Gryzemuis on 2/3/2014 at 14:29
Quote Posted by demagogue
Russia intervening in Georgia a few years ago
I remember that. I also remember that the western press all reported about those poor little Georgians who got stomped by the big bad bully Russia. I guess you remember the story going like that as well.
But I remember it differently.
The people of South Ossetia feel themselves to be Russians, not Georgians. The borders were once draw semi-randomly. And after 1990 they found themselves to be part of Georgia, not Russia. They wanted independance from Georgia. They even had a referendum about it, and the large majority expressed their loyalty to Russia. The Georgians didn't like that.
Then on the Friday afternoon before the 2008 Olympics, Georgia started militairy operations against South Ossetia. From the (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian%E2%80%93Ossetian_conflict#2008_War_in_South_Ossetia) wiki-page: "On 8 August, the starting day of Beijing Olympics,
Georgia launched a military offensive to "restore constitutional order in the whole region."[54] Georgia started a full-scale attack on the breakaway republic overnight, using tanks, aircraft, heavy artillery and infantry."
It were the Georgians that behave wrongly. The Russians made a very cool-headed and precise response. They stopped Georgia from invading South Ossetia. With relatively little violence and very few casualties. They immediately offered to play the role of UN peacekeeper.
I think Georgia did everything wrong.
I think Russia's response was not bad.
But *all* of the western media reported about a Russian invasion. And talked about those poor Georgians.
And if you read about it a bit more, e.g. from different sources on the web, it was clear that the western media were completely wrong. And later in the week(s) nobody corrected their stories. Russia was depicted as the bad bully.
With Syria it's not much different. The western media (as far as I can see) depicted the rebels as old-fashioned rebels. The small heroes fighting the big bad bully Assad. While in fact,
the story is 1000x more complex. There is not good side to pick. The rebels are not fighting for freedom. Most of them are fighting for an Islamic state. Many of them are fighting an ordinary tribal war for power: Sunnis versus Alawites (Shia). You could even mention oil-pipelines and pissed-off Saudis. The rebels are just as violent as Assad. If they come to power, the result will be completely unpredictable. But the western media kept the romantic image of the rebels for a long time. And Russia was assigned the old-fashioned "big devil" role again. While in fact, Russia had a more realistic view of the situation.
The big problem in Syria is that there is no solution. No matter what side you take. But my point is: the western media are clueless when it comes to picking sides in who is right and wrong.
And
the media are doing the same thing in the Ukraine. The rebels are the good guys. The Russians are the bad guys. It is a fact that Yanukovych is a mobster and a thief. And he should go. But Yulia Tymoshenko is just as big a mobster, and maybe an even bigger thief. She just belongs to a different (rivaling) clan of oligarchs and mobsters. I have great sympathy for the ordinary guys and women who were on the Independence Square. I even think Klitschko acted in an honest way. But I can guarantee you that the people taking over now (whether it will be Tymoschenko or not) will be just another clan of mobsters. There is no reason for the western press to pick sides so naively as they do.
And the fact remains that Yanukovych was elected. Maybe the elections were rigged, but that has not been proven. More importantly, even if Yanukovych has less support in Kiev, it does seem he has a 50/50 support when you look at all of Ukraine. So yeah, when the Russians say that the legal government has been overthrown by a bunch of rebels with western support, they do have a point. I sometimes watch (
http://rt.com/) Russia Today. Their reporting is heavily biased. And often makes me laugh because of their obvious biased views. But they are not much different from CNN. So if you watch both tv-stations, you see two different sides of the story. And you can draw your own conclusions.
Again, the point I am trying to make: western media always pick the side of the rebels and the underdogs. They always pick the side that seems pro-west. But often they pick the wrong side.
LoLion on 2/3/2014 at 14:56
Quote Posted by demagogue
... Because that argument played so well for Germany in WWII, Russia intervening in Georgia a few years ago, Rwanda intervening in Congo (the deadliest war since WWII), and a few dozen other dodgy examples...
Also can't miss this brilliant move:
> Spends 7 years and $50 billion building good will in the international community to host the Sochi Olympics.
> Pisses it out the window not even a week after it's finished.
I guess there are two major factors to consider here. First is that the Ukrainian revolution probably scared Putin – even though the internal oposition against his regime is either pathetic (Khodorkovsky, Navalny, or even Pussy Riot) or uncool from the western point of view (the communist party, which funnily enough is the most serious and well organized opposition Putin has to face) he might fear that the economic problems in Russia might eventually cause large scale riots. Hence doing everything he can to damage the post revolutionary regime in the Ukraine might be a way to discredit similar attempts at home, even at the expense of bad PR.
The other thing is that the current crisis in Ukraine might be a death knell of the Syrian uprising. With a highly explosive situation in the Europe itself few people will pay any attention to Syria – meanwhile it appears that various rebel factions are already accepting cease fires with the government, since they dont see a chance of winning without more significant western support, which was not coming before and is definitely not going to come now that everyone is focussed on Ukraine.
Quote:
Again, the point I am trying to make: western media always pick the side of the rebels and the underdogs. They always pick the side that seems pro-west. But often they pick the wrong side.
Well this is hardly a surprise, there is nothing like unbiased media when it comes to international conflicts.
As for Georgia the thing is that Saakashvili was trying to do exactly the same thing that Russians did with Chechnya – to restore government control over a rebellious region of his country. The only difference being that nobody sent an army to help Chechnians – who definitely don’t feel like Russians and historically were treated much worse than the South Ossetians were – in their fight for freedom.
If the Georgians did anything wrong it was that they thought they could behave in the same way that Russians do without having nuclear weapons to back it up. Russians meanwhile took the opportunity to devastate large part of Georgian infrastructure when they moved into the country – if they only wished to keep the South Ossetians safe they would never advance as deep into Georgia as they did.
I agree on Syria completely though. It seemed to me that western media supported the rebels simple because “Assad is allied with Russia, so enemy of Assad is a good guy,” while ignoring the fact that the most capable elements of the rebellion were in fact Al-Qaeda type forces that the west spares no effort to pursue all over the world.
In case of Ukraine I have no illusions about the elements that came to power after the revolution and it is true that Tymoshenko already failed once after the Orange revolution. But I have no doubt that Ukraine will be better off if it (or what is left of it after this whole thing ends) develops closer ties with EU and stays as far away from Russia as possible. Especially when it comes to corruption, which I am sure is massive on Ukraine, the EU norms will help considerably – they definitely helped where I live.
icemann on 2/3/2014 at 15:18
What was the end result of all the stuff in Georgia? Not heard a peep about that country since that event many years back. Did Russia leave their forces there up to present day? Or leave after a while?
LoLion on 2/3/2014 at 16:17
After the war South Ossetia declared independence, which was recognised by about 4 countries including Russia. Its a poor shithole with puppet government and significant Russina military presence. In fact very little changed after the war - Russian "peacekeepers" are now an occupying army and most of the world still considers South Ossetia part of Georgia.
As for Georgia itself, Saakashvili is no longer in power and some members of his government went to jail on charges of corruption. New government is a bit more friendly towards Russia, but relations are still kinda tense. The NATO ascension process is basically frozen for now. Georgian economy was badly damaged in the war and is still trying to recover with EU/US help (back when I worked for the Czech ministry of foreign affairs the economic support for Georgia was a pretty big deal for us), while the Russians invest heavily in South Ossetia.
So basically the only tangible result is that Georgia wont be joining NATO any time soon (a success for Russia in any case). Other than that things are mostly back to status quo ante bellum.
demagogue on 2/3/2014 at 22:45
For the record, I was at least being open minded to people criticizing the protestors, including my friend above, and my personality type is generally not to trust mob politics. (I never really trusted the Occupy rallies in the US for that reason. And even the "good kind" that led to Egypt's democratic reforms, we saw how long that lasted...) I was much more interested in the status of the apparently legal impeachment(?) process by a supermajority of Ukraine's parliament than anything going on in the streets.
But, again like my Russian friend, you don't have to take the protestor's side to think that Russia intervening in Ukraine to push succession or toy with their politics is a bad idea. It's always a bad idea. One of the worst parts about the Iraq II war was the American occupation government was by all accounts awful.
icemann on 3/3/2014 at 05:05
Quote Posted by LoLion
After the war South Ossetia declared independence, which was recognised by about 4 countries including Russia. Its a poor shithole with puppet government and significant Russina military presence. In fact very little changed after the war - Russian "peacekeepers" are now an occupying army and most of the world still considers South Ossetia part of Georgia.
As for Georgia itself, Saakashvili is no longer in power and some members of his government went to jail on charges of corruption. New government is a bit more friendly towards Russia, but relations are still kinda tense. The NATO ascension process is basically frozen for now. Georgian economy was badly damaged in the war and is still trying to recover with EU/US help (back when I worked for the Czech ministry of foreign affairs the economic support for Georgia was a pretty big deal for us), while the Russians invest heavily in South Ossetia.
So basically the only tangible result is that Georgia wont be joining NATO any time soon (a success for Russia in any case). Other than that things are mostly back to status quo ante bellum.
Well that sounds pretty fucked. Crimea will be a permanent addition to Russia in that case, in all but name.
If you can't beat em through politics / people power, then just roll in the tanks, enforce an independence vote and then install a puppet government that ensures that the countries yours from then on. Yay.
Muzman on 3/3/2014 at 14:09
This might be in here somewhere already, but I do wonder what the long term game plan was otherwise.
Say Yanukovych was a stooge (pretty likely, I guess). With him in power was there some long term goal to increase Russian activity/presence/population with a mind to a later handover? Or was it enough just to have a pro Moscow guy in so the Uk won't go with Euro/NATO?
I'm not casting any doubts on anything particularly, but it's weird to think how it would have gone without the whole open revolt and occupation. Presumably that wasn't part of the plan.
catbarf on 3/3/2014 at 14:56
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
It were the Georgians that behave wrongly. The Russians made a very cool-headed and precise response. They stopped Georgia from invading South Ossetia. With relatively little violence and very few casualties. They immediately offered to play the role of UN peacekeeper.
The Russians used a convenient excuse to conduct a military invasion in response to what was up until that point a non-violent show of force to quell the Ossetian and Abkhazian insurgents that have been fighting sporadically, kidnapping tourists, and running organized crime for years. It'd be easier to argue that the Russians were 'cool-headed' and 'precise' if they hadn't stomped all the way to Tbilisi and taken the opportunity to bomb both the airport and whatever infrastructure they could find.
I lived in Tbilisi before the war and have been back since and the effects on the Georgian economy were immediately visible. Much of the damage was completely unnecessary and had nothing to do with military targets, but by crippling the economy of US-backed Georgia Russia significantly weakened Western power in the region.
Well, with Putin doing his best to recreate the Soviet Union I can't imagine this political maneuvering is going to stop with just Ukraine. Apparently several of the Baltic states have (
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/russias-seizure-of-crimea-is-making-former-soviet-states-nervous/284156/) invoked Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, feeling threatened by Russia's expansion. I think they're right to be nervous.
