Evgeny Morozov joined Russia’s cyber war against Georgia:
In less than an hour, I had become an Internet soldier. I didn’t receive any calls from Kremlin operatives; nor did I have to buy a Web server or modify my computer in any significant way. If what I was doing was cyberwarfare, I have some concerns about the number of child soldiers who may just find it too fun and accessible to resist.
Worth a read:
The invasion may not turn out to be a victory for Russia. The most heartening moment in the last week was the arrival in Tbilisi on Tuesday of the presidents of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, and Poland to stand in solidarity with Saakashvili. They are not ready to accept the reassertion of an old-fashioned Russian “sphere of influence.” And their public presence and resistance are more important than any American or European statements.
Jeffrey Tayler, writing from Moscow, has a smart dispatch on the war in Georgia. His thoughts on NATO:
…that the United States would even consider proposing Georgia for membership in NATO reflects a blindness to the consequences of the first two rounds of NATO expansion and defies elementary strategic logic.
Leaving aside how enrolling a tiny, technologically backward nation located in the remote Caucasus region jibes with NATO’s treaty-adjured mission to “promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area,” the next round could kill what remains of Russia’s strategic cooperation with the West—cooperation the West will need, for example, to fight Islamic extremism in Central Asia, contain nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea, and control the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And Russia, with vast reserves of oil and gas, its arsenal of ICBMs, its million-strong conventional forces, its advanced arms industry, and its close relations with states like Iran, Syria, and North Korea, retains considerable capacity as a maker or breaker of international equilibrium. The West needs Russia on its side, much more than it could benefit from admitting Georgia to NATO, and even more than it would profit from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Supsa pipelines. Moreover, NATO’s previous encroachments into formerly Soviet terrain, in conjunction with NATO’s 1999 war to prise Kosovo from Yugoslavia (an historic Russian ally and fellow Orthodox Christian nation) ignited in Russia the very anti-Western passions that have propelled nationalistic Vladimir Putin to sustained approval ratings of between 70 and 80 percent and threaten a new cold war.
From Michael Dobbs’ excellent and even-handed piece in the WaPo:
It is unclear how the simmering tensions between Georgia and South Ossetia came to the boil this month. The Georgians say that they were provoked by the shelling of Georgian villages from Ossetian-controlled territory. While this may well be the case, the Georgian response was disproportionate. On the night of Aug. 7 and into Aug. 8, 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.
Putin’s aggression was massively disproportionate, but the US definitely played into his hands by championing Saakashvili so hubristically. And I didn’t know this:
It is true that he has won two reasonably free elections, but he has also displayed some autocratic tendencies; he sent riot police to crush an opposition protest in Tbilisi last November and shuttered an opposition television station.
Wise leaders show a steady hand and a calm posture in dealing with these events. McCain has done neither. Once again, the most impressive figure in all of this has been Robert Gates.
I keep imagining that one of one of the Kagans – perhaps one we haven’t yet even heard of – will soon be advocating actual – oh, wait:
Having pulled back from Ossetia and Abkhazia, the Georgians can now regroup and re-equip. They are in desperate need of two things: weapons to kill tanks, and weapons to kill or deter aircraft and helicopters. We can supply both. The Stinger missile, the bane of Russian Frontal Aviation in Afghanistan, is still the most potent shoulder-fired weapon around. It will cause Russian close support aircraft to keep their distance, or to attack from higher altitude. Providing Georgia with medium-range surface-to-air missiles which can be deployed from Georgian territory proper will further push back their high-altitude aircraft (e.g., Tu-22M Backfires )…
First, we need to give the Georgians anti-tank mines, and not just any kind, but our latest "smart" off-route mines like the XM93 Wide Area Mine (WAM). These don’t have to be placed directly on the roads, but can be put off to the side, where built-in sensors can detect armored vehicles and launch explosive formed penetrator (RFP) warheads at them. Second, we need to give them our best anti-tank guided missile, the FGM-148 Javelin . This is a "fire and forget" weapon: once the operator lines up the target in his sights and locks on, he can fire the missile and get away, while the missile will fly autonomously to the target.
Do the neocons understand that this means war with Russia? Do they really believe that it’s a sensible idea, given so many other commitments and the pressing need for unified pressure on Iran?
This is the best rebuttal to my own view that pushing NATO to the borders of the Black Sea and beyond is foolish over-reach. I don’t think offering Georgia NATO membership is a wise move; I do think the West should support democratic polities in Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic states. There is a balance to be struck between the West’s obvious interest in getting Russian cooperation in the war on Jihadist terror and preventing Russian meddling in its near-abroad. There’s a trade-off here. And allowing Russia its traditional sphere of influence may be much less of a headache than trying to police its every move and losing cooperation on such vital matters as securing loose nukes.
What worries me is that McCain’s eagerness for more conflict in the world – pushing Russia and China into a corner – is not in the best interests of the United States. It may be moral; it may be exciting; it may provide the great national purpose McCain thinks we all need to feel. But it ignores the hard trade-offs involved, and perpetuates the whole with-us-or-against us bluster of the last eight years. We need more of that? More enemies? Less diplomacy? More conflict?
Count me out.
Looking at the impulse to intervene in Georgia … and Iraq … and Iran … and Afghanistan … and Burma … and Darfur, and … well, you get the idea. The Cold War may be over, but the forces propelling constant war and perpetual conflict are still in place. My attempt to look at the context for our current moment – and an account of my own shifts over the past few years toward non-interventionism – is here.
All the admirable reasons that John McCain is deeply exercised by the plight of the Georgians are reasons why he is not the right man at this point in history to lead the United States. My take here.
A reader writes:
I think you downplay the important role that liberal interventionists have played in fostering an imperial America. Remember that the prudence demonstrated by Bush 41, who refused to dance on the Berlin Wall, was repudiated by Clinton, who pushed NATO expansion down Russia’s throat even though the entire rationale for NATO had vanished. It was Clinton that established the self-evidently hypocritical precedent that America has the right to define its interests in Russia’s near-abroad (i.e. Kosovo) but that Russia had no similar entitlement if it contradicted America’s wishes.
In other words, liberals got the ball rolling here. I’d also note that Obama has not only NOT repudiated this, he has echoed McCain’s call for Georgia in NATO. He is in no way offering a rebuke of the imperial status quo. He is affirming it.
Yes, he is.
Totten reports from Azerbaijan:
Azerbaijan belongs to that strange region where the sort-of West meets the sort-of East and is another Balkan-style tinderbox with ethnic time bombs that tend to explode. Azerbaijan has lots of oil, too, so it matters to the rest of the world far more than its near absence in the media might suggest. It’s simultaneously being pulled toward Russia, the West, and the Islamic world. No one knows where it will end up, but Russia’s invasion of Georgia next door likely will be a big factor.
The Dish 