As much as I would like to comment on the latest feats of athleticism at the Beijing Olympics, I cannot in light of ongoing developments in Georgia. And nothing troubles my conscience and geopolitical consciousness more in this respect than the prevailing ignorance I find amongst so many American colleagues and friends about the origins and implications of this conflict.
Of course, this is hardly the forum for such rudimentary political education – although nothing demonstrates the need quite like the American who wondered why her family in Atlanta had no idea that Georgia was under attack.
I am mindful, however, that many readers of this weblog have queried the origins of my “prophetic” statements about this Russian invasion. Therefore, I shall suffice to reprieve quotes from (just some of) my previous commentaries that I hope will not only inform readers about the issues involved but also substantiate my most recent assertions.
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Despite his bluster about calling things as he sees them, Bush seems to be courting a perilously blind spot for Putin. After all, Putin has made no secret of his zealous pining to reform Russia back to a police state: He has silenced the press; jailed dissidents and political opponents; and decreed that, henceforth, he will appoint all regional governors by presidential fiat.
[Russian President Vladimir Putin] is trying to reclaim Russia’s (superpower) sphere of influence in the world: by warning Russia’s former satellite states against joining NATO (even though all of them – led by Poland – seem determined to defy him); trying to affect the make-up of East European governments (as he did, to no avail, in Georgia and Ukraine); and forming bilateral relationships with rogue states to counter America’s influence (like selling advanced military equipment to North Korea, Syria, Libya, Cuba and Venezuela).
[Russia’s Putin: soul mate scorned courts Iran, The iPINIONS Journal, March 3, 2005]
The Putinization of Russia continues apace and Papa Joe Stalin must be very proud indeed. In fact, President Vladimir Putin’s power and influence have become so totalitarian that national polls show Russians have more faith in him than in their Church or any other organ of the state.
[President Putin reforming Russia in his own image, The iPINIONS Journal, March 25, 2005]
President Vladimir Putin (himself a former KGB agent) has effectively resurrected one of the most feared tools of repression in the old Soviet Union: the use of KGB agents to arrest and toss into the gulag anyone suspected of opposing Communist rule or dissenting from the Party line.
[Putin sends political dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky to the gulag, The iPINIONS Journal, June 1, 2005]
Putin made Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko an offer he could not refuse: Like a true dictator, Putin told [President Viktor] Yuschenko that if Ukraine’s 47 million “orange revolutionaries” wanted to continue receiving gas from Russia to cook their food, heat their homes and drive their cars, they would have to pay four times as much for it. When Yuschenko refused, Putin made good on his threat and cut off the gas supply!
[Putin fires first salvo in new Cold War in Europe, The iPINIONS Journal, January 3, 2006]
After his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin almost five years ago, Bush declared that he looked into Putin’s soul and found a “kindred spirit when it came to democratic values.” But, in a conversion worthy of Saul of Tarsus, Bush dispatched his Vice President, Dick Cheney, to Putin’s doorstep in Vilnius, Lithuania yesterday to [inform the world about] his loss of faith in Putin’s spirit.
[Cold War redux: Friendship over between Russia and the United States, The iPINIONS Journal, May 5, 2006]
Recent reports that Putin has turned his Stalinist wrath on Georgia came as no surprise…. No one expected Putin to allow [Georgian President Mikhail] Saakashvili to show such public contempt for Russia with impunity. And, given his penchant for old KGB tactics, it was entirely predictable that Putin would dispatch spies to undermine Saakashvili’s democratically-elected government.
[UPDATE: The Putinization of Russia extends to Georgia, The iPINIONS Journal, November 2, 2006]
For years, some of us have been chronicling the egregiously undemocratic, if not unlawful, acts Putin has committed in his Putinization of Russia.
These acts include confiscating private companies without compensation and throwing the owners in the gulag; silencing his critics (by curtailing or squashing the freedom of the press) and ordering others to be assassinated– as many suspect he did to stop Politkovskaya’s criticisms of his human rights abuses against the Chechens from reverberating around the world; and extending his totalitarian reach into neighboring countries in a vain attempt to reclaim Soviet-era control over them.
[Putin probably ordered the hit [on former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London]. But no one will do anything about it, The iPINIONS Journal, November 28, 2006]
Putin remains so popular amongst Russia’s (new) oligarchs and proletarians alike that Kasparov’s calls for a democratic revolution make him more analogous to John the Baptist preaching in wilderness than Thomas Paine rallying revolutionaries to fight against tyranny.
[Chess champion Kasparov running for Russian presidency…by getting arrested, The iPINIONS Journal, April 16, 2007]
But never mind my indictment against Putin; because what made Bush’s unprecedented invitation to him so disappointing, if not hypocritical, is the fact that only a year ago, Bush dispatched VP Dick Cheney to Putin’s doorstep in Vilnius, Lithuania to deliver a similar indictment, which I heartily endorsed in an article entitled Cold War Redux: Friendship over between Russia and the United States.
Nevertheless, if the Putinization of Russia were not sufficient to convince Bush that he’s hell-bent on reclaiming Russia’s superpower status, then Putin’s efforts to re-establish Cold-War ties with African leaders should be dispositive in this respect. After all, one of the more cynical and indelible features of the historic bipolar struggle between the US and USSR was their amoral strategy of inducing Third World countries – with lots of cash and military hardware – to parrot their ideological world view.
[Cold War II – from the African front, The iPINIONS Journal, July 17, 2007]
I’ve already delineated Putin’s master plan to remain Russia’s ruler for life…. revenues from the oil and gas companies he has nationalized – not only to serve his political agenda but also to rebuild Russia’s Cold War military might – have made Putin impervious to criticism.
[Hail Putin! The iPINIONS Journal, December 3, 2007]
Putin has not only wielded neo-Stalinist power in Russia with an iron fist that would have made Uncle Joe blush, he has also made political incursions into neighboring states that are eerily reminiscent of the manner in which the former Soviet Union dominated its “sphere of influence.”
[Bush digs his spurs into butt of an already scorned Russian bear, The iPINIONS Journal, April 2, 2008]
To be fair to Putin, however, he has just as much moral authority (and military power) to do what he’s doing in Georgia as President Bush had to do what he did in Kosovo; i.e., to use force to facilitate independence for a province of an independent state.
[Tensions simmering between Mother Russia and her former dependent territory, Georgia, The iPINIONS Journal, June 6, 2008]
Georgia calling on the US and EU to come to its aid is rather like the tiny Caribbean country of Grenada calling on the Soviet Union to come to its aid after the US invaded in 1983.
[Russian invades Georgia under cover of Beijing Olympics, The iPINIONS Journal, August 8, 2008]
Western leaders have responded with nothing more than hollow words to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili’s cries for help in repelling the Russian invasion of his country….
And no one knew this would be the case more than Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. That is why he made this Clausewitzian move to invade and occupy almost half of Georgia while engaging Western leaders in a diversionary war of words….
Putin’s message to Georgia and other former Republics of the former Soviet Union (like Ukraine) is crystal clear, namely: If you think you’re so far beyond Russia’s Cold-War sphere of influence that you can rub your political and military alliances with the West in our face, think again!
Accordingly, I predict that it’s only a matter of time before these two (de facto independent) provinces [namely South Ossetia and Abkhazia] formally reunite with their Mother Russia.
[With mission accomplished in Georgia, Putin orders ceasefire, The iPINIONS Journal, August 13, 2008]
Enough said?
Well, just for the record, Bush’s effort to lead a coalition of the willing to punish Russia for its “illegal aggression” against Georgia reeks of such hypocrisy and double-standards that I suspect he’ll get even fewer countries to sign on than he got for his coalition of the willing to invade Iraq.
I have no doubt that Putin would like to do to Saakashvili what Bush did to Saddam Hussein – only without bothering with the Western-style show trial.
And, despite the school-yard rhetoric about choosing sides, I have no doubt that Bush and other Western leaders will eventually eat their words, accept whatever Russia does with Georgia and continue their uneasy regard for Putin as an indispensable international statesman.
In the meantime, however, it behooves them to do now what Bush urged them, to no avail, to do earlier this year: admit Ukraine to NATO (and do the same for any of the other former republics of the Soviet Union that petitions for admission into this Western military alliance). Because only NATO – with its “attack against one is an attack against all” governing principle – can check Putin’s military aggression in Eastern Europe.
And if he resorts again to using Russia’s supply of natural gas in an effort to blackmail his neighbours into submission, then Europe and the US can respond by freezing the hundreds of billions he and his cabal of Kremlin oligarchs have secreted in Western banks. Checkmate!
After eight years in power, Putin has secretly accumulated more than $40bn. The sum would make him Russia’s (and Europe’s) richest man.
[Putin, the Kremlin power struggle and the $40bn fortune, The London Guardian, December 21, 2007]
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