Monthly Archives: August 2008

Retro

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The war has a retrograde feel says Charlie. I believe* it’s only the third conventional war between two countries since the Gulf war. They were far more common during the cold war era.

The other was the Ethiopia-Eritrea war**, and…Iraq. One hopes retro hasn’t become fashionable following a weakening of the international law. That would be very, very bad.

*Clashes between India and Pakistan and Ecuador and Peru didn’t involve declarations of war, although his war may still turn out to be as brief, we can hope, though maybe with a bigger death toll. The Armenia-Azerbaijan war went on after the Gulf war, but started as a conflict within the Soviet Union in the late 80s.

** So two out of three wars involves countries recently separated, which gives them a slightly retro civil war feel, which I suppose is a hopeful thought.

How many disputed territories have you annexed this week?

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James Sherr writes in today’s Telegraph:

… Russia is exasperated with the West and also contemptuous of it. In the Georgian conflict, as in the more subtle variants of energy diplomacy, Russians have shown a harshly utilitarian asperity in connecting means and ends. In exchange, we appear to present an unfocused commitment to values and process. Our democracy agenda has earned the resentment not only of Russia’s elite but of the ordinary people who are delighted to see Georgia being taught a lesson. Our divisions arouse derision.

I suspect that this kind of writing will seem alarmist in hindsight. For a while now, I’ve had the view that it’s probably better not to talk up Russia and Russian strength. From the playground perspective, that kind of talk only encourages the bully. More importantly, it gets things out of proportion, and lack of proportion surely belongs to the psychology of escalation.

There’s a distinct retrograde character to this week’s events. This makes following the news exciting, but nonetheless I don’t think we’re seeing the beginning of a return to the state of affairs pre-1989. For a start, with communism, for decades, there was the fear that maybe, just maybe, the reds might be outproducing us. In other words, whether or not communism was ethically sound, it worked. (And there’s more than a hint of this mentality with respect to China today.) I tend to believe that if you follow this road assiduously you get to a situation where – through reference to some sort of biological analogy – ‘strength’ or ‘fitness’ is given as the highest purpose of a nation. This bad.

Luckily, we don’t need to go there: communism (at least, communism as practised by the Russians) turned out not to work. The consequences are still with Russia today, and can be seen at various levels and in various applications, including military applications. For example, shells fired from a Leopard 2 will likely pass clean through the hull of a T-80, but not vice versa. (Korolev’s rocket designs were good, admittedly.) It’s only because military investment was such a high priority in the USSR that we see today’s Russia in possession of a variety of functional materiel.

Now that we can measure it,* we find that Russia’s GDP is approximately equal to that of Portugal Brazil (which is not to knock Brazil). Much of Russia’s wealth comes from resource extraction: in other words, Russia is not making stuff. Is it thinking stuff instead? Well, is there a nascent biotech or semiconductor industry in Russia today? (Or is there maybe some other, more esoteric kind of activity that hasn’t yet permeated popular consciousness?) How are Russian universities doing?

Russia is fairly populous, although no one would call it densely populated. However, its population is shrinking; in part, because it is not a healthy country.

So we’re left with territory – Russia borders a lot of places – and with its military, which still has some potency. Put those two together, and maybe it’s not surprising that some Russian tanks will pop across the border from time to time. Or at least, they’ll want to.

One thing I found hard to understand about the last few days was the BTC pipeline bombing. I don’t think that anyone doubts that the Russian air force could hit it eventually, if they chose, but what would be the point? There’s no short term strategic consequence: nothing exclusively depends on that particular piece of infrastructure. So unless the Russians bombed it every day – which in itself would delay a profitable peace – they’d only see the thing rebuilt. If on the other hand, they wanted the pipeline – preciousss – for themselves, they’d have to invade (and take any further consequences). This possibility must be on people’s minds, but it seems less likely today than it did yesterday. My suspicion is that the Russians simply missed the pipeline, and then, having thought things through, decided not to have another go.

My geostrategic recommendation, for what little it’s worth: have strong words with the Ukrainians so that the Russians are allowed to take their boats home unmolested. Negotiate the introduction of a UN monitoring force to be stationed somewhere in the vicinity of South Ossetia. Continue to reduce dependency on oil and gas. And wait. Looking back, one lesson is this: if the Georgians had been militarily competent, they could have made this particular excursion punishingly difficult. The terrain favours defence. Whatever training and equipping may have been going on, it was obviously not up to scratch: we’ve just seen a failure of basic, local deterrence.

*Probably not a straightforward job

And We’re Out of There

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I’m writing this in advance, so things may change during the night, but my better half’s foundation made evacuation mandatory Saturday afternoon, so off we go. We’re on our way to Yerevan to see if things subside reasonably quickly. I hope so, as I really like Tbilisi and was enjoying settling in there. One way or another, we’ll be going back to a very different environment.

Georgia: played?

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Well, the South Ossetia conflict is going pretty badly for Georgia. The Russians appear to have cleared Tsikhinvali, and they’ve moved over six! hundred! armored vehicles into theater. Russian bombers have struck at a number of military targets inside Georgia, and the Russian Navy is maneuvering off the Georgian coast.

It’s increasingly clear that the Russians were very ready for this conflict. In fact it’s looking like the Georgians did exactly what Moscow wanted.

Was Georgia played? We’ll probably never know, but a couple of thoughts come to mind. Continue reading →

The American angle

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Let’s take a moment to consider this para from Doug’s (the Doug in Tbilisi, that is) first post.

Second, what will the Americans and EU do? A senior State Department figure was here in Tbilisi last week, and I would expect that the Georgian side at least hinted very broadly about what was up. He would have to deny that, of course, in the way of these things. We can assume that the Americans did not warn them off.

(My emphasis).

If true, this has to be one of the most indefensible things the Bush Administration has done in the last few years. Saakashvili took a reckless gamble, and it didn’t work out.

The Americans have more or less encouraged Saakashvili’s dangerously confrontational approach to Russia, and have given them hopes of NATO membership, which was never going to happen. They may also have had unrealistic expectations about US support in the event of a war. This war would likely never have happened if the US had discouraged the Georgians [update: in the last few years. Not saying the low level visit last week was crucial, rather than telling.] The result is an probable own goal by the Bushies. In Rob Farley’s words:

Hegemony or no, the United States will have been unable to give significant military aid to an Iraq War ally facing the prospect of interstate war.” More seriously. This isn’t the end of the world, but it’s not great.

But for the people of Georgia, it’s a lot worse than “not great”.

…8th Circle disagrees.

Rapidly Developing Situation in Georgia

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So Tbilisi was very normal as I drove around this morning. Did I notice more uniforms than usual? Maybe, but maybe that’s just me looking for them more. The tank being hauled on the back of a truck in from the outskirts of town was definitely out of the ordinary. The short convoys of black Mercedes and police cars could have been any high official about business, though on Saturday morning that’s not quite expected. Less buying of water and than you would see before a hurricane on the US Gulf Coast. And quite honestly Tbilisi during an armed conflict was more open than Washington, DC on a normal business day.

On the other hand: Mobile phone service is having sporadic outages, probably due to overload. I’ve seen some signs that banks are moving their cash to consolidated locations (rumor was that banks in Gori moved their cash out yesteday), and I had trouble drawing money this afternoon. Although I had similar trouble last weekend, too. A colleague who was here today said that the main bridge was down in Gori, and that police were not necessarily letting people drive through town. This would cut the main east-west road roughly in half.

Parliament will by all accounts declare war and martial law this afternoon. More details as they become available.

South Ossetia: alea jacta est

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That’s Latin for “throw the dice high”, and that’s what it looks like Georgian leader Saakashvili has done.

I’m no longer the Fistful’s Man In the Caucasus — I left in March, after the violence in Armenia. Doug Merrill is now the go-to guy: he’s in Tbilisi, very close to the action. But he’s asleep right now, and it looks like some of our readers are still awake, so FWIW here’s an impression from a distance. Half-informed, amateur war analysis follows.

Who started it? — Looks like Georgia. The sniping earlier came from both sides, but the Georgians have clearly launched a major ground offensive, and that doesn’t just happen by accident.

Why? Why? — What follows is a mishmash of guesses. Take it with a big grain of salt.

South Ossetia has always been vulnerable to a blitzkrieg attack. It’s small, it’s not very populous (~70,000 people), and it’s surrounded by Georgia on three sides. It’s very rugged and mountainous, yes, but it’s not suited to defense in depth. There’s only one town of any size (Tsikhinvali, the capital) and only one decent road connecting the province with Russia.

That last point bears emphasizing. There’s just one road, and it goes through a tunnel. There are a couple of crappy roads over the high passes, but they’re in dreadful condition; they can’t support heavy equipment, and are closed by snow from September to May. Strategically, South Ossetia dangles by that single thread.

So, there was always this temptation: a fast determined offensive could capture Tsikhinvali, blow up or block the tunnel, close the road, and then sit tight. If it worked, the Russians would then be in a very tricky spot: yes, they outnumber the Georgians 20 to 1, but they’d have to either drop in by air or attack over some very high, nasty mountains. This seems to be what the Georgians are trying to do: attack fast and hard, grab Tsikhinvali, and close the road.

So, is it working? — It’s too early to tell, but it’s not looking good. Continue reading →

When Conflicts Thaw: South Ossetia

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This one is breaking fast — as I was writing an earlier version of this post, Georgia’s president Mikhail Saakashvili said at a press conference that Georgian forces had downed two Russian planes that had breached Georgian air space. Local media are reporting that Georgia has taken most of Tskhinvali, the breakaway region’s capital. The assault began last night, after a week of escalating sniping and shooting across the ceasefire lines that had been reasonably stable since the early 1990s.

One of the reports I read today (can’t find the link, grr) held that the Georgians were claiming to have headed off a “column of mercenaries” coming down from the north, i.e., Russia. This is just plausible — Russian railroad troops have been busy the last week in Georgia’s other breakaway region of Abkhazia — but also sounds like a pretext. At any rate, the Georgian leadership has decided to unfreeze the conflict by bringing it to a boil.

First reports indicate a military success for the Georgians: control of most of Tskhinvali, which seems to be the only significant prize in the region. We’re nearly 90 minutes into an announced three-hour ceasefire and “humanitarian corridor,” which seems to be about giving people time to get out of town and any wavering fighters time to change into civvies and melt into the background. After that, it’s implied, Georgian forces will be cleaning up the rest of Tskhinvali. Given the operation so far, I think they’ll succeed, and with that formally claim that South Ossetia has been reintegrated.

That’s where things get interesting, as there are several open points. First, what will Russia’s leadership do? It was willing to have Russian planes violate Georgian airspace last week during the escalation, and reports have it that one bomb each fell near the Georgian cities of Gori and Kartveli. On the other hand, this looks like a gesture — if the Russians wanted to have bombs fall on Gori and Kartveli, they jolly well would have. Escalation by the Russian side is of course possible, but Saakashvili’s government has bet that Russia won’t be all that put out about 70,000 South Ossetians. The ruble and the Russian stock market, however, both had big drops today, apparently on the theory that you never know about escalation.

Second, what will the Americans and EU do? A senior State Department figure was here in Tbilisi last week, and I would expect that the Georgian side at least hinted very broadly about what was up. He would have to deny that, of course, in the way of these things. We can assume that the Americans did not warn them off. The German foreign minister was also here, with a plan for Abkhazia. It’s slightly less likely that he was clued in, but the topic of his visit points to the next item on the reintegration agenda.

Abkhazia has always been the biggest and least tractable of Georgia’s conflicts, and the one most important to Tbilisi. Adjara went peacefully; South Ossetia is now doing things the hard way. Sooner or later, Tbilisi seems to be saying, Abkhazia will have to make its choice. Recent increased Russian activity may have led the Georgians to think that it was time to wrap up Ossetia and leave just one item on the menu.

UPDATE: Reported Russian bombardment of military airport just outside Tbilisi, details as they become available.

UPDATE 2: Wu Wei is also based in Tbilisi, and updating more regularly. Like him her, I am also getting news from Civil.ge. Internet, cell and electricity are all holding up well (all also occasionally go out during normal times), though, weirdly, I cannot access Google. Reports of Russian air power bombing two military air fields, Vaziani (just outside Tbilisi) and Marneuili, south of Tbilisi.