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9102. jexster - 8/8/2008 4:53:08 PM It's about time
Russia Attacks! 9103. jexster - 8/8/2008 5:39:49 PM An expert on international security today warned that all-out war between Russian and Georgia would amount to "the worst crisis in Europe since the end of communism".
Dr Jonathan Eyal, director of studies at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), described Georgia's decision to shell the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, as a brazen effort to humiliate the Russians.
He claimed the sudden escalation in tensions in the region heralded a dangerous possible return of "East-West confrontation".
Crush em
Kazakhstan's threatening to come to Russia's aid against the cowardly criminal in Tbilisi
Leaving McLame flapping his toothless gums .... 9104. jexster - 8/8/2008 5:47:36 PM Liberate South Ossetia!
They even have a flag.
A few hundred t-90's bring to a boil 9105. jexster - 8/8/2008 5:56:17 PM Pravda: "Russia Strikes Back!" 9106. alistairconnor - 8/14/2008 12:05:20 PM The Georgia debacle may well be seen as the nadir of US influence in world affairs.
(Unless it falls even lower, which it undoubtedly would under a McCain presidency, but I'm not prepared to countenance that possibility.)
A foolhardy Caucasian president overplays his hand, thinking that he has US backing and that this enables him to make the Russians back off. The US, absolutely powerless to intervene in the Russian sphere of influence, sits on its hands. The Europeans, deeply divided, wring theirs, and play appeasement. Cool heads in Europe thank their lucky stars that they recently beat back US demands to admit Georgia to NATO... which would have pitched them into war with Russia, when Sakashvili launched his foolhardy adventure.
Of course, this is all playing out exactly as the Kremlin wanted it. Everyone, including McCain, has played into Putin's hands perfectly. It's all part of the modern Great Game -- control of Central Asian oil and gas.
And when the dust settles, Georgia will either be a docile Russian satellite again, or it will be so unstable as to be useless as a conduit to get Central Asian oil while bypassing Russia.
i.e. this little war is the clincher that enables Russia to lock up an effective monopoly on Eurasian oil and gas. Game, set and match. 9107. alistairconnor - 8/14/2008 12:16:49 PM Condi isn't wringing her hands... she's sternly wagging her finger.
"There are any number of opportunities for Russia to reverse course and to demonstrate that it is trying to behave according to 21st century principles," she said. "But, I can assure you that Russia's international reputation and what role Russia can play in the international community is very much at stake here."
Rice stated that the time, when the world would have to deal with the consequences of what happened in South Ossetia and Georgia, would come, although she did not specify what consequences Russia may eventually face.
The US Secretary of State repeated several times that Russia had a lot to lose, including its international reputation and its role in the international community.
Well, she certainly ought to be an authority about great powers who lose their international reputation and role in the international community due to military adventures with a subtext of control of oil supplies...
So how come she gets it so wrong? Russia has indeed demonstrated that it knows how "to behave according to 21st century principles", as inaugurated in 2002 by the USA...
But they have learned some lessons from their precursor, and will not suffer the negative consequences that she foretells. 9108. wonkers2 - 8/14/2008 12:44:09 PM "ISI linked to NATO, India attacks"--sounds like our Pakistani friend pseudoerasmus' work. 9109. wonkers2 - 8/14/2008 2:17:45 PM More troops for Afghanistan--another big mistake?? Futile nation-building trap? 9110. wonkers2 - 8/14/2008 2:22:59 PM I wonder what our former Afghanistan guru, pseudoerasmus, thinks about the situation? 9111. jexster - 8/14/2008 3:30:02 PM Medvedev: I wipe my ass with Georgian territorial integrity 9112. jexster - 8/14/2008 3:32:13 PM 
9113. jexster - 8/14/2008 5:53:46 PM 9110
God Damn Mongorians
9114. alistairconnor - 8/14/2008 6:26:18 PM I wonder what our former Afghanistan guru, pseudoerasmus, thinks about the situation?
Oddly enough, Wonk, he thinks it's gone extraordinarily well. He is now in favour of the intervention, having opposed it originally. 9115. wonkers2 - 8/14/2008 7:54:01 PM As a result of 9-11, few people here in the U.S. question the wisdom of our efforts to democratize/civilize Afghanistan, but our efforts are beginning to look like a mistake to me or at least not in our interest to send a bunch more troops there as Obama and McCain are proposing to do. It's a very tough place that has brought about the downfall of other countries.
Where is pseudoerasmus hanging out these days? 9116. marjoribanks - 8/16/2008 8:16:30 AM Well, with Afghanistan as with other geopolitical matters, it really depends on your perspective. From the American and allied Western point of view, I would not say the ongoing post-9/11 campaign has gone very well. It has been extremely costly, has provided a rallying point for the extremists, and has made the country just safe enough for business that it is now set for world-record harvests of opium in the coming years. More troops, etc, will not particularly help. Plus, I suspect that the US military is angling towards an envisioned day when the US tries to pacify the NWFP and Baluchistan from bases in Afghanistan, which will be another grand historical error on an epic scale.
Then, from the point of view of Pakistan, this whole campaign has been a total disaster which has massively degraded the country's reach and influence in the region. From Iran's point of view, it is a mixed bag. From India's, it has been a great thing.
Putting aside all of that, I might be inclined to agree with Pseuder (if AC has his position right) if he is talking about the Afghans themselves, who have some degree of engagement with the outside world after a very long time. They now enjoy receiving quite vast international aid - much of which is coming in the form of vital infrastructure - and society in the larger towns and cities is being forcibly cracked open, almost at gunpoint, so that some human development advances are undeniably taking place, and it is possible for hundreds of thousands of refugees to return.
9117. marjoribanks - 8/16/2008 8:25:04 AM Wonk, please remember that if (I regret to admit that I think it is more a case of when) the next large-scale terrorist attack takes place in the West, that it is almost inevitable that the fingerprints will lead straight back to Afghanistan or possibly the NWFP or Baluchistan in Pak. Please reckon with your own thoughts and sentiments in such an instance.
Isn't it better to engage, however ham-fistedly and expensively, rather than abandon? Are there no lessons learned from the last time the US washed its hands, and walked away from Afghanistan after helpfully setting it awash in dollar bills and high-end armaments?
9118. marjoribanks - 8/16/2008 8:48:35 AM Now, as for the Georgia situation, leaving aside moral and other related compulsions, the swift Russian movements have been rather brilliant, decisive geopolitical hardball from Putin. In the short and medium term he is a big winner, with only the possibility of an eventual cost in the long term.
Biggest loser, besides the largely symbolic whack to American hegemonistic posturing, is the international legal and diplomatic framework. Now mere paper, and shredded at that, we could well be in another era of big fish relentlessly eating little fish for a good long while. China, India, Iran and Turkey, even Brazil, it's going to be regional powers calling the regional shots, with functional carte blanche to operate with impunity. 9119. marjoribanks - 8/16/2008 9:01:44 AM Wombat,
A few days ago, you asked (me) in the Politics thread:
"You don't Obama would be more likely to back away from Pakistan--given their equivocation toward US interests and the infiltration/institutionalization of radical Islam in the upper reaches of their intelligence and military organizations--all to India's advantage?"
The Pakistan issue is only one part of the Indian relationship with the US, which now includes a robust and diverse economic equation. There is no doubt that Obama will be worse than Bush in the context of the economic equation, for the simple reason that it is impossible to be better, leave alone the nativist noises he has already made on issues such as outsourcing.
But on Pakistan, I see Obama positioning a much, much closer relationship with whatever regime coalesces in Pakistan than anything Bush engineered. We see in retrospect that the Bushites basically repeated the same historical error that the Americans have blundered into again and again in Pakistan, they gave Musharraf (huge) money and armaments, and let him handle everything because he promised him everything. The Americans were played like a fiddle by Musharraf, just as they have been played as chumps for a solid thirty years and counting now - he got what he wanted in full, and the US got a slow trickle of what they wanted, enough to keep the cash flowing, and the tacit blessings for dictatorship intact.
Obama will be more hands on than previous Presidents, but I believe that this is even more problematic. From the American point of view, it is a tough tough call to become the nanny state and guarantor for a country like Pakistan, but that seems to be the way things are going.
And, naturally, a massive American engagement with Pakistan is not in India's interest. 9120. marjoribanks - 8/16/2008 9:07:53 AM BTW, Wombat, some time ago I reviewed 'Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons'
by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, a stomach-churning book that laid bare a lot of the inside story of the US-Pakistani relationship over the past 30 years.
I highly recommend that you read this book, and would like to hear back from you if you do get your hands on it. 9121. alistairconnor - 8/16/2008 11:32:54 AM And, naturally, a massive American engagement with Pakistan is not in India's interest.
I really wonder about that. I hardly think it's a zero-sum game, where anything which is good for Pakistan is bad for India and vice-versa. On the contary, I think that if an intelligent US engagement with Pakistan can stabilise and strengthen its institutions and democracy, then that's got to be good for India. (obviously, current US policy has done the opposite, because they played the strongman against the institutions, and lost.)
So, what about Kashmir? It's looking grim, being used as a domestic political football by both sides. It looks to me like the confused political situation on both sides of the border has resulted in bellicose nationalism emerging as a unifying force, a lowest common denominator.
Or am I reading the wrong sources?
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