Who has the bolshy yarbles? Female suicide bombers, that's who.

The head of Putin is heavy. As Dark Steer's analysis showed, the last thing Putin really wanted this August when he invaded Georgia / accepted Georgian provocation to invade was to add yet another Russian region to the long list of "restives."

Today we saw proof. Russia can't expand a sphere of influence while continuing to wage war just to maintain its territorial integrity. What succor can Putin offer the "oppressed peoples" of northern Georgia when he can't protect his own from Chechen suicide bombers?

So, questions for the Premier: Was Putin's motivation in the Georgian incursion to deny safe haven in South Ossetia for Chechen militants? If so, can't we expect him to back down on the announced Polish-border missiles?

Don't the Chechens want what Putin does, i.e. land and thus oil royalties? So isn't the real beef a federalist beef, i.e., between the regions en masse and the central government? Thus, isn't it absurd to target the capital of North Ossetia rather than a Big Russian target? What kind of dumbass Chechen would do this?

Do Ossetians (of N and S) really want Chechens to have beef with them rather than with Mother Russia? If not, does this push them towards Moscow and anschluss, or away and toward more "restiveness"? Might Moscow have a reason to start beef between regions therefore?

(This is not nearly as paranoid as it sounds. Putin covered up Beslan, assassinated Anna Politkovskaya, etc. He likes Dark Ops. Why he can't just say, "I'm waging war on Chechnya, don't mess with me, this is an insurrection," I still don't know. Presumably he still wants to be invited to the G8, but that's a high price for a tea party...)

hasta
--
ds

Frozen conflicts...Putin losing marbles: "I am surprised that you are surprised..."

Is there anyone in the region actually intimidated by Vlad Putin? Poland signed a missile defense agreement at long last. Lithuania's president is a noted hardass (and a serious thinker; here's his speech to the London School of Economics in February). Putin can bluster about countries making themselves into targets, but the biggest thing he/Medvedev have threatened lately is Moldova.

Said Medvedev to the Moldovan president:

After the Georgian leadership lost their marbles, as they say, all the problems got worse and a military conflict erupted [...]

The dispute between Transdniestrian separatists and the Moldovan central government was identified as Second Most Likely to Feel the Putin by Joshua Kucera in Slate:

The conflict in Transdniestria has been frozen for some time, and there's not much at stake in Moldova, but if the situation heated up, the United States and Russia would definitely take opposing sides, and in the post-South Ossetia world, who knows?

Indeed; good news for cartographers, though.

As for losing marbles, Putin now believes that the West arranged for the Georgian aggression in order to boost the McCain candidacy (and to remind McCain what country Putin is from). Here's Putin in the WaPo:

When the CNN correspondent, Matthew Chance, expressed skepticism, Putin argued that the Bush administration faced difficulties in the Middle East and Afghanistan, as well as economic difficulties.

"A small, victorious war is needed," Putin said. "And if you don't succeed, it's possible to shift the blame on us, turn us into the enemy against the backdrop of rah-rah patriotism to rally the country again around certain political forces. I am surprised that you are surprised at what I say. It's obvious."

To summarize: Moldova is the largest thing Putin's willing to threaten; Putin is slowly becoming deranged on CNN. Is there cause for alarm here? To my mind, the best indicator that the past month's media hyperventilation about the New Cold War is meaningless is that David Brooks thinks it's for real: from PBS, after watching BillyClint in Denver:

MARK SHIELDS: [...] People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power.

DAVID BROOKS: Not sure Vladimir Putin will be impressed by the power of our example or Ahmadinejad, but it's a nice formulation.

This is the benchmark by which we judge serious foreign policy difficulties: if Brooks is afraid, ignore it. If Brooks is for it, watch out.

By this standard, let us confidently assume that just as Putin has no intention of leaving Ossetia and Abkhazia, he also has no interest in adding a half-dozen wannabe-states to the roster of cranky part-Russian regions. No Nagorno-Karabakh, no second Dagestan, no Transdniestr. Let's see if we can get Putin out of Poti, and stop wetting the bed about What Happens Next...
--
ds

Dude, you just made me defend FoxNews...

I don't be-lieve you, as the man said.

Sure, Fox looked stupid when it realized it had Ossetians, you could see it coming from the point when he says the girl and her aunt fled via Moscow. The larger embarrassment is to discover that your interview is with a Kremlin partisan rather than with a victim of aggressive war...

Has anyone confirmed their stories? When someone is being bombed, does she know whose bombers they are? If the incoming weapons were artillery, sure, likelihood is Georgian. But Russia had air dominance from the start. Oh, and the niece said she didn't see or hear any bombs at all...Fox didn't cut away because they had the wrong victims; people who would talk about their real pain inflicted by the wrong -- to Fox's mind -- government, but because they didn't have victims at all.

The kicker is the aunt's parroting of Putin's line:

Russian authorities say 2,000 people were killed in fighting around Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, and more than 30,000 refugees fled over the Russian border.

Which would be impressive if it weren't nigh impossible. The estimated population of Ossetia is 30- to 65,000; the estimate is so wide, I imagine, because Ossetia is built like West Virginia on steroids. And you're telling me they all got out of whatever little hollers they live in in 48 hours?

Our best source for Ossetian casualties is the nominal president of Ossetia?

Eduard Kokoity, the president of South Ossetia, said in a statement on a government Web site that hundreds of civilians had been killed in fighting in the capital.

...whose estimate is inflated by "Russian authorities" to 2,000; the Times is content to split the difference: "1500 Reported Killed in Georgia Battle." And this supposed eyewitness' best guess is the same as yours, mine and Putin's?

Presumably, if we believe the 12-year-old and her aunt, we should also believe D.H. Williams of the "Daily Newscaster":

[...]the facts show that Georgian troops lead [sic] by Israeli Mossad agents attacked Russian troops and civilians in Ossetia.

I'm not even sure if I should link to this asshole. Cut and paste this if you must: http://www.dailynewscaster.com/2008/08/14/12-year-old-san-francisco-girl-tells-of-georgian-aggression-against-ossetian-civilians/

Oh, or this asshole: "OSSETIA HOLOCAUST! FOX NEWS LIE!...TRY TO STOP WOMAN TELLING THE TROOTH...[sic]" Again, watch at your own risk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZU8LteAAww

Dude.
--
ds

Hard Baltics vs. Iron Sphere...

<< Georgia part one

Putin's whole endeavor is to install Moscow-friendly regimes in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, in a paranoid rendition of the US campaign against Serbia. In this version, Russia comes to the rescue of aggrieved Russophile minorities, wages a bombing campaign, and calls actions by the small central government ethnic cleansing. Medvedev's aforementioned background provides the final stroke in the US : Serbia :: Russia : Georgia analogy; the lawyer wants Saakashvili in the Hague.

I can see the Ukraine falling, Saakashvili out of a job, etc., but it seems more likely that Poland and the Baltics will not shit themselves with fear. For one, Putin sounds unhinged, comparing Saakashvili to Saddam Hussein:

"Of course Saddam Hussein had to be hung for destroying some Shia villages. And the current Georgian rulers, who wiped ten Ossetian villages off the face of the Earth in an hour, of course they have to be protected."

Ilves of Estonia said "I am a Georgian"...Lech Kaczynski didn't trust Putin's cease-fire yesterday; today that looks pretty wise, as latest reports have Russians moving out of Gori, deeper into Georgia...

Little Lithuania, whose name was tossed around as an alternate missile defense site, and thus has been put on Putin's shitlist unnecessarily, may prove hard core. A few years ago, Russia cut oil to the Meziekiu Nafta refinery, and then set it on fire.



Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus, unmoved, hinted that the train to Kaliningrad would be shut down for "political repairs":

"We should guarantee the safety of trains and passengers," he said, according to the Baltic News Service. "Should repairs be needed in order to increase the safety of railway services, I see no reason to heat up political tensions."

Calmer than you are. Shit to this effect has been going on every other year for what seems like all decade. The Baltics respond to economic pressure in kind; they don't escalate. They don't mass troops on the borders of some nether region, incapable of being taunted into a "Who's got the bolshy yarbles?" contest. DS presumes the Iron Sphere will not expand...

Trying to stay calm...
--
ds

Hazards of guessing...

Russian tanks have cut Georgia in half. This is one of the hazards of guessing.

The "democracy agenda" forced Putin's hand. We're expanding NATO, sending anti-ballistic missile batteries to Poland and the Czech Republic, and we were training Georgian troops until this weekend. We assumed a Russian military response to be out of the question. We were wrong.

Fortunately for us, the war in Georgia has taught us rubes the lay of the land. Russia believes a sphere of influence is a sphere of influence. Listen to the prescient Ivan Krastev in 2005:

The “orange triumphalism” in the west that followed the regime changes in Georgia and Ukraine perceives the decline of Russia’s influence in the post-Soviet space as irreversible. The only relevant questions for the democratic triumphalists nowadays are how many more weeks Alexander Lukashenko can survive in power in Minsk and where the next “colour revolution” will take place.

In my view this single-scenario approach is an exercise in wishful non-thinking that underestimates the vulnerability of the newest “new democracies” and neglects Russia’s strategic drive to transform itself from a status-quo power into a revisionist power on the territory of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

While a return to Soviet size and authority is a scary strategic goal, Dark Steer thinks (right?) it unlikely. Putin has had to abduct tycoons, assassinate journalists, poison former spies, poison politicians of the "near abroad", and wage perennial war in his own backyard just to assert control. How many versions of Dagestan are there in Russia? Does Putin need more?

To be more specific, Abkhazia wants independence, not anschluss. Ossetia may feel stable under Russian absorption; a large troop presence there could just as easily invite attacks by Chechen separatists. It's a rough neighborhood, happily cut up by mountains, but rough.

Tentatively, since I was way wrong about the Israel-Syria love connection, I'm going to assume that Putin moves troops up to the outskirts of Tbilisi, scares shit out the populace, and pulls back. Russian "peacekeepers" sit on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, neither of which gains independence. Ukraine's Party of Regions takes parliament, Poland and the Czech shut down missile defense talks...

...Lithuania later...
--
ds