Trent,
All the points you make are plausible; and I’ve been thinking along the same lines but have stopped short of reaching the same conclusion because I have only guessed the Georgians are fighting better than expected and didn’t know that for a fact. But let’s suppose that’s true then this is the story that emerges.
The Georgians found out that the Russians were going to do a coup de main and what we saw was essentially a meeting engagement. Maybe the Russians even leaked their plans so the Georgians had enough time to look the heavies but not enough time to block the Russians. Still, the Georgians may have performed well enough to throw the Russian timetable off by 48 hours.
But I’m guessing they weren’t sure if the Russians would stop at Ossetia. In the meantime, I’m guessing that the US crafted a proposal whereby the Georgians would fall back, thereby pulling the political rug from underneath the Russians, and simultaneously handing Moscow a velvet glove ultimatum: ‘we will take a dim view of Russian incursions into Georgia proper’. But they didn’t specify the penalty. The US may be bluffing and the Russians have called.
It now appears they are going for Gori and aim to install a puppet regime in Georgia. Now Georgia is in EUCOM’s AO. I am sure they have a contingency because NATO just finished an exercise with Georgia about a month ago at the very same airbase the Russians bombed first. We don’t know what it is, but it probably involves the arrival of force multipliers. Nothing heavy can get there in time. The guys who come will the ones who can work the force multipliers and prepare the infrastructure for the follow-on.
The arrival of the 2,000 Georgians now means a brigade of troops trained in using force multipliers has arrived. But to throw them into South Ossetia, whose position was untenable I’m guessing with the arrival of Russian light infantry to clear the heights, was dumb. That meant the Georgians had to re-establish a position based on a new strategic concept: the battle to preserve the country itself. Slow the Russians down, mine the roads, blow the bridges, counterattack sharply maybe hurt them very publicly. So the Georgians fell back in good order according to their plans. This alone tells you they were not defeated. You can’t disengage in good order if you’re broken. Now the Russians are keeping up the tempo and pressuring Gori.
The main Georgian handicap is that the Russians have air superiority. This has to be nullified in some way without direct US involvement. That’s the key. I think two things have to be done. One is send air superiority in to Turkey as a contingency to protect it, but also to complicate Russian planning and make them have to account for the possibility the USAF will come in, even if that possibility is remote. The second is to throw some kind of air defense over Georgia. Other than that, the only thing I can think of is that the Georgians need indirect precision strike and some kind of digital maneuver capability. Now that speculation is as far as I can take it without going into pure fiction, just making reasonable guesses.
Personally, I hope the Russians stop now. They can declare victory. In fact they should quit while they’re seemingly ahead. Who knows what can still happen? The road to Tbilisi is in the future and that is always a dark path.
