Georgia: Not Quite as Putin Intended.
In spite of Akira’s valiant attempts to portray Putin as a master strategist and the aggrieved party to the conflict, the consequences are beginning to be more in line with my views than his.
First from AP:
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel is offering strong support for Georgia, saying the country is on track to become a member of NATO.
Merkel flew to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Sunday, two days after she met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
In a speech Sunday, Merkel also suggested that NATO could help rebuild the tattered Georgian military.
Merkel supports the EU cease-fire, saying it needs to be followed “immediately” and that Russian troops need to pull out of neighboring Georgia.
From Radio Netherlands:
Ukraine has agreed to take part in a missile defence system designed by the United States to protect Western countries. The government in Kiev defended its decision for military co-operation with the West, saying Russia cancelled a bilateral treaty with Ukraine earlier this year.
A few days ago, Poland and the United States reached agreement on the siting of missiles on Polish territory. These, together with radar installations in the Czech republic, make up the missile shield. Russia is fiercely opposed to the defence system and has threatened retaliatory measures.
The Ukrainian offer to co-operate with the US on the shield comes as the situation surrounding Russia’s military operations in Georgia is increasingly tense. Ukraine’s pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko has strongly criticised Russia and is threatening to impose restrictions on Russian navy vessels’ use of the port of Sebastopol in Ukraine.
Gee, way to go Vladimir, guess you never made acquaintance with Dale Carnegie in your studies of human nature.
Victor Davis Hanson weighs in and I think more highly of his views than those of most other commentators on the world scene.
We are a little more than a week into the crisis, and already Russia has already gotten itself more than just fights with Georgia—but also issued creepy threats to Poland over missiles, and to the Ukraine over naval bases. Putin has galvanized into panic most of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, prompted a radical change of policy in the United States, and embarrassed its once sure support from the appeasement bloc of the European Union. What will next week bring? A Georgian insurgency, replete with stingers, anti-tank guns, and ieds? Increased arms sales to the former republics? Tougher talk from Obama?
Read it all.
As I tried to explain in my comments on my previous post, Russia had a golden opportunity to become a normal civilized country, allies with the Anglosphere, and Putin has thrown it all away, and for what? Dreams of a New Russian Empire, controller of energy supplies to EUtopia and therefore having the EU countries under his thumb, aiding the enemies of the US with the aim of bogging down the US Military and economy in countering Iran, Syria, NK etc.
Vladimir old friend, you should have got your own country’s problems fixed before taking on the rest of the world and the US in particular. You are as dependent on supplying oil and gas to EUtopia as they are on being supplied, you don’t really have much else going for you, not even the Western capitalists eager to help you develop your economy in a more diversified way, you’ve pissed them off right royally, not to mention scared the shit out of them.
The invasion of Georgia is a colossal blunder because it has shown that there is no reason to hope that Russia can be a reliable partner in anything for the foreseeable future. Prospects for the Russian people got bleaker last week.
Update. David Warren has a column up on the subject.
Sphere: Related ContentA powerful state which, like contemporary Russia, is eager to play on the inevitable ethnic difficulties of its neighbours — to abet those problems, as the Russians have done, and then use them as pretext for the invasion and dismemberment of a much smaller neighbour — is regardless of its size and constitution, behaving as a rogue state.
We cannot continue to act on the polite assumption that Vladimir Putin and his minions (including the current nominal president, Dmitry Medvedev), are honourable. “Realism” requires that we act henceforth on the assumption that they aren’t.
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Re: “Akira’s valiant attempts to portray Putin as a master strategist and the aggrieved party to the conflict”
I did no such thing.
Facts:
Putin is an immoral tyrant bastard.
It’s not relevant.
Abkhazia & South Ossetia are not Georgia.
Saakashvili is literally nuts.
Russians perceive the US and NATO as a threat.
US mismanagement is making things worse.
The US has gone to war with the strongest Orthodox Christian state in the Balkans [the boundary between the Caliphate and Europe] and is belligerent towards Russia [the only Orthodox Christian state to resist Jihad for 450 years].
The US is allied with Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, “Kosovo”, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The US state department forbids even the mention of “Jihad” “Islamism” etc.
The US ambassador to the UN is a Sunni Muslim citizen of Afghanistan.
The US supports Turkey joining the EU, which would make the EU at least 1/4 Muslim.
Muslim immigartion to the US has risen while Bush has been president, and will probably only increase under a President Obama, McCain, or Clinton (technically she’s still in the race).
Most Americans don’t even care that the lead candidate was not only a Muslim citizen of Indonesia, and recorded as such on his Indonesian ID, but even lies about his past, and the media assist his lies.
Which non-Muslim country is doing the most in the world to strengthen empower and expand Jihad?
Draw your own conclusions.
Some people care about The Truth. You are clearly not one of them.
The Conservative, Anti-Jihadi perspective:
“If Saakashvili acted in the hope of a decisive political and even military American response to Russia’s predictable reaction, he is naive. If he willingly accepted the role of collateral damage in the scenario of discrediting Russia, he is stupid. And if he thought that he could do a Tudjman with impunity, he is insane.”
“Georgian troops planned to occupy Southern Ossetia in a Blitzkrieg operation modelled after Croatia’s “Operation Storm” that expelled a quarter-million Krajina Serbs”
“Actively involved at all levels of planning, training and equipping the Georgian army, the US could not have not known what was coming.”
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=704
Re: “Akira’s valiant attempts to portray Putin as a master strategist and the aggrieved party to the conflict”
I did no such thing.
From your comments, “Surprise! They actually have one sensible writer at the Times:
Vladimir Putin’s mastery checkmates the West”
So what else am I supposed to make of that?
Facts:
Putin is an immoral tyrant bastard.
Agreed.
It’s not relevant.
It isn’t? When an immoral tyrant bastard controls a country and determines what that country does from poisoning the leading candidate in an independent country’s election, murdering journalists who criticise him and now invading Georgia, it somehow isn’t relevant? And you want some of what I’m smoking?
Abkhazia & South Ossetia are not Georgia.
Debatable to say the least and legally they are.
Saakashvili is literally nuts.
I have no idea if he is or not, I think ‘nuts’ is going overboard a bit.
Russians perceive the US and NATO as a threat.
It is now because of the Russian ‘perception of it being so’ and their acting on that previously false perception as an enemy of them.
US mismanagement is making things worse.
Well of course, what else is new, I hear tell global warming can be laid at their door too.
The US has gone to war with the strongest Orthodox Christian state in the Balkans [the boundary between the Caliphate and Europe] and is belligerent towards Russia [the only Orthodox Christian state to resist Jihad for 450 years].
The US is allied with Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, “Kosovo”, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
So if it’s Christian, no matter how bad, we should be OK with it. If as part of the huge project of bringing Islam out of the 7th century mindset it is sliding into we have to deal with some bad Islamic countries because you can’t do it all at once and at some stage Islam will have to do some of the work itself, then that’s the way it has to be. It could take a hundred years to sort that mess out, quite a bit less if the Russian leaders weren’t actively undermining it.
The US state department forbids even the mention of “Jihad” “Islamism” etc.
The US State Dept is as bad as Arnold Toynbee’s Chatham House crowd in the years after WW2, it should be abolished and a new dept established.
The US ambassador to the UN is a Sunni Muslim citizen of Afghanistan.
So?
The US supports Turkey joining the EU, which would make the EU at least 1/4 Muslim.
That’s a tricky one, would Turkish membership encourage Turkey to remain a state with a government separate from its religion and marginalize its extremists or would it swamp the EU Islamically? I hesitate to call it, but should the EU be expected to take a chance on it?
Muslim immigartion to the US has risen while Bush has been president, and will probably only increase under a President Obama, McCain, or Clinton (technically she’s still in the race).
A one year moratorium on all immigration wouldn’t be a bad idea while a few ground rules were re-established.
Most Americans don’t even care that the lead candidate was not only a Muslim citizen of Indonesia, and recorded as such on his Indonesian ID, but even lies about his past, and the media assist his lies.
That’s OK, he’s going to lose.
Which non-Muslim country is doing the most in the world to strengthen empower and expand Jihad?
That would be the Saudis, too bad Richard Nixon got ousted before he got his oil self sufficiency programme on the go. It really is madness the way so much our money winds up financing the jihad against the West. I mean really I’m with you on most of this stuff, I just think you are obsessing on Saakashvili whatever his name is too much.
Draw your own conclusions.
Some people care about The Truth. You are clearly not one of them.
That statement is just silly.
PS. I really have very little spare time, and probably won’t reply in that much detail again, sorry but that’s the way it is. I appreciate your comments and have learnt from them, I still see Russia as having squandered a marvellous opportunity, think India as I said before.
For you to reply “So?” when informed that the US ambassador to the UN is a Muslim and a citizen of Afghanistan shows how confused you are.
To shrug your shoulders about Turkey joining the EU supports that conclusion.
This confirms beyond a doubt your ignorance of Islam and your liberal pedigree:
“If as part of the huge project of bringing Islam out of the 7th century mindset it is sliding into we have to deal with some bad Islamic countries because you can’t do it all at once and at some stage Islam will have to do some of the work itself, then that’s the way it has to be. It could take a hundred years to sort that mess out”
Obviously, in context, my reference to a European leader talking sense about Georgia-Russia, it was because he said that both sides were at fault.
Wrong about the Saudis. The US does more to legitimize and empower Jihad in the US and Europe, through aiding Jihad armies, banning criticism of Jihadis and normalizing immigration.
This is especially for you:
http://brianakira.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/praise-fluid-the-freedom-loving-union-of-international-democracy/
If this is not a “nut”, then I don’t know what is
America’s Crazy “Ally”
http://brianakira.wordpress.com/2008/08/17/americas-crazy-ally/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGf2tmuz1aw
Akiras last blog post..Praise F.L.U.I.D. ~ The Freedom-Loving Union of International Democracy