[Marxism] [Fwd: [R-G] The Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power - Stratfor]

[Jay Moore]

Stratfor                                       August 12, 2008

    

   [1]The Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power


   By George Friedman


   The Russian invasion of Georgia has not changed the balance of power
   in Eurasia. It simply announced that the balance of power had already
   shifted. The United States has been absorbed in its wars in Iraq and
   Afghanistan, as well as potential conflict with Iran and a
   destabilizing situation in Pakistan. It has no strategic ground forces
   in reserve and is in no position to intervene on the Russian
   periphery. This, as we have argued, has opened a window of opportunity
   for the [2]Russians to reassert their influence in the former Soviet
   sphere. Moscow did not have to concern itself with the potential
   response of the United States or Europe; hence, the invasion did not
   shift the balance of power. The balance of power had already shifted,
   and it was up to the Russians when to make this public. They did that
   Aug. 8.


   Lets begin simply by reviewing the last few days.


   On the night of Thursday, Aug. 7, forces of the Republic of [3]Georgia
   drove across the border of South Ossetia, a secessionist region of
   Georgia that has functioned as an independent entity since the fall of
   the Soviet Union. The forces drove on to the capital, Tskhinvali,
   which is close to the border. Georgian forces got bogged down while
   trying to take the city. In spite of heavy fighting, they never fully
   secured the city, nor the rest of South Ossetia.


   On the morning of Aug. 8, [4]Russian forces entered South Ossetia,
   using armored and motorized infantry forces along with air power.
   South Ossetia was informally aligned with Russia, and Russia acted to
   prevent the regions absorption by Georgia. Given the speed with which
   the Russians responded within hours of the Georgian attack the
   Russians were expecting the Georgian attack and were themselves at
   their jumping-off points. The counterattack was carefully planned and
   competently executed, and over the next 48 hours, the Russians
   succeeded in defeating the main Georgian force and forcing a retreat.
   By Sunday, Aug. 10, the Russians had consolidated their position in
   South Ossetia.


   On Monday, the [5]Russians extended their offensive into Georgia
   proper, attacking on two axes. One was south from South Ossetia to the
   Georgian city of Gori. The other drive was from Abkhazia, another
   secessionist region of Georgia aligned with the Russians. This drive
   was designed to cut the road between the Georgian capital of Tbilisi
   and its ports. By this point, the Russians had bombed the military
   airfields at Marneuli and Vaziani and appeared to have disabled radars
   at the international airport in Tbilisi. These moves brought
   [6]Russian forces to within 40 miles of the Georgian capital, while
   making outside reinforcement and resupply of Georgian forces extremely
   difficult should anyone wish to undertake it.


   The Mystery Behind the Georgian Invasion

    

   In this simple chronicle, there is something quite mysterious: Why did
   the Georgians choose to invade South Ossetia on Thursday night? There
   had been a great deal of shelling by the South Ossetians of Georgian
   villages for the previous three nights, but while possibly more
   intense than usual, artillery exchanges were routine. The Georgians
   might not have fought well, but they committed fairly substantial
   forces that must have taken at the very least several days to deploy
   and supply. Georgias move was deliberate.


   The [7]United States is Georgias closest ally. It maintained about 130
   military advisers in Georgia, along with civilian advisers,
   contractors involved in all aspects of the Georgian government and
   people doing business in Georgia. It is inconceivable that the
   Americans were unaware of Georgias mobilization and intentions. It is
   also inconceivable that the Americans were unaware that the Russians
   had deployed substantial forces on the South Ossetian frontier. U.S.
   technical intelligence, from satellite imagery and signals
   intelligence to unmanned aerial vehicles, could not miss the fact that
   thousands of Russian troops were moving to forward positions. The
   Russians clearly knew the Georgians were ready to move. How could the
   United States not be aware of the Russians? Indeed, given the posture
   of Russian troops, how could intelligence analysts have missed the
   possibility that the Russians had laid a trap, hoping for a Georgian
   invasion to justify its own counterattack?


   It is very difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their
   attack against U.S. wishes. The Georgians rely on the United States,
   and they were in no position to defy it. This leaves two
   possibilities. The first is a massive breakdown in intelligence, in
   which the United States either was unaware of the existence of Russian
   forces, or knew of the Russian forces but along with the Georgians
   miscalculated Russias intentions. The United States, along with other
   countries, has viewed Russia through the prism of the 1990s, when the
   Russian military was in shambles and the Russian government was
   paralyzed. The United States has not seen [8]Russia make a decisive
   military move beyond its borders since the Afghan war of the
   1970s-1980s. The Russians had systematically avoided such moves for
   years. The United States had assumed that the Russians would not risk
   the consequences of an invasion.


   If this was the case, then it points to the central reality of this
   situation: The [9]Russians had changed dramatically, along with the
   balance of power in the region. They welcomed the opportunity to drive
   home the new reality, which was that they could invade Georgia and the
   United States and Europe could not respond. As for risk, they did not
   view the invasion as risky. Militarily, there was no counter.
   Economically, Russia is an energy exporter doing quite well indeed,
   the Europeans need Russian energy even more than the Russians need to
   sell it to them. Politically, as we shall see, the Americans needed
   the Russians more than the Russians needed the Americans. Moscows
   calculus was that this was the moment to strike. The Russians had been
   building up to it for months, as we have discussed, and they struck.


   The Western Encirclement of Russia

    

   To understand Russian thinking, we need to look at two events. The
   first is the [10]Orange Revolution in Ukraine. From the U.S. and
   European point of view, the Orange Revolution represented a triumph of
   democracy and Western influence. From the Russian point of view, as
   Moscow made clear, the [11]Orange Revolution was a CIA-funded
   intrusion into the internal affairs of Ukraine, designed to draw
   Ukraine into NATO and add to the encirclement of Russia. U.S.
   Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton had promised the Russians
   that NATO would not expand into the former Soviet Union empire.


   That promise had already been broken in 1998 by NATOs expansion to
   Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and again in the 2004
   expansion, which absorbed not only the rest of the former Soviet
   satellites in what is now Central Europe, but also the three Baltic
   states, which had been components of the Soviet Union.


   The Russians had tolerated all that, but the discussion of including
   Ukraine in NATO represented a fundamental threat to Russias national
   security. It would have rendered Russia indefensible and threatened to
   destabilize the Russian Federation itself. When the United States went
   so far as to suggest that Georgia be included as well, bringing NATO
   deeper into the Caucasus, the Russian conclusion publicly stated was
   that the United States in particular intended to encircle and break
   Russia.


   The second and lesser event was the decision by [12]Europe and the
   United States to back Kosovos separation from Serbia. The Russians
   were friendly with Serbia, but the deeper issue for Russia was this:
   The principle of Europe since World War II was that, to prevent
   conflict, national borders would not be changed. If that principle
   were violated in Kosovo, other border shifts including demands by
   various regions for independence from Russia might follow. The
   Russians publicly and privately asked that Kosovo not be given formal
   independence, but instead continue its informal autonomy, which was
   the same thing in practical terms. Russias requests were ignored.


   From the Ukrainian experience, the Russians became convinced that the
   United States was engaged in a plan of strategic encirclement and
   strangulation of Russia. From the Kosovo experience, they concluded
   that the United States and Europe were not prepared to consider
   Russian wishes even in fairly minor affairs. That was the breaking
   point. If Russian desires could not be accommodated even in a minor
   matter like this, then clearly Russia and the West were in conflict.
   For the Russians, as we said, the question was how to respond. Having
   declined to respond in Kosovo, the Russians decided to respond where
   they had all the cards: in South Ossetia.


   Moscow had two motives, the lesser of which was as a tit-for-tat over
   Kosovo. If Kosovo could be declared independent under Western
   sponsorship, then [13]South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two breakaway
   regions of Georgia, could be declared independent under Russian
   sponsorship. Any objections from the United States and Europe would
   simply confirm their hypocrisy. This was important for internal
   Russian political reasons, but the second motive was far more
   important.


   Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once said that the fall of the
   Soviet Union was a geopolitical disaster. This didnt mean that he
   wanted to retain the Soviet state; rather, it meant that the
   disintegration of the Soviet Union had created a situation in which
   Russian national security was threatened by Western interests. As an
   example, consider that during the Cold War, St. Petersburg was about
   1,200 miles away from a NATO country. Today it is about 60 miles away
   from Estonia, a NATO member. The disintegration of the Soviet Union
   had left Russia surrounded by a group of countries hostile to Russian
   interests in various degrees and heavily influenced by the United
   States, Europe and, in some cases, China.


   Resurrecting the Russian Sphere

    

   Putin did not want to re-establish the Soviet Union, but he did want
   to re-establish the Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet
   Union region. To accomplish that, he had to do two things. First, he
   had to [14]re-establish the credibility of the Russian army as a
   fighting force, at least in the context of its region. Second, he had
   to establish that Western guarantees, including NATO membership, meant
   nothing in the face of Russian power. He did not want to confront NATO
   directly, but he did want to confront and defeat a power that was
   closely aligned with the United States, had U.S. support, aid and
   advisers and was widely seen as being under American protection.
   Georgia was the perfect choice.


   By [15]invading Georgia as Russia did (competently if not
   brilliantly), Putin re-established the credibility of the Russian
   army. But far more importantly, by doing this Putin revealed an open
   secret: While the United States is tied down in the Middle East,
   American guarantees have no value. This lesson is not for American
   consumption. It is something that, from the Russian point of view, the
   Ukrainians, the Balts and the Central Asians need to digest. Indeed,
   it is a lesson Putin wants to transmit to Poland and the Czech
   Republic as well. The [16]United States wants to place ballistic
   missile defense installations in those countries, and the Russians
   want them to understand that allowing this to happen increases their
   risk, not their security.


   The Russians knew the United States would denounce their attack. This
   actually plays into Russian hands. The more vocal senior leaders are,
   the greater the contrast with their inaction, and the Russians wanted
   to drive home the idea that American guarantees are empty talk.


   The Russians also know something else that is of vital importance: For
   the United States, the Middle East is far more important than the
   Caucasus, and [17]Iran is particularly important. The United States
   wants the Russians to participate in sanctions against Iran. Even more
   importantly, they do not want the Russians to sell weapons to Iran,
   particularly the highly effective S-300 air defense system. Georgia is
   a marginal issue to the United States; Iran is a central issue. The
   Russians are in a position to pose serious problems for the United
   States not only in Iran, but also with weapons sales to other
   countries, like Syria.


   Therefore, the United States has a problem it either must reorient its
   strategy away from the Middle East and toward the Caucasus, or it has
   to seriously limit its response to Georgia to avoid a Russian counter
   in Iran. Even if the United States had an appetite for another war in
   Georgia at this time, it would have to calculate the Russian response
   in Iran and possibly in Afghanistan (even though Moscows interests
   there are currently aligned with those of Washington).


   In other words, the Russians have backed the Americans into a corner.
   The Europeans, who for the most part lack expeditionary militaries and
   are [18]dependent upon Russian energy exports, have even fewer
   options. If nothing else happens, the Russians will have demonstrated
   that they have resumed their role as a regional power. Russia is not a
   global power by any means, but a significant regional power with lots
   of nuclear weapons and an economy that isnt all too shabby at the
   moment. It has also compelled every state on the Russian periphery to
   re-evaluate its position relative to Moscow. As for Georgia, the
   Russians appear ready to demand the resignation of President Mikhail
   Saakashvili. Militarily, that is their option. That is all they wanted
   to demonstrate, and they have demonstrated it.


   The war in Georgia, therefore, is Russias public return to great power
   status. This is not something that just happened it has been unfolding
   ever since Putin took power, and with growing intensity in the past
   five years. Part of it has to do with the increase of Russian power,
   but a great deal of it has to do with the fact that the Middle Eastern
   wars have left the United States off-balance and short on resources.
   As we have written, this conflict created a window of opportunity. The
   Russian goal is to use that window to assert a new reality throughout
   the region while the Americans are tied down elsewhere and dependent
   on the Russians. The war was far from a surprise; it has been building
   for months. But the geopolitical foundations of the war have been
   building since 1992. Russia has been an empire for centuries. The last
   15 years or so were not the new reality, but simply an aberration that
   would be rectified. And now it is being rectified.

References
   1. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/russo_georgian_war_and_balance_power
   2. http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical_diary/georgia_russia_twilight_hour
   3. http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/georgia_russia_hostilities_erupt_south_ossetia
   4. http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/russia_moscows_four_options_south_ossetia
   5. http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/georgia_russia_checkmate
   6. http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/georgia_timeline_events_aug_11
   7. http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/georgia_russias_response_united_states
   8. http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical_diary_putins_new_old_russia
   9. http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical_diary_putins_jab_west
  10. http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical_diary_ukraine_elections_and_orange_reversal
  11. http://www.stratfor.com/russian_reversal_part_1
  12. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/kosovar_independence_and_russian_reaction
  13. http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/georgia_russias_response_united_states
  14. http://www.stratfor.com/russia_putins_cfe_gambit
  15. http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/georgia_russia_operations_over
  16. http://www.stratfor.com/russia_using_missile_defense_geopolitical_lever
  17. http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/iran_tehrans_view_crisis_caucasus
  18. http://www.stratfor.com/global_market_brief_europe_loosens_energy_ties_bind_russia