Russia

Georgia tries to regain South-Ossetia, risks war with Russia

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Earlier today, Georgia attacked South-Ossetia in order to regain this separatist province. This will probably lead to war between Russia and Georgia, and Georgia is already claiming that Russian jets have bombed Georgian targets. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has vowed to retaliate against Georgia, for some Russian soldiers have allegedly been killed, and besides, most South-Ossetians have Russian citizenship.

The independence of South-Ossetia from Georgia is not internationally recognized, and neither are the referenda in which the overwhelming majority of South-Ossetians voted for said independence. Btw, North-Ossetia is a part of Russia.

We’ll have to see how this develops, but this might become very bad, if very recent history is anything to go by. Another separatist Georgian province is Abkhasia. In 1993, the Abkhasians won their own war against Georgia with some outside help. The non-Abkhasian population fled or was ethnically cleansed. Up to 10,000 people died, and up to 300,000 were forced into exile. There also is no telling how far Putin might go; the Second Chechen War also has been very bloody.

Meanwhile, some historical background (and very convoluted background at that):

The history of Georgia

The history of South-Ossetia

Also, don’t miss the Georgian Affair from 1922, it shows just how complicated things are in the Caucasus region, and no, nobody there thinks that there should be some kind of statute of limitations on revenge, claims to independence or respectively the reconstitution of former statehood as it had been in centuries past.

Update: Russian troops have entered South-Ossetia, two Russian jets have reportedly been shot down.

Update II: Now Abkhasia (or Abkhazia) is threatening to open a second front against Georgia
Their foreign minister points out that Abkhasia was forcibly integrated into the Georgian Soviet Republic when Stalin, a Georgian, led the Soviet Union.

R.I.P. – Alexander Solzenitzen

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Solzhenitsyn’s toughness and courage can not be doubted; his death at 89 takes us back to the tragedies to which his voice gave witness and the courage that voice took to be heard.  A discussion of the way religious mysticism led him to both anti-semitism and a criticism of the liberal values we revere is discussed in Ilya Somin’s obituary on Volokh.  On the other hand, Steiner (and Applebaum’s analysis of him) is discussed at Judd Brothers, as are links to other remembrances.  Of course, A&L does this well. 

 

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The Sermon to the Germans

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Obama’s sermon to the Germans has been much discussed in the blogosphere. In this post, I’d like to focus on one thread of the speech: Obama’s words about the Berlin Airlift:

Sixty years ago, the planes that flew over Berlin did not drop bombs; instead they delivered food, and coal, and candy to grateful children. And in that show of solidarity, those pilots won more than a military victory. They won hearts and minds; love and loyalty and trust – not just from the people in this city, but from all those who heard the story of what they did here.

Actually, of course, a very large number of bombs had been dropped on Berlin and other German cities, just a few years earlier. Americans were in Berlin at all only due to the application of military force, without which, Berlin would have continued to be a Nazi city–and one in which a Barack Obama, if he were allowed to continue living at all, would certainly not have been allowed to give a political speech.

And Berlin–along with the rest of West Germany–avoided Soviet invasion and domination only because of American military force. The unarmed transport planes that supplied Berlin would not have survived had the Soviets not been aware of the armed fighters and bombers–and nuclear weapons–that were in American possession.

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The MSM Misses the Bout: Part I

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As an amateur historian, I am given to musing about the flow and processing of information. People make mental models of the past, but those models are usually highly skewed. As both Napoleon and George Orwell are alleged to have observed, it is the winners who write history. Beyond that, most historians rely primarily on written sources, which further skews our perspective to the prejudices of a given time’s literati, as well as limiting our perspective by that self-same “intelligentsia’s” intellectual shortcomings. The uptake curve of any new trend is difficult to perceive at its inception. Important events often show up as important only well after the fact. Of all the news stories of today, how many human beings can predict what story will actually shape the world of 50 years from now? Even experts fail at this. And often, the true import of events is obscured until the generation who experienced those events has passed away, along with their distorted perceptions.

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The MSM Misses the Bout: Part II

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If “fourth generation warfare” is, as I suspect it is, the leading edge of one of the greatest historical trends of our generation, then the mechanisms of that trend should be the subject of serious academic and journalistic study. The trend may be part of a larger trend that encompasses the gradual weakening of the modern state’s attempt to monopolize violence that was heralded by the Treaty of Westphalia and celebrated by Max Weber.

As I mentioned in Part I, small scale conflict is largely a police action if one or both combatants are restricted to small arms. Sophisticated weapons, especially anti-aircraft systems, are crucial for fourth generation actors to rise beyond the street gang level when operating against states that have not yet collapsed internally.

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