I know we discussed this over at Mercury Rising, and I contended that an attempt at military reconquest of Ukraine by Russia was going to bleed Russia a lot more than Medvedev or Putin could probably imagine. This is NOT a good time in history to think about building empires. Not for anyone. Tactics and technology are going to combine to make life unbelievable hell for the aggressor state, and the would-be empire builders are going to find the cost will probably grossly outweigh the benefits.

But Viktor Yushchenko has gone out of his ever-loving mind. If he’s really counting on the US to pull his chestnuts out of the fire when this goes sour, he got a free lesson in geopolitical reality to ponder just last week. If the Russians use this as a pretext, they may lose. But it’ll probably tear Ukraine to pieces anyway.

The Iraqis basically won the Iraq War by about couple of years ago. When the US occupation regime was reduced to an appendage of whatever Shia faction could swing the most weight. That’s why they silently collaborated in the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad in 2006.

But Iraq is in chaos, without a government the population at large considers legitimate. The infrastructure has been wrecked for the last five years, and nobody is going to build much that’s stable with fresh suicide bombers doing their thing every single week.

That’s what I’d call a Pyrrhic victory at best.

Does Yushchenko really want to see the same thing happen to Ukraine?

He might be weighing the fact that his path to survival does not go through Bush/McCain/neoconservative influence right about now. He may well not use it, but by requesting Biden to travel to Georgia Saakashvili might be setting up an out for himself, and at the very least, creating an opportunity for leverage over BushCo. simply by the threat of revealing the unknown extent involvement by us promoting the initial attack on Ossetia.

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Good post.

Bank on it.

Saakashvili is a tie eating kook. Here’s the proof.

-G

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