Wasting Time With Alex

Monday, August 11, 2008

Playing on anti-Americanism

Putin’s new push to revive the old days of empire is borrowing a page from the latest freedom haters and blaming the US again. I know many have said that this war was a Russian move that only came after a provocation from Georgia, but the fact remains that there is no doubt that the Russians have been preparing for just this for months. The Russian military can not wipe its ass effectively without taking 4 or 5 times as long as it should to get it right. This operation is a huge combined arms movement.

They did not just throw this together in a few hours. It has been months in the planning. And it is a clear message to Europe that the Bear is not going to play nice. In one swell move the Russians grab a huge chunk of Georgia and effectively bring it back under their control while indirectly holding what is left of Georgia hostage to Moscow’s whim. They also now control the flow of gas and oil to Europe, effectively making this a strategic weapon they can use to strangle Europe when it does not play along. This is ethnic cleansing at its best. Of course the people that protest the US and blame it for this kind of thing are likely all rooting for the Russians because Georgia is an US ally.

And speaking of oil: have the prices gone up? I bet Moscow is hoping this expenditure of assets at a minimum stops the decline in oil prices and hopefully even drives it back up. The Rookies are losing big money with gas down. They certainly are not in any kind of hurry to stop what they are doing. Georgia has basically called for a cease-fire and moved its forces out of the disputed region, but to me it looks like the Russians are just playing everyone while actually going for broke. This will not stop till Russia achieves the objectives it set before it kicked off this operation. Oh I am sure they will blame Georgia’s actions for their assault, but nobody can deny that the Russians have been planning and ready to go into Georgia as this massive response proves. In fact my bet is that they orchestrated the whole thing. We are talking about the old KGB vanguard running Russia right now.  Maybe the Cold War is back, the Bear sure is....

UPDATE: It looks like the Russians have orchestrated one heck of a coup. They are hard at work trying to convince people that they have good motives behind their invasion of a sovereign state. That’s right. They have invaded Georgia after claiming some atrocities by the Georgians against a separatist state within Georgia. This would be akin to the US invading Mexico over an internal dispute between Mexico and one of their states which was using force to declare itself independent and claiming it was just helping a neighbor out. Nobody would buy it. The Russians have been planning this for a while as their military maneuver showed. A military as incompetent as that of the Russians can not deploy the array of forces they did even with weeks notice. And I bet when we find out all the facts it will be something Moscow instigated that forced the Georgians to act with force. Moscow has now grabbed the one pipeline it did not control, send a message to all the old satellite states that they better do what Moscow says or they could be next, and put the Europeans on notice that they too better do what Moscow wants unless they want to see their energy supplies carried by pipelines now all under Russian control, cut. It sure looks like the bear is back.