HELL IN THE CAUCASUS AND DELUSIONS ALL THE WAY TO WASHINGTON


The complex region know as the Caucasus, a region of relatively small population with a large mixture of ethnic, religious and language differences has been a tinder box of conflict for centuries. A mountainous difficult terrain, where East met West, the pot always bubbled with intrigue. Small kingdoms became nations and at one time or another, going back at least 200 years, all were enveloped by "Mother Russia." When Russia became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, (USSR) in the Communist Revolution, the area lost much of it’s glamour and wore the Soviet yoke in a fairly restrained manner.

Georgia, an early Christian entity, was known for it’s fruits, wine, gangsters and two world class mass murderers, Stalin and his colleague Laventia Beria, who ran the feared KGB under Stalin. Beria was considered so dangerous that when Stalin died it was the quick decision, of other powerful Soviet leaders, to execute him before he made his own move.

The quiet time in the mountain vastness ended abruptly with the implosion of the communist state with most of the outlying captive "republics" declaring independence. New and broken, post Soviet Russia was in no position to halt the disintegration and the world looked at Russia, with it’s failed ideology, as critically wounded, that would not return to it’s former position of power, for a very long time, if ever.

The West and especially the United States were quick to ignore Russia’s traditional hot buttons and showed little interest in seeing things from the Russian perspective. Our handling of the Yugoslavian breakup made no allowance for the traditional Russian support of Serbia, whom of all the Balkan states had stood up against Nazi Germany, while the rest actively supported fascism. Our recent championing the independence of Kosovo rubbed salt in their wounds.

In the Caucasus the quiet time was over. Chechnya, a heavily Muslim enclave that was supplying fighters in the Balkans and to al Queda forces in various locations, exploded and the Russians needed two major efforts to pacify the region. It was a brutal, sloppy and bloody and showed the deterioration of the Russian armed forces. What followed was a series of color coded and largely bloodless national revolutions where friends, even puppets of the new Russia, were replaced by what was advertised as democratically elected leaders. Skull duggery abounded with Russian fingerprints all over it. The West, led by the United States, fanned the flames of every small conflagration and we became particularly supportive of Georgia. In 1991, Georgia declared it’s independence and in 2003 Mikheil Saakashvili, who gained law degrees in the United States, was elected by 96% of the population. He immediately adopted a strong pro western posture and applied for membership in the European Union and NATO. He requested and got hundreds of U.S. military trainers and dispatched 2,000 Georgian troops to become part of the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq. That made this tiny country of some 4 . 5 million people the third largest supplier of forces to our Iraq effort.

Vladmir Putin, then President of Russia and still a very powerful, if not all powerful Prime Minister, was not at all pleased. Two breakaway provinces of Georgia, South Ossetia (population about 100,000) and Abkhazia received support from Russia and Russian "peacekeepers" were in place in both regions. Cross border incidents between Georgia and South Ossetia were routine and Georgian forces occupied a key tunnel and it’s approaches through the otherwise impenetrable mountains in Abkhazia. Over the recent past Saakashvili always blamed banditry by South Ossetia for his reasons for sending his troops across the border to eliminate South Ossetian "rebels."

Who knows?

But what we do know is that Mr. Saakashvili, who is described as "headstrong" by even his friends was getting cocky with his now well equipped and trained army. At the end of the first week of August as all of the heavies showed up, at the great theater that is the Olympics in China, Georgian troops, tanks, equipment and aircraft entered into South Ossetia and did a credible job of quickly destroying South Ossetia’s main city, Tskhinvali.

Wrong move!

In fact his whole effort to embrace the west was a wrong move. Delirious in his case and absolutely arrogant on ours. NATO, to open up shop on Russia’s border; a trained western supplied army to tweak the Russian bear; hope for support when Russia controls virtually all the natural gas that Europe require to not freeze to death much less supply their industry; to think that the United sates and it’s virtually impotent president was going to lead a gallop to the rescue?

Nuts!

Hungary made the same mistake in 1956 when, tuned into the encouraging Voice of America, they tried to overthrow their Russian wardens and assumed that then President Eisenhower and U. S. might would make things right.

Wrong!

And when over 500 Russian tanks rolled into South Ossetia and sent the Georgians running and when the tanks and ships and planes went well past the South Ossetian border every one called foul. Our two candidates for President , our existing President and Vice President and all the flunkies of Western Europe who called the Russian response a "disproportional" response. Cheney says the Russian actions must be answered. McCain, states that future relations between Russia and the U.S. will suffer and his tone is hopelessly bellicose. Obama, has called for talks and mediation. All, in one form or another have suggested that every one go back to the way things were on August 6, 2008, before Saakashvilli lost his mind and then we should start talking. Putin, who rushed from Bejing to South Ossetia has literally, in cruder language, said, "Up yours."


Lets get some things straight. We had no business encouraging Georgia. Georgia had no business applying for NATO membership and that will never happen. Spheres of influence of old count. Pundits are claiming that Putin is living in a Cold War mind set. Actually it goes back at least to the Middle Ages it is how mankind thinks.