Kruzchevekian Russia

Kruzchevekian Russia

Monday, August 11, 2008

Having kept my attention on the RUSCOMS since President Reagan strategically planned the dismantling of the Soviet Empire back in the early 1980s, I knew that it was only a matter of time before the spiteful Russian geopolitical attitude struck the community of democracies once again. The Russians could only hide what they really are for so long. Many years ago, when President Reagan gave his “shining city on the hill” speech, it was one of the factors that caused me to pursue a career in the US military for national and public service versus an easier and more comfortable life had I not chosen to do so. The Russians have always been America’s enemies since 1922, even though the United States helped them militarily in World War Two by providing much needed war supplies and other logistical and tactical support to Joseph Stalin to counter Nazi aggression.

What is occurring this very hour in the Republic of Georgia is simply outrageous. It is, in essence, a democratic nation-state being invaded by a much larger nation-state that also claims to be a democracy. That can’t be possible under liberal definitions of democracy. One of the nation-states has to be perverse to conduct the type of warfare that has appeared.

Now, all sorts of apologists for the Russians have appeared in the global leftist media. NATO has been blamed, and so has US policy for missile defense in Europe, oil supplies and their flows to the Caspian, Russian citizenship in the South Ossetia population—every factor in this conflict is being examined. These details however are overriding the truth. I will explain that truth now.

The Republic of Georgia was once a communist satellite nation-state during the Cold War. The Georgian’s have had voluminous personal experience living under communist ideology as directed by the Kremlin in the last century. When Georgia was able to break free of Russia and become a democratic nation-state, Georgia moved in one direction—towards Europe. The Georgian people made their choice, and their choice was freedom. As a sovereign nation-state, they were freely able to choose alliances and other relationships within the sphere of the international community as they saw fit to. They chose Europe because of European intellectual philosophies regarding the rights of man, the same foundations of political philosophy that the United States espouses.

When seeking alliances with nation-states that resemble your own nation-state, security arrangements are a priority. It is for that reason that Georgia moved so diligently to prove itself to Europe and the United States so that it could become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Collective security is easier to achieve than individual security, as the spread of communism in the last century proved and the 150,000,000 human lives lost under its ideology of perversion. NATO membership then is not only expected from a “European” nation-state, it would be questionable to political scientists if a state claiming European values would not pursue such an alliance.

Georgia proved its friendship to the west by deploying parts of its armed forces to help the United States in Iraq. The combined troop strength of Georgia including the military forces that it assigned to Iraq stood only at 26,000 men. That is a very small number of soldiers to defend a democratic nation-state, so Georgian contributions of 2,000 soldiers to the War in Iraq was actually 5% of its total military might, a greater contribution than any other democratic nation-state besides the United States. Georgia was proving itself as a loyal friend and ally to other states it so desperately wanted to mirror in Europe. Georgia was earning its place in the community of nations.

Georgia was never a strategic military threat to Russia. Georgia did not possess the military manpower and equipment to cause Russia any short or long-term strategic harm to Russian national security. The fact of the matter is a closet-communist is in power in the Kremlin. His name is Vladimir Putin.

Putin’s grievance with Georgia boils down to one single fact. Georgia chose European social and political values over Russian ones. When the Berlin Wall collapsed, and with it the Soviet Empire, populations of Russian citizens living in Georgia did not want to sever the umbilical cord with Russia itself. These populations revolted militarily with Kremlin assistance in an effort to separate from Georgia. Over time, Russia saturated these areas with passports to give citizens living in South Ossetia a pseudo form of dual-citizenship. That is not legal justification to redraw a nation-state’s borders, but what Putin used as an excuse to annex Georgia and dismantle the Georgian democracy. For all intents and purposes, it appears that Georgia was attempting to retake its lost territory in South Ossetia and the Russians used that activity as an excuse to invade the country.

Russian military activity in Georgia, as we speak, mirrors Soviet doctrine during the Cold War. The Russians are using heavy self-propelled artillery against civilian populations, followed by large armor and infantry movements across the objective. These horrifying tactics have no place in 21^st Century warfare, but are appearing in Georgia because of their effectiveness by the Russians in Chechnya. There are also strong coercive effects in such forms of warfare, sending the message to other democratic nation-states in the region not to pursue NATO membership and alliances outside of Russian approval. But again, these countries have chosen European values, and if Russia is truly a democratic nation-state, why wage total war against Georgia?

There is no other way to explain the Russian strategy in Georgia other than total war. The Russians are not only trying to secure South Ossetia, they are in the process of dismantling the Georgian democracy to its lowest common denominator. In a matter of days, Georgia could no longer be the democratic country it once was, and its populations are being used by the Russians as a lesson to democratic nation-states that also share European values over Russian values.

Georgia can be saved but it will require confronting the Russian menace. A decisive and strategic attack upon the tunnel that separates North Ossetia from South Ossetia would force the Russians to conduct all military deployments by air lift. NATO operations against the Russian Black Sea Fleet at harbor off the shores of Georgia would cripple Russian conventional capability. Ukrainian activities to evict the remaining Russian Naval Fleet in its ports would force Russian servicing of those assets far to the north. These activities, while risking a broader war against Russia, would protect Georgia long enough to repel the Russian attack and shore up its own security.

NATO has the resources and initiative to conduct these operations in such a way as to reduce the threat of a broader war by making it clear to Russia that its aggression in Georgia will not be tolerated. European members of NATO must only ponder that they are being considered in the same way as Georgia is, the exception being that Georgia has no means to defend itself now, nor did it have prior to the outbreak of hostilities with Russia. Georgia was an easy target to make an example of by the Russians and that is why it was chosen for invasion. During the Cold War, the communists chose weak nation-states for invasion in a similar way for mirrored strategic and propaganda purposes. They are the traditional outcomes of bullying behavior, and anti-democratic.

Russia would not risk a broader conflict. It would be a strategic mistake to believe that the United States and the NATO Alliance could not repel Russian aggression in Georgia because of US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan in the War on Terrorism. Russia is not mad—they understand the capabilities of the US Air Force and the US Navy.

Europe must decide if they are going to let a mirror image of themselves go quietly into the night. If Europe allows this to occur without taking concrete action to demonstrate to the Russians that attacking and destroying the civilian populations of an allied democratic nation-state is unacceptable, we will see the stage set yet again for another century of Cold War forms of warfare, deliberate separatism, and the further erosion of democracies around the world.

Christopher Farmer

MS, National Security

Should the United States and NATO take military action against Russia to repel the Russians from Georgia?

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