March 4, 2014

Did U.S. okay 2008 South Ossetian war?

Military exercises are the standard way to partially mobilize your troops for war without declaring a mobilization, which can turn into a disastrous chain reaction, as in 2014. Thus Putin's announcement of war games on the Ukraine border set in motion Russia's seizure of Crimea and raised fears of a general invasion of the eastern Ukrainian mainland. In contrast, his announcement today that the exercises are complete and his troops are going back to their garrisons caused stock prices to rise in hopes that the Russkies aren't going to occupy a part of Ukraine that lacks the Crimea's clear boundaries and thus would cause even more trouble for everybody than Putin's grab of the Crimea. 

Unfortunately, over the last few weeks, lots of hopeful signs that good sense and compromise were about to break out have turned out to be shortlived.

In reading up on the South Ossetian war of August 2008, I see, not surprisingly, that both Russia and Georgia conducted war games in the region in late July, while exchanging highly accurate accusations of what the other side was threatening to do. 

What I hadn't been aware of is that 1,000 American troops took part in the military exercises in Georgia. From Reuters on July 15, 2008, three weeks before Georgian tanks rolled into South Ossetia across the line worked out in a formal agreement between Russia and Georgia in 1992 and since manned by official Western European monitors.
U.S. troops start training exercise in Georgia 
(Reuters) - One thousand U.S. troops began a military training exercise in Georgia on Tuesday against a backdrop of growing friction between Georgia and neighboring Russia. 
Officials said the exercise, called "Immediate Response 2008", had been planned for months and was not linked to a stand-off between Moscow and Tbilisi over two Russian-backed separatists regions of Georgia. 
The United States is an ally of Georgia and has irritated Russia by backing Tbilisi's bid to join the NATO military alliance. 
"The main purpose of these exercises is to increase the cooperation and partnership between U.S. and Georgian forces," Brigadier General William B. Garrett, commander of the U.S. military's Southern European Task Force, told reporters. 
The war games involve 600 Georgian troops and smaller numbers from ex-Soviet Armenia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine. 
The two-week exercise was taking place at the Vaziani military base near the capital Tbilisi, which was a Russian air force base until Russian forces withdrew at the start of this decade under a European arms reduction agreement. 
Georgia and the Pentagon cooperate closely. Georgia has a 2,000-strong contingent supporting the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, and Washington provides training and equipment to the Georgian military. 
Georgia last week recalled its ambassador in Moscow in protest at Russia sending fighter jets into Georgian airspace. Tbilisi urged the West to condemn Russia's actions. 
Russia said the flights were to prevent Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili from launching a military operation against the separatist South Ossetia region. 
Moscow accuses Saakashvili of preparing to restore Tbilisi's control over South Ossetia and the second breakaway region of Abkhazia by force. Tbilisi says that is a pretext for Russia to effectively annex large chunks of Georgian territory.

Not surprisingly, both sides' complaints turned out to be fairly accurate about what the other side was up to. Georgia was planning a major offensive across the 16-year-old peacekeeping line, while Russia then used its counteroffensives to consolidate control in both separatist regions.

Georgia has some commercial value to the U.S. beyond the tactical and emotional advantages of Bear-baiting: it's the site of new pipeline that runs from the oilfields of Azerbaijan, skirts Armenia (an enemy of Azerbaijan and ally of Russia), crosses Georgia, and into Turkey. On August 6th, 2008 a section of the pipeline in Turkey was blown up, purportedly by Kurdish separatists. Whether that obscure incident contributed to the war that started within a couple of days or not is unknown to me. (The pipeline was fixed within a few weeks.)

So, the Americans had some reasonable interest in helping train Georgians to defend this useful asset. For example, Georgian air defenses performed well during the war, downing three Russian jets including an expensive bomber and denying Russia effective air supremacy over Georgia.

But the line between defense and offense is always somewhat hazy, although not wholly indistinct.

The obvious questions raised by the presence of 1,000 U.S. troops in Georgia conducting a military exercise with Georgian troops up to about 10 days before Georgia initiated its offensive is whether Washington knew about what was coming, and did the U.S. discourage or encourage Georgia's irredentist bellicosity? Judging from immediately subsequent events, I'd have to say "not discourage sufficiently" and, possibly, some American officials leaned toward "encourage." In turn, how much did this stupid little war exacerbate Russian paranoia about NATO "encirclement?"

But, those kind of questions are lost in the mists of time in American conventional wisdom, which depends upon brute Narrative Control -- just keep reasserting disingenuous, intentionally misleading versions of what happened less than six years ago, and who's going to go look up the facts on Wikipedia? For example, Bush's National Security Advisor at the time of the war, Stephen J. Hadley, has an op-ed in the Washington Post that begins:
Vladimir Putin has done this before. When he invaded Georgia in August 2008, Western diplomacy and pressure denied him his ultimate goal: marching to Tbilisi and deposing Georgia’s democratically elected government. 

Interestingly, the Bush Administration apparently debated on and off for four days bombing the Roki Tunnel through which the Russians were pouring into South Ossetia before permanently junking the idea. 

Condi Rice's memoir blames Saakashvili for being a dangerous hothead. 

Robert Gates, the Defense Secretary under both Bush in 2008 and under Obama, has published his memoir Duty in which he discusses the war at some length. Some excerpts from Gates' book:
As the Soviet Union was collapsing and Georgia (an ancient country in the Caucasus that had been annexed by Russia early in the nineteenth century) declared its independence, two pro-Russian Georgian provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, declared their independence. Bloody conflict followed until 1994, when Russia was finally able to negotiate a cease-fire sustained by Russian peacekeeping troops in both provinces. A fragile peace lasted until January 2004, when an aggressive and impetuous Georgian nationalist, Mikheil Saakashvili, was elected president. In the summer of 2004, Saakashvili sent Interior Ministry troops into South Ossetia, on the pretext of putting down "banditry," to reestablish Georgian control. The Georgians were forced into a humiliating withdrawal, but their violation of the status quo infuriated the Russians. When Saakashvili sent troops into a third independence-minded province in the summer of 2006, it signaled that he was prepared to fight to regain the two pro-Russian separatist provinces. Russian hatred of Saakashvili was stoked further when, in 2007, he went to the border of Abkhazia and promised loyalists there they would be "home" within a year. 
The Russians used Kosovo's declaration of independence (it had been a part of Yugoslavia and had long historical ties to Serbia) in February 2008, which the United States and Europeans supported and a pro-Serb Russia opposed, as a pretext to turn up the temperature on Georgia. The West's logic in supporting Kosovo's independence, said the Russians, ought to apply as well to Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin in April said Russia might possibly recognize the independence of the two provinces. On April 21, Saakashvili telephoned Putin to demand that Russia reverse course on recognition and cited statements by Western governments opposing it. Putin had used highly colloquial Russian in telling Saakashvili where he could put the Western statements. Soon thereafter Georgia mobilized its troops, and in response, Russia sent 400 paratroopers and a howitzer battery to staging areas near the cease-fire line. Acts of violence in both provinces increased during the summer. On August 7, Georgia launched a massive artillery barrage and incursion to retake the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.

So, what I put in bold of Gates' account seems like a good one sentence summary of what turned exchanges of fire into a war.
The next day Russian forces poured into South Ossetia, routed the Georgians, and drove deep into Georgian territory, a punitive attack aimed at the destruction of the Georgian military infrastructure. They attacked military facilities-especially those that had been certified by NATO-and destroyed coastal patrol boats, military equipment, communications, and a number of villages. The deputy chief of the Russian general staff said at the time that the Russian mission was to weaken Georgia's military, but plainly the Russians were also sending a warning to other governments in Central Asia (and Ukraine) about the risks of trying to integrate with NATO. 
The Russians had baited a trap, and the impetuous Saakashvili walked right into it. The Russians, Putin in particular, wanted to reassert Russia's traditional sphere of influence, including in the Caucasus. I was asked by a reporter if I trusted Vladimir Putin "anymore"? I responded, " ‘Anymore' is an interesting word. I have never believed that one should make national security policy on the basis of trust. I think you make national security policy based on interests and on realities." After meeting with Putin in 2001, President Bush had said he looked into Putin's eyes and "got a sense of his soul." I said to some of my colleagues privately that I'd looked into Putin's eyes and, just as I expected, had seen a stone-cold killer. 
As the invasion unfolded, President Bush, Condi, Steve Hadley, Admiral Mullen, and I were all on the phone with our counterparts in both Russia and Georgia-urging the Russians to stop and withdraw to the cease-fire lines while urging the Georgians not to do anything else stupid or provocative. When I talked with Serdyukov on August 8, I told him we were alarmed by the escalation of hostilities and urged him "in the strongest terms to halt the advance of your forces and stop the missile and air attacks inside Georgia." I asked him point-blank if they intended to take all of Georgia. He said no. I was equally blunt with my Georgian counterpart. I told him, "Georgia must not get into a conflict with Russia you cannot win" and that Georgian forces needed to cease hostilities and withdraw to defensible positions. Above all, direct contact between Georgian and Russian forces had to be avoided. I assured him we were pressing the Russians not to introduce more forces into Georgia and to respect Georgia's territorial integrity. ...
While there was broad agreement in our government and elsewhere that Saakashvili's aggressiveness and impetuosity had given the Russians an opportunity to punish Georgia, the violence and extent of Russian military (and cyber) operations were eye-openers for many. 

Dick Cheney's memoir is more terse, Saakashvili is mentioned only on p. 513, where he is described as "ordering a response" which gave Putin the excuse he was looking for.

Bush's memoir Decision Points includes this face to face exchange at the Beijing Olympics:
"'I've been warning you that Saakashvili is hot-blooded,' I told Putin. 
"'I'm hot-blooded too,' Putin retorted. 
"I stared back at him. 'No, Vladimir,' I said. 'You're cold-blooded.' "

In summary, my guess (and it's very much a guess) is that Saakashvili was getting conflicting body language from the Bush Administration. Perhaps he misjudged that Cheney was still the power behind the throne, while Bush's favor had actually shifted toward the less belligerent Gates and Rice, who despised the Georgian.

(By the way, I shouldn't be so personally harsh on Saakashvili, whose nationalist irredentism has its admirable aspects. But, I remain alarmed that the highest level of the United States government allowed itself to wind up debating whether to start bombing Russian forces over this guy's ambitions.)
    
So, sorry about such a long investigation into history, but since these events keep getting cited so tendentiously this week, it's worth putting a lot of the information out there.

Allow me to reiterate that all of these factually distorted analogies in the American press right now between Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 are unfair to the new Ukrainian government, which hasn't invaded anybody, and, in general, seems to be behaving quite responsibly.
   

35 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, that's an intelligent read on the situation with good questions asked.

And frankly, it increasingly makes me wonder if the U.S. has any f***ing idea just what a hornets' nest it may be stirring up.

Aren't there at least minimum qualifications for getting a job in the State Department?

Anonymous said...

"Allow me to reiterate that all of these factually distorted analogies in the American press right now between Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 are unfair to the new Ukrainian government, which hasn't invaded anybody, and, in general, seems to be behaving quite responsibly."

Of course, one should also recall that Putin very much wanted Georgia to behave irresponsibly....

Anonymous said...

"In summary, my guess (and it's very much a guess) is that Saakashvili was getting conflicting body language from the Bush Administration. Perhaps he misjudged that Cheney was still the power behind the throne, while Bush's favor had actually shifted toward the less belligerent Gates and Rice, who despised the Georgian."

My guess is that Saakashvili was on a manic upswing.

PJ O'Rourke has a new book said...

Steve, today on the Mark Levin radio show, Rummy said Russia "went into" Georgia, and that the motivation was to prevent association with NATO.

DJF said...

From what I have read the Ossetians had managed to stop the Georgian advance before the Russians advanced into South Ossetia, The Ossetians had also called on their allies the Abkhazians who attacked Georgian positions so Georgians were stopped in Ossetia and losing against the Abkhazians. The Russians then pushed the Georgians out of Ossetia and attacked through Abkhazia

There were three reasons why the Russians moved into Georgia proper.

1. Take out Georgian artillery which threatened Ossetia
2. Round up all the weapons abandoned by the Georgians (Something the US did not do in Iraq and paid dearly for the mistake)
3. Round up all the Ossetian and Abkhazian fighters who had already moved into Georgia

Why does Russia support the Ossetians and Abkahasians, simple, they don’t care about having parts of Georgia , they just want peace in the Caucasus Mountains. Supporting the Georgians gets them war since the Georgians have proven they can’t beat the Ossetians and Abkahasians . Supporting the Ossetians and Abkahasians gets them peace since they forced the Georgians into a cease fire which mostly held until Saakashvili came along.

The same reason is why the Russians supports Steve’s favorite Chechen dictator, he keeps the Chechens peaceful

panelvan said...

Putin likes making hay while the sun shines; also, he doesn't mind forcing the sun to break through a cloudy sky.

AMac said...

One point of dispute over "who started it?" that has never been resolved (to my knowledge), is, Did the Russians start pouring the armored units of the 58th Army through the Roki Tunnel before or after Saakashvili unleashed his Guns of August?

Georgians say before and Russians say after. I noted at the time in a comment,

"The OSCE apparently had a military observer at the JPKF post at the crucial Didi Gupta junction, ~35 km SW of the Roki Tunnel on route P-2 (the only road connecting the tunnel with Tskhinvali). They haven’t revealed what that observer witnessed."

Kind of hard to miss over 100 BMPs and tanks roaring down a two-lane road and over a bridge, a few yards from your post. Does anybody know if the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe ever revealed what its observer observed?

Anonymous said...

Steve, today on the Mark Levin radio show, Rummy said Russia "went into" Georgia, and that the motivation was to prevent association with NATO.

Rush and Levin are wrong on this issue. They believe Putin is some commie out for global domination while ignoring global leftists using US power to do the same. Interestingly, Michael Savage seems to have figured this out and comes across as much more knowledgeable of which side is pushing what.

Anonymous said...

So, is Hillary a hothead? She has already declared that Putin is the new Hitler, or so it seems.

Dan said...

Most nations that mess with Mother Russia tend to regret it.

Jut saying.

Anonymous said...

"And frankly, it increasingly makes me wonder if the U.S. has any f***ing idea just what a hornets' nest it may be stirring up. "

I don't think it's incompetence. The neocons' interests are simply different from the interests of the American people. The neocons want their enemies to constantly fight each other. They want to stir things up. Russia vs. Ukraine is better for them than Putin-led Eurasian Union vs. the oligarchs and cultural filth. Shia vs. Sunni is better for them than Muslims vs. Israel.

Portlander said...

This Saakashvili thing kind of reminds me of April Glaspie's role in the first Gulf War.

Now maybe "role" is being uncharitable, but these people are supposed to be sine qua non statecraft experts acting on behalf of the world's hyper-power, and yet these body language mistakes are being made with some noticeable regularity.

I suppose we could be generous and say these types of mistakes are unavoidable, but then that suggests the problem is the world doesn't actually need a hyper-power. It inclines people to do overly rash things figuring the 800 lb gorilla has their back.

But then that runs into the problem that we're essentially questioning: The Deep State, do we need it?

airtommy said...

the new Ukrainian government, which hasn't invaded anybody

They invaded Ukraine. Remember the democratically-elected government that they violently deposed just a few weeks ago?

Anonymous said...

That "third independence-minded province" was Adjaria. It has the misfortune of not bordering Russia, so it ain't independence-minded no more.

Geoff Matthews said...

PJ,

Couldn't Rummy and Steve's accounts both be accurate?

5371 said...

For example, Georgian air defenses performed well during the war, downing three Russian jets including an expensive bomber and denying Russia effective air supremacy over Georgia.

I'm afraid that like all other claims of Georgian success in battle, these were invented after the fact as some weak consolation for their disasters.

HA said...

Actually, these folks in Galicia have barely had a relationship with Russia. They were not part of Russian state at any time between about 1250 and 1939. They aren't part of one now either.

When will the Greater-Russia apologists realize that *everyone* West of Trieste had a very intimate relationship with Russia. The "Galicians", or however you choose to name or denigrate them, are no exception. I may not agree with much of anything that they stand for, but when it comes to shouting 'no' at whatever Moscow chooses to offer this time around, I can certainly sympathize.

Dan said...

The bottom line here.

Is peace served by Russia maintaining a robust military presence in Crimea?

That's what is at stake.

To quote Baron Mandelson of New Labour on income and earnings:

I'm disgustingly comfortable with people getting filthy rich, as long as they pay their taxes.

I don't have a problem with the Russians running Crimea.

Anonymous said...

OT/ Victoria Nuland's father just died - fascinating biography:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/us/sherwin-b-nuland-author-who-challenged-concept-of-dignified-death-dies-at-83.html?hp

Anonymous said...

"In summary, my guess (and it's very much a guess) is that Saakashvili was getting conflicting body language from the Bush Administration. Perhaps he misjudged that Cheney was still the power behind the throne, while Bush's favor had actually shifted toward the less belligerent Gates and Rice, who despised the Georgian."

In the years before the war, Rice repeatedly praised Saakashvili's efforts to promote Georgia's "territorial integrity" and the restoration of "constitutional order,” terms he was using domestically as euphemisms for retaking South Ossetia and Abkhazia by military force. Rice's statement's – in combination with high profile visits by then-President George W. Bush, then-VP Cheney, and prominent Republican Senator John McCain – left listeners with the expectation that the Georgian military could expect direct US intervention in any conflict with Russia, Abkhazia, or South Ossetia.

When Condoleeza Rice visited Georgia on July 10, 2008, she repeatedly reaffirmed her support for Saakashvili, promised to protect Georgia's “territorial integrity” and to help it join NATO, and denounced Russian efforts to dissuade Georgia from attempting a military solution in South Ossetia. She ended one such speech by promising to support Georgia in the coming months, stating that
“[w]e always fight for our friends.”
In the coming weeks, Saakashvili was nearly moved to tears whenever he discussed Rice's fervent support for his agenda.

Less than a month later, on August 8, 2008, Saakashvili ordered a so-called “constitutional order operation” intended to “restore” Georgia's “constitutional order” and “territorial integrity.” To the rest of the world, the “operation” was known as the 2008 South Ossetia War or the Russo-Georgian War.

Anonymous said...

>Why does Russia support the Ossetians and Abkahasians, simple, they don’t care about having parts of Georgia , they just want peace in the Caucasus Mountains.

Thank you Pravda, for reiterating the official Russian position.

Anonymous said...

Some fun facts I bet you didn't know: Turkey has interests recognized by treaties from 1920s in Adjaria (Batumi) and Nakhchivan, for example a declaration of independence in the first and an Armenian invasion in the second would be -more accurately could be depending on who's in power- a pretext for direct Turkish intervention.

Anonymous said...

Less than a month later, on August 8, 2008, Saakashvili ordered a so-called “constitutional order operation” intended to “restore” Georgia's “constitutional order” and “territorial integrity.” To the rest of the world, the “operation” was known as the 2008 South Ossetia War or the Russo-Georgian War.

Correction:

The "constitutional order operation" started on August 7, 2008, local time.

AmericanGoy said...

Somebody's been reading my blog. Good for you; this info needed to be out there.

Are you going to write about the Hebrew speaking defense minister making "defence" deals with "private" Israeli weapons companies.

Also, are you going to write about not just the 1500 American "advisers" in Georgia, but also the Israeli ones?

Hunsdon said...

Our host parenthesized: By the way, I shouldn't be so personally harsh on Saakashvili, whose nationalist irredentism has its admirable aspects.

Hunsdon said: Well said. My general objection to foreign leaders is not so much how they run their country, but how much they cause the United States to get involved. (Naturally, there is a fair bit of overlap here.)

I like Georgia---it's a fascinating place, with good food, good wine, and a hillbilly martial culture I can admire. Don't care to go to war to settle their irredentist dreams, though.

Anonymous said...

Dan:"Most nations that mess with Mother Russia tend to regret it.

Jut saying."

Well, the Crimean War turned out badly for the Russians. And WW1 swung Germany's way in the East (cf Treaty of Brest-Litovsk). Of course, Germany's failure to win in the West kept the Germans from being able to follow through on their victory.And the Cold War ended with the Soviet Union falling apart.

DJF said...

“”””Thank you Pravda, for reiterating the official Russian position”””

So what is your position

Ossetians and Abkahasians have already beaten the Georgians twice. There was peace for the most part in the area before Saakashvili tried his invasion. Supporting Georgia does not get Russia peace because they are not very good fighting in the hills and mountains of the Caucasus.

At best supporting Georgia will get a long drawn out insurgency in the Caucasus on both sides of the Caucasus mountains. And if Russia sends troops to help the Georgians then Russia becomes a target of another long war in the mountains

Mr. Anon said...

"Portlander said...

But then that runs into the problem that we're essentially questioning: The Deep State, do we need it?"

No. The first thing I would do, had I the powe to do so, would be to close at least half our embassies around the world. That alone would reduce a lot of immigration into the US. And do we really need an embassy in Burkina Faso?

Anonymous said...

"In summary, my guess (and it's very much a guess) is that Saakashvili was getting conflicting body language from the Bush Administration."

The more I read up about it - including your posts - the more I think US oligarchs are running their own foreign policy out ahead of the official one.

The two policies are more or less aligned in their anti-Russian aspects but the oligarch's one is at least partly just about making money and also far more reckless.

Anonymous said...

For example, Georgian air defenses performed well during the war, downing three Russian jets including an expensive bomber and denying Russia effective air supremacy over Georgia.

I seem to recall that the USAF lost one of its much lauded stealth aircraft to an even lesser force a while back.

Anonymous said...

Now the factual distortion is that the Ukrainian govt. is peopled by angels and pure-at-heart democrats.

Svoboda, the Gas Princess, the fact that Yakunovich was the legitimate President all swept under the rug.

The CW is best distilled by the airhead on PBS's so-called Newshour.

Anonymous said...

Reads like something out of Alice in Wonderland. Scary to think about what MIGHT have happened. Reminds me of how Europe blundered into WW1. We all know how well that worked out.

How does having an alliance with Georgia protect American lives?

ATBOTL said...

This whole Ukraine conflict is being overblown in the Anglosphere media.

A democratically elected government was chased out of office by rioters. The opposition, who lost the last election, has now installed itself in government, which is probably illegal and unconstitutional. Parts of Ukraine that are predominantly populated by people who voted for the party that was chased out by the rioters are refusing to recognize the new self-styled government.

The likely solution will be for the deposed faction to have a say in forming the new gov't. All this nonsense about Russia invading is a gambit to try to legitimize the Tymoshenko faction's seizure of power.

ATBOTL said...

"Did the Russians start pouring the armored units of the 58th Army through the Roki Tunnel before or after Saakashvili unleashed his Guns of August?"

After.

That there is any confusion over this is indication of just how wildly dishonest and deliberately deceptive our media is.

AMac said...

ATBOTL (3/5/14, 3:59 PM) --

Do you have a Link or cite? Do you know if the Didi Gupta OSCE observer's reports were ever released?