any idiot who believes russia acts on anyone but it’s own behalf, or could give a shit about anyone else except where such concern can be used as a pretext for extending its direct control, is an IDIOT. russia cares about 100,000 Ossetes? right. more like the “former” KGB in charge has laced the entire post-Soviet space with “national liberation” groups and espionage agents, and worked to undermine and reverse all sovereign autonomous states in what Russia considers its “near abroad.” That’s all. This move is just an opportune moment chosen to make an example of Georgia. It has not a goddamn thing to do with Ossetes; that’s just to fool local morons and Western useful idiots. The ultimate target is NATO. Contrary to popular punditry, Europe does not consider Georgia to be its own kind any more than it considered Serbia and Bosnia to be but a “Slav problem.” “Europe” is not, and probably never really was, motivated by principles such as these, largely because they actually boarder these states. That’s why the USA is so useful in every way. The Russian strategy envisions pushing this concern for such things as “security structures” back, back, back out of Europe entirely, ultimately destroying NATO. Surely one major purpose of pushing through Georgia is to demonstrate that NATO will not respond to its applicants’ travails – that NATO in fact cannot rival Russian energy dominance, and that NATO is effectively dead and Russia left up to its own cunning devices.
It is said that the major purpose of glasnost and perestroika was to “deprive the enemy of the image of an enemy” – that is, if Russian leadership displays a happy liberal face people will be content to be done with the Cold War and will in fact start to get angry if anyone tries to bring it up again. He who sounds the warning that Russian aggression, as of old, continues, will suddenly be in the minority, like one of that first maligned generation of prophets against Bolshevism.
Well folks, I’m afraid this is exactly what is happening today – although it happens very slow, in places called Georgia, over ostensibly local ethnic politics concerning people called “Ossetes.”
Has anyone else noticed that the Taliban in NWFP just declared “open war” against the Pakistani state? Interesting timing, no? Wanna bet this and that are related?
