Why Did The Georgians Invade South Ossetia On August 7?



(image via nyrb)

The timing, said Shakespeare's Hamlet (the richest psychological portrait in Western literature), is everything. How interesting then that the timing of what historians of the future may look backward and acknowledge as the precise, perceptible moment the center of global power shifted eastward hinges on the question of strategic timing in Eastern Europe (a region so many of the West's problems in the past century have begun). Georgia today released mobile phone call intercepts that they say prove Russian tanks and troops entered Georgia 20 hours before the start of Georgia's attack that Russia said forced it to begin its offensive.

George Friedman, who is the founder and CEO of Stratfor, a private intelligence company publishing geopolitical and security analysis, begins his essay for The New York Review of Books:

"The Russian invasion of Georgia has not changed the balance of power in Eurasia. It has simply announced that the balance of power had already shifted. The United States has been absorbed in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as potential conflict with Iran and a destabilizing situation in Pakistan. It has no strategic ground forces in reserve and is in no position to intervene on the Russian periphery. This has opened an opportunity for the Russians to reassert their influence in the former Soviet sphere. Moscow did not have to concern itself with the potential response of the United States or Europe; hence, the balance of power had already shifted, and it was up to the Russians when to make this public. They did that on August 8."

Powerful stuff. Friedman also asks a question that The Corsair has wondered about for about a month: Why did the Georgians invade South Ossetia on August 7? It seemed, considering all the timing options, absurdly hasty.

The question of the timing -- why August 7th? -- is particularly important today as From The New York Review of Books, September 25, 2008:

"Why did the Georgians choose to invade South Ossetia on August 7? There had been a great deal of shelling by the South Ossetians of Georgian villages for the previous three nights, but while possibly more intense than usual, such artillery exchanges were routine. The Georgians might not have fought well, but they committed fairly substantial forces that must have taken at the very least several days to deploy and supply. Georgia's move was deliberate.

"The United States is Georgia's closest ally. It maintained about 130 military advisers in Georgia, along with civilian advisers, contractors involved in all aspects of the Georgian government, and people doing business there. (The United States conducted joint exercises with Georgian troops in July, with over a thousand US troops deployed. The Russians carried out parallel exercises in response. US troops withdrew. The Russian maneuver force remained in position and formed the core of the invading force.) It is inconceivable that the Americans were unaware of Georgia's mobilization and intentions. It is also inconceivable that the Americans were unaware that the Russians had deployed substantial forces on the South Ossetian border. US technical intelligence, from satellite imagery and signals intelligence to unmanned aerial vehicles, could not miss the fact that thousands of Russian troops were moving to forward positions. The Russians clearly knew that the Georgians were ready to move. How could the United States not be aware of the Russians? Indeed, given the deployments of Russian troops, how could intelligence analysts have missed the possibility that Russia had laid a trap, hoping for a Georgian invasion to justify its own counterattack?

"It is difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their attack against US wishes. The Georgians rely on the United States, and they were in no position to defy it. This leaves two possibilities. The first is a huge breakdown in intelligence, in which the United States either was unaware of the deployments of Russian forces or knew of them but—along with the Georgians—miscalculated Russia's intentions. The second is that the United States, along with other countries, has viewed Russia through the prism of the 1990s, when its military was in shambles and its government was paralyzed. The United States has not seen Russia make a decisive military move beyond its borders since the Afghan war of the 1970s and 1980s. The Russians had systematically avoided such moves for years. The United States had assumed that they would not risk the consequences of an invasion.

"If that was the case, then it points to the central reality of this situation: the Russians had changed dramatically, along with the balance of power in the region."

We cannot fail to note that today, alas, the pro-Western government in The Ukraine collapsed, further signalling the center of global power is shifting from the West to the East. George Friedman's new book, The Next Hundred Years: A Forecast For The 21st Century, will be published in January 2009