[R-G] The Caucasus —Washington Risks nuclear war by miscalculation

[Anthony Fenton]

The Caucasus —Washington Risks nuclear war by miscalculation

by F. William Engdahl

Global Research, August 11, 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ENG20080811&articleId=9790


The dramatic military attack by the military of the Republic of  
Georgia on South Ossetia in the last days has brought the world one  
major step closer to the ultimate horror of the Cold War era—a  
thermonuclear war between Russia and the United States—by  
miscalculation. What is playing out in the Caucasus is being reported  
in US media in an alarmingly misleading light, making Moscow appear  
the lone aggressor. The question is whether George W. Bush and Dick  
Cheney are encouraging the unstable Georgian President, Mikhail  
Saakashvili in order to force the next US President to back the NATO  
military agenda of the Bush Doctrine. This time Washington may have  
badly misjudged the possibilities, as it did in Iraq, but this time  
with possible nuclear consequences.

The underlying issue, as I stressed in my July 12  Global Research  
article entitled Georgia, Washington and Moscow: a Nuclear  
Geopolitical Poker Game , is the fact that since the dissolution of  
the Warsaw Pact in 1991 one after another former member as well as  
former states of the USSR have been coaxed and in many cases bribed  
with false promises by Washington into joining the counter  
organization, NATO.

Rather than initiate discussions after the 1991 dissolution of the  
Warsaw Pact about a systematic dissolution of NATO, Washington has  
systematically converted NATO into what can only be called the  
military vehicle of an American global imperial rule, linked by a  
network of military bases from Kosovo to Poland to Turkey to Iraq and  
Afghanistan. In 1999, former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and  
the Czech Republic joined NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,  
Romania, and Slovakia followed suit in March 2004. Now Washington is  
putting immense pressure on the EU members of NATO, especially Germany  
and France, that they vote in December to admit Georgia and Ukraine.

The roots of the conflict

The specific conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia and Abkhazia  
has its roots in the following. First, the Southern Ossetes, who until  
1990 formed an autonomous region of the Georgian Soviet republic, seek  
to unite in one state with their co-ethnics in North Ossetia, an  
autonomous republic of the Russian Soviet republic and now the Russian  
Federation. There is an historically grounded Ossete fear of violent  
Georgian nationalism and the experience of Georgian hatred of ethnic  
minorities under then Georgian leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia, which the  
Ossetes see again under Georgian President, Mikhel Saakashvili.  
Saakashvili was brought to power with US financing and US covert  
regime change activities in December 2003 in what was called the Rose  
Revolution. Now the thorns of that rose are causing blood to spill.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia—the first a traditional Black Sea resort  
area, the second an impoverished, sparsely populated region that  
borders Russia to the north—each has its own language, culture,  
history. When the Soviet Union collapsed, both regions sought to  
separate themselves from Georgia in bloody conflicts - South Ossetia  
in 1990-1, Abkhazia in 1992-4.

In December 1990 Georgia under Gamsakhurdia sent troops into South  
Ossetia after the region declared its own sovereignty. This Georgian  
move was defeated by Soviet Interior Ministry troops. Then Georgia  
declared abolition of the South Ossete autonomous region and its  
incorporation into Georgia proper. Both wars ended with cease-fires  
that were negotiated by Russia and policed by peacekeeping forces  
under the aegis of the recently established Commonwealth of  
Independent States. The situation hardened into "frozen conflicts,"  
like that over Cyprus. By late 2005, Georgia signed an agreement that  
it would not use force, and the Abkhaz would allow the gradual return  
of 200,000-plus ethnic Georgians who had fled the violence. But the  
agreement collapsed in early 2006, when Saakashvili sent troops to  
retake the Kodori Valley in Abkhazia. Since then Saakashvili has been  
escalating preparations for military action.

Critical is Russia’s support for the Southern Ossetes. Russia is  
unwilling to see Georgia join NATO. In addition, the Ossetes are the  
oldest Russian allies in the Caucasus who have provided troops to the  
Russian army in many wars. Russia does not wish to abandon them and  
the Abkhaz, and fuel yet more ethnic unrest among their compatriots in  
the Russian North Caucasus. In a November 2006 referendum, 99 percent  
of South Ossetians voted for independence from Georgia, at a time when  
most of them had long held Russian passports. This enabled Russian  
President Medvedev to justify his military's counter-attack of Georgia  
on Friday as an effort to "protect the lives and dignity of Russian  
citizens, wherever they may be."

For Russia, Ossetia has been an important strategic base near the  
Turkish and Iranian frontiers since the days of the czars. Georgia is  
also an important transit country for oil being pumped from the  
Caspian Sea to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and a potential base for  
Washington efforts to encircle Tehran.

As far as the Georgians are concerned, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are  
simply part of their national territory, to be recovered at all costs.  
Promises by NATO leaders to bring Georgia into the alliance, and  
ostentatious declarations of support from Washington, have emboldened  
Saakashvili to launch his military offensive against the two  
provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Saakashvili and likely, Dick  
Cheney’s office in Washington appear to have miscalculated very badly.  
Russia has made it clear that it has no intention of ceding its  
support for South Ossetia or Abkhazia.

Proxy War

In March this year as Washington went ahead to recognize the  
independence of Kosovo in former Yugoslavia, making Kosovo a de facto  
NATO-run territory against the will of the UN Security Council and  
especially against Russian protest, Putin responded with Russian Duma  
hearings on recognition of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria, a  
pro-Russian breakaway republic in Moldova. Moscow argued that the  
West's logic on Kosovo should apply as well to these ethnic  
communities seeking to free themselves from the control of a hostile  
state. In mid-April, Mr. Putin held out the possibility of recognition  
for the breakaway republics. It was a geopolitical chess game in the  
strategic Caucasus for the highest stakes—the future of Russia itself.

Saakashvili called then-President Putin to demand he reverse the  
decision. He reminded Putin that the West had taken Georgia's side.  
This past April at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, US President  
Bush proposed accepting Georgia into NATO’s "Action Plan for  
Membership," a precursor to NATO membership. To Washington’s surprise,  
ten NATO member states refused to support his plan, including Germany,  
France and Italy.

They argued that accepting the Georgians was problematic, because of  
the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They were in reality  
saying that they would not be willing to back Georgia as, under  
Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which mandates that an armed attack  
against any NATO member country must be considered an attack against  
them all and consequently requires use of collective armed force of  
all NATO members, it would mean that Europe could be faced with war  
against Russia over the tiny Caucasus Republic of Georgia, with its  
incalculable dictator, Saakashvili. That would mean the troubled  
Caucasus would be on a hair-trigger to detonate World War III.

Russia threatens Georgia, but Georgia threatens Abkhazia and South  
Ossetia. Russia looks like a crocodile to Georgia, but Georgia looks  
to Russia like the cats' paw of the West. Since Saakashvili took power  
in late 2003 the Pentagon has been in Georgia giving military aid and  
training. Not only are US military personnel active in Georgia today.  
According to an Israeli-intelligence source, DEBKAfile, in 2007, the  
Georgian President Saakashvili

"commissioned from private Israeli security firms several hundred  
military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian  
armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat  
tactics. They also have been giving instruction on military  
intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi also  
purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems from  
Israel. These advisers were undoubtedly deeply involved in the  
Georgian army’s preparations to conquer the South Ossetian capital  
Friday."

Debkafile reported further, "Moscow has repeatedly demanded that  
Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia, finally threatening  
a crisis in bilateral relations. Israel responded by saying that the  
only assistance rendered Tbilisi was ‘defensive.’" The Israeli news  
source added that Israel’s interest in Georgia has to do as well with  
Caspian oil pipeline geopolitics. "Jerusalem has a strong interest in  
having Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port  
of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are  
afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for  
pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil terminal at  
Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers  
can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean."

This means that the attack on South Ossetia is the first battle in a  
new proxy warfare between Anglo-American-Israeli led interests and  
Russia. The only question is whether Washington miscalculated the  
swiftness and intensity of the Russian response to the Georgian  
attacks of 8.8.08.

So far, each step in the Caucasus drama has put the conflict on a yet  
higher plane of danger. The next step will no longer be just about the  
Caucasus, or even Europe. In 1914 it was the "Guns of August" that  
initiated the Great War. This time the Guns of August 2008 could be  
the detonator of World War III and a nuclear holocaust of unspeakable  
horror.

Nuclear Primacy: the larger strategic danger

Most in the West are unaware how dangerous the conflict over two tiny  
provinces in a remote part of Eurasia has become. What is left out of  
most all media coverage is the strategic military security context of  
the Caucasus dispute.

Since the end of the Cold War in the beginning of the 1990’s NATO and  
most directly Washington have systematically pursued what military  
strategists call Nuclear Primacy. Put simply, if one of two opposing  
nuclear powers is able to first develop an operational anti-missile  
defense, even primitive, that can dramatically weaken a potential  
counter-strike by the opposing side’s nuclear arsenal, the side with  
missile defense has "won" the nuclear war.

As mad as this sounds, it has been explicit Pentagon policy through  
the last three Presidents from father Bush in 1990, to Clinton and  
most aggressively, George W. Bush. This is the issue where Russia has  
drawn a deep line in the sand, understandably so. The forceful US  
effort to push Georgia as well as Ukraine into NATO would present  
Russia with the spectre of NATO literally coming to its doorstep, a  
military threat that is aggressive in the extreme, and untenable for  
Russian national security.

This is what gives the seemingly obscure fight over two provinces the  
size of Luxemburg the potential to become the 1914 Sarajevo trigger to  
a new nuclear war by miscalculation. The trigger for such a war is not  
Georgia’s right to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Rather, it is US  
insistence on pushing NATO and its missile defense right up to  
Russia’s door.



Global Research Associate F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of  
War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press)  
and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (www.globalresearch.ca 
. He may be reached through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.


F. William Engdahl is a frequent contributor to Global Research.   
Global Research Articles by F. William Engdahl