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Thread: Heavy Fighting in South Ossetia
Husar 05:03 08-10-2008
So what do we have here?
A bunch of breakaway nutters or were they subject to ethnical cleansing from Georgian authorities?
A bunch of peace treaty breakers or are they the victims of a big evil conspiracy?
A bunch of imperialist invaders or were they just coming to help those who asked for it?

I cannot seriously answer any of these questions and it seems most people answer them according to which country they always hated the most or they believe to be full of evil imperialists so that doesn't help me either (coming from that evil, untrustworthy nazi country I refuse to look at other countries in the same way).

Basically that leads me to believe they can just kill eachother over there and solve their own damn complicated issues, maybe if they get a really bad bloodbath they will get tired of behaving like stupids and join the UN for some healthy talk. And if not, they can just continue banging one another's heads in but I will do my best to keep my own head out of it.

As long as it takes a big ego to be successful in this world, one shouldn't be surprised that a lot of people get shafted because someone doesn't want to back down.

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ICantSpellDawg 17:25 08-10-2008
Ukraine Tells Russia To Find A New Black Sea Port

This is going to be another big angle in the current conflict. Russia has kept a number of its Soviet-Era Crimean sea-bases. In using those bases in the Georgian blockade deployment, Ukraine has said enough is enough. Russian ships may not be allowed back to Crimea. If Ukraine keeps its word, this could turn much more intense.

It would also be a great excuse to finally get Russians the hell out of Crimea before 2017 (which will probably never happen if they don't act now). If Russia justs deals with it that would be great, but I'd bet that Ukraine will either fold or Russia will attack them. Again, yet another reason for a strong NATO Naval presence on the Black Sea - for the security of Ukraine and the eventual deployment of peace keepers into Georgia.

I believe that, it may sound crazy - but the former Soviet nations need NATO for their territorial stability in the face of an increasingly reckless, totalitarian and nationalistic Russia. Russia would have never pulled this stunt if the nations were part of the alliance. We should announce a timetable for immediate emergency inclusion into NATO for both Georgia and Ukraine. This would allow a small window for Russia pull out and work more sensibly for the annexation or emancipation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It would also pressure Georgia to not use its military to solve a territorial dispute as it will soon feel more secure. I believe that this may actually help the situation.

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ICantSpellDawg 18:34 08-10-2008
Here is an eminently reasonable article with candy for all ideological sides in this travesty. It also pretty closely coincides with my interpretation, to my irrepressible chagrin.
Link

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Andrew Wilson: Georgia and Russia can still step back from the brink

Sunday, 10 August 2008

The hostilities in Georgia are more than a war in Europe's backyard. It is a war in Europe itself, with brings potentially dire consequences.

The Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili, elected in a landslide in 2004 on a manifest destiny platform of restoring national unity, has miscalculated and may have stepped into a Russian trap. Vladimir Putin came to see Georgia as Russia's Cuba – an outpost of a foreign power in his backyard – and trouble has been brewing for months.

The South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali is surprisingly close to Tbilisi. But a quick campaign made no sense from Saakashvili's position of weakness. He may have built up his armed forces with American help since 2004, but his most important assets are moral, although his image as the leader of a beleaguered democracy was already tarnished by his suppression of anti-government demonstrations in Tbilisi last November.

Saakashvili may have thought the Olympics Games would give him cover, especially as Putin was in Beijing and Russia hosts the next Winter Games just over the border in Sochi in 2014. But this only made him look duplicitous, especially as he announced a ceasefire just before launching the invasion.

The Georgian may therefore already be losing the all-important propaganda war. The Russians always thought Saakashvili would be easy to provoke and have been prodding and jabbing since the spring. A minority of Nato states may argue that the conflict increases the case for Georgian membership, but in others, scepticism is more likely to grow.

A second set of lessons should be learned by Europe. It's not that European governments failed to notice the problems ahead. The Lithuanians have been agitating; Javier Solana visited Georgia in June; the Germans have been trying to broker a diplomatic solution. But EU states did not stand solid enough behind the Germans. Too many had their heads in the sand, and the wrong signals were sent to both sides. The Georgians felt isolated. We created a vacuum where Saakashvili thought he had to act on his own, and the Russians thought they could act with impunity. The lesson: even if we think an issue is peripheral, we should get involved early on, when conflict prevention is still possible.

Finally, there are some hard facts for Russia. Russian troops are on sovereign Georgian territory. There are credible reports of attacks on "Georgia proper", although the very use of the term undermines the nation's territorial integrity. It is Russia that has escalated the conflict by hitting towns such as Kutaisi, Poti and Gori, and the likely consequences will destabilise the region as a whole.

Even if Russia withdraws, Georgia will be chastened and lessons will learned by neighbouring states. The prospects for a deal between Moldova and the "Transnistrian Republic" will diminish, despite the elections due next March. Russia will feel its Black Sea fleet can stay in Ukraine's Crimea beyond the current agreed date of 2017.

If Georgia is more seriously damaged, Russia may feel it has established a veto on who joins Nato in the future. But it is not too late for the West to get properly involved. Both sides risk serious collateral damage: the Georgians to their Nato and EU ambitions, the Russians to President Medvedev's proposals for a new security treaty in Europe and to their relations with the incoming US president.

We should recognise that the Russian "peacekeepers" are not peacekeepers any more, and press for a Lebanon-style force with an international mandate that could perhaps be agreed by the nascent US-EU-Nato-OSCE mission. Both sides have miscalculated, but, for all the talk of "genocide", both have incentives to step back from the brink.

Andrew Wilson is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations


UPDATE: C'mon, comment on my ideas! Is everyone already bored with this awe inspiring situation?

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Adrian II 19:09 08-10-2008
Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff:
UPDATE: C'mon, comment on my ideas! Is everyone already bored with this awe inspiring situation?
Relax. You are much too alarmist, you are mistaking diplomacy for war and your military proposals are surreal. Georgia is paying the price for the fact that the West has stupidly pried Kosovo loose from Belgrade. No need to cover up that stupidity with a new haphazard intervention and risking world peace over Mr Saakashvili's ambitions.

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ICantSpellDawg 19:25 08-10-2008
Originally Posted by Adrian II:
Relax. You are much too alarmist, you are mistaking diplomacy for war and your military proposals are surreal. Georgia is paying the price for the fact that the West has stupidly pried Kosovo loose from Belgrade. No need to cover up that stupidity with a new haphazard intervention and risking world peace over Mr Saakashvili's ambitions.
So your remedy is what? To do nothing? It has always been an alternative and it seems to be the one playing out now.

I'm not talking about war - I'm talking about a cessation of conflict and a brokered deal that does the inevitable (a final decision regarding Abkhazia and South Ossetia coupled with the entrance of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO) without much conflict. Do you believe that Russia would engage NATO forces? Maybe, but I doubt that they would if there was a real deal brokered.

We are talking about Russia annexing land that is not theirs with a sizable Georgian population through the use of military force. To do nothing would be the most foolish decision. I believe that they will seize Georgian land that is not in dispute as some sort of "de-militarized. Russian controlled zone". By the end of this debacle Georgia will be half the size that it is today if we take no action.

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KukriKhan 19:32 08-10-2008
Originally Posted by :
UPDATE: C'mon, comment on my ideas!
Neither NATO nor the US have a dog in this fight. An interest, yes, but no dog. IMHO.

Let the UN handle it.

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ICantSpellDawg 19:35 08-10-2008
Originally Posted by KukriKhan:
Neither NATO nor the US have a dog in this fight. An interest, yes, but no dog. IMHO.

Let the UN handle it.
The UN cannot handle situations in which any prime vetoing powers are deeply invested. All reasonable actions will be vetoed. You saw the result in Kosovo and NATO mediation was the only viable option.

The U.N. is simply an agglomeration of embassies and serves an interesting but terribly limited international role. To treat it as anything close to a functional voting body is deeply naive.

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FactionHeir 19:38 08-10-2008
I think the idea of veto in the UN is silly anyway. That results in it not being able to get anything done.

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KukriKhan 20:13 08-10-2008
Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff:
The UN cannot handle situations in which any prime vetoing powers are deeply invested. All reasonable actions will be vetoed. You saw the result in Kosovo and NATO mediation was the only viable option.

The U.N. is simply an agglomeration of embassies and serves an interesting but terribly limited international role. To treat it as anything close to a functional voting body is deeply naive.
You call for, nay beg for, reaction to your war-mongering solution to a regional conflict, and toss out any reliance on the body whose raison d'ĂȘtre is the working out of regional conflicts lest they blow up into WWIII, as "deeply naive".

As a veteren of a couple of shooting conflicts, I reject this assessment. If the UN is not resorted to, or stands mute, then it is, as you say "...an agglomeration of embassies and serves an interesting but terribly limited international role... ", and should be disbanded immediately.

But it needs to step up. And now. Screw the vetoes, play it out diplomatically.

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Hosakawa Tito 19:40 08-10-2008
Originally Posted by KukriKhan:
Neither NATO nor the US have a dog in this fight. An interest, yes, but no dog. IMHO.

Let the UN handle it.
Yes, I agree. However, except for token military contributions and handing out blue helmets, who does the UN look to for the bulk of it's martial needs?

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Praxil 19:42 08-10-2008
Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff:
UPDATE: C'mon, comment on my ideas! Is everyone already bored with this awe inspiring situation?
Man, you've been writing stuff in this thread, almost as good as Tom Clancy's novels. Fo real"!"

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ICantSpellDawg 19:43 08-10-2008
We've discussed our perceptions of the conflict and now we can try to speculate on solutions.

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Adrian II 19:50 08-10-2008
Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff:
We've discussed our perceptions of the conflict and now we can try to speculate on solutions.
I believe the Russinas want to occupy Abkhazia, too, and they will before the week is over. That's when the real negotiations can start. And once Georgia has a different President and the separatist issues have been sorted out, Nato membership can be envisaged for Tbilisi.

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ICantSpellDawg 19:58 08-10-2008
Originally Posted by Adrian II:
I believe the Russinas want to occupy Abkhazia, too, and they will before the week is over. That's when the real negotiations can start. And once Georgia has a different President and the separatist issues have been sorted out, Nato membership can be envisaged for Tbilisi.
Abkhazia has received 4000 Russian troops already.

Do you support Russia in its occupation of these Georgian territories? It would be one thing if Russia was fighting for their independence, but they are fighting for new Russian land. This is very different from NATO actions in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Coalition actions in Iraq.

South Ossetia has about 1/3rd of its population that is Georgian and the land is part of the nation of Georgia. The percentage that are Russian is negligible. We must ask ourselves why Russia has anything to do with this situation; Simply because they were giving out free dual citizenship?

I view Russia's actions there as similar to a hypothetical situation where Iran (or Turkey) violently annexes Northern Iraq because it has a majority Kurdish population. Absurd.

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