So, why did Russia invade Georgia?

Question

So, why did Russia invade Georgia?

Answer 1

By George Friedman

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The Russian Resurgence

Kosovo, Russia and the West

The Russian invasion of Georgia has not changed the balance of power in Eurasia. It simply announced that the balance of power had already shifted. The United States has been absorbed in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as potential conflict with Iran and a destabilizing situation in Pakistan. It has no strategic ground forces in reserve and is in no position to intervene on the Russian periphery. This, as we have argued, has opened a window of opportunity for the Russians to reassert their influence in the former Soviet sphere. Moscow did not have to concern itself with the potential response of the United States or Europe; hence, the invasion did not shift the balance of power. The balance of power had already shifted, and it was up to the Russians when to make this public. They did that Aug. 8.

Let’s begin simply by reviewing the last few days.

On the night of Thursday, Aug. 7, forces of the Republic of Georgia drove across the border of South Ossetia, a secessionist region of Georgia that has functioned as an independent entity since the fall of the Soviet Union. The forces drove on to the capital, Tskhinvali, which is close to the border. Georgian forces got bogged down while trying to take the city. In spite of heavy fighting, they never fully secured the city, nor the rest of South Ossetia.

On the morning of Aug. 8, Russian forces entered South Ossetia, using armored and motorized infantry forces along with air power. South Ossetia was informally aligned with Russia, and Russia acted to prevent the region’s absorption by Georgia. Given the speed with which the Russians responded — within hours of the Georgian attack — the Russians were expecting the Georgian attack and were themselves at their jumping-off points. The counterattack was carefully planned and competently executed, and over the next 48 hours, the Russians succeeded in defeating the main Georgian force and forcing a retreat. By Sunday, Aug. 10, the Russians had consolidated their position in South Ossetia.

On Monday, the Russians extended their offensive into Georgia proper, attacking on two axes. One was south from South Ossetia to the Georgian city of Gori. The other drive was from Abkhazia, another secessionist region of Georgia aligned with the Russians. This drive was designed to cut the road between the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and its ports. By this point, the Russians had bombed the military airfields at Marneuli and Vaziani and appeared to have disabled radars at the international airport in Tbilisi. These moves brought Russian forces to within 40 miles of the Georgian capital, while making outside reinforcement and resupply of Georgian forces extremely difficult should anyone wish to undertake it.

The Mystery Behind the Georgian Invasion

In this simple chronicle, there is something quite mysterious: Why did the Georgians choose to invade South Ossetia on Thursday night? There had been a great deal of shelling by the South Ossetians of Georgian villages for the previous three nights, but while possibly more intense than usual, artillery exchanges were routine. The Georgians might not have fought well, but they committed fairly substantial forces that must have taken at the very least several days to deploy and supply. Georgia’s move was deliberate.

The United States is Georgia’s closest ally. It maintained about 130 military advisers in Georgia, along with civilian advisers, contractors involved in all aspects of the Georgian government and people doing business in Georgia. It is inconceivable that the Americans were unaware of Georgia’s mobilization and intentions. It is also inconceivable that the Americans were unaware that the Russians had deployed substantial forces on the South Ossetian frontier. U.S. technical intelligence, from satellite imagery and signals intelligence to unmanned aerial vehicles, could not miss the fact that thousands of Russian troops were moving to forward positions. The Russians clearly knew the Georgians were ready to move. How could the United States not be aware of the Russians? Indeed, given the posture of Russian troops, how could intelligence analysts have missed the possibility that the Russians had laid a trap, hoping for a Georgian invasion to justify its own counterattack?

It is very difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their attack against U.S. wishes. The Georgians rely on the United States, and they were in no position to defy it. This leaves two possibilities. The first is a massive breakdown in intelligence, in which the United States either was unaware of the existence of Russian forces, or knew of the Russian forces but — along with the Georgians — miscalculated Russia’s intentions. The second is that the United States, along with other countries, has viewed Russia through the prism of the 1990s, when the Russian military was in shambles and the Russian government was paralyzed. The United States has not seen Russia make a decisive military move beyond its borders since the Afghan war of the 1970s-1980s. The Russians had systematically avoided such moves for years. The United States had assumed that the Russians would not risk the consequences of an invasion.

If this was the case, then it points to the central reality of this situation: 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.

The Western Encirclement of Russia

To understand Russian thinking, we need to look at two events. The first is the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. From the U.S. and European point of view, the Orange Revolution represented a triumph of democracy and Western influence. From the Russian point of view, as Moscow made clear, the Orange Revolution was a CIA-funded intrusion into the internal affairs of Ukraine, designed to draw Ukraine into NATO and add to the encirclement of Russia. U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton had promised the Russians that NATO would not expand into the former Soviet Union empire.

That promise had already been broken in 1998 by NATO’s expansion to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic — and again in the 2004 expansion, which absorbed not only the rest of the former Soviet satellites in what is now Central Europe, but also the three Baltic states, which had been components of the Soviet Union.

Answer 2

In a nutshell, militants (fomented by and including the Russian 'peacekeepers' there) in South Ossetia were attacking the Georgian Gov't and Georgian civilians. It appears that all this behind the scenes prepping for war was orchestrated by the Russian Gov't - as they were unhappy with Georgia. Georgia then responded against the militants and then Russia invaded Georgia.

Russia wants to:

* control Georgia's oil transportation/supply routes from the Caspian Sea and thus control ALL of Europe's energy inputs

* intimidate Georgia into not joining NATO

* push Georgia from becoming a true democracy on Russia's border

* punish Georgia for allying with the US

* move towards re-creating the USSR

Peace

Answer 3

omg.

Answer 4

For the peaches.

Answer 5

McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, was until March a registered lobbyist for the Republic of Georgia. His firm continues to work on behalf of Georgia

A public relations firm working for the Russian Federation pointed out Scheunemann’s lobbying past to reporters — a sign that McCain’s stance is not, for better or worse, being welcomed in Moscow — as did Obama’s campaign.

“John McCain’s top foreign policy adviser lobbied for, and has a vested interest in, the Republic of Georgia and McCain has mirrored the position advocated by the government,” said Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan, noting that the “appearance of a conflict of interest” was a consequence of McCain’s too-close ties to lobbyists.

McCain also calls for NATO to be inserted into the conflict, though Georgia is not a NATO member. McCain also dusted off his bizarre call for Russia to be kicked out of The G-8. And Randy Scheunemann immediately tried to politicize the conflict - without however mentioning that he was a lobbyist for Georgia.

Further, McCain is ensnared irretrievably by the lobbyists he's surrounded himself with. Americans can't be sure of knowing what kinds of conflicts of interest lie behind John McCain's pronouncements on both foreign and domestic issues.

For nearly a week now, John McCain has seized up the coincidental timing of Georgia's conflict with Russia and Barack Obama's vacation in HI. By gushing support for Georgia Pres. Mikheil Saakashvili and racheting up his rhetoric against Russia, McCain is betting that the spotlight will convince voters he's an experienced leader who can handle international crises (and that Obama, by comparison, cannot). But McCain is also running the risk of overreaching, particularly with his annoucement 8/13 that he's dispatching two of his top surrogates, Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on a fact-finding mission to Georgia. As the week winds down, will voters see McCain as a take-charge executive, or a posturing war monger? Will Obama be seen as disconnected amateur, or a candidate appropriately deferring to the Bush administration to handle the crisis?

The White House has started to panic over a July 9 meeting between Condi Rice and Mikheil Saakashvili, desperate to suggest they didn't encourage Georgia's crack-down in South Ossetia. Given that panic, I wonder whether Karl Rove had any similar chats with Saakashvili when they were in Yalta together just days later? Now, there's been a lot of justified chatter about the role of Randy Scheunemann, who appears to be advising the Republic of Georgia at the same time as he provides campaign advice to John McCain. ... There's something going on--and given Karl Rove's presence close to the scene of the crime, I've got my suspicions.

Answer 6

South Ossetia is a small area that after the break-up of the USSR officially belongs to Georgia. Ossetians also live in a small area (North Ossetia) that belongs to Russia. There are many families that live on both sides of the border, and many of those who live in the southern part are Russian citizens. Ossetians have been in conflict with Georgians intermittently for years, if not centuries. Ossetians want some form of self-government, to protect them from complete annihilation by Geogians. In order to stop fighting, an international agreement was reached many years ago that would have Russian peacekeepers stationed between the two warring parties. Since then, only minor skirmishes have been occurring. When the US installed a new government in Georgia, one of its selling points was an appeal to Georgian nationalism with the promise to rein in all the minorities, who wanted autonomy or self-rule.  This scared the bejesus of Ossetians, who had no one to turn for help but Russia. Apparently, the Western democracies were too overwhelmed with fighting for Albanian rule in Kosovo, to pay attention to the fate of any other minority in the world.  Gerogia was getting ready to the fight for a while. US marines were drilling Georgian troops, NATO and Ukraine were building up its arsenal and its aircrafts were constantly flown into Ossetia on reconnaissance (a few of them were shot down). Finally, Georgia used one of the many minor clashes as the cause of invasion. Ossetians and Russian peacekeepers were lulled by the new peace initiates that the president of Georgia announced just hours before the invasion started. Georgian troops annihilated Ossetians towns and villages, including the Ossetian capital Tshinvali. Hospitals, schools, residential areas were bombarded and shelled, with reports of the residents driven over by Georgian tanks and people burning alive in their homes. Thousands of Ossetians poured into Russia. Russian citizens, both civilian and the peacekeepers were killed. This, of cause, is similar to the situation in Yugoslavia, were we have intervened to punish Serbs for trying to bring back under their control smaller ethnic groups. In fact, the blame for some of the massacres in the Balkan conflict was placed of the NATO peacekeepers (Dutch troops were actually sued for that) for not actively intervening in defense of the civilians. This also brings the memories of our invasion of Grenada, which was justified by alleged harassment of US citizens there. Unlike NATO in the Balkans, Russian did not wait until the Ossetians are exterminated. They reinforced their peacekeeping troops with heavy amour and airplanes, and the Georgian army ran. Russians also destroyed Georgian military installations that were used to launch the attack (military bases and airstrips).  Georgians ran so fast, that they did not have time to take their tanks, artillery, weapons and ammunition with them, leaving huge unguarded depots. Russians took these depots under their control, at least in part, to protect this equipment from falling into the hands of paramilitaries, terrorists and criminals. Ironically, the infamous “column of Russian tanks” that, according to CNN report was headed towards Tbilisi, was a convoy of Georgian equipment (one tank and several vehicles) that Russians tried to move out of an unguarded base. Russia offered Georgia a ceasefire, with the combatants returning to their positions before the Georgian attack. It took several days and intense pressure from the West for Georgians to sign this agreement.  During this time CNN was blaming Russians for not abiding by the agreement before it was actually signed! As it turned out, the wily Georgian president (he used to be an American lawyer before being promoted to rule Georgia) did not sign part of the agreement, so no one can understand now whether it is valid or not. This means that Russians may have to stay in Georgia even longer, because in the absence of an agreement Georgians are certain to finish up any Ossetians that they did not get in the first strike.

Russians have been blamed for pursuing their sinister goals in this war. This may be so, but these motifs certainly were not the primary cause of the invasion: the same reasons existed for years, yet the invasion has occurred only after the Georgian attack on Ossetia.

The short answer to your question: to fulfill their peacekeeping obligations, to protect their citizens, and to avert the genocide of Ossetians.