilisi, seeking to remove President Saakashvili, George Bush should make clear in no uncertain terms that the United States will arm any resistance movement. As the Georgians displayed to other invaders throughout history, they are as capable as the Afghanis in making Russians bleed.
Lastly, the United States should station part of the Atlantic Fleet off the coast of the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, with corresponding ground forces on the borders.
This small Baltic, warm water port and its surrounding farms were annexed by Stalin from conquered Axis territory after World War II. Modern Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus land lock Kaliningrad from the Russian Federation. We must make it clear if Russia seeks to make border changes in Georgia, on vague historical grounds, NATO will gladly restore part of Prussia to Germany--or to Poland or Lithuania.
Tyrants respect only strength. It is past time to show some.
When Chamberlain brought home the Munich Agreement to the British House of Commons, Winston Churchill said prophetically, but to much public condemnation at the time, "You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war."
It is a choice President Bush has to make in the coming days.
Christopher Tidmore is a contributor to Bayoubuzz. The opinion was first published in the Louisiana Weekly.
QUOTE(david sobien @ Aug 15 2008, 12:40 AM)
Sounds like to me this president of Georgia thought he was Bush. He thought he purchased McCain for $200,000 and could do anything he wished. Sounds like this guy is as dumb as Bush also. But Russia had more tanks then he did. Did he not know that?
Well, all I can say is that I see numerous examples of people, most certainly intelligent people, behaving irrationally, and not very intelligently, every day.
South Ossetia: The perfect wrong war
By Walid Phares
I am posting an article I titled "South Ossetia, the Perfect Wrong War." In the current hot debate about the South Ossetia-Georgia conflict there are two main trends in the West:
1. Western frustration: To consider Russia's aggressive response as part of a renewed Cold war and thus a signal for the West to mobilize against the Russians, again.
2. Anti-American Critics: To consider US policy as responsible for this and other crises and thus the need to change this policy.
3. Strategic Wisdom: I am suggesting a third way to look at it through the big picture of our War on Terror and how to deal with such conflicts. This thesis may not attractive to the previous main trends, but it would be wise to consider in a post 9/11 era.
The ongoing debate in the West and particularly in the US is showing revealing trends. The critics of the War on terror blame the US. The supporters of the War on Terror split in two camps. One platform recommending an all out mobilization against Moscow, while the Coalition is battling the Jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan and dealing with Iran. And another platform advising to smartly contain the current crisis with Russia and focus on the confrontation with the Jihadi forces. The latter forces of course would be delighted to see the US engaging in two global conflicts instead of one. They will be delighted even more, if the US (and the West) would suspend the War on Terror and re-engage in a new Cold war. Here is the essay.
Read More »
South Ossetia: The perfect wrong war
By now, days after Georgian forces stormed the capital of south Ossetia and Russian units counter attacked across the breaking away province and beyond; a devastating war has spread across the Caucasus causing death, destruction and displacement of populations. All wars are terrible -- even the legitimate ones where country, freedom and survival at are at stake. But this war is particularly unnecessary, could have been avoided and above all is wrong; in fact I call it the perfect wrong war.
Unfortunately, when battles are raging with tanks, artillery, bombs and all sort of firepower, it becomes more difficult to see the substantive issues clearly than before the confrontation began. For example, it becomes more pressing to reach a cease fire, provide medical attention, create Red Cross corridors, stop ethnic cleansing, human rights breaches and take care of refugees, than to investigate who began the hostilities, what provoked it, what are the local claims and what international equation has permitted such an onslaught. And to make it more complicated, rushed journalistic reporting -- often biased -- confuses public opinion endlessly. In short, once the bullets fly, media sensationalism explodes and political agendas creep in.
Let's review the battle of arguments in the South Ossetia conflict and try to analyze the essence while keeping an eye on the bigger picture, the one that affects democracies' national security and international efforts against terror forces.
The classical slogans
When you observe the media analysis worldwide, you can spot the mutual classical slogans and easy assessments, not always accurate. As soon as the clashes began in Tskhinvali (the South Ossetian capital), anti-American propagandists rushed to accuse the Bush Administration of "pushing President Mikheil Saakshvili to perform an attack destined to weaken the Kremlin." Other more sinister charges linked the Georgian move to a US "interest in Oil pipelines." Similar to the 9/11 conspiracy theories these allegations were also found in some Russian unofficial commentaries. But opposing narratives spoke of a "Putin offensive to expand Russian power southbound after years of weakness." Many stories accused the Kremlin of simply trying to "re-occupy" former Soviet Republics.
Obviously these slogans from this and other sides are frivolous. Neither Moscow nor Washington are in a state allowing them to wage wars