Augu st 14, 2008
Master Plan or Screw Up?
Georgia and U.S. Strategy
By MIKE WHITNEY
The American-armed and trained Georgian army swarmed into South
Ossetia last Thursday, killing an estimated 2,000 civilians, sending
40,000 South Ossetians fleeing over the Russian border, and destroying
much of the capital, Tskhinvali. The attack was unprovoked and took
place a full 24 hours before even ONE Russian soldier set foot in
South Ossetia. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Americans still
believe that the Russian army invaded Georgian territory first. The
BBC, AP, NPR, the New York Times and the rest of the establishment
media have consistently and deliberately misled their readers into
believing that the violence in South Ossetia was initiated by the
Kremlin. Let’s be clear, it wasn’t. In truth, there is NO dispute
about the facts except among the people who rely the western press for
their information. Despite its steady loss of credibility, the
corporate media continues to operate as the propaganda-arm of the
Pentagon.
Former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev gave a good summary of
events in an op-ed in Monday’s Washington Post:
For some time, relative calm was maintained in South Ossetia. The
peacekeeping force composed of Russians, Georgians and Ossetians
fulfilled its mission, and ordinary Ossetians and Georgians, who live
close to each other, found at least some common ground….What
happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian
military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with
multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas…
Mounting a military assault against innocents was a reckless decision
whose tragic consequences, for thousands of people of different
nationalities, are now clear. The Georgian leadership could do this
only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more
powerful force. Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of
U.S. instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought
in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of NATO
membership, emboldened Georgian leaders into thinking that they could
get away with a "blitzkrieg" in South Ossetia…Russia had to respond.
To accuse it of aggression against "small, defenseless Georgia" is not
just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity."
Russia deployed its tanks and troops to South Ossetia to save the
lives of civilians and to reestablish the peace. Period. It has no
interest in annexing the former-Soviet country or in expanding its
present borders. Now that the Georgian army has been routed, Russian
president Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have expressed a
willingness to settle the dispute through normal diplomatic channels
at the United Nations. Neither leader is under any illusions about
Washington’s involvement in the hostilities. They know that Georgian
President Mikail Saakashvili is an American stooge who came to power
in a CIA-backed coup, the so-called "Rose Revolution", and would
never order a major military operation without explicit instructions
from his White House puppetmasters.
The Georgian army had no chance of winning a war with Russia or any
intention of occupying the territory they captured. The real aim was
to lure the Russian army into a trap. US planners hope to do what they
did so skillfully in Afghanistan; lure their Russian prey into a long
and bloody Chechnya-type fiasco that will pit their Russia troops
against guerrilla forces armed and trained by US military and
intelligence agencies. The war will be waged in the name of liberating
Georgia from Russian imperialism and stopping Putin from achieving his
alleged ambition to control critical western-owned pipelines around
the Caspian Basin.
In June, former foreign policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, presented the basic storyline that would be used
against Russia two full months before the Georgian invasion of South
Ossetia. The article appeared on the Kavkazcenter web site. Brzezinski
said the United States witnessed "cases of possible threats by Russia,
directed at Georgia with the intention of taking control over the
Baku-Ceyhan pipeline".
Brzezinski: "Russia actively tends to isolate the Central Asian region
from direct access to world economy, especially to energy supplies..If
Georgia government is destabilized, western access to Baku, Caspian
Sea and further will be limited".
Brzezinski’s speculation is part of a broader scenario that’s been
crafted for the western media to provide a rationale for upcoming
aggression against Russia. Brzezinski is not only the architect of the
mujahadin-led campaign against Russia in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but
also, the author of "The Grand Chessboard–American Primacy and its
Geostrategic Imperatives", the operating theory behind "the war on
terror" which involves massive US intervention in Central Asia to
control vital resources, fragment Russia, and surround manufacturing
giant, China.
"The Grand Chessboard" is the 21st century’s version of the Great
Game. The book begins with this revealing statement:
"Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some
five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world
power…..The key to controlling Eurasia is controlling the Central
Asian Republics."
This is the heart-and-soul of the war on terror. The real braintrust
behind "never-ending conflict" was actually focussed on Central Asia.
It was the pro-Israeli crowd in the Republican Party that pulled the
old switcheroo and refocussed on the Middle East rather than Eurasia.
Now, powerful members of the US foreign policy establishment
(Brzezinski, Albright, Holbrooke) have regrouped behind the populist
"cardboard" presidential candidate Barack Obama and are preparing to
redirect America’s war efforts to the Asian theater. Obama offers
voters a choice of wars not a choice against war.
On Sunday, Brzezinski accused Russia of imperial ambitions comparing
Putin to "Stalin and Hitler" in an interview with Nathan Gardels.
Gardels: What is the world to make of Russia’s invasion of Georgia?
Zbigniew Brzezinski: Fundamentally at stake is what kind of role
Russia will play in the new international system.(aka: New World
Order) Unfortunately, Putin is putting Russia on a course that is
ominously similar to Stalin’s and Hitler’s in the late 1930s. Swedish
foreign minister Carl Bildt has correctly drawn an analogy between
Putin’s "justification" for dismembering Georgia — because of the
Russians in South Ossetia — to Hitler’s tactics vis a vis
Czechoslovakia to "free" the Sudeten Deutsch. Even more ominous is the
analogy of what Putin is doing vis-a-vis Georgia to what Stalin did
vis-a-vis Finland: subverting by use of force the sovereignty of a
small democratic neighbor. In effect, morally and strategically,
Georgia is the Finland of our day.
The question the international community now confronts is how to
respond to a Russia that engages in the blatant use of force with
larger imperial designs in mind: to reintegrate the former Soviet
space under the Kremlin’s control and to cut Western access to the
Caspian Sea and Central Asia by gaining control over the Baku/Ceyhan
pipeline that runs through Georgia.
In brief, the stakes are very significant. At stake is access to
oil as that resource grows ever more scarce and expensive and how a
major power conducts itself in our newly interdependent world, conduct
that should be based on accommodation and consensus, not on brute
force.
If Georgia is subverted, not only will the West be cut off from
the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. We can logically anticipate that
Putin, if not resisted, will use the same tactics toward the Ukraine.
Putin has already made public threats against Ukraine."
Brzezinski, Holbrooke and Albright form the "Imperialist A-Team";
these are not the bungling "Keystone Cops" neocons like Feith and
Rumsfeld who trip over themselves getting out of bed in the morning.
They know what they are doing and they are good at it. They’re not
fools. They have aligned themselves with the Obama camp and are
preparing for the next big outbreak of global trouble-making. This
should serve as a sobering wake-up call for voters who still think
Obama represents "Change We Can Believe In".
Richard Holbrooke appeared on Tuesday’s Jim Lerher News Hour with
resident neocon Margaret Warner. Typical of Warner’s "even-handed"
approach, both of the interviewees were ultra-conservatives from
right-wing think tanks: Richard Holbrooke, from the Council on Foreign
Relations and Dmiti Simes from the Nixon Center.
According to Holbrooke, "The Russians deliberately provoked (the
fighting in South Ossetia) and timed it for the Olympics. This is a
long-standing Russian effort to get rid of President Saakashvili."
Right. Is that why Putin was so shocked when he heard the news (while
he was in Beijing) that he quickly boarded a plane and headed for
Moscow? (after shaking his finger angrily at Bush!)
Holbrooke: "And I want to stress, I’m not a warmonger, and I don’t
want a new Cold War any more than Dimitri does….The Russians wish to
re-establish a historic area of hegemony that includes Ukraine. And it
is no accident that the other former Soviet republics are watching
this and extraordinarily upset, as Putin progresses with an attempt to
re-create a kind of a hegemonic space."
It is impossible to go over all of Holbrooke’s distortions,
half-truths and lies but, what is important is to recognize that a
story is being constructed to demonize Putin and to justify future
hostilities against Russia. Holbrooke’s bogus assertions are identical
to Brzezinski’s, and yet, these same lies are already appearing in the
mainstream media. The propaganda "bullet points" have already been
determined; "Putin is a menace","Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet
empire", "Putin is an autocrat". (Unlike our "freedom loving" allies
in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt!?!) In truth, Putin is simply
enjoying Russia’s newly acquired energy-wealth and would like to be
left alone.
So why are Brzezinski and his backers in the foreign policy
establishment demonizing Putin and threatening Russia with "ostracism,
isolation and economic penalties?" What is Putin’s crime?
Putin’s problems can be traced back to a speech he made in Munich
nearly two years ago when he declared unequivocally that he rejected
the basic tenets of the Bush Doctrine and US global hegemony. His
speech amounted to a Russian Declaration of Independence. That’s when
western elites, particularly at the Council on Foreign Relations and
the American Enterprise Institute put Putin on their "enemies list"
along with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Castro, Morales, Mugabe and anyone
else who refuses to take orders from the Washington Mafia.
Here’s what Putin said in Munich:
The unipolar world refers to a world in which there is one master,
one sovereign—- one center of authority, one center of force, one
center of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious
not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign
itself because it destroys itself from within…. What is even more
important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis
there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilization.
Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved
any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and
created new centers of tension. Judge for yourselves—wars as well as
local and regional conflicts have not diminished. More are dying than
before. Significantly more, significantly more!
Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of force –
military force – in international relations, force that is plunging
the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.
We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic
principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a
matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal
system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United
States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is
visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies
it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about
this?
In international relations we increasingly see the desire to
resolve a given question according to so-called issues of political
expediency, based on the current political climate. And of course this
is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe.
I want to emphasize this – no one feels safe! Because no one can feel
that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of
course such a policy stimulates an arms race.
I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we
must seriously think about the architecture of global security.
Every word Putin spoke was true which is why it was not reprinted in
the western media.
"Unilateral and illegitimate military actions", the "uncontained
hyper-use of force", the "disdain for the basic principles of
international law", and most importantly; "No one feels safe!"
Putin’s claims are all indisputable, that is why he has entered the
neocons crosshairs. He poses a direct challenge to what Brzezinski
calls the "international system", which is shorthand for the
corporate/banking cartel that is controlled by the western oligarchy
of racketeers.
Was the Goergian attack last Thursday a set-up, organized in
Washington? Unfortunately for Bush, the wily Russian prime minister is
considerably brighter than anyone in the current administration.
Bush’s plan will undoubtedly backfire and disrupt the geopolitical
balance of power. The world might get that breather from the US after
all.
Mike Whitney can be reached at [email protected]