Doug Muir at A Fistful of Euros has a solid commentary on the situation in Georgia which I’d urge you to read. I’m holding my water right now on the subject until we know what’s actually going on. If the fighting has actually stopped, I’ll have a post on winners and losers in the conflict. Some of my thoughts on the subject might surprise you.
What I would like to read is some analysis that explains to me the importance of South Ossetia. It seems to me that if Georgia could secure the border, Georgia would be better off without it.
I understand national pride and strategic depth, but I don’t think Russia wants South Ossetia, they just want to use the issue in perpetutity to vex Georgia.
(In Robert Kaplan’s tour of hell holes circa 2000, I believe he referred to South Ossetia as existing on a lower plain)
“Fistful” makes one important point that has been relatively neglected by other insightful commenters, to say nothing of most of the media’s brief cutaways from the Olympics. (I’d hoped for a mention of this on your OTB podcast!)
What’s the military scorecard look like?
I think it’s clear that in a Hobbsian (cf. Kantian) world, facts on the ground count for a whole lot, and in a war, the sides’ military performaces count for a great deal in establishing them.
In this regard, the Russians seem to have been strategically masterful. They had troops and APCs and tanks to hand. More significantly, they had their logistics lined up and ready to go in case a conflict erupted. Lines of communication, potentially vulnerable (Roki tunnel), proved no problem either. Tactically, Russian performance has probably been mediocre, but adequate to the task.
By contrast, the Georgian military seems to have experienced a near-collapse at the first signs of difficulty, when the Russians and Ossetian militias contested their lightning occupation of the S. Ossetian capital. In the latest phase, Gori and the towns and territory around it seem to have been ceded to the advancing Russians. I don’t think it was the cease-fire negotiations that were responsible for this–the result is that Georgia is cut in half. Likewise, the 25-mile (?) thrust from Abkhazia into westernn Georgia to destroy its painstakingly-constructed NATO-standard military base seems not to have been contested.
I think the model for small countries facing large, belligerent neighbors has to be Finland in the Winter War. Mannstein and the Finns knew they would lose to Russia, but the Finnish forces fought tenaciously anyway–to make the Russians pay, to garner outside admiration and support, and ultimately to make the invasion so costly that the Russians would find a negotiated settlement adequate.
The Georgian military has completely failed in the current war in emulating Finland, if that was ever their intention. Why? What’s the point of an American (and French) trained force, if it cannot seem to manage C3I functions during hostilities, if it can’t fall back with its equipment in good order on interior lines, if it can’t even make invading Russian troops nervous? Did the Georgians neglect air-defense systems, even Stinger and handheld SA’s? Did they not see the way that AQIZ and Iranian-trained Special Groups have contested the field against Americans in Humvees, APCs, and M1A1s, with the most-common weapons being the RPG and the IED?
The accounts broadcast on PBS’s News Hour show last night (Weds. night) from the UK’s ITV reporter in Georgia were memorable. The reporter drove from Tblisi to Gori, and encountered columns of Russian armor, on the highways and off. The soldiers were relaxed as they advanced further into Georgia proper. He showed no equivalent images of Georgian defenders.
A common theme of Dave’s applies here: most of the events in Georgia are not effects that were caused by actions or inactions of the US. This is to my mind one of the biggest examples–the performance of the Georgian military is at base a function of Georgian institutions, budget priorities, culture, etc. I hope more light is ultimately shed on the reasons for this failure by an aspiring democracy and ally of the West.
Good point, AMac. I’ve sort of been waiting to cover that angle in my winners and losers post which in the present unsettled state of things would be premature. Clearly, one of the biggest winners is the Russian military. I think that Georgia is their Grenada.
The situation with the Georgian military is somewhat more mixed. Their air defenses seem to have been pretty effective. Their ground troops have been pretty awful. That’s consistent with the situation in the region. IIRC only the Armenians have been able to field a decent ground army.
I sometimes wonder if the fact that the Georgians aren’t Indo-Europeans have something to do with it. Deep structure of Indo-European society and all.
Small Wars Journal has a few notes on the military performance of the Georgian military.