The Caveman’s Corner

Mikhail Saakashvili

It’s the one on the right this time.

Oh, Mikhail, Mikhail, Mikhail. You’ve done it this time. Your country is falling apart, your military is in retreat, and, best case scenario, you lose what-ever control you had over a good third of your territory. Your people should really exile you before its too late. So what can we learn from his egregious, 3rd grader-like errors that might help the Georgian people recommend a new leader to their soon-to-be Russian masters?

Lesson 1: When the Russians have troops in a region, they have stated a support for the autonomy of that region, and they’re already pissed off at you for trying to align yourself with the West, and, oh, they posses overwhelming military superiority, then there’s a fair chance they might respond militarily when you try to usurp that region’s autonomy with force. For all intents and purposes here, Georgia started a war with Russia by attacking Russia ‘peacekeepers.’ Countries that could beat Russia in wars were smart enough not to do that. Did they think the Russians wouldn’t mind? Did they think that they wouldn’t leap gleefully at the chance to beat Georgia down for bucking Moscow’s authority? Did they think they could win?

Let’s just have a look at Georgia’s mighty military machine, shall we? From Wikipedia:

Main battle tanks

• T-72sim1 - 259
• T-55 - 110

AIFVs/APCs

• BMP-1 - 80 units
• BMP-2 - 120 units
• BTR-80 - 75 units
• MT-LB - 64 units
• Otokar Cobra - 100

Towed artillery

• 2A36 Giatsint-B - 12 units
• 2A65 Msta-B - 18 units
• 2A18 (D-30) - 120 units

Self-propelled artillery

• 2S7 Pion - 12 units
• 2S19 Msta-S - 3 units
• 2S3 Akatsiya - 26 units
• VZ 77 Dana - 47 units

Multiple Launch Rocket Systems

• RM-70 - 48 units
• BM-21 Grad - 120 units
• LAR-160- 15 units

To summarize, basically a lot of Soviet equipment from around the 80s, and some Turkish 4×4 armored personnel carriers. Total forces: 28,666.

Now, what might the Russians have. What, the largest and best equipped non-Western army in the world?

A brief chart, covering the ground forces only:

Full active forces personnel: 1,037,000. That’s right, the Russians have almost as many tanks as the Georgians do soldiers. I think I make my point.

Lesson 2: Don’t think the West is going to run to your aid just because you floated the idea of joining NATO and almost got assassinated with President Bush that one time. See above. Even if they could win, most countries are smart enough not to start wars with Russia. The Russians fight back. And don’t expect overwhelming international pressure because…

Lesson 3: During the Olympics? Are you insane? Great job guaranteeing that your plight, which in almost any other news environment would have had front page coverage and hours of video played constantly of miserable civilians on the 24 hour news mills, get’s bumped to a distant B spot. Georgia’s only hope in this thing is to present itself to the world as a martyr, and to do that you need to be the world’s focus. Well, right now, more people probably know who won the men’s swimming relay than where your country is. There’s a genius of modern media for you, right there.

It is possible that the Russians engineered their provocations of Georgia (for example, military flyovers of Georgian airspace beginning in July) so that they’d hopefully coincide roughly with the start of the Olympics, allowing them to do what they have (although some analysts seem to think that the Georgian action caught even the Russians by surprise, yet more points in the column favoring Saakashvili’s total mental incompetence, started a war he wasn’t even actively goaded into). But I don’t think Russia’s most brilliant Karl Rove could have imagined that the timing would be as perfect the very day of the opening ceremonies.

Now I should say that the Russians too have behaved not only shamefully, but almost as stupidly in all of this. The only smart moves Saakashvili has made have been pleading to Western media outlets (in the time he’s given between Olympic coverage, of course) and adopting that unilateral cease-fire. The Russians are now busily compensating for Saakashvili’s lack of ability by massively over-reacting and appearing to the world like they’re simply after the Georgian government (which they might well be). What Russia should have done is cry out to the world as the Georgians entered South Ossetia, wait for condemnations to mount, then intervene limitedly in the name of the civilian population. They could have achieved their goals with respect to the pro-Russian autonomous regions in Georgia, they could have used the opportunity to damage Georgia’s reputation internationally (instead of boosting it immensely, as they are), and the embarrassment might well have led to the sort of regime change in Tbilisi that they’re supposedly after with this war. But, since I don’t really know who was in charge of the Russian response, I couldn’t give Saakashvili any competition in the nomination.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 11:02 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.