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It's war. Part III

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  • I will preface this by saying that Friedman can write some very bad columns, but I hjave to agree with some of his points in this one:



    Op-Ed Columnist
    What Did We Expect?
    By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
    Published: August 19, 2008
    If the conflict in Georgia were an Olympic event, the gold medal for brutish stupidity would go to the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin. The silver medal for bone-headed recklessness would go to Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and the bronze medal for rank short-sightedness would go to the Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams.

    Let’s start with us. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, I was among the group — led by George Kennan, the father of “containment” theory, Senator Sam Nunn and the foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum — that argued against expanding NATO, at that time.

    It seemed to us that since we had finally brought down Soviet communism and seen the birth of democracy in Russia the most important thing to do was to help Russian democracy take root and integrate Russia into Europe. Wasn’t that why we fought the cold war — to give young Russians the same chance at freedom and integration with the West as young Czechs, Georgians and Poles? Wasn’t consolidating a democratic Russia more important than bringing the Czech Navy into NATO?

    All of this was especially true because, we argued, there was no big problem on the world stage that we could effectively address without Russia — particularly Iran or Iraq. Russia wasn’t about to reinvade Europe. And the Eastern Europeans would be integrated into the West via membership in the European Union.

    No, said the Clinton foreign policy team, we’re going to cram NATO expansion down the Russians’ throats, because Moscow is weak and, by the way, they’ll get used to it. Message to Russians: We expect you to behave like Western democrats, but we’re going to treat you like you’re still the Soviet Union. The cold war is over for you, but not for us.

    “The Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams acted on the basis of two false premises,” said Mandelbaum. “One was that Russia is innately aggressive and that the end of the cold war could not possibly change this, so we had to expand our military alliance up to its borders. Despite all the pious blather about using NATO to promote democracy, the belief in Russia’s eternal aggressiveness is the only basis on which NATO expansion ever made sense — especially when you consider that the Russians were told they could not join. The other premise was that Russia would always be too weak to endanger any new NATO members, so we would never have to commit troops to defend them. It would cost us nothing. They were wrong on both counts.”

    The humiliation that NATO expansion bred in Russia was critical in fueling Putin’s rise after Boris Yeltsin moved on. And America’s addiction to oil helped push up energy prices to a level that gave Putin the power to act on that humiliation. This is crucial backdrop.

    Nevertheless, today we must support all diplomatic efforts to roll back the Russian invasion of Georgia. Georgia is a nascent free-market democracy, and we can’t just watch it get crushed. But we also can’t refrain from noting that Saakashvili’s decision to push his troops into Tskhinvali, the heart of Georgia’s semiautonomous pro-Russian enclave of South Ossetia, gave Putin an easy excuse to exercise his iron fist.

    As The Washington Post’s longtime Russia watcher Michael Dobbs noted: “On the night of Aug. 7 ..., Saakashvili ordered an artillery barrage against Tskhinvali and sent an armored column to occupy the town. He apparently hoped that Western support would protect Georgia from major Russian retaliation, even though Russian ‘peacekeepers’ were almost certainly killed or wounded in the Georgian assault. It was a huge miscalculation.”

    And as The Economist magazine also wrote, “Saakashvili is an impetuous nationalist.” His thrust into South Ossetia “was foolish and possibly criminal. But unlike Putin, he has led his country in a broadly democratic direction, curbed corruption and presided over rapid economic growth that has not relied, as Russia’s mostly does, on high oil and gas prices.”

    That is why the gold medal for brutishness goes to Putin. Yes, NATO expansion was foolish. Putin exploited it to choke Russian democracy. But now, petro-power-grabbing has gone to his head — whether it's invading Georgia, bullying Western financiers and oil companies working in Russia, or using Russia’s gas supplies to intimidate its neighbors.

    If it persists, this behavior will push every Russian neighbor to seek protection from Moscow and will push the Europeans to redouble their efforts to find alternatives to Russian oil and gas. This won’t happen overnight, but in time it will stretch Russia’s defenses and lead it to become more isolated, more insecure and less wealthy.

    For all these reasons, Russia would be wise to reconsider Putin’s Georgia gambit. If it does, we would be wise to reconsider where our NATO/Russia policy is taking us — and whether we really want to spend the 21st century containing Russia the same way we spent much of the 20th containing the Soviet Union.
    If you don't like reality, change it! me
    "Oh no! I am bested!" Drake
    "it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong" Voltaire
    "Patriotism is a pernecious, psychopathic form of idiocy" George Bernard Shaw

    Comment


    • I disagree with the premise that Russia wasn't inherently aggressive.

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      • Russia

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        • Originally posted by onodera
          No wonder the US is so agitated about this war, they can support either side, and still commies will lose!
          Hey! That reminds me of an old song by Janice Joplin!

          Commies is losers
          Commies is losers
          Commies is losers
          Oh lordy, lordy lor-r-r-r-r
          Commies is losers.

          Somehow rednecks always wind up on top.
          "I say shoot'em all and let God sort it out in the end!

          Comment


          • Originally posted by Kuciwalker
            I disagree with the premise that Russia wasn't inherently aggressive.
            qft

            russia, especially it's autocratic version, needs a common enemy to unite the ranks and be hated.

            btw, just like about any country, US included.

            Comment




            • Investors quit Russia after Georgia war
              Investors pulled their money out of Russia in the wake of the Georgia conflict at the fastest rate since the 1998 rouble crisis, new figures showed on Thursday.

              Russian debt and equity markets have also suffered sharp falls since the conflict began on August 8, with yields on domestic rouble bonds increasing by up to 150 basis points in the last month.
              Vladimir Potanin, head of Interros, one of Russia’s largest industrial groups, has complained about the shortage of long-term credit to Mr Medvedev, the financial newspaper Vedomisti reported on Thursday.

              The tight credit conditions have been exacerbated by foreign capital flight since the war. Data released by Russia’s central bank showed a drop in foreign currency reserves of just over $16.4bn in the week beginning August 8. This was one of the largest absolute weekly drops in 10 years, according to Ivan Tchakarov at Lehman Brothers.
              The moves show that Russia’s economy, in spite of having one of the strongest national balance sheets in the world, is not immune to global market sentiment, which could end up being an important check on Kremlin decision-making.
              But the ebbing of foreign investor confidence will make it harder for Russian companies to raise debt and equity finance since foreign sources account for a disproportionate share of long-term capital for Russian corporate borrowers.

              “The market is vulnerable to foreign capital flight,” said Kingsmill Bond at Troika Dialogue, the investment bank. “The major Achilles heel of the Russian market is that there is very little domestic long-term capital.”

              Partly as a result of the Georgian conflict, yields on domestic rouble bonds have increased in the last month by between 75 and 150bp, Mr Bond said.
              I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891

              Comment


              • Maybe the money men will have a better result that the politicos.
                Long time member @ Apolyton
                Civilization player since the dawn of time

                Comment



                • Russians halt Nato co-operation


                  Russian troops have been in control of the port of Poti
                  Russia has told Nato it is halting all military co-operation, the bloc says, as the crisis over Georgia deepens.

                  The Russian move follows a statement by Nato that there would be no "business as usual" with Moscow unless its troops pulled out of Georgia.

                  However, the alliance had stopped short of freezing co-operation with Moscow.

                  Meanwhile, a top Russian general said that the withdrawal of the bulk of Russia's troops would be complete in about 10 days.

                  Gen Vladimir Boldyrev, commander of the Russian ground forces in the region, referred to the pullout of troops "sent to reinforce Russian peacekeepers" in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia.

                  It was not immediately clear how Gen Boldyrev's comments would fit in with a previous Russian commitment to withdraw its forces to behind a buffer zone around South Ossetia by the end of Friday.

                  Moscow has said it intends to keep some 500 troops in what it called a "zone of responsibility" as part of a peacekeeping mission.

                  In a separate development, South Ossetia and Abkhazia - another Georgian breakaway region - held mass rallies calling for independence.

                  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow's response to their pleas would depend on the conduct of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

                  Lavrov's warning

                  Nato spokeswoman Carmen Romero said the alliance "takes note" of Russia's decision to halt co-operation but had no further reaction to it.

                  Speaking to reporters in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, Mr Lavrov said Russia was not going "shut any doors" to future co-operation with Nato.

                  But he warned that the alliance had to decide what was more important to it - supporting Mr Saakashvili or developing a partnership with Russia.

                  "It all depends not on us but on those who make the decisions on what the priorities are for the leaders of Nato in foreign policy," Mr Lavrov said.

                  Washington played down the significance of the Russian move, saying Nato had already effectively frozen co-operation in protests at Moscow's continuing military presence in Georgia.

                  "For all practical purposes, military-to-military co-operation had really already ended with the Russians," US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

                  Under the 2002 agreement that set up the Nato-Russia Council, the former adversaries began several co-operation projects.

                  These included allowing Nato to transport by land through Russia non-military supplies for the bloc's operation in Afghanistan, developing battlefield anti-missile technology, joint military exercises and help with rescue at sea.

                  Security zone

                  It is still not clear to what extent Russian military forces have withdrawn from Georgia.

                  Russian news agencies say an armoured column, consisting of more than 40 vehicles, has passed through South Ossetia, on its way to the Russian border.

                  A BBC correspondent in the Georgian village of Igoeti, just 35km (21 miles) from the capital Tbilisi, said he saw the Russian military pulling back towards South Ossetia early on Thursday afternoon. Russian forces were also reported to be still dug in around Georgia's main Black Sea port of Poti.

                  Russia poured troops into Georgia after Georgian forces tried to retake South Ossetia on 7 August. Russian-led peacekeeping troops had been deployed there since a war in the early 1990s.

                  Thousands of people attended pro-independence rallies in the Abkhaz capital Sukhumi and war-ravaged South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali on Thursday.

                  The world-renowned conductor Valery Gergiyev - himself an Ossetian - gave a concert in the devastated South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, with his St Petersburg orchestra on Thursday.
                  Russia goes back on its word AGAIN!

                  Comment


                  • They are digging in big time. Looks like they never intended to keep their word. Sometimes I hate to be right.
                    Long time member @ Apolyton
                    Civilization player since the dawn of time

                    Comment


                    • On a personal note, my old ship the USS McFaul along with the CG cutter Dallas and maybe USS Mount Whitney are headed to Georgia to drop off humanitarian aid. It is very odd to use a DDG to transport supplies, but it had preapproved permission from Turkey to enter the Black Sea so they are using her.



                      The first U.S. military ship carrying humanitarian aid for Georgia is headed to the Black Sea after loading the supplies from a port in Crete on Wednesday, according to U.S. Navy officials.


                      I wish I was still there, a very interesting and important thing to be a part of

                      I still have some friends onboard, they are feeding me info via email.
                      "The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.

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                      • NATO can't completely stop co-operation with Russia, it flies over Russian airspace to reach Afghanistan. I guess the Iranians are all hinky about having a bunch of infidel soldiers flying overhead.
                        "I say shoot'em all and let God sort it out in the end!

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                        • Originally posted by Patroklos
                          ... I still have some friends onboard, they are feeding me info via email.
                          Your job: Pass this info. onto us.

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                          • May they have a successful voyage.
                            Long time member @ Apolyton
                            Civilization player since the dawn of time

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Lancer
                              They are digging in big time. Looks like they never intended to keep their word. Sometimes I hate to be right.
                              They want to force some action regarding the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Seriously, should this issue remain in limbo for another 16 years? It will only remain a flashpoint in Russia - US relations, perhaps even re-ignite the cold war. Both have a long history of desiring independence from Georgia, a history dating back 90 years. They've both been effectively seperated from Georgia for 16 years. Giving these areas independence would deprive Georgia of nothing it hasn't already lost.
                              "I say shoot'em all and let God sort it out in the end!

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Lancer
                                May they have a successful voyage.
                                QFT
                                "I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you're not patriotic. We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration." - Hillary Clinton, 2003

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