Information war, in this case, is behind in catching up to the facts on the ground created by rapid military action.
The initial claim is that Georgia started things rolling with a massacre of over 1,000 Russian citizens. Georgia was unable to respond with valid reason for it’s massive attack, only saying that Russia then beating it to bloody tatters over the deaths of Russian passport-holders was:
1. Too excessive given Georgia just destroyed one piddly little city.
2. Wrong because Georgia is a freedom-loving democracy that should compel other democracies to jump into the war and start their own military conflict with Russia.
The “international community’s” communications were a morass of confusion, ranging from neocon belligerance to diplomatic nit-splitting, to confusion on what US policy was:
1. Neocons absurdly demanded military force by America to kill Russians to preserve the pro-Zionist Saakashvili – ignoring no other power would give America basing rights. The also demanded that we admit Georgia into NATO, ignoring that the French, Italian, German veto and the Brit and Dutch being exceptionally lukewarm to NATO membership was based on Article 5 fears of having to be obligated to warfare for dangerous Georgian territorial claims – something that happened and proved the Euros right to avoid the danger of putting Georgia in NATO.
2. Various international bodies failed to act or come up with “agreed on wording” to stop the war because they were divided on who was at fault.
3. Inside America, no one knew if Condoleeza Rice had green-lighted the Georgian adventure, and few policy-makers including the China-cavorting Bush – received any information on the circumstances leading to the initial Georgian attack – despite 250 US troop “advisors” inside Georgia.
There were some side issues of various euro and neocon and Russian factions pounding the keyboards, but all from the sidelines divorced from events directed entirely outside their control and influence. There was considerable Russian “side-effort” to knock out Georgian broadcast and cell-phone capacity because of their military utility, but stress side-effort from what Russian air and armor did in folding a poorly constructed Georgian military that the US trained and equipped more for “high-tech special ops boots on the ground” terrorist fighting than stopping air and armor threats US planners foolishly assumed was a “zero threat” scenario in a post-communist, post 9-11 world.
(Which is a good caution on US forces that the same people insist we don’t need ability to defeat Russia & China but only need a Navy and AF to the extent they support light infantry “boots on the ground” fighting low-tech evildoers, with exciting new million-dollar American weapon toys..Many wish to reshape our military only to fight insurgents and evildoers plus “surgically defeat the Iranian threat to Our Special Friend”, and shoot down rogue nation missiles. Not considering we are over-committed with the smaller force we have, have burned out our active duty and reserve forces badly in the last 7 years, and are badly in debt to contries like Russia, KSA, and China (91 billion, 200 billion plus 5% of American real estate, 1.08 trillion, respectively) to pay for oil with no US exports wanted in return and for Bush’s wars and tax cuts to the wealthy.)
And militarily weakened and in hock to our enemies, have lost most our allies.
Putin saw the US as a hypocritical paper tiger, the neocons as mostly reviled and discredited, and Georgia a fine place to do a little payback.
In February, Condoleeza Rice and EU members following the US lead backed 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.
