Interplanetary Revolution - Soviet Propaganda: 1924
I recently spoke with what the MSM would call "a highly-placed source" in Washington about the situation in Georgia. My contact has spent many years working in and around the Caucus region and knows the politics of the area quite well. In any event, these are his impressions of the current crisis, its causes and implications. ~ Lucius
Russia chose to invade because they knew that neither Europe nor America would do anything. Moreover, they did not expect the Georgians to fight back too hard unless they tried to occupy Tbilisi or Batumi. The immediate aim, in his opinion, is "to destabilize the Sakashvili regime." But the effect seems to have been the opposite. The Georgian population has been further angered "in their pro-Western anti-Russian stance." The Russians appear to have severely underestimated the level of opposition. Georgia is the largest trading partner of the Ukraine, and the major market for agricultural and food-processing machinery, Ukraine’s only major industrial output. Moreover, "if you were to discount the fact that Ukraine is a transit point for Russian oil and gas, I think Georgia stacks up as one of their largest trading partners." Georgian ports also handle overflow from Turkish ports and thus are an important factor in Black Sea trade. Azerbaijan depends on Georgia as its highway to the West and also has an interest. The end result of international reaction will not necessarily be to Russia’s likings. The best case scenario "would be a Ukrainian or Turkish (NATO) peace keeping mission which would only further piss off Russia."Internally, the whole operation smacks of Putin, but there is also a power struggle between he and Medvedev, with the latter trying to assert his dominance as titular head of the government. Much of the outcome of the crisis hinges on what happens inside the Kremlin.
My source ultimately says that there is something absurd about the whole invasion:
South Ossetia (like Darfur and many other conflict-prone regions) is not somewhere where anyone would choose to live. It's easily the least fertile area of Georgia, not rich with any mineral wealth, and is mostly inaccessible. It's basically a collection of rocky crags and dry scrub forests with no real hope of any real economic growth...thus a population that's been shrinking since the start of Soviet rule. The second absurd part is that, since many Ossetians are already refugees elsewhere (mainly North Ossetia and Ingushetia), there are probably less than 20,000 of them left in the territory. The OSCE number is huge to justify funding (the 70,000 or so talked about in the news), but the actual estimate, the last time I talked to anyone who had been there that wasn't paid to repeat the OSCE information, was that there are 16,000-18,500 residents left. Certainly not enough people for a viable state or even enough to justify an international incident.In the end, he suggests this is a typical Russian maneuver – invade a southern "breakaway" region at the beginning of a new administration as a show of strength – Yeltsin and Putin both did it in Chechyna, and now that there is no Chechnya to invade, the largely made-up region of "South Ossetia" fits the bill.
Images of a free Georgia (Sakartvelo)
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