What, I have to be the first to mention the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline?

If I were more fond of conspiracy theories, I'd hypothesize that the U.S. wants an excuse to insert military hardware next to the pipeline, and encouraged Saakashvili to behave like a complete moron.

The parallels between Sakashvili's probably US-encouraged overplaying of his hand in this case, and March 14th's (probably US-encouraged) overplaying of its hand vis-a-vis Hizbullah are pretty striking.

Everybody has turned into an expert on the North Caucasus since this blew up, leaving the actual experts steaming with indignation.

So maybe a little hesitant to wank on. But I understand the US already has a military base somewhere in the south of Georgia, small stuff, and the Russians gave it a wide berth still.

encouraged Saakashvili to behave like a complete moron.

I don't think he needed encouragement, really. I'm not really interested in the Caucasus and its dreary ethnic conflicts, but am more concerned that McCain's top foreign policy advisor is a (nominally) former lobbyist for Georgia, and that Saakashvili has quite clearly stated he has no problems starting a global conflict on his account.

I personally don't mind/care about McCain's foreign policy adviser, as long as they're relatively open about past work.

However, can't agree more with the Registan link Klaus provided. Not to worry though. From what I understand, Totten is heading over there.

Personally, I'd been shocked at the strange lack of good information about what's going on there: the Archduke may have been shot, and all we hear are just bunch of lunatic talk from all sides... Dangerous echoes from 1914.

Eh, obviuosly, Klaus has already made the same point above. Regardless, the point remains, though: the world is complex and what everything means is rarely obvious, but people with strong preconceptions want to fit the little pieces of information that they do have into their existing worldview and use them as evidence that they are right--and there are too many people with strong preconceptions these days.

In the grand scheme of things, no one will seriously change their worldview: it'll confirm, depending on who you ask, the barbarity of the Russians, hypocrisy of the West, the all-importance of oil, or whatever. Parts of the narrative suit every one of these views. It'd be nice if this caused somebody to wake up for a change...but that's not gonna happen....alas.

I do not think that this has much grander impact at the moment, although I would venture that the Lebanese factions that have thought they could infinately leverage American ignorance versus Syria are liking giving a second thought. But then there were already signs a bit of reality was creeping in.

Per the Lebanese: I think March 14 has already had it made perfectly clear what the limits of actual American assistance (as opposed to American encouragement) lie. In fact, this element of the Georgia situation reminds me strongly of the showdown between M14 and Hizbullah etc. a few months ago. (As I said above in a comment that got caught in the spam filter).

Well, ethnic conflicts may be dreary to some, but as someone who has taken a close academic and personal interest in the couch-cushion ethnicities of the FSU for going on 20 years, I thinmk this has the potential to get really ugly before it's over.

Will it be a regional war, or merely a post-Cold War semi-proxy conflict? I don't pretend to know how all the answers, but I just picked up (and finally finished off) Absurdistan yesterday after an absence of several months, and in addition to being absolutely hilarious, it seemed downright prescient.

This couldnt have happened at a worse time. I am luke warm for Obama but even less inclined to vote for McCain. How many votes will this deliver to McCain if it escalates? I am completely confident that if this is the last of it, the only Georgia us Americans will remember will be in the South.

Seems to me blindingly obvious (feel free to beat me about the head & shoulders about my preconceptions) that this is all about Putin doing what he's been doing all along: making Russia more powerful. Unlike Bush, he knows the limits of his power, but he is perfectly willing to exercise the limited power he has to its limits.*
If that means beating up on a country who's serious armed forces are less than the population of a small town (specifically my little suburban borough), well, that's not going to stop him from beating his chest and throwing fecal matter around in the general direction of, well, everyone.
Pretty pathetic, but somehow he managed to make the US look equally pathetic, which is a pretty neat trick.
Saakashvili, from what I've been reading, seems to be an intellectual peer of Dubya. Which may explain why Dubya's gettin' all exercised about this poor schlub's comeuppance.
Europe of course also looks thoroughly pathetic, given that it long ago handed its short & curlies over to the Russians via the pipelines that feed them their energy. So all their bleating means precisely nothing.

*The subplot underneath this is the growing power of all the energy-rich countries. All except the US, anyway. I mean, we're sitting on massive coal reserves, for one thing. In Wyoming. Where his vice president, you know, the guy who's supposed to actually be pulling those puppet strings, comes from. Sheesh. These guys are not only stupid, which is bad enough, but they're useless, which is worse.

My understanding is that far from encouraging Georgia, the Bush administration had warned Saakashvili repeatedly not to respond to Russian provocation.
Saakashvili is pretty buddy-buddy with Bush et al--he may or may not know the AG personally from their days in the same NYC law firm. Perhaps he was being told conflicting things. Perhaps Rice did not make it sufficiently clear just how much Georgia would be on its own if they sent the tanks into S Ossetia and Abkhazia. Or perhaps Saakashvili reckoned he could trade on his relationship with the US, the pipeline, and a bit of moral blackmail to get US backing regardless of what Rice said.
I definitely do not see this as part of some Bushie plot, either to get more troops in or to get McCain elected. I'm not saying it's impossible, but my feeling is that it's highly improbable bordering on the implausible. Even Bushite stupidity and short-sighted self interest has its limits.

I'm betting on the mixed messages, if not straight from Condi, then from someone else in the administration...Saakashvili would have to be completely suicidal to poke Russia without expecting this magnitude of retribution, if not worse. Stereotypical Caucasian machismo aside, I just have a hard time thinking he could possibly be that much of a moron.

Am also eagerly awaiting the return from abroad of a friend who served as an OSCE election monitor in Georgia during the most recent Presidential election, so as to talk turkey with him.

For those interested, here's one person's commentary on the issue:

http://billmon.dailykos.com/

In short, I think Saakashvili WAS getting mixed messages. There has been a concerted effert by US to include more members in NATO (and not just from the administration, but from Congress as well). With NATO membership increasing considerably after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with talks of missle defense systems being put in Poland and elsewhere, with the issues surrounding Serbia/Kosovo, it's a wonder that something hasn't happended sooner.

It looks as if Saakashvili gave Putin the pretext to do something militarily he likely has wanted to do for some time. And it looks as if the Russians are continuing to look for a pretext to lay waste to Georgian infrastructure (given that the Russians haven't quite moved out of Georgia proper, even though they've signed a cease-fire and have agreed to leave - if news reports are to be believed).

I think the Russians are seriously overplaying their hand. They are establishing a solid record of exercising their military and economic power with all the subtlety of an chimpanzee a china shop with a baseball bat.

After the ongoing BP fiasco, even the most greedy and starry-eyed investors are waking up to the perils of "investing" in Russia. I put "investing" in quotes as you have to think of it as more of a "donation," really. Cutting off natural gas was bad enough but at least they tried to put a fig leaf on it. This effort to begin re-establishing the Soviet Union by force, however, is nothing more than naked agression.

The Chinese have made a point of adopting a long-term "peaceful rise" strategy. The idea being that China will go out of its way to calm its neighbors concerns so as to avoid a regional block dedicated to blunting Chinese power and influence. The Russians, by contrast, seem to be doing everything in their power to convince the entire world that they are completely unreliable and respond to nothing but their short-term self interest. Good luck with that.

Well, yeah, Russian foreign policy has never exactly been known for its subtlety. And as my election-monitor said in our all-too-brief conversation, it looks like Russia's current plan is to "castrate" (his word) the Georgian military infrastructure.

"This effort to begin re-establishing the Soviet Union by force, however, is nothing more than naked agression."

Sorry, I have to disagree here - there's no evidence that Russia is trying to re-establish the Soviet Union by force. Saakashvili fucked-up big time, thought he could get away with "cleaning-up" S. Ossetia. Putin finally found the pretext to flex some Russian might and deal with the problem, likely knowing that any kind of commensurate response from NATO/US was unlikely.

Sad to say, but it looks like S. Ossetia (and Abkhazia) won't be a problem for Georgia anymore, because the Russians aren't leaving those places anytime soon (if ever).

And if the Georgians had captured South Ossetia and blocked the Roki Tunnel, the Russians would simply have bombed all over Georgia - including Tblisi - and rolled in from Abkhasia instead. This scenario would also have seen more Georgian atrocities against Ossetians than what time allowed now. There was no way they could have won, and the Georgians were lucky to lose so quickly and relatively painlessly.

BTW, I'm glad to see that this thread has got our side ads branching out from the usual "talk to Arab women" ads to "Meet your own stunning Russian girl today".

"This effort to begin re-establishing the Soviet Union by force, however, is nothing more than naked agression."

Sorry, I have to disagree here - there's no evidence that Russia is trying to re-establish the Soviet Union by force.

The Russians have already demanded "regime change" in Georgia. They have dug into Gori and show no signs -- despite their supposed promises -- of withdrawing from undisputed Georgian territory. Their plan is pretty clear. They're not leaving until Georgia has a more "friendly" government in place that will, no doubt, pursue "closer military and economic ties" with Russia.

Now it may be that heretofore feeble outside pressure will dissuade them from turning Georgia into a vassal state with a puppet government. But that's certainly what they'd like to do, especially if the alternative is a Georgia firmly embedded in Western political institutions.

On the ultimate wisdom of Russia's strategy, here's a quote from the NY Times.

As the United States and Poland formally signed the missile defense agreement on Wednesday, over vociferous objections from Moscow, polls in the daily newspaper Dziennik showed public opinion swinging sharply in the past month, from opposition to the missile base to support. . . . But since the Georgia crisis, this largest of post-Communist European Union members has moved to cement its relationship to action-oriented America and not just the tentative bureaucracies of Europe and NATO. . . .On the newsstands here, the cover of the mainstream, right-leaning weekly magazine Wprost is an illustration of Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s prime minister, with an instantly recognizable little mustache and sweep of hair across the forehead that make the headline, “Adolf Putin,” redundant."

Bottom line -- the Russians are strategic morons. All the Russians are doing is setting the American post 9-11 Central Asian bonanza in stone. Everyone from Kiev to Kazakstan will clamor to do deals with the Americans in the hopes of detering Russian adventurism. After 200 years, the Russians have managed to checkmate themselves in the Great Game. Brilliant.

The Russians have already demanded "regime change" in Georgia. They have dug into Gori and show no signs -- despite their supposed promises -- of withdrawing from undisputed Georgian territory. Their plan is pretty clear. They're not leaving until Georgia has a more "friendly" government in place that will, no doubt, pursue "closer military and economic ties" with Russia.

And so how you go from the above to make such a declarative statement as "this effort to begin re-establishing the Soviet Union by force"? I think you may be jumping the gun just a bit.

Bottom line -- the Russians are strategic morons. All the Russians are doing is setting the American post 9-11 Central Asian bonanza in stone.

Don't really see what you're getting at - Russia exerts considerable influence in Central Asia given that they have effective control of the flow of oil/natural gas ou of Central Asia (and the one area it didn't just so happended to be in Georgia - Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline).

Not to say the US doesn't have any influence, but Russia's action in Georgia has hardly set in stone US bonanza in the region.

Everyone from Kiev to Kazakstan will clamor to do deals with the Americans in the hopes of detering Russian adventurism. After 200 years, the Russians have managed to checkmate themselves in the Great Game. Brilliant.

Ukraine, maybe, but not Central Asia. In any event, as long as Russia controls the spigot for Europe's energy needs (and need I remind you what happened last winter when Russia decided to turn that spigot off?), then they can make things more problematic for countries wishing to do deals with the US (especially as it relates to the security/economic interests for the rest of Europe).

:: bump ::

For those interested in far more detailed reporting on Georgia than what one normally finds in mainstream English-language sources, I subscribe to a Chechnya listserve which is lately All Georgia, All the Time. Volunteers post links and English translations from news sources around the world; translation quality varies, but is enough to get the gist of a given story, and most translated articles aren't found elsewhere in English. Check it out:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chechnya-sl/

And once again, The Onion has the real story.