Russia: Why Georgia Lost The War

It’s not yet clear what the Georgian government was thinking when they allowed the border skirmishing to escalate to a military effort to restore government control over South Ossetia. It didn’t work, as the Russians promptly counterattacked and drove the Georgian troops out of South Ossetia. The Georgians can try a guerilla war, and hope that their new relationship with the United States and the European Union will add some measure of protection. That’s a false hope. The Russians have made it clear during the last few years that any real, or imagined, Western influence or interference in nations that border Russia (what the Russians call the “near-abroad”) will be opposed with lots of noise, followed by some firepower. The recent events in Georgia are an example of that, an example the Russians hope the West takes seriously, even if the Georgians don’t.

As I noted earlier:Daily Pundit

I’d say that this latest Russian adventure (Meet the new Russia, same as the old Russia) is more designed to accomplish two goals - control of energy infrastructure, and the prevention of Georgia from joining NATO.

Now, most rationally ignorant Americans, either entirely ignorant of world affairs, or sucking at the teat of MSM ignorance, have acquired the notion that with the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia became a world power on the level of, say, Tanzania.

That was never true. Any nation with a nuclear throw-weight of several thousand warheads has to be considered a super power, and Russia never fell below that level. Could Russia defeat the US in some sort of regional conflict if both sides have the opportunity to tool up, put their militaries into the field, and square off? Probably not. But that isn’t generally the way the world works. And it didn’t work that way in South Ossetia, as the Georgians learned rather quickly.

Russia may not be as strong, relatively, to the US as it once was (although that is arguable as well - Russia was always weaker in comparison than generally understood) but compared to any nation in the rest of the world but the U.S., it is far stronger by just about every meaningful military measure.

And now, with the aid of a population that has supported every imaginable sort of tyrant and tyranny for at least a thousand years, it is switching from a communist tyranny to a fascist tyranny. The primary difference in the threat, of course, is that there is very little of the religious fanaticism that characterizes, say, Islam, to the Russian stance - which means its government is amenable to rationality. Without that, even MAD would not have been successful. Which is, of course, why the thought of a nuclear Iran run by barbarian religious fanatics who think a medieval mullah is going to rise from a well on the back of a nuclear bloom is so unnerving.

The West, especially Europe and the United States, is simply unable to countenance such thought processes, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still exist, and either influence, or control, the geopolitical decisions these barbarian religious whackjobs make in both the long and the short terms.

We can deal with Russia, and we can deal with China. The one hangover of generations of communism in both countries is that religion, per se, does not play a particularly large role in the decision-making processes of the state. (Nor does it here, thank, um, god).

We cannot deal with a nuclear Iran - in fact, we have been singularly unsuccessful in dealing with a non-nuclear Iran. You’d think that would tell us something, but apparently not. If the ultimate kiss-ass, Jimmy Carter, couldn’t smooch mullah fundament enough to get them to release the American hostages they took after an illegal invasion of American territory, even to save his own Presidency, why would a Barack Obama think he could do better?

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