The Bear Is Back

....And it doesn't much care what we think of its brutality, or its evisceration of prior assurances that it wouldn't invade Georgian territory outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia:

Russian forces carried out military operations Monday around the west Georgian town of Senaki to prevent Georgian troops from regrouping there, news agencies reported, quoting the Russian defence ministry.

The reports were confirmed by a Georgian official.

Russian forces “are conducting an operation to prevent firing on South Ossetia and on Russian peacekeepers by Georgian artillery and the regrouping of Georgian forces aimed at new aggression towards South Ossetia,” RIA Novosti quoted a Russian defence ministry official as saying, in a report also carried by Interfax.

In other words, the Russian invasion of Georgia was undertaken for defensive purposes, dontcha know.  Just like in the Soviet Socialist days of yore.  Because a free, democratic, pro-Western, and dare I say, NATO-member Georgia would be a dagger aimed at the heart of Czar Vlad's neoRussian Empire.

Well, he appears to think so, and believes his forces to be in sufficient control of the situation that his figurehead president wasn't bashful about publicly disclosing it:

Medvedev ordered the military to quell any signs of Georgian resistance.

“If there are any emerging hotbeds of resistance or any aggressive actions, you should take steps to destroy them,” he told his defense minister at a Kremlin meeting.

Russia’s foreign minister, meanwhile, said that Georgia’s president must leave office and Georgian troops should stay out of the pro-Russian South Ossetia region for good.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow won’t talk to President Mikhail Saakashvili and Saakashvili “better go.” [emphases added]

That is classic Soviet aggression.  Invade a defenseless country, force out its elected government, and replace it with a Russian puppet regime that will dutifully take orders from Moscow.  Its "independence" a pathetic fiction for the Russians will demand international recognition.

Strategic Forecasting's George Friedman is wasting no time telling the world, "I told you so."  And if he's right - and the events of the past week certainly appear to back him up - it bears multitudinous bad tidings for U.S. national security interests in the Middle East:

The 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. Moscow’s 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.

And, per the aforementioned Soviet-era template, where the Red Army goes, the Red Army stays.  Since we (forget the EUnuchs) can't stop the Russians militarily, Georgia is theirs, right?

Eventually, yes, it is.  But not just yet:

Russia said Tuesday that it had ended its five-day tank and bomber assault against Georgia and agreed to a French peace plan by which most Russian forces would return home and international mediators would work to settle the long and explosive conflict between Georgia and Russian-backed South Ossetian separatists.

Which was BS because even as this "cease-fire" was being agreed to, Russian tanks were driving even deeper into Georgia proper:

Russian tanks have moved into the central Georgian city of Gori in apparent violation of a new ceasefire agreement, according to Georgian officials and eyewitnesses who reported black smoke rising over the town.

Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili charged that as many as fifty tanks had rolled into town and were “attacking Gori.” Russian military officials denied any fresh incursion.

Eyewitnesses, including western journalists, said they saw at least ten Russian tanks in the city. It was not clear what they were targeting, but smoke was rising from the general vicinity of a recently built military base.

Constructed to NATO standards, the base had been abandoned by Georgian troops on Monday when they pulled back to Tbilisi to bolster defenses around the capital.

Removing obstacles for the next invasion or the resumption of the current one?  Does it matter?

The always sunny Ensign Ed seems to think it does:

Why did the Russians back off?  Peter Finn’s excellent analysis in the Washington Post gets it right.  The Russian action threatened its economic interests, and as the rhetoric ramped up from the US and especially from Eastern Europe, Moscow began to have second thoughts.  They have gone much farther than the US could ever have in demonstrating why Poland, the Czech Republic, and other states along Russia’s western frontier would need a strong missile defense.  Five presidents of Eastern European nations traveled to Tbilisi this week in a very public rebuke to Vladimir Putin and support for Mikheil Saakashvili.

Russia failed in another, entirely predictable manner as well.  If they wanted to depose Saakashvili, their efforts failed utterly.  The Georgian president now enjoys massive popularity for defending his nation and refusing to knuckle under to Moscow.  Politically, he is stronger than ever, and Putin just demonstrated to an entire new generation of Georgians why they need the West and why they can’t trust the Russians.

You can discount Ed's second point.  Saakashvili's current popularity is transitory, as Ed himself explains in his next 'graph.  Putin could have martyred the Georgian president in front of the whole world and it wouldn't have cost him much more Western goodwill than his invasion has forfeited already.  And that already doesn't appear to be much of a deterrent.  Besides, he can have Saakashvili die of a "mysterious ailment" in the near future, as other of Vlad's enemies have succumbed in the not too distant past.

The missile defense argument carries a lot more weight.  In my mind, the upcoming U.S. presidential election is an even bigger factor, given how it has boosted John Sith McCain's stature and further diminished that of Barack Hussein Obama.  If you were Vladimir Putin and you wanted to rebuild the Evil Empire, which would you rather have as your White House counterpart - the man who's seen right through you and your neoSoviet ambitions for years (even if he's not proposing much to stop them), or the lightweight who'll hop Air Force one as fast as humanly possible to jet over to the Kremlin to grovel before your throne?  Taking the incremental approach to the re-conquest of Georgia will send the message Vlad wanted to send and still let this round blow over, while uping the ante for the next one.

Friedman brings up one Russian motivation for invading Georgia that was, for those who were gung ho in favor of Bill Clinton's rape of Serbia, a splendid example of inbound roosting chickens:

The second and lesser event was the decision by Europe and the United States to back Kosovo’s 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. Russia’s 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 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.

Thus, seen from that perspective, you can almost say that the Czar has a point.  His is a cynical, calculated, brutal invasion of a defenseless pro-Western country based upon lies and falsehoods; just like Bill Clinton's was a cynical, calculated, brutal invasion of a defenseless, pro-Russian (or at least Russian-supported) country based upon lies and falsehoods.  Indeed, it can be argued that the drift of the Russian Federation away from democratization, marketization, and alignment with the West toward this burgeoning new Cold War began when NATO bombs began raining down on and blasting apart Serbian cities.

In other words, the Russian invasion of Georgia is, like the 9/11 attacks, one more thread in Sick Willie's legacy of infamy.  And, to be bipartisan, George W. Bush doesn't exactly look prescient with his one-time claim to have "looked into Vlad's heart" and "found a friend".

Are we already back in a new Cold War?  Again, not just yet.  But the new post-Georgia invasion reality of a hostile neoRussian Empire changes the equation utterly in what is destined to be the flashpoint of nuclear Armageddon.  Friedman continues:

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 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 Moscow’s interests there are currently aligned with those of Washington).

In other words, the Russians have backed the Americans into a corner.

A rather interesting additional context for Russian defenses of the Iranian mullahgarchy on the UN Security Council, is it not?  One can certainly see the value to Moscow of an Islamic Iran armed with nuclear weapons.  Tehran would be the perfect proxy for a neoImperial Russia that wanted to regain superpower status sooner rather than later without risking direct military confrontation with the United States.  If the Iranians succeeded in crippling us, either directly or through their terrorist proxies, Moscow would gain a free hand to sweep through the Middle East functionally unopposed.  If the Iranians miscalculate and are decimated in a nuclear exchange with us and/or the Israelis, they've got at least quasi-plausible deniability.  And in the nearer term, they can make the pre-emptive, regime-changing American invasion of Iran for which I have been begging for the past five years much more difficult, and perhaps prohibitive - assuming we abruptly regained our determination and willingness to undertake it.

So what has Russia really lost from their attack on Georgia?  Membership in the G-8?  Dubya's friendship?  In realpolitik terms, that's chickenfeed.  What they've gained is the undivided attention of every country in their once and future sphere of influence, and the strategic drop on the United States in the most strategic region of the planet.

For a democrat (small "d"), the former might be troubling.  For a Czar, the latter makes it a helluva bargain - and a downpayment on bigger "defensive actions" to come.