Take a look at the link to the Yalta conference Rove and Saakashvili attended in July. It is probably significant that this Georgia thing was plotted on Ukraine’s territory.

Today you claim the USSR was made up of ‘provinces’, Ukraine, Latvia, Georgia… as it appears to suit the master plan today. During the USSR’s days those ‘provinces’ were members of the UN as it suited Russian motives then. Most grade school children know that provinces cannot be members of the UN; but I guess you have yet to reach that intellectual level.

Your second fact regarding Crimea’s 1991 vote for independence carefully omitted the fact it voted for inclusion in an independent Ukraine (54.7%), even the great Russian city of Sevastapol in that same referendum voted to be a part of an independent Ukraine, surprisingly by even a higher percentage of 57.07.

I really did not wish to go further as most reasonable people realize quickly whether what they are reading will add to their knowledge or if they are reading the whining of revisionists.

WORKERS & RUSSIANS OF THE WORLD UNITE!!!!

But earlier in the article, you see that the Abkhasians also have their own self-conceived national identity that also goes back for many decades. They had a widespread and successful boycott of the referenda to decide Georgian independence at the dissolution of the Soviet Union. They have never recognized themselves as part of Georgia. Was that the product of Russian plotting?

There are a lot of people in these two ethnic enclaves who believe that they should have their own countries. They have been making trouble about this for a long time, have had nationalistic impluses that would lead to ethnic cleansing of residents who threatened their identity for a long time. From what I have read, the only time they have not made trouble over an extended period was during the Stalin years, when they, and everyone else, around them was so horribly oppressed that they were preoccupied with mere survival.

The Russians have exploiting this, but they did not create the situation. To some extent, both the West and Russia did the same thing in the former Yugoslavia. The Georgians deny that any such thing as an Abkhasian identity even exists, and that the Ossetians would be perfectly happy to be Georgians if it were not for evil Russian plotting. And to some extent the Georgians alienated the residents with high handed actions at the break up of the Soviet Union.

So, thanks for the link. It does not change my opinion that there is little grand strategic or geopolitical substance to this crisis unless US and Russian politicians wish to gin it up into something that looks like one for their own political purposes.

And I distrust the judgement of anyone who, at this point, and with what we currently know, becomes either a Russian, or a Georgian, or Ossetian, or Abhkasian, or Bush administration partisan, or a crisis monger. I am not directing that specifically at you, but just making that point in general.

I believe that the border states to Russia will have a big reassessment on Russia vis-a-vis the West. When the bear is hibernating is completely different than when be wakes up.

BTW, great post – keep up the great work!!

http://64.233.167.104/custom?q…..#038;gl=us

A secessionist movement of the Abkhaz ethnic group in the region led to the declaration of independence from Georgia in 1992 and the Georgian-Abkhaz armed conflict from 1992 to 1993 which resulted in the Georgian military defeat and the mass exodus and ethnic cleansing of Georgian population from Abkhazia. In spite of the 1994 ceasefire accord and the ongoing UN-monitored and Russian-dominated CIS peacekeeping operation, the sovereignty dispute has not yet been resolved.

In August 1992, the Georgian government accused Gamsakhurdia’s supporters of kidnapping Georgia’s interior minister and holding him captive in Abkhazia. The Georgian government dispatched 3,000 troops to the region, ostensibly to restore order. The Abkhaz were relatively unarmed at this time and the Georgian troops were able to march into Sukhumi with relatively little resistance[59] and subsequently engaged in ethnically based pillage and looting.[60] The Abkhaz units were forced to retreat to Gudauta and Tkvarcheli.

The Abkhaz military defeat was met with a hostile response by the self-styled Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, an umbrella group uniting a number of pro-Russian movements in the North Caucasus, including Circassians, Abazas, Chechens, Cossacks, Ossetians and hundreds of volunteer paramilitaries from Russia, including the then little-known Shamil Basayev, later a leader of the anti-Moscow Chechen secession, sided with the Abkhaz separatists to fight the Georgian government. Regular Russian forces also reportedly sided with the secessionsts. In September, the Abkhaz and Russian paramilitaries mounted a major offensive against Gagra after breaking a cease-fire, which drove the Georgian forces out of large swathes of the republic. Shevardnadze’s government accused Russia of giving covert military support to the rebels with the aim of “detaching from Georgia its native territory and the Georgia-Russian frontier land”. The year 1992 ended with the rebels in control of much of Abkhazia northwest of Sukhumi. The conflict remained in stalemate until July 1993, when Abkhaz separatist militias launched an abortive attack on Georgian-held Sukhumi. They surrounded and heavily shelled the capital, where Shevardnadze was trapped. The warring sides declared a truce at the end of July, but it collapsed in mid-September 1993 after a renewed Abkhaz attack. After ten days of heavy fighting, Sukhumi fell on 27 September 1993. Shevardnadze narrowly escaped death, after vowing to stay in the city no matter what. He was forced to flee when separatist snipers fired on the hotel where he was staying. Abkhaz, North Caucasian militants and their allies committed numerous atrocities[8] against the city’s remaining ethnic Georgians, in what has been dubbed the Sukhumi Massacre. The mass killings and destruction continued for two weeks, leaving thousands dead and missing.

During the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, Russian authorities and military supplied logistical and military aid to the separatist side.[8] Today, Russia still maintains a strong political and military influence over separatist rule in Abkhazia. Russia has also issued passports for the citizens of Abkhazia since 2000 (as the Abkhazian passports cannot be used for international travel) and subsequently paid retirement pensions and other monetary benefits. More than 80% of the Abkhazian population received Russian citizenship by 2006; however, Abkhazians do not pay Russian taxes, or serve in the Russian Army.[14][15] About 53,000 Abkhazian passports have been issued as of May 2007

Basically, the Abkhaz thought they could get a better autonomy deal from the Russians and so rebelled against the Georgian government which was both weak and corrupt. They were initially defeated but with the support of other national groups in the Caucasus and most importantly from the Russians they ethnically cleansed their region of Georgians. In return they were granted unofficial autonomy and Russian aid and citizenship. The Russian strategic aim was by carving Georgia up it would weaken and allow greater control of an independence minded former Soviet Republic of the USSR.

I leave you to look up the info on Ossetia but it is roughly the same. The Georgians are by no means blameless but they have been actively undermined by the Russians for about 16 years now.

But I find almost the entire foreign policy establishment maddening. They live in their own weird world, with odd assumptions which go completely unchallenged most of the time. And they are very insular. If you aren’t in the club, you don’t have a voice.

It is very chilling that our ruling political class seems to have departed from Madison’s thinking.

fixed it for you.

Just asking.

And Ian—very astute of you to look beyond the Georgia borders to what may be lurking down the line. But then again we know you are astute.