The Occasional Observer

2 comments:

SheaHeyKid said...

Here's my take on Georgia/Russia.

First, US is not going to war with Russia, not even if Russia annexes Georgia. The same holds IMO for China invading and taking over Taiwan, despite our "obligations". Bottom line, this country will NOT be going to war with either Russia or China unless they directly attack us on our soil.

Second, Russia knows we're not going to war with them, so they'll push things as far as they want, until they get what they want.

That leads to point 3, exactly what do they want? Is this invasion part of a pre-ordained plan from Putin for mother Russia to rise up again, and reinstate the Soviet Union? Could be, it is clear he still harbors those feelings. Or, is it simply a response to tell the US to get out of their backyard, stop trying to bring those countries into NATO, and stop trying to install missile defense shield into Poland. If the latter, then this will be handled with some behind-the-scenes negotiation between US and Russia. If the former, then it will fall to UN and Europe to decide when to push back and tell Russia "Enough!," because I all but guarantee the US will not get militarily involved here.

8/18/2008 8:14 AM

Fredo said...

The U.S. military will definitely not be putting "boots on the ground" in Georgia.

We have already provided Georgian forces with military advisors, and used our air force to ferry Georgian troops back from Iraq/Afghanistan. They really liked that one.

If you saw Condi on MTP yesterday, it's clear we think Europe needs to do the heavy lifting in getting this resolved--but that doesn't mean we're forfeiting our objectives in the area.

You often hear it said that Israel is our only reliable ally in the region--a Westernized, Christian nation like Georgia, would make another. They would provide us with a huge hammer to weild over Syria and Iran, if they're in NATO and we can have a B-2 wing ready to deploy in minutes.

So while we're not going to war with Russia to push them out of Georgia, we still have to stick to our guns that the "territorial integrity of Georgia must be respected."

What we can't do is say to Putin, "it's in your backyard, there's no critical US interest at stake, so while we disagree with what you've done, in reality we know there's nothing we can do about it." This invites him to go down a similar road with other states on Southern and Western borders. And we'll have the chilling effect of preventing investment in energy infrastructure in the region, lest it get bombed or nationalized by the Kremlin.

The Russians are going to have to sweat and (metaphorically) bleed for every inch of space they take, and you're seeing it already. I think they badly miscalculated the price they'd pay for this incursion. They might lose their shadow NATO seat. They might lose G8 membership. They've already lost on Poland. And now the Ukraine might have patriot missles that could shoot down Russian nukes as they're still leaving their silos.

I'd say we're winning on this one, and we should keep pressing the diplomatic advantages.

8/18/2008 9:23 AM