@Lifeofthemind:
Fedya, One question about the Wisdom of giving Russia Abkhazia.

I suppose that it would simply be impossible to get them out of there. One can’t give something one doesn’t first possess. Them Russkies just finished a military railroad along the coast and they really, really do need a safer [for them] alternative to Sebastopol.

Perhaps Abkhazia-Sukhumi that is all they actually feel they HAVE to have for existential survival. Master Sun Tsu strongly advises us not to try to destroy a trapped enemy. Then you get things like the Battle of the Bulge spoiling your plans.

If so, it would take a world infantry war to clear them out, not just a very tough bunch of small unit Georgians.

The Abkhazians are descendents of the ethnic Russians who killed or expelled EVERY Muslim in Abkhasia (60% of population; now there’s a trail of tears for ya) in the 1860′s & ’70′s.

In 1992 they ethnically cleansed 30,000+ ethnic Georgians (vs 1500+ the other way), no doubt as a delayed reaction to Stalin forcing them to speak Georgian instead of Russian[!].

Abkhazia SHOULD be Georgian, but if a U.S.-backed Trans-Caucasian Union operates a NATO-affiliated base on the other side of the valley, Western Georgia becomes a tripwire like the Fulda Gap in Central Europe. Any massed Russian troops there who dare to move will be erased immediately with the common assent of every Turkic nation, not just tough little Georgia.

Note well that this does not actually require (or even WANT) NATO participation to work. All nations around the Black and Caspian Seas other than Iran and Russia will be dying if this doesn’t work. It will also, I would imagine, require a US-Chinese “understanding”.

Turkey has to have guarantors against the Russkies and the All New! Persians. Azerbaijan is even more desperate.

And isn’t Armenia way overdue for a “color” revolution? Sheesh.

So, now that Ivan has awakened us all, perhaps he should get Sukhumi as a consolation prize for his having united a Black and Caspian Seas Treaty Organization against himself, and created a tripwire against any further expansion Southward.

Takes pressure off the Ukraine, too.

Ivan gets a bunch of mountains filled with the ghosts of his victims. World trade gets a new Silk Road built out of pipelines. World peace gets China and Europe competing in Central Asia on price, not chokeholds.

Priceless!

I hope our poker-playing President may soon reveal a hand like this, a hand that only great skill, nerve, and wits could have put together starting, of necessity, a few years ago when the cards were mostly dealt.

And, what a helluvah big pot!