ubernoir wrote:

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown says there is "no justification" for Russia's military action in Georgia.

I am not convinced that there is "no justification" for Russia's actions but it has not been a limited or proportionate response and the Georgian leader was either being bloody stupid in starting military action or expected the West to come to his aid and was trying to manipulate us. This sort of brinkmanship by the Georgian government is extremely dangerous. However the Russian military has been let off the leash and the Russians should negotiate not flatten Georgia. Talk at the UN by the US about Russia invading sovereign nations sounds hypocritical after Iraq but something needs to be said and the violence needs to be brought to a stop. If South Ossetia wants to be independent like Kosovo then so be it. However the Chechnyans didn't get that choice so it is extremely hypocritical of the Russians to argue the case now and self serving.

The situation makes the Caucusus seem like the Balkans at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century with tiny states playing very dangerous games thus extending an invitation to join NATO to Georgia becomes extremely dangerous and a short cut to a global conflagration. Do we have to repeat history and get drawn into their petty vicious squabbles? Repeating the Great Powers games of previous eras is stupid and resulted to 2 World Wars. Russia is reasserting its military power. Our best long term strategy is to stop fueling their economy which is only propped up by oil and natural gas. Short term there is a lot of nationalism in play in the region and Russian pride. The horse we have in this race is stability. The only meaningful weapon we have are sanctions and neither Europe or America is placed or ready to use that weapon in a meaningful way we have to start acting to change that situation. We are largely impotent to respond but we note their behaviour and should start being a little more frosty to the Russians and more frosty to those who seek to manipulate us in their conflicts with Russia. At the moment there is a buffer between NATO and Russia and I think we need to put some diplomatic effort into maintaining that buffer rather than eroding it with invites to NATO.

Putin and his boys are going to retake the entire CIS, one nation at a time. Why shouldn't they? Whats stopping them?

Jello wrote:

ubernoir wrote:

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown says there is "no justification" for Russia's military action in Georgia.

I am not convinced that there is "no justification" for Russia's actions but it has not been a limited or proportionate response and the Georgian leader was either being bloody stupid in starting military action or expected the West to come to his aid and was trying to manipulate us. This sort of brinkmanship by the Georgian government is extremely dangerous. However the Russian military has been let off the leash and the Russians should negotiate not flatten Georgia. Talk at the UN by the US about Russia invading sovereign nations sounds hypocritical after Iraq but something needs to be said and the violence needs to be brought to a stop. If South Ossetia wants to be independent like Kosovo then so be it. However the Chechnyans didn't get that choice so it is extremely hypocritical of the Russians to argue the case now and self serving.

The situation makes the Caucusus seem like the Balkans at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century with tiny states playing very dangerous games thus extending an invitation to join NATO to Georgia becomes extremely dangerous and a short cut to a global conflagration. Do we have to repeat history and get drawn into their petty vicious squabbles? Repeating the Great Powers games of previous eras is stupid and resulted to 2 World Wars. Russia is reasserting its military power. Our best long term strategy is to stop fueling their economy which is only propped up by oil and natural gas. Short term there is a lot of nationalism in play in the region and Russian pride. The horse we have in this race is stability. The only meaningful weapon we have are sanctions and neither Europe or America is placed or ready to use that weapon in a meaningful way we have to start acting to change that situation. We are largely impotent to respond but we note their behaviour and should start being a little more frosty to the Russians and more frosty to those who seek to manipulate us in their conflicts with Russia. At the moment there is a buffer between NATO and Russia and I think we need to put some diplomatic effort into maintaining that buffer rather than eroding it with invites to NATO.

Putin and his boys are going to retake the entire CIS, one nation at a time. Why shouldn't they? Whats stopping them?

nothing is stopping them it's like a mixure of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the invasion of the Sudetenland in 1938 and without pause this time the rest of Czechoslovakia. Regime change by force is as President Bush just said completely unacceptable (although he seems not to see any irony in his saying that). The only stick as I said we have, other than military force which is impossible against a nuclear power, are economic sanctions but the only sanctions which would hurt the Russians are oil and gas but that's not going to happen as I said. I'd start with throwing them out of the G8 and follow that by calling in some of the loans and start looking at some symbolic sanctions. But no we can't stop them. The mask has fallen. Welcome to the second Cold War.