Krauthammer's view of Russia's objectives match mine:
Eastern Europe understands the stakes in Georgia. It is the ultimate target. Russia's aims are clear: (1) sever South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia for incorporation into Russia; (2) bring down Georgia's pro-Western government; and (3) intimidate Eastern European countries into reentering the Russian sphere of influence.
Objective No. 1 is already achieved. Georgia will never recover its provinces. They will soon be absorbed into Russia.
Objective No. 3 has backfired, for now. The Eastern Europeans have rallied to Georgia -- and to the United States.
Objective No. 2 remains in the balance. Russian tanks have cut Georgia in half. Its largest port has been ransacked. Its capital is isolated. Russia shows every sign of staying in place by maintaining checkpoints and ultimate control.
I don't think that objective 1 had any point, however, since Russia has had those regions for years now. The real battlefield is the world of former Russian colonies.
The second and third objectives relating to that issue have not been achieved and it is here that we need to oppose the Russians. Krauthammer worries that the Russians may yet win in these areas. I share the worry for objective 2 but think that we are working on this reasonably well.
Ralph Peters (see link below) thinks Russia's objectives are to cow the Georgians and former Russian provinces and to control the oil pipelines through Georgia. I think the latter is not an objective since the best way to do that would have been to conquer Georgia straight up while they had the chance.
Regardless of the objectives, I don't mind the relatively quiet response we have made so far since I figure punishing Russia now (like by scrapping G-8) might lead the Russians to just dig in inside Georgia rather than leave. That's the paranoia part. Get the Russians out and halt any momentum to restarting the war. Which is why our humanitarian missions led by our military are good. Work our way between the Russians and Georgians in ways that the Russians can't easily protest. Do that and the Georgians will feel more capable of resisting the Russians rather than submitting from fear of Russian cruelty.
Luckily, Russian businessmen are worried about the impact of the war:
While the value of the rouble has stayed relatively stable since the start of the conflict, with the help of central bank intervention, the stock market has fallen 6.5 per cent since August 7 and companies have found it harder to raise capital as investors demand sharply higher yields to buy their bonds to reflect the perceived risk.
The moves show that Russia’s economy, in spite of having one of the strongest national balance sheets in the world, is not immune to global market sentiment, which could end up being an important check on Kremlin decision-making.
“The million-headed hydra of the bourgeoisie has sent a signal: ‘change your course, comrades!’” wrote the popular internet columnist Dmitry Oreshkin on http://www.ej.ru/ in a joking reference to the communist background of Russia’s leadership.
After we get the Russian troops largely out, then we can work on punishments and rebuilding the Georgian military--this time to fight the Russian invaders should they try again. some of those punishments could be leveraged to get any lingering Russian forces out of Georgian territory that Russia wants to hold as a buffer zone.
And for God's sake, stop trying to blame this on American policy or Bush. The Russians are the problem. Ralph Peters put it well:
It's become a cliche to cite Putin's KGB past when explaining him. Yet, Russia's new strongman isn't an ideologue; he's an ethnic nationalist. There's no taint of dialectical materialism in the cold-eyed man from St. Petersburg; on the contrary, he's far more a creature from a Dostoevsky novel than a "new Soviet man" produced by Lenin. Even Putin's heritage as a secret policeman reaches farther back than the recent era of the KGB-or Cheka, or NKVD, or MGB. Putin harks back beyond the czarist Okhrana to the proto-Gestapo Oprichniki of Ivan the Terrible, whose twin concerns were internal order and the exclusion of all things foreign, and whose elementary traits were paranoia and cruelty.
And the Russians are finally beginning to look like they are reversing course and getting out of most of Georgia:
Russian military convoys rolled out of three key positions in Georgia and headed toward Moscow-backed separatist regions on Friday in a significant withdrawal two weeks after thousands of troops roared into the former Soviet republic.
No, this is not yet a complete withdrawal. But the important thing is to get the Russians moving in reverse so they are not in a position to renew the invasion and march on Tbilisi.
We did not lose Russia. Russians lost Russia. For now, anyway.
And we could still lose Georgia if we don't balance the needs of dealing with Russia's paranoia and cruelty. But I think we are doing well after our initial stumbling in the first days of the Russian invasion when we couldn't bring ourselves to recognize that Putin was acting very badly.
