"Major Combat Operations Have Ended"

By BJ

Well, Russia has apparently had enough fun beating down the Georgians for now and President Medvedev is ordering an end to military operations. Despite the increasingly hysterical claims of a full-fledged invasion and take-over of Georgia, it is unclear yet whether or not the Russian did any more than launch a single raid outside of the breakaway regions with ground troops, instead relying on air power to bomb the Georgian staging areas and other military targets.

Probably for the best given the Georgian army's panicked scattering from Gori on the mere rumour the Russians were coming show that they aren't exactly fit to defend much of anything right now.

While it is still unclear if the Russians ever set foot outside of South Ossetia, and the fighting there seems to have died down, the real prize of the two breakaway regions has always been Abhkazia, where fighting apparently continues in the Georgian-occupied Kodori Gorge. If that doesn't get resolved soon, the whole mess could flare up once again.

If, however, this does turn out to be the end of "major combat operations", you'd have to say that the Georgians got off pretty light for Saakashvili's stupidity. As Daniel Nexon notes:

• Saakashvili launched an offensive after claiming to want negotiations to stop the escalating crisis. He did so less than twenty-four hours after calling for cease-fire negotiations, in an operation that looks like it wasn't dreamed up overnight (but, given some of its tactical mistakes, it might as well have been).

• The Russians respond with overwhelming force but limit their ground operations (so far) to the break away republics and adjacent staging grounds for Georgian actual or potential military operations. They initiate a naval blockade and commence bombing runs inside of Georgia. The west accused them of "dangerous escalation."

• But if this were a United States operation you can bet that the US navy would be blockading the country and the USAF would be taking out every piece of military hardware or key transportation hub they could find. Indeed, the US would be actively aiming at regime change. The United States did all of these things in the Kosovo campaign.

And I'll leave the last word to the War Nerd, Gary Brecher:

There are three basic facts to keep in mind about the smokin’ little war in Ossetia:

1.    The Georgians started it.
2.    They lost.

3.    What a beautiful little war!

Granted number 3 isn't that important in geopolitical terms, but the guy has a persona to keep up, and he has what is probably the right take on what aftermath will be.

The fretting and fussing and sky-is-falling crap about this war is going to die down fast, and the bottom line will be simple: the Georgians overplayed their hand and got slapped, and we caught a little of the follow-through, which is what happens when you waste your best troops—and Georgia’s, for that matter—on a dumb war in the wrong place. We detatched Kosovo from a Russian ally; they detached South Ossetia from an American ally. It’s a pawn exchange, if that. If it signals anything bigger, it’s the fact that the US is weaker than it was ten years ago and Russia is much, much stronger than it was in Yeltsin’s time. But anybody with sense knew all that already.

Comments

[Fred Beloit]

Here you are, my friend BJ. You requested a time line from me and I offer this one for your information. Like everything else under the sun today, it seems even time lines are political.

Via LGF
http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/special-extra-%E2%80%94-editorial-the-facts-on-georgia/

[Fred Beloit]

Hmmm. Doesn't fit? Here is the rest:
ombat-op.html?cid=126113964#comment-126113964

[Fred Beloit]

This link discusses the source of the false time line.If it is cut off LGF has it:

http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2006/09/05/the-further-misadventures-of-screwball-yuri-mamchur-neo-soviet-con-man/

[BJ Bjornson]

Hey Fred,

You had better believe timelines are political, and as I said previously, believing either government involved is an exercise in futility. The facts however, don’t change regardless of the spin people put on them. Even the editorial LGF links to about the “true facts” on the timeline notes that there were escalating skirmishes on the border, though it greatly magnifies their impact and magnitude. (Note they don’t bother mentioning any casualty figures from these “massive” provocations since admitting very few people were killed during them, on both sides, would make their true scope far too obvious.) Then it has the Georgians taking “defensive action” by sending an entire armoured column into Tskhinval, after which the Russians responded by sending their own military into the region.

So, still no contradiction of what I wrote.

As to the second link, I'm a little confused, are the LGF crowd trying to argue that the reason the entire planet isn't spinning the whole conflict the way the Georgian government wants it to be spun is because of one guy? Honestly?