http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dc2m8p62_286gkdfs7d4<br /> http://pasta.cantbedone.org/pages/xR5QZ-.htm<br /> http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/editorial-thanks-mr-putin/<br /> EDITORIAL: <br /> Thanks, Mr. Putin <br /> La Russophobe, 21 August 2008 <br /> <br /> We have to deny Russian strategic objectives, which are clearly to undermine Georgia’s democracy, to use its military capability to damage and in some cases destroy Georgian infrastructure and to try and weaken the Georgian state. <br /> "We are determined to deny them their strategic objective. <br /> "We are not going to allow Russia to draw a new line at those states that are not yet integrated into the trans-Atlantic structures. <br /> "This is a very dangerous game and perhaps one the Russians want to reconsider,”<br /> – U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, en route Monday to an emergency session of NATO to address Russian aggression in Georgia.<br /> <br /> "This is not something that is just cost-free. <br /> "Nobody needs Russian strategic aviation along America’s coast." <br /> <br /> Rice said of the flights that began again with frequency about six months ago. <br /> <br /> We are making a list, and checking it twice. So many people need to express their heartfelt thanks to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Georgia. Here’s our top-ten list. <br /> <br /> 1. NATO. There was the world thinking NATO’s hour had passed, that it was obsolete. Russians were arguing this most furiously, of course. Then along comes Putin, and proves how indispensable it really is. The missile defense shield for Eastern Europe has a whole new life. Dreams can come true. <br /> <br /> 2. Ukraine. The pro-West majority in Ukraine was grappling with the pro-Russian minority over the issue of turning to the West. Now, Yulia Timoshenko and Victor Yuschenko have no difficulty convincing their country what the right direction is. Russian tanks have a wonderful way of concentrating the mind. <br /> <br /> 3. John McCain. One minute dismissed as “overreacting” to Russia’s threat, he’s now a soothsayer. Putin has breathed a whole new life into the McCain campaign, and made challenger Barack Obama look exceedingly out of his depth, weak-kneed and pathetic. Putin very well may have influenced the course of the next U.S. election, helping elect the man who is Russia’s worst nightmare. <br /> <br /> 4. Georgia. For all the world, it looks like Georgia’s Western-educated ruler suckered Putin into a grandstand play that polarized the entire world against Russia. In hindsight, it appears this was Georgia’s only hope of holding on to the Ossetia and Abkhazia territories; though small, to a tiny country like Georgia they are enormous. Within hours, he had the U.S. Secretary of State and the Germany Chancellor on Georgian soil, flouting the “might” of Russian tanks, expressing solidarity with his country. That’s assuming, of course, that Putin didn’t have the stones to march on Tbilisi — and so far (knock wood) he hasn’t. <br /> <br /> 5. The United States of America. Just when the world was getting really hostile to American power and there was talk of a pullout in Iraq, along comes Putin. He reminds the world what a really scary country looks like and suddenly the U.S.A. looks pretty good by comparison. <br /> <br /> 6. The European Union. Suddenly the naysayers must think again. Europe is suddenly very, very relevant, and European unity even more so. Europe has crossed the Rubicon by admitting many ex-Soviet slave states, but it was losing focus as Russia ratcheted up the pressure on the energy front. Putin seems to have overlooked the ability of his tanks to focus and unify his opposition, even to the extent of making common cause with the U.S.A., just as was the case during the first cold war. <br /> <br /> 7. The Russian Opposition. Suddenly, the illusion that Putin was respected around the world has exploded. From every corner of the world, Putin receives nothing but contempt. Sure, Russian access to this information is limited, but the opposition knows it all and some trickles everywhere. Suddenly, Putin is a war dictator — first Chechnya, now Georgia. That’s not the stability Russians crave. It’s a chink in the armor. It gives the opposition hope, something to work with. <br /> <br /> 8. Mikheil Saakashvili. First he weathers a massive Russian PR blitz and wins reelection with a landslide mandate in parliament. Now Putin makes him a martyr, gives him the chance to be photographed with bombed-out children and old women, the world’s most important leaders at his side. He’s published on the op-ed pages of major newspapers, he’s a hero fighting for his tiny country’s survival against a thuggish bully, against overwhelming odds. He’s an underdog. The world loves him. Putin couldn’t have given him a better Valentine.<br /> <br /> 9. The U.S. military-industrial complex. There they were, all those folks talking about the cold war being over and the lack of any need for a dominant American military, a peace dividend, and so forth. Then along comes Putin with his tanks, and suddenly the world remembers that a proud KGB spy governs a dictatorship with 11 time zones and bristling with nuclear weapons. The Evil Empire lives! And nobody could have made the case half as well as Putin. <br /> <br /> 10. La Russophobe. Our traffic has exploded since the Georgia crisis began. Kim Zigfeld’s post about it on Pajamas Media collected a record number of comments for the author, over 100. Our message from day one has just been ratified loud and clear. We were right all along, and now we have the proof. And we owe it all to Putin. <br /> <br /> Meanwhile anyone, like U.S. President George Bush for instance, whoever said Russia could be trusted or treated like a civilized nation now looks like a totally hopeless fool. <br /> Thanks Vlad! We owe you a big one!

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dc2m8p62_285fvbs36hp<br /> http://pasta.cantbedone.org/pages/iYRmbT.htm<br /> http://www.slate.com/id/2197704/<br /> South Ossetia Isn't Kosovo<br /> By Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 18 August 2008<br /> Whatever Moscow says, there are at least six significant differences between the two situations.<br /> <br /> <br /> While it is almost certainly true that Moscow's action in the Ossetian and (for good measure) the Abkhazian enclave of Georgia has been, in a real sense, the revenge for the independence of Kosovo (on Feb. 14 Vladimir Putin said publicly that Western recognition of Kosovar independence would be met by intensified Russian support for irredentism in South Ossetia), it is extremely important to bear in mind that this observation does not permit us the moral sloth of allowing any equivalence between the two dramas.<br /> <br /> Perhaps one could mention just some of the more salient differences?<br /> <br /> Russia had never expressed any interest in Ossetian or Abkhazian micro-nationalisms, while Georgia was an integral part of the Soviet Union.<br /> It is thus impossible to avoid the suspicion that these small peoples are being used as "strategic minorities" to negate the independence of the larger Georgian republic and to warn all those with pro-Russian populations on their soil of what may, in turn, befall them. This is like nothing so much as Turkish imperialism in Cyprus and Thrace and Iraq, where local minorities can be turned on and off like a faucet according to the needs of the local superpower.<br /> <br /> Kosovo, which was legally part of Yugoslavia but not of Serbia [after Serbia forfeited its nominal claim on it by illegally abolishing its constitutional autonomy within the Federation] was never manipulated as part of the partition or intervention plan of another country —the United States, in fact, spent far too long on the pretense that the Yugoslav federation could be saved— and, for a lengthy period, pursued its majority-rule claims by passive resistance and other nonviolent means.<br /> NATO intervention occurred only when Serbian forces had resorted to mass deportation [actually, mass demolition of houses] and full-dress ethnic "cleansing."<br /> Whatever may be said of Georgia's incautious policy toward secessionism within its own internationally recognized borders, it does not deserve comparison with the lawless and criminal behavior of the Slobodan Milošević regime.<br /> And in any case, it is unwise for Moscow to be making the analogy, since it supported Milošević at the time and has excused him since on the less-than-adorable grounds (barely even disguised in Russian propaganda) of Christian Orthodox solidarity. It also armed and incited the most extreme and least pacifist forces in Ossetia and Abkhazia.<br /> Does anybody remember the speeches in which the Russian ambassador to the United Nations asked the General Assembly or Security Council to endorse his country's plan to send land, air, and sea forces deep into the territory and waters of a former colony that is now a U.N. member state? I thought not. I look at the newspaper editorials every day, waiting to see who will be the first to use the word unilateral in the same sentence as the name Russia. Nothing so far. Yet U.N. Resolution 1441, warning Saddam Hussein of serious consequences, was the fruit of years of thwarted diplomacy and was passed without a dissenting vote.<br /> <br /> The six former constituent republics of Yugoslavia, which all exercised their pre-existing constitutional right to secede from rule by Belgrade, are seated as members of the United Nations, as, indeed, is Georgia. Twenty out of 27 states of the European Union have also recognized the government of Kosovo as an entity de jure as well as de facto. The Kosovar population is estimated at 1.8 million, which makes it larger than that of some existing E.U. member states. Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia ever even remotely intends to sponsor any statehood claims for the tiny local populations of Ossetia and Abkhazia? On the contrary, these peoples will be reassimilated into the Russian empire. So, any comparison with Kosovo would have to be not to its breaking away but to its potential absorption and annexation by Albania. And nobody has even proposed this, let alone countenanced the unilateral stationing of Albanian armed forces on Kosovar soil.<br /> Heartbreakingly difficult though the task has been, and remains, the whole emphasis of Western policy in the Balkans has been on de-emphasizing ethnic divisions; subsidizing cities and communities that practice reconciliation; and encouraging, for example, Serbs and Albanians to cooperate in Kosovo. One need not romanticize this policy, but it would nonetheless stand up to any comparison with Russian behavior in the Caucasus (and indeed the Balkans), which is explicitly based on an outright appeal to sectarianism, nationalism, and—even worse—confessionalism.<br /> <br /> The fans of moral equivalence may or may not have noticed this, but the obviously long-meditated and coordinated Russian military intervention in Georgia comes in the same month as explicit threats to the sovereignty of Poland and Ukraine, and hard on the heels of a Russian obstruction of any U.N. action in the case of Zimbabwe. Those who like to describe Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev as reacting to an "encirclement" of Russia may wish to spill some geopolitical ink on explaining how Kosovo forms part of this menacing ring of steel —or how the repression of the people of Zimbabwe can assist in Moscow's breakout strategy from it.<br /> <br /> If it matters, I agree with the critics who say that the Bush administration garnered the worst of both worlds by giving the Georgians the impression of U.S. support and then defaulting at the push-comes-to-shove moment. The Clintonoids made exactly that mistake with Serbian aggression a decade and more ago, giving the Bosnians hope and then letting them be slaughtered until the position became untenable —and then astoundingly, and even after the Dayton Accords, repeating the same series of dithering errors in the case of Kosovo. The longer the moment of truth was postponed, the worse things became.<br /> <br /> But this in itself argues quite convincingly that there was no deliberate imperial design involved. <br /> <br /> Will anyone say the same about Putin's undisguised plan for the forcible restoration of Russian hegemony all around his empire's periphery? It would be nice to think that there was a consistent response to this from Washington, but I would not even bet someone else's house on the idea, which is what President Bush has given the strong impression of doing in the low farce and frivolity of the last two weeks.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2008/08/22/01003-20080822ARTFIG00008-mikhail-saakachvili-moscou-a-decide-de-se-mesurer-a-l-otan-.php<br /> Mikheïl Saakachvili : « Moscou a décidé de se mesurer à l'Otan » <br /> Adrien Jaulmes, 21/08/2008 <br /> <br /> « L'Ossétie du Sud n'est qu'un camp militaire russe destiné à contrôler la Géorgie », affirme le président géorgien.<br /> Le président géorgien explique au « Figaro » pourquoi la communauté internationale ne devrait pas faire confiance aux promesses du Kremlin.<br /> <br /> <br /> LE FIGARO. Qu'attendez-vous de l'Union européenne et des États-Unis ?<br /> Mikhaïl SAAKACHVILI. Ils doivent faire sortir la Russie du territoire géorgien. Le gouvernement russe actuel n'est pas communiste ou stalinien. Ce sont plutôt des gens intéressés par l'argent. Ils inscrivent leurs enfants dans les écoles occidentales, ils vont passer leurs vacances en Occident. Ils ont donc tout intérêt à entretenir de bonnes relations avec l'Ouest. Mais ils sont aussi très cyniques vis-à-vis de cet Occident qu'ils aiment tant. Ils pensent qu'ils peuvent manipuler à leur guise les Européens. Poutine a proféré à plusieurs reprises des menaces contre la Géorgie en nous disant :<br /> <br /> « Vous croyez que vos amis occidentaux vont venir se battre dans le Caucase ? »<br /> <br /> Pensez-vous que la crise géorgienne marque le début d'une nouvelle guerre froide entre l'Est et l'Ouest ?<br /> Non, la Russie n'est pas capable de mener une guerre mondiale. Mais envoyer des troupes contre un petit pays comme la Géorgie, ça, oui, elle en est capable. Les Russes ont décidé de se mesurer à l'Otan sans tirer un seul coup de feu. J'ai averti les Occidentaux à plusieurs reprises, mais ils ne m'ont pas cru. Je ne les en blâme pas : il est difficile à un Occidental de comprendre une attitude aussi brutale.<br /> <br /> Ne pensez-vous pas avoir fait preuve d'imprudence au début de cette crise ?<br /> Nous n'avions pas d'autre choix que d'intervenir. Les Russes avaient mobilisé les irréguliers ossètes. Ils avaient massé des troupes en Ossétie du Nord. Ils avaient remplacé les gardes frontières ossètes par leurs propres soldats à l'entrée du tunnel de Roki. Nous avons prévenu les Américains que quelque chose se préparait pour qu'ils disent aux Russes d'arrêter. Et les Russes ont jugé que le mois d'août, en pleine campagne électorale américaine, d'un côté, et pendant les Jeux olympiques, de l'autre, était la meilleure période pour agir. Ils ne nous ont pas laissé le choix.<br /> <br /> Pourquoi avez-vous critiqué le cessez-le-feu ?<br /> Parce que le cessez-le-feu est ambigu et obscur. Kouchner est allé à Moscou avec un plan en quatre points. Lors de la rencontre entre Medvedev et Sarkozy, les Russes en ont rajouté deux autres qui leur ont donné une marge de manœuvre pour agir à leur guise sur le terrain. Le résultat en est qu'il faut à présent nous en remettre à la seule bonne volonté de la Russie. Les seules forces sur le terrain sont celles des Russes. Nous ne pouvons rien faire d'autre que des déclarations.<br /> <br /> Les Français ont-ils commis une erreur ?<br /> Non, mais ils ont cru que les Russes pensaient ce qu'ils disaient. Ce qui est loin d'être le cas. Les Français étaient de bonne foi, mais ils n'ont pas réalisé que les Russes ne respectaient rien sans une menace derrière. Ils ont un sentiment d'impunité. Pourquoi respecteraient-ils l'accord ? Rien ne les y oblige.<br /> <br /> Êtes-vous en faveur de sanctions ?<br /> Le plus important est de ne pas faire de compromis. Si on laisse faire ce régime, ils ne s'arrêteront pas là. Il faut faire en sorte que les Russes ne s'en sortent pas comme ça. Sinon ils penseront qu'ils peuvent agir à leur guise et établir de nouvelles règles du jeu. Leurs provocations au cours des dernières années n'ont jamais été sanctionnées. On m'a même décrit comme un paranoïaque lorsque je les dénonçais. C'est cette absence de réaction qui a laissé croire aux Russes qu'ils avaient toute latitude pour agir.<br /> <br /> N'auriez-vous pas pu parvenir à un accord avec l'Ossétie ?<br /> Le gouvernement d'Ossétie du Sud est à 90 % russe. Le ministre de la Défense ossète était un général russe. Je crois en une Géorgie multiethnique. Mais les Russes s'en fichent. Nous leur avons tout offert, l'autonomie la plus grande. Mais rien n'y a fait. L'Ossétie du Sud n'est qu'un camp militaire russe destiné à contrôler la Géorgie. Négocier avec des séparatistes locaux est possible, mais négocier avec le FSB est au-dessus de nos forces. Poutine est en train d'agir de la même façon en Ukraine, il distribue des passeports russes à des habitants de la Crimée. Il pourra ensuite intervenir en prétextant qu'il ne cherche qu'à protéger ces citoyens.

http://www.jamestown.org/edm/article.php?article_id=2373325<br /> <br /> NATO MINISTERIAL MEETING DEALS GINGERLY WITH RUSSIA’S WAR ON GEORGIA<br /> <br /> By Vladimir Socor, 20 August 2008<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin dismisses NATO's response as "empty words" (Reuters)<br /> For an organization that has come to rely heavily on words and symbolism, NATO issued a disconcertingly evasive communiqué at its emergency meeting on Georgia (NAC Statement, August 19). The North Atlantic Council held a “special session” at the level of Foreign Ministers in Brussels on August 19, eleven days into Russia’s military invasion of Georgia.<br /> <br /> One attending official seriously remarked that collecting 26 ministers in August took time and could be seen as a success in itself. But it seems just as likely that the Alliance delayed the meeting in hopes that Russian troops would have begun withdrawing from Georgia by August 19, sparing the Alliance the trouble to deal with that problem. In the event, however, that problem stared NATO’s ministerial session in the face.<br /> <br /> Reflecting a lowest common denominator among Allies, the communiqué vaguely echoes the French-brokered armistice plan (see EDM, August 13, 18, 19) in calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia’s interior. The placement of this demand near the end of the communiqué seems to de-emphasize its significance. The first mention of Russia appears only in the second paragraph, and it is a positive mention: NATO “welcomes the [armistice] agreement reached and signed by Georgia and Russia.” No reference to the Russian military duress, under which this flawed armistice was “reached.”<br /> <br /> The communiqué urges prompt, good-faith implementation of the armistice, politely ignoring its loopholes. Rising, however, above that document, NATO endorses Georgia’s territorial integrity, which the Franco-Russian text of the armistice cast aside.<br /> <br /> The Alliance announces, “We have resolved that we can not continue business as usual [with Russia]. We call on Moscow to demonstrate both in word and in deed its continued commitment to the principles upon which we have agreed to base our relationship.” The document stops short of recalling those principles (this would have delved into the Alliance’s decade-old wishful thinking) and it does not say how it would depart from business as usual with Russia.<br /> <br /> According to officials in the run-up to the meeting and on its sidelines, NATO is suspending joint activities with Russia, including military exercises and some political-level meetings, until Russia’s troops withdraw from Georgia, whereupon such joint activities would resume. Those post-2002 joint activities and, now, their suspension belong mostly in the realm of political symbolism. NATO had all along displayed far greater interest than Russia did in joint exercises and political meetings. Their suspension would not affect Russian behavior in the present crisis or in those that seem likely to ensue after this one.<br /> <br /> Presumably, the Alliance is pondering how to handle the participation of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in NATO’s Operation Active Endeavor. NATO had touted Russia’s participation in that annual exercise in the Mediterranean as one of those symbolic successes with Russia. That same Russian Fleet, however, has now blockaded Georgia’s ports and has landed thousands of troops for military action in Abkhazia against Georgia. These actions also violate the neutral status of Ukraine, on whose territory that Russian Fleet is based. NATO might not welcome it back to joint exercises, following that Fleet’s attack on a NATO aspirant country.<br /> <br /> The ministerial meeting in Brussels decided to create a permanent NATO-Georgia Commission, for which the North Atlantic Council shall rapidly develop the modalities (NAC Statement, August 19). This Commission would focus on post-conflict reconstruction in Georgia, from damage assessments to restoration of public services and relief to internally displaced Georgians. A first team of civil engineers is already being sent to help plan the rebuilding of schools, hospitals, and airports. But while Georgia is in dire want of such assistance in the aftermath of Russia’s destructive invasion, NATO for its part hardly needs yet another social work undertaking, among the many that dilute the Alliance’s core mission and dissipate its resources. In any case, there is no funding authorization for this Commission’s civil projects as yet.<br /> <br /> The NATO-Georgia Commission does not seem likely to follow the model of the NATO-Ukraine Commission, which is designed in part to bring the country closer to the ultimate goal of NATO membership. The NATO-Georgia Commission seems weighted down by a socio-economic agenda. The decision to create this Commission is a product of compromise between supporters and naysayers of Georgia’s application to NATO for a Membership Action Plan (MAP). The August 19 ministerial meeting has merely confirmed earlier decisions to review Georgia’s application at the December 2008 ministerial meeting, in the run-up to the April 2009 NATO summit.<br /> <br /> The Allied communiqué does not mention military assistance programs for Georgia. The United States, however, has announced its intention to help Georgia restore its capacity for self-defense, which lies in ruins after the Russian invasion. Russian forces have systematically targeted Georgia’s military infrastructure, particularly the U.S.- and allied-built bases and airfields, and carted away the stockpiles of arms and equipment.<br /> <br /> Russia has reacted with scorn, rather than relief, to the Alliance’s weak communiqué: “empty words,” “a mountain gave birth to a mouse” (Interfax, August 19), declared Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, whose almost daily insults NATO tolerates in NATO’s own home.<br /> <br /> In Moscow, however, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov called a press conference to denounce U.S. support for “Saakashvili’s criminal regime.” This is now Moscow’s official terminology with regard to Georgia, and Lavrov warned the United States and NATO that they must make a choice between working with Georgia or with Russia (Interfax, August 19). Ahead of the NAC’s September visit to Georgia and the Alliance’s December ministerial meeting, Russia tries to intimidate at least some NATO governments into delaying approval for a Georgian MAP.

http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/special-extra-the-g-7-deals-with-russia/#more-7273<br /> Special Extra — The G-7 Deals with Russia<br /> La Russophobe, 21 August 2008 <br /> <br /> The International Herald Tribune reports that, even as it has been ejected from the NATO council, Russia has been effectively booted out of the G-8, with all the other members of the group siding with Georgia against Russian aggression:<br /> <br /> <br /> The world’s major industrial countries are calling for increased economic support for war-torn Georgia.<br /> <br /> Finance ministers from the Group of Seven leading industrial countries issued a joint statement Wednesday pledging support for Georgia’s economy and its financial system. They also urged other countries and institutions to assist in the effort.<br /> <br /> “We, the G-7, stand ready to support Georgia in order to promote the continued health of the Georgian economy, maintain confidence in Georgia’s financial system and support economic reconstruction,”<br /> <br /> the finance officials said.<br /> <br /> The United States has been leading the international response after fighting broke out in Georgia earlier this month between Russian and Georgian troops over Geogia’s break-away territory of South Ossetia. A convoy of badly needed food aid for beleaguered Georgians was allowed past a checkpoint by Russian troops on Wednesday, but there have been few signs the Russian soldiers are preparing to fulfill a promise made by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that those troops will complete a withdrawal from Georgia by Friday.<br /> <br /> In their statement, the G-7 finance ministers endorsed international mediation efforts to “end the hostilities and to bring about a political solution to the conflict in Georgia. The loss of life, humanitarian suffering and wider destruction over recent days is considerable and we welcome commitments to assist with the urgent humanitarian needs.”<br /> <br /> The statement welcomed the commitment of Georgia and the International Monetary Fund to work on a financial program to support Georgia’s economy. It also called on other international lending institutions, including the World Bank, to “promptly identify and support” reconstruction efforts in the country. “Georgia has solid economic fundamentals as a result of economic reforms and sound policies and we are committed to helping Georgia continue on this path,” the G-7 ministers said.<br /> <br /> The G-7 is composed of the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada.