[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Pipsqueak creates crisis

[Bill Totten]

Georgia's attack on South Ossetia sets Russia and the US on a dangerous
course

by Eric Margolis

www.torontosun.com (August 31 2008)	


Pipsqueak Georgia's harebrained and disastrous attack on tiny South
Ossetia has produced a full-blown crisis pitting the US and NATO against
Russia.

In an act fraught with danger, US and NATO warships are delivering
supplies to Georgia, watched by Russian men of war. The US Congress may
soon vote $1 billion for America's embattled Georgian satellite.

The western powers have resorted to fierce Cold War rhetoric. They are
playing with fire. Russia has some 6,600 strategic nuclear weapons,
mostly aimed at North America and Europe. Besides the US, which invaded
Afghanistan and Iraq, and whose air force just killed ninety Afghan
civilians, sixty of them children, is in no position to lecture Moscow
about aggression.

France's conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, blasted Russia and
shortly will hold a European summit over Georgia in Brussels. As usual,
the Harper government faithfully echoed Washington's words.

Poland agreed to emplace a US anti-ballistic missile system only 184
kilometers from Russia's border, provoking Moscow's fury. Ukraine and
Poland are loudly backing Georgia.

Russia's chief of staff, General Yuri Baluyevsky, warns his nation has
the right to launch a "pre-emptive nuclear strike" against enemies, in
line, he tartly noted, with the Bush administration's own policies.

Topping off this war of words, two of Senator John McCain's closest
right wing allies, senators Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, went to
Georgia and called for "tough" measures against Moscow. They urged
isolating Russia for "aggression" and admitting Ukraine and Georgia to NATO.


McCain Preview

McCain's allies give a good preview of what his foreign policy would
look like. Lieberman and Graham, leading proponents of the US occupation
of Iraq, had the chutzpah to insist, "Russia must not be allowed to
control energy supplies".

This ugly mess recalls how the great powers blundered into both the
first and second world wars over obscure locales such as
Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Danzig Corridor.

The obvious lesson: Act with extreme caution. Few are listening as
rhetoric sharpens.

The Bush administration - most likely VP Dick Cheney - almost certainly
planned or knew about Georgia's attack on Russian-backed South Ossetia
launched under cover of the Beijing Olympics. Whether the White House
was trying to inflict a quick little military victory over Moscow, or
whipping up war fever at home to boost John McCain's prospects in the
presidential election, is uncertain.

This crisis over a mere 70,000 South Ossetians and 18,000 Abkhazians
could have been resolved quietly by diplomacy. Instead, the Bush
administration turned it into a major confrontation by accusing Russia
of aggression.

Washington, which rightly recognized the independence of Kosovo's
Albanians from Serb repression, denounced Russia's recognition of Abkhaz
and South Ossetian independence from Georgian repression. Meanwhile,
Moscow, which crushed the life out of Chechnya's independence movement,
piously claimed to be defending Ossetian independence.

Things may get worse. The US is pressing Ukraine to join NATO, though
half of its 48 million citizens oppose doing so. Ukraine's constitution
mandates a neutral state. Russia allowed Ukraine to decamp from the
Soviet Union with the understanding it would never join NATO, and allow
Russia's Black Sea Fleet to operate from Crimea.

Russian political expert Sergei Markov rightly notes that Washington and
NATO see Ukraine as a rich new source of troops for Iraq and
Afghanistan, wars from which he says NATO leaders cannot withdraw their
soldiers without committing "political suicide".

"Old Europe" is trying to avoid a clash with Moscow, while "new Europe"
- Georgia, Poland, the Czechs, and Balts - frightened of Russia's
growing power, eggs on the US-Russia confrontation.

Not only did the clumsy US attempt to expand its influence into Moscow's
backyard backfire badly, Washington's childish, petulant response is as
inflammatory as it is powerless. The Georgian crisis and empty threats
against Russia have aroused strong nationalist passions in Russia, which
sees itself increasingly isolated and surrounded by the US and NATO.

Nationalist hysteria, jingoism, and fevered rhetoric are coming from
both sides. We saw such lunacy before: In August 1914, and September 1939.

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2008/08/30/pf-6619621.html


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