Have been trying to soak up the news from Georgia since I came back online yesterday.
First, some background. Georgia is a former Soviet Republic that broke away from the Union when the Soviet empire collapsed. While most of Georgia was happy to gain independence, two regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, preferred to remain part of Russia. There was a short, sharp civil war at the beginning of the '90s that left the situation in a stalemate. The separatist regions did not re-join Russia or gain independence from Georgia, but they were allowed to maintain control of their governments and territory, with the protection of Russia to ensure their autonomy. The situation has remained tense for the last 15 years, with frequent small scale battles between separatist forces and the Georgian army and police.
From what I've gathered so far, it looks like the Georgians used one of these small scale battles as a pretext for a deep strike into South Ossetia, using Georgian mechanized and armor units supported by aviation. This wasn't a skirmish but a real invasion. The Georgians took the Ossetians by surprise and had control of the rebel capitol by end of the day last Friday.
The Russian response should have been predictable - they came down with a hundred-kilo steel hammer. Looks like they pulled armor, mechanized and special operations forces out of Chechnya (which lies just to the northeast), and used artillery and air power to pound the tar out of the Georgians, who were forced to scamper out of South Ossetia and try to catch their breath.
Then the Russians used their air power to pound the Georgian rally points so the Georgians couldn't regroup. They poured more ground forces into Ossetia, and used their Black Sea fleet to land 4000 troops into Abkhazia. Today (Monday, August 11), the troops from Abkhazia pushed into Georgia from the west. At the moment it's not clear if there is a full-scale invasion of Georgia underway, but the bulk of the Georgian army has pulled back to defend Tbilisi, the capitol.
So far the international community has made some ineffective protests and finger-wagging, but there's absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop the Russians at this point. Europe has no diplomatic options because they get more than half their energy supplies from Russia - and Russia has shown, as in the case of the Ukraine - that they're willing to turn off the heat in the winter if their customers displease them. The US has little power here because they're tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they need Russia to keep the pressure on Iran in order to slow the Iranian nuclear program (the civilian components of which are supplied by Russia).
The only real actions taken so far were the Ukrainians refusing to allow the Russian Black Sea fleet to return to their port at Sevastopol, in Ukrainian territory, and the Americans airlifting a thousand Georgian troops from their base in Iraq back to Tbilisi, where the Georgians have much greater need for them.
On the face of it, the initial Georgian attack into South Ossetia wasn't a smart move. They counted on the fighting to be over before the Russians could respond, but this was a bet on slim margins, and the Georgians got burned.
Georgians are patriots but they're not Chechen fanatics, and it doesn't seem as if the small, secular Georgian population is willing to sacrifice itself wholesale, the way the Chechens did, in order to bleed the Russian army to a stalemate. The Georgians have gone on a weapons-buying spree over the past few years to equip their army, but this type of conventional war is a war the Russians are very good at and know how to win.
While it seems that the Georgians brought this on themselves, it is a sad outcome. At minimum, the defeat will rattle Georgian democracy and push the country towards more radical politics in the future. Georgian entry to NATO, already a shaky prospect, is no longer an option for the foreseeable future. Russia's guarantee of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is now permanent, and these regions (along with other trouble spots like Transdnestria in Moldova and Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan) will continue to put a big question mark over the security situation in the Caucasus.
Why is this important? Oh yeah, the usual... oil. There are huge, largely untapped oil & natural gas fields in the Caspian basin, and the best way to get this energy to the West is through the Caucasus. In 2005 a consortium of western companies built the BTC pipeline from Baku on the Caspian coast in Azerbaijan, through Georgia, to Turkey and the Mediterranean. The project cost about 4 billion dollars just for the pipeline, and the value of that transit route is much higher.
My take on this is that the Russians will slap Georgia hard, destroying most of the new equipment the Georgian military has bought and keeping the lights off in Tbilisi for a few days or weeks. I don't think Russia has much to gain by trying to annex the separatist regions. (Abkhazia and South Ossetia can cause more trouble by remaining in a legal and diplomatic grey zone). I don't think Russia will stay in Georgia or take control of the BTC pipeline - they don't want to push Europe & the Americans too hard, and that pipeline is too precious to destroy. I think eventually they'll withdraw and build new bases in Abkhazia and South Ossetia to keep an eye on the Georgians in the future - and it will be a lesson to other former republics, above all Azerbaijan and Ukraine, that Russia is back on the world stage (as it always has been) and is not to be trifled with.
There is a lot at stake here, and we can't afford to ignore it.
Posted by case at August 11, 2008 09:17 PM