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Totten's Report on the Georgia/Russia War


MSBoxer

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For those that don't know Michael Totten is a journalist who has been covering the Iraq war for the last several years. He has now posted background information on the recent actions in Georgia.

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/08/the-truth-about-1.php

"TBILISI, GEORGIA – Virtually everyone believes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili foolishly provoked a Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, when he sent troops into the breakaway district of South Ossetia. “The warfare began Aug. 7 when Georgia launched a barrage targeting South Ossetia,” the Associated Press reported over the weekend in typical fashion.

Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn't start it on August 7, nor on any other date. "

Very interesting read, with just enough history to help those unfamiliar with this region.

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This just in: Russia recognizes the independance of South Ossetia and Abkhazia:

The Plot Thickens

"This is not an easy choice to make, but it represents the only possibility to save human lives," Medvedev said Tuesday in a televised address.

Ummm, huh? Seems like the greatest possibility to lose human lives, as it will only encourage more fighting.

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Why will it encourage more fighting at all, let along be "the greatest possibility to lose human lives"??

Certainly Georgia will not be encouraged to attack again will it? will it encourage Russia to attack? That wouldn't necessarily cost the "greatest possible" toll of life, since Georgia palpably can't defend itself.

Western recognition of the unilateral independance of Kossovo doesn't seem to have cost many lives so far - why would this be different?

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Only if you expect Georgia to allow those territories to go their own way, with no possibility of an invasion anytime in the near (or middle) future. Given the region's history, I'm not so optimistic as you seem to be. Your second sentence (minus the question marks) seems the most likely outcome, to me. The question is, will it be instigated by Georgian government troops or "militias", and how far down the road.

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The source of that report, Patrick Worms, is a very smart man. He has a great sense of humor, he is infinitely patient, and his is charming. Way back when, he walked with the mujahaddin. However, right now he earns his living as a paid media representative of the Saakashvili government. Worms' job, and he does it quite well, is to put forward the Saakashvili point of view to the western media. Citing Patrick Worms as a reliable and unbiased source of current events in Georgia, as knowledgable as Patrick is, without corroboration is irresponsible journalism.

The article does just that. The author further was in Georgia for the first time, worked through a translator, and did not speak with any Ossetians. That to me makes his conclusions suspect.

In my opinion, the reason the media generally has made Saakashvili the villian in this war, is that he is the guy that escalated. There had been small arms and mortar exchanges for months, and there is no question that the Ossetians/Russians were attempting to turn a roughly stable ceasefire line into a hot one.

But it was Saakashvili, and no one else, that chose to expand the shooting. After Ossetian gunfire and mortar barrages on ethnic Georigan villages, Saakashvili's response was not to call for western peacekeepers, or take it to the UN, or yank his citizens off the ceasefire line because his army couldn't protect them.

Instead, Saakashvili ordered a ground assault into South Ossetia, and he backed it with howitzers and rocket artillery. In the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, there was roughly a regiment of solid Russian infantry, called "peacekeeper" but for practical purposes similar to contract (i.e., non-recruit) paratrooopers. Saakashvili chose to fire upon those uniformed Russian troops, and the evidence is those Russians had not been firing on the Georgians.

What would the Americans do if the Cubans opened fire on Guantameno with artillery? What fool opens fire on uniformed Russian infantry, and expects no response?

Saakashvili compounded his mistake by committing a series of military errors. He assumed his artillery would force the Russian peacekeepers out of Tskhinvali. Wrong, they took casualties but held. He assumed his air force could close the Roki tunnel and so slow down Russian reinforcement. Wrong, the Russian shot both planes down. He assumed Russians would respond locally, and not escalate themselves. Wrong, the Russians broke out of South Ossetia on about day for into Georgia proper, they bombed transport links, they landed in the port Poti and sank the Georgian fleet, and they assisted the Abkhazians in capturing the Kodori Gorge.

Saakashvili's (and so Worm's) position is, the Russian peacekeepers were not guaranteeing peace, they were allowing the Ossetians to shoot across the ceasefire line, therefore, the Russians were complicit in starting the shooting. That's probably so. But just because you are legally right, does not mean you embark on a stupid, indeed suicicidal war. That is precisely what Saakashvili did.

His excuse "We didn't expect the Russians to respond like that" is either a lie, or proof of his incompetence.

What other possible response could there have been, after Russian infantry started taking casualties from a conventional, and fairly intense, Georgian army artillery barrage, followed by a Georgian advance on Russian positions?

P.S. I would say any one who posts a picture of the Tbilisi Marriot and Shota Rustaveli street, and the top tourist site the Mskheta castle, as a bona fides of visiting the Georgia conflict zone, is suspect. I would want to see pictures from the field, particularly of Georgian refugees, Russian tanks, damages buildings, and so on.

I would say that a person who flies into Tbilisi, stays at the Marriot, chats with Saakashvili's top media flank, and then claims he has the inside skinny on Georgia is not a very professional journalist, and I would take whatever he writes with a huge grain of salt.

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Von Lucke you haven't answered why you think recognition will maximise future bloodshed.

I expect Georgia to let those territories alone for the forseable future at least.

The russian army will be in Sth Ossetia for a long time now, in greater strength than before, and there are no Georgians left there, so I really don't see any Georgia causing any great problems unless they want to provoke another invasion by Russia.

Do you think they will?

Perhaps Russia will manufacture a reason to invade Georgia - but that's a possibility that exists whether they recognise Sth Ossetia & Abkhazia or not.

So as I see it the recognition makes absolutely no difference to the possibility of future bloodshed.

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If there is, I'd love to see it. You might be able to make the arguement that somewhere, somehow, some Ossetian militia crossed the line - although of course that had happened before. But the first big troop movement AFAIK was the Georgians driving into South Ossetia. The Russians in the beginning had only the peacekeeper infantry there, they certainly weren't attacking. All the evidence I have seen indicates the border was hot for quite a while, got really hot in the beginning of August and it was probably the Ossetians doing it, and then on August 6 Saakashvili sends troops to capture South Ossetia, to coincide with the opening day of the Olympics. My read is he was shooting for a fait accompli and ran aground when the Russian infantry decided it wasn't as impressed with the Georgian artillery, as the Georgian President was.

What Saakashvili says on CNN or anywhere else has to be compared closely with the facts before you start making conclusions. Almost always there is a grain of truth, but also almost always there are things the Georgians leave out. One of the incidents in the lead-up to the war, for instance, was the Georgian arrest of some Russian service personnel in the ceasefire zone; the Russian peacekeepers had been sneaking anti-tank missiles to the Ossetians. A fair cop, but certainly something that really would irritate Moscow, and when Saakashvili does his song and dance about the border provocations he usually leaves out the stuff the Georgians did to inflame the situation.

Again, this is not to say the Russians and Ossetians didn't bait him. They did, big time. But Saakashvili is the one that took the bait, and look at his country now.

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Totten's been around, and is known for accurate on the scene reporting, if all he did was sit in hotels and sip tea I'd be very surprised.

I think you may have missed this part -

You should always be careful with the version of events told by someone on government payroll even when the government is as friendly and democratic as Georgia's. I was lucky, though, that another regional expert, author and academic Thomas Goltz, was present during Worms' briefing to me and signed off on it as completely accurate aside from one tiny quibble.
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Sven,

As a matter of fact I did. Lots of times. The Russians said the Georgians started it, and that they didn't exit South Ossetia and enter Georgia until day 3 of the war.

Dirtweasle,

I saw that part. It might be revealing if you read the comments on the article, on Totten's blog page. Some of the respondents ask some pretty pointed questions, and Totten gets pretty insulting in a couple of his responses.

Goltz is experienced in the region, but by some accounts - including his own book Azerbaijan Diary - he is not without anti-Russian bias. But that's not really the big problem with taking the Worms' account at face value, to my mind.

To my mind, the big problem with Patten's article is that the huge question of WTF the Georgians were thinking, opening fire with artillery on the Russians, is glossed over. That Georgian act, which triggered overwhelming retaliation, is presented as a natural result of the flow of events, and a reasonable Georgian response to the situation. It is spun as, if I remember the text right "Georgia's best chance" or more generally "something had to be done, and that was the only shot we had." That assumes the Georgians had a chance, that the Georgians fighting on any terms made sense, and that the Georgians had no other options than agreeing to a conventional war against a Russia run by the likes of Putin and Medvedev. No one, probably, knows better how nasty the Russians can be than the Georgians.

As to where Totten was and was not, and how much he has been around, there are these points:

- He posted, generally, pictures of the safest, nicest, prettiest, most western-looking part of all Georgia. I find this suspicious. The country is really very poor, and about a half-kilometer the center of Tbilisi this is apparent. If his photographs don't reflect that, one might wonder, did he go far from the center of Tbilisi. I have to wonder why a blogger with a rep for war reporting didn't post any shots of beat-up buildings, refugees, poor people, Georgian cops goofing off, Russian soldiers doing their thing. All those images are easy to get in Georgia. So you might wonder why he posted a picture of that ex-pat oasis, the Marriot - a place with the highest prices in all Georgia, where a room costs the equivalent of about three or four months of a Georgian' average salary, if he has one. I would say that is not really representative of the country.

- The "governments" of Abkhazia and Ossetia are readily accessible and happy to take phone calls from foreign reporters. The Russians high level are a pain but their soldiers an junior officers will talk to most journos provided it's not a mob scene or the reporter isn't a jerk. Totten, apparently, did not do any of this legwork.

An Abkhazian spokesman would have had several issues with the Georgian pitch, starting with the question why the Christian Georgians believe they have the right to rule the Moslem Abkhaz, and for that matter make Abkhaz children learn Georgian in school. An Abkhaz would point out the region's economy depends on Russian tourists, and Saakashvili's anti-Russian policies are killing the Abkhaz economy. And so on, there are holes in the Abkhaz arguents too, but it takes a pretty impressive leap of trust to conclude that one side in any Caucasus dispute, is all good guys. Totten however has that kind of faith in the Georgian leadership.

- Unless the Saakashvili government has a monopoly on the truth, has never told a lie, and is by definition morally superior, one might wonder at a reporter accepting the line pitched by the Saakashvili government's paid spokesman at face value. Totten, apparently, does precisely that.

- Totten had not just dropped in for the first time in Georgia, not even the first time in the Caucasus, but by his own admission the first time in the former Soviet Union. I would say that is not the kind of background I would want in a person, who has taken on the job of deciding who in that place is fibbing, and who is telling the truth, in the former Soviet Union - a place where honesty isn't particularly valued. A person like that, as disconnected from the region as that, would be pretty easy to fool, were a person from that place inclined to lie.

- By his own admission, Totten could only communicate with the locals through a translator. I'll be happy to go off on a diatribe pointing out the details, but put simply, it is only possible to report the painfully obvious through a translator. Understanding nuance - like judging whether the Georgian government post-war spin holds water or is full of sheep offal - requires a local language plus time in country.

- But I think the clincher is Totten's arguement "You should always be careful with the version of events told by someone on government payroll even when the government is as friendly and democratic as Georgia's."

That is, journalistically speaking, an infantile and almost stunningly unprofessional statement.

Any reporter with even a shred of experience with non-democratic regimes will tell you, the democratic ones are by far the more effective liars. Not the authoritarian ones. The authoritarian regimes are clumsy and easy to contradict, and at the end of the day they don't care much what the world thinks, just the official truth inside the country.

It's the governments that are used to the media and manipulating it that are hard to nail down. I.e., the democratic ones.

By definition, assertions by a democratic regime friendly to the US carry a huge likelihood of spin and media manipulation. After all, that is something the government did, almost certainly, to get into power in the first place. Maybe they are not liars, but by definition they got to where they are by shaping information passed to the media.

If Totten actually believes that democracy and friendliness to the US makes a foreign government more reliable in its statements, he is either incredibly naiive, or is assuming his readers are a bunch of fools. It is counter-intuitive, and how a person with supposedly lots of experience overseas could come to that kind of goofy conclusion, is beyond me.

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Any reporter with even a shred of experience with non-democratic regimes will tell you, the democratic ones are by far the more effective liars. Not the authoritarian ones. The authoritarian regimes are clumsy and easy to contradict, and at the end of the day they don't care much what the world thinks, just the official truth inside the country.

thats quite a quote

Boris

London

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To my mind, the big problem with Patten's article is that the huge question of WTF the Georgians were thinking, opening fire with artillery on the Russians, is glossed over.

When you view this in the context of the fact that they knew that:

A Russian Armored column was at various times heading for, in, and crossed, the Roki tunnel

-and-

Commando raid on bridge, which purportedly destroyed 15 armored vehicles and delayed the Russian column 24-48 hours.

-and-

Air strike on the tunnel mouth on the Georgia side.

After you see that, you get to what the Georgians may have been thinking:

1. We destroy the Roki tunnel, cutting the Russians 'peacekeepers' off from reinforcement

2. We pound the piss out of them with artillery

So, the questions are:

Is that the best plan they could come up with in 24-48 hours?

Let's say the Georgians were able to seal the tunnel, were they expecting the Russian force to roll over and surrender after an artillery barrage?

Why didn't they AT mine the roads too?

Why doesn't Georgia have any AT weapons?

I would love someone to lay out a time line of all of these events, so we can see if it all lines up.

-When was the failed air strike on the tunnel?

-When was the raid to blow the bridge?

-Was the artillery barrage before or after the Russians emerged on the Ossetian side of the tunnel???

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Sven,

As a matter of fact I did. Lots of times. The Russians said the Georgians started it, and that they didn't exit South Ossetia and enter Georgia until day 3 of the war.

Yes that we do know, but I was referring to the time the Russians got they marching orders to enter Georgia through the Roki tunnel. Was it before or after the Georgian artillery barrage on South Ossetia? Arranging a spontaneous nocturnal motor march into a neighbouring country during senior commands off-duty hours and reaching the outskirts of Tskhinvali on friday afternoon 8.8. 14 hours later seems like a remarkable feat. I just don't buy it, to be frank.

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Sven,

You make an excellent point. The standard answer the Russians gave when they first got into Georgia was "we've been driving for 3 (or 4) days. If you count backwards, it works out elements of 17th Mech began the move from Chechnya to South Ossetia almost precisely at the same time the Georgians began their assault on South Ossetia. Which is of course impressive reaction speed - and by most standards (including mine) strong proof the Russians were ready to intervene, that Saakashvili's attack did not catch them by surprise. It seems quite possible that, at the moment the Georgians kicked off their assault, Russian motor rifle units (heck, and naval units) already were in motion towards Georgia.

So that begs the question, how did the Russians know what the Georgians were going to do, ahead of time? It's clear they had a reaction plan all set and ready to go, but maybe that was just good planning. It seems clear the Ossetians and behind them the Russians were trying to provoke a Georgian response. And then there is the spy factor - this is the Caucasus, the Georgia is a poor place, Saakashvili has enemies, and Russian intelligence links into the region are ancient. I would say the chances of a Kremlin mole somewhere in Saakashvili's government is a foregone conclusion, and a highly-placed one is pretty possible. Maybe Saakashvili's war plan got leaked - were that the case, that would go some ways towards explaining how the Russians responded so quickly.

Certainly, the appearance of a Russian naval element able to land marines in Abkhazia on the 2nd or 3rd day of the way (I forget which) is an amazing achievement, if you assume the Russians had no idea what was coming. It takes a day for warships to cross the Black Sea and it's not like Russian marines in Sevastopol sit in their landing ships 24/7 with their stuff; loading takes time too.

So it seems clear the Russians were ready to attack, or if you use their POV to counterattack.

Easy-V I think asks some good questions as well:

Is that the best plan they could come up with in 24-48 hours?

This is just my opinion, but I doubt it. Why try and stop the Russians, by trying to grab South Ossetia with the Russians coming right at you? If your goal is defending the nation, wouldn't it make more sense to disperse your army in ethnic Georgian territory, make the Russians pay to fight through the towns, get the world on your side, and force the Russians to commit to a major war? And critically, if you are defending Georgia proper from a proper Georgian invasion maybe the Georgian army will fight.

Operationally, after all, it's not like the Roki tunnel is the only route into Georgia from Russia, there is the tunnel by Kazbegi mountain, and of course the entire Georgian west is open to naval landings and/or attacks via Abkhazia. The Saakasvhili government of course asserts that "closing the Roki tunnel was our only chance to stop the Russians."

But that's ludicrious, that assertion assumes that once the tunnel is closed, the Russians would neither seek an alternate route nor escalate. It also assumes that South Ossetia is fantastic defensive terrain, and Georgia is terrible defensive terrain. In fact, Georgia south Ossetia is high hills, towns and villages in the valleys, river cuts and fields. It is excellent terrain for ATGM, you can get 2+ km shots anywhere you look, there are plenty of places for infantry to hide, this is not the Iraqi desert, not even close.

What's more, the Georgians had roughly the same number of tanks as the Russians brought to the table - had those tanks done the reverse slope/mobile defense deal, and the Georgian crews been roughly equivalent to the Russians, it's a pretty good bet the armor battle would have chewed both sides up. CMSF teaches us - T-72 vs. T-72 is just bloody.

The Georgians didn't even attempt a conventional defense. Their strategy was, try and capture South Ossetia, and when that didn't work run from the Russian army.

To me, the way things played out argues strongly that the Georgian army was expecting to grab South Ossetia against very little resistance. Their posture was never defensive. Once the prospect of fighting defensive battles against Russians became clear, the morale of the Georgian army fell apart.

What President considers going to war, with an army like that?

Let's say the Georgians were able to seal the tunnel, were they expecting the Russian force to roll over and surrender after an artillery barrage?

If one assumes that Saakashvili was trying to grab South Ossetia - a Georgian province - back from Russian control, then that seems to have been the strategy. The idea seems to have been, we will close the tunnel, present overwhelming force to the Russian infantry in Tskhinvali, and the Russians would either give up or fall apart underneath the Georgian artillery barrage. The Georgian infantry sent towards Tskhinvali was I have read the worst of the army's 3 infantry brigades, it was based in Gori and had been last on the totem pole for training with the Americans, supply, and stuff like that. Yet this is the force Saakashvili sends at the Russian peacekeepers, who had prepared positions in and around the town, and were by Russian standards very solid toops.

The Georgians deployed about 80 artillery pieces vs. Tskhinvali, about half rocket launchers and half SP guns. There were about 1,500 Russian infantrymen, dispersed, in their holes and bomb shelters.

What fool assumes that kind of artillery firepower could neutralize that kind of infantry force?

Yet the entire Georgian plan - even if everything the Saakashvili government is the pure unadulterated truth - depended on the Georgians somehow wiping out or otherwise getting rid of the Russian infantry in Tskhinvali, and what's more doing it quickly.

You didn't have to be Napoleon to realize that betting Russian infantry won't hold up under an artillery bombardment, is a really flawed strategy.

The Totten article however accepts without questioning the Georgian assumption that, had they somehow closed the Roki tunnel, the Russians in Tskhinvali would have somehow magically dissolved.

Why didn't they AT mine the roads too?

- Because the Georgians were stupid and weren't prepared for a Russian attack?

- Because the Georgian army is not as good as Saakashvili would like us to believe, for all its US training it has not so much discipline and considers itself mostly an instrument of domestic politics rather than an organization that should sometimes fight and die to defend the nation.

- Because Georgian army morale fell apart the moment the Russian intervention became obvious, and they ran, and running troops do not emplace AT mines.

- Because civil society considers mines an abhorrent weapon, and Georgia as a western nation with European values would never emplace mines.

Take your pick. I would assume the Saakashvili government would go for the last option.

Why doesn't Georgia have any AT weapons?

Well, they do/did have plenty of tanks quite capable of shooting up the Russian ones. There in terms of armor was technical parity, both sides had about 50 - 100 upgraded T-72, and maybe twice to three times that of T-72/62/55. Air was not a serious issue, the Georgian ADA kept most of the Russian ground strike at a distance and shot them down sometimes.

So you have to ask, how come there was no armor battle?

Well, one possibility is that since 2002 the Georgian army has been training not for conventional combined arms warfare, but rather raising mostly infantry battalions that went through a rough equivalent of US basic training. Some of that infantry had experience clearing other Georgian provinces controlled by bandits or minor separatists, and of course about 1/3 of the Georgian infantry has fantastic experience in fighting insurgencies in Iraq, and by all accounts the Georgians in Iraq are excellent troops.

Not much help when the threat is a conventional air/sea/land attack by Russia, of course.

So again one has to ask the question, who goes to war with Russia with an army basically trained to clear villages of bandits, and with the best 3rd of the army in Iraq?

The Georgians say, of course, "we weren't expecting the war". All fine and good, but then you have to wonder why in the world, if they weren't expecting a war, did they bet their nation's future on an minicule attack on the Roki tunnel, and the assumption a regiment of Russian paratrooper-type infantry would roll over and play dead?

The only rational Georgian strategy was not go to war, to take it to the UN, to suck up the civilian losses and fight the Russians in the media. The moment the war goes hot, the Georgians lose. And again, it was the Georgians that spent more than 24 hours firing artillery on Tskhinvali, before Russian reinforcements reached South Ossetia or Abkhazia.

I would love someone to lay out a time line of all of these events, so we can see if it all lines up.

-When was the failed air strike on the tunnel?

First day of the war, on Thursday night-Friday morning.

-When was the raid to blow the bridge?

If you're talking about the RR bridge connecting Tbilisi and Poti, that was on Monday, the last day of actual shooting.

-Was the artillery barrage before or after the Russians emerged on the Ossetian side of the tunnel???

By every account I have seen, before. Even if you take the Saakashvili people at face value, their admitted strategy was grab South Ossetia before the Russian reinforcements could arrive. Hence the failed attempt to bomb the Roki tunnel (2 Su-25 directly into Russia's southern ADA network, at the most obvious target in the entire theater. The Saakashvili people would have us believe this was a rational move with real chances of success.)

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The study of gunnery is pure mathematics, it can be counted tube by tube basis how many pieces of artillery is needed to inflict a wanted outcome upon the opposing infantry, ranging from slight discomfort and ill feeling towards the enemy, to a total destruction of the opposing troops, whether field fortified or not.

Basic doctrinal stuff in the former Soviet Sphere, in which the Georgians and their military and political leadership are well versed of, I'd believe.

Actually nobody cares what the Georgians themselves did, short of genocide, of course. And there's no independent or official backing for these pre-conflict Russian claims of the Georgians perpetrating ethnic cleansing or genocide in a vein of Slobodan Milosevic or Radocan Karadzic. Quite frankly, it's a prefabricated falsehood by the FSB/SVR machinery, meant for their internal rabble-rousing purposes and international "useful idiot" consumption.

As immature as Mr. Saakashvili, his cabinet and his nation as a whole may be on their path to democracy and 'rule of law' in the Dworkinian sense, they have done more in just ten years than the whole Russian ethnocity during their thousand year history. There should be no misunderstanding about this key point, at the very core of the international system. Even if hampered in their quest because of internal strife and conflict, of which a large part can easily be traced back to former KGB and subsequently to FSB/SVR operations to destabilizete the Region.

Business is business, of course, but I think Mr. Putin has outplayed his hand in this sense. All indications seems to point to that direction.

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