What's Going On In Georgia And How Dangerous A Game Is McCain Willing To Play With War & Peace?

For the last three days I've been trying to make heads or tails out of the situation in Georgia, not in the southern U.S.-- which is puzzling enough-- but in the small former Russian and Soviet province that is now a feisty independent republic, straddling the oil pipeline from the Caspian oil areas to the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea. Parisian Kos diarist, Jerome, knows more about this than almost anyone writing about it who I've found-- and far more than the superficial imbeciles at the NY Times, let alone CNN-- so I'd recommend his latest post at Daily Kos. Short version: see the map above-- oil pipelines is why Washington cares about this... plus an opportunity for some ritualistic anti-Russian moves. (Remember how well that worked out for us and the world in Afghanistan?) Today's Times, whoring itself out, as usual, as the mouthpiece for self-serving Insider opinion from DC, expressed shock that this could happen. It was entirely predictable.. if not entirely provoked by the naive armchair warriors who dragged this country into Iraq and are currently promoting a war with Iran. Jerome:

[O]ur claims to have the moral high ground are totally ridiculous and need to be fought, hard. This is not about democracy vs dictature, brave freedom lovers vs evil oppressors, but a nasty brawl by power-hungry figures on both sides, with large slices of corruption. The fact that this is turned into a cold-war-like conflict between good and evil is a domestic political play by some in Washington to reinforce their power and push certain policies that have little to do with Russia or Georgia. That needs to be understood.

The other place to turn for real information-- rather than Infotainment-- on the Confrontation in the Caucasus is the blog Lawyers, Guns and Money, where Robert Farley is doing a stupendous job of putting the whole thing in context. I'm old enough to remember when investigative journalists worked for TV news departments so I appreciate Farley's commentary. He is less sympathetic to the Georgian case because he thinks that "escalating the war (and providing an excuse for Russian counter-escalation) was a damn stupid thing for Saakashvili to do, and a remarkably damn stupid thing for him to do absent an extremely compelling cause. Small, weak states living next to abrasive, unpredictable great powers need to be extremely careful about what they do; in most cases, their foreign policy should, first and foremost, be about avoiding war with the great power. This is what Saakashvili failed to do. The war didn't need to escalate; it was a Georgian decision to move from the village skirmishes that were happening on Tuesday to the siege of Tsikhinvali on Thursday."

But with the Russian Army so much bigger and more powerful than the U.S.-trained and equipped Georgian army, what did Saakashvili and his NeoCon allies in Washington have in mind?

[T]he war will not be fought between the full Russian and the full Georgian militaries; rather, it will be fought between the Georgian and whatever forces the Russians can get to South Ossetia and keep supplied there. And that may have been the crux of Georgian strategy. As Doug Muir notes, there is only one road between Russia and South Ossetia, and no substantial airfields. Doug:

There was always this temptation: a fast determined offensive could capture Tsikhinvali, blow up or block the tunnel, close the road, and then sit tight. If it worked, the Russians would then be in a very tricky spot: yes, they outnumber the Georgians 20 to 1, but they’d have to either drop in by air or attack over some very high, nasty mountains. This seems to be what the Georgians are trying to do: attack fast and hard, grab Tsikhinvali, and close the road.

It looks right now as if that strategy has failed. The Russians seem to have been able to deploy a substantial armored force in South Ossetia, and also seem to control the sky. Of course, we don't know what things will look like tomorrow, but right now they don't look good for Georgian efforts to close the road. And if the Georgians can't close the road, they are in very serious trouble. Indeed, even if they do close the road they might be in trouble; the other way that the Russians might get into South Ossetia is to go through Georgia. That would be an escalation, but the Russians might be tempted by their overwhelming theater superiority, and by the stakes.

The NeoCon miscalculation is that politically Putin and Medvedev can't afford to lose this war. Period. So they won't-- even if they have to obliterate Georgia. (The role of the NeoCons in this kind of reminds me of what Bush's father did to the Shi'a and the Kurds after the First Gulf war. He irresponsibly and uncaringly urged them to rise up against Saddam-- and then he did virtually nothing to prevent the inevitable slaughter that followed-- unless you count his clueless son's murder of Saddam and his family and destruction of his country justifiable payback.)

Moreover, it's not just the downside of defeat that will drive Russian behavior; the Russians really want to win because they will see serious gains from victory. Putin will likely be able to dispense with the Prime Minister nonsense after pounding Georgia to dust, because the Russians will elect him God King, or at least "discover" that he's actually the heir to the Romanov throne. The Ledeen Doctrine works much better for Russia than for the United States, because people understand that Russia really doesn't care; she will destroy you without troubling her conscience about democracy. Russia gets to demonstrate her power, solve two of the Frozen Conflicts (the Georgians are never getting Abkhazia back if Russia wins here), and humiliate the United States, all at the same time. They hit the trifecta if they win this war.

The sooner NeoCons are driven out of Washington, the better for the whole world. It is worth noting that McCain's response to the conflict has been to immediately look to use it for political domestic gain and to adopt the NeoCon position entirely, one that has been pushed by one of the top lobbyists McCain has scarfing up money for him, potential war criminal Randy Scheunemann,a paid employee of the Georgian government. While Obama, NATO, the European Union and even Bush are taking a balanced position, McCain sounds like he'd like to expand this into a conflict between the U.S. and Russia. He's out of his fucking mind and a truly dangerous little jerk who no one should take seriously as a candidate for anything except a comfy retirement home.