Georgia is pro U.S. and apparently would like to join the E.U.bizarre though that sounds geographically
Russia seems to want power for powers sake in the world without even the rationale of gaining resources,expanding markets(and no as a previous poster said they need a buffer zone like they need a third leg)or even attempting to bring a measure of stability to the world.
They are not militarily threatened by the West but act like sulking school kids as in "We want you to join our club( although none of the potential enrolees seem very keen on the idea )but you insist on actually cajoling the West into letting you join their economy and political ethos because you think that its a better way of life all round.
Result?
Join us or we’ll kill you.
Russia seems to be acting in a very similar way to Germany in the nineteen thirties.
Fascism is rife,democracy is hollow,there has been attempted asassinations of political leaders in neighbouring states as well as serious attempts to subvert their electoral processes plus at least one actual assassination in Western countrys of Russian political dissidents.
Add to that incredible corruption at all levels of government with serious featherbedding of the leaderships friends,supporters or bribe payers and the influence of of organised crime that makes the American Mafia look like a bunch of Boy Scouts thay are one of the most serious threats on the planet to the West and the Third World.
The West gets it wrong quite often but at least the motives for policies are for the most part philantropically intended.
Fuck me… just seen a grocery shop we visited in Gori this time last year being bombed to rubble by the Ruskies.
The Russians were already winding up the tension last year - they over-flew Gori and dropped a couple of missles - so this was always on the cards.
Our Georgian friends on facebook say it’s fairly chilled in Tbilisi at the moment, but as the reservists start joining up it’s starting to get a bit nervy.
When I was living there in 2003, they had “EU” postage stamps with EU and the old maroon Georgian flags on them. Being normal Georgian postage stamps, they did not have glue or adhesive.
On the counter at the post office there were cups of white glue and paint brushes to affix them to the envelope. The power company kept records the same way - tape, glue and scissors.
I think Tunisia will be in the EU before Georgia.
BTW, there is a good film about the electricity situation in Tbilisi circa 2002 called "Power Trip ". Very good documentary.
It’s really sad. Georgia is such a beautiful place - like Italy and Switzerland put together, but they are in a region of difficult neighbors. Gori is along the main highway to Turkey (and NOT in South Ossetia) and if the Russians block the road, it will be difficult indeed for residents of Tbilisi as the supply of goods will be cut off.
Also, now that the Soviet Union is gone, you need to ask yourself: why the hell does NATO still exist? Russia figures, correctly, that Western Europe still feels threatened by them, and is trying to create a “shield” of WE-allied countries around Russia.
NATO continued to exist after the fall of the Soviet Union because it works pretty well as an intergrated organisation that has taken years of tinkering,adapting and member states armed forces training and working together under a unified command structure with efficient communications between the various air/sea and land units.
Even when they dont agree on policy the countries involved work well together politically.
Something this good does not get thrown away merely because starry eyed liberals and the usually undeclared agents of less then benign national blocks portraying themselves as nothing more then concerned citizens say so.
Before we compare the Warsaw Pact with NATO let us remember that it was entirely a Soviet Union commanded,policy driven organisation with the occupied vassal states of E.Europe only there to supply troops and material,bases and funding without any decision making capability permitted whatsoever.
Unlike NATO where the member states are independant and make their own political decisions,decide how much they are prepared to spend,what equipments etc they are going to supply and can even leave the treaty organisation whenever they wish to without the fear of the other treaty nations invading their country.
In many ways it serves the functions that the U.N. was supposed carry out but which instead became mostly a talking shop that the better off nations pay for and the poorer nations use as a device to try to squeeze more money out of.
And lets not forget that NATO allowed the WW2 ENEMY nations(Austria and Germany)their freedom not too long after the end of the war whereas The Soviet Union continued an often brutal occupation of FRIENDLY nations(Poland/Czech etc.) right up until the collapse of the USSR so the old chestnut about the West trying to “surround” the S.U.was pretty nonsensical then and ref. Russia just as much now.
At the end of the war we had nuclear weapons and they didn’t so if we had had any agressive intentions we could have taken them out quite easily as an economic/military force without too much difficulty,without huge losses and there was very little that they could have done about it.
As far as I know the West never had a single plan to make a ground/air assault on the Eastern Bloc before the War Pact had actually attacked Western Europe,not even as a spoiling attack,whereas the WP had several serious not brainstorming plans.
The ONLY reason that they never put any of those plans into effect was because the Wests response would have cost them dearly and the prize would have been smouldering,radioactive ruins.
Not because of any ethical or moral constraints.
And frankly if for some bizarre reason we DID decide that we coveted their territory!The result would have been global nuclear war.
But why am I talking about the S.U. when it no longer exists?
Because it seems that the aggressive political and military stategy back then was NOT as we thought part of the Marxist/Leninist long term goal to spread Socialism to the exploited masses worldwide.
But judging by their behaviour in recent years it seems to be a Russian Nationalist/Imperialist mind set.
All emotion and pride without any genuinlly logical aim at the end of it.
Bullying and attention seeking on the international stage for its own sake.
We should thank god that we didn’t dissolve NATO because the Russian Federation would be running riot now if they still had the big stick and we were defenceless.
Now they’ve planted a flag on the seabed as an attempt to claim the Arctic Ocean I wonder what they want to grab next?
Georgia has consistently maintained that South Ossetia is part of Georgia ever since 1991. This is also the position that the United Nations and most countries hold. There have been military attacks across the Georgia-South Ossetia border over the years: in 2004, 2006, 2007, and June and July of this year. So the Georgian attack in August, while larger than most past attacks, was not a change in what has been an unfortunate status quo. The Russian attack, on the other hand, is a change in the status quo. So it seems a little more timely to discuss why Russia chose to do something for the first time rather than discuss why Georgia has continued to do what it’s been doing for seventeen years.
Seeing as your depiction of events is completely at odds with virtually every news report coming from the area, it doesn’t sound like it will be a terribly interesting discussion. Good luck with that.
Seconded. It’s really quite bittersweet, alternately hilarious and sad, as a proud, hardworking people struggles with the growing frustrations of a failing infrastructure. The most emotional movie I’ve ever seen about public utilities.
When I used to pay our AES/Telasi (the electric company) bill in Tbilisi, their office never had electricity and records were kept in a huge ledger in a most Byzantine manner. The receipts I received in 2002-03 still said “CCCP”. Somehow it worked, as when I was one day late one month, our power did get turned off… but it took me 3 days to notice.
Overall I am pretty pleased with the situation. Russia has some wiggle room, and can not be called an aggressor in this conflict outright. The US is overextended fighting elsewhere, Europe depends on Russia for energy, and is unwilling to risk the steady supply, as made clear by not admitting Ukraine to Nato, and to top it all off Ukraine has offered to assist Georgia, thereby giving Russia a reason to go in and take the Crimean fleet and whatever else she pleases by force. The Russian army needs a conventional force to try all of its oil/gas money bought toys on. Its hard to imagine how this could possibly get any better.
As far as Russia not needing Georgia as a buffer zone - you don’t understand just how traumatic WW2 was for us, we need anything we can get as a buffer zone between us and whoever. There is Europe to the left, China underneath, and the US on the right, we are kinda paranoid, and if tanks start rolling we wanna know that it’ll take them a while to get to Russian soil.
Russia certainly can be called the agressor in this conflict. They fed a conflict outside their own borders (supplying passports, interfering militarily) rather than respecting the sovereignty of Georgia as an independent nation. Suppose, just to turn this thing entirely on its head, that some Islamic country invaded Russia to ‘protect’ Chechnians from Russian oppression, after supporting these Chechnians with arms and other resources first. I’d bet Russia wouldn’t like it too much and would - as they have done for years - argue that this is an internal affair and would everyone pretty pretty please, with sugar on top, mind their own fucking business.
As for World War II trauma, I don’t think that can ever serve as a pretext for invading Georgia or, as it has done in the past, for using the countries in Eastern and Central Europe as a *cordon sanitaire * against the wicked Huns. The people in those nations have made it pretty clear that they don’t like being Russia’s buffer and rather than seeing NATO enlargement as a manifestation of western expansionism, Russians should start seeing it as a declaration of the new NATO members that they don’t want to be subdued by Russia again.
In two weeks time, it’s forty years ago that the Prague Spring was destroyed Russian (and other countries’) tanks. You bring up trauma, but this event and the twenty-plus years of brutal repression under the guise of ‘normalization’ were pretty traumatic to the Czechs and Slovaks. If I was Russian, I wouldn’t be so jubilant. An eye for an eye, et cetera…
Georgia’s now pulled out of South Ossetia - they say. Not so, according to the Russians. More disturbingly, however: trouble now spreading to the region of Abkhazia. Story here.
I was too militaristic when I said the Georgians deserved it. They are a sovereign nation and they should be able to do as they please within their own borders. However they’ve elected a pro-western government, and since then Russia has been looking for any excuse it could find to make lives of ordinary Georgians worse, send them a message that pro-westernism and bordering with Russia do not go well together. Same with Ukraine. That coupled with America’s recent willingness to use military force to advance her economic/natural resource needs makes me very irate to hear that Russia is somehow out of line doing this. Putin is a meaner and crazier person then Bush. What did the Georgians think would happen?
This is so cool. I’ve had traumatic experiences in my life, but I never realized it was a justification for harming people weaker than me. Now I’m off to begin my reign of terror, fueled by narcissistic self-pitying justifications.
