Totten's Report on the Georgia/Russia War

[Stalins Organ]

Those of us that can count, however, might well assume that if Georgia gets a 1 billion dollar bump to its civilian budget from the outside, that's 1 billion clams freed up inside Georgia to be spent on whatever gee-whiz weapons Misha decides he likes this week.

Or it might not - more likely it will enable Georgia to keep spending jsut as much on its military as it did before, rather than hanving to divert some of that to rebuilding.

So effectively it will let the soldiers keep training instead of having to rebuild roads, bridges and buildings.

Of course we've also seen the usefulness of Georgian military training.....

[John Kettler]

Here's a thought provoking article comparing and contrasting defector FOXBAT pilot Viktor Belenko's take on Russian military preparedness with what was observed in Georgia. There are numerous similiarities not only to what he reports but to behavior exhibited by the Red Army in Germany during WW II regarding the taking of property. Further, there are some withering assessments regarding the Russian Air force, its losses to the Georgian air defenses, why that happened and the fact that the recon BACKFIRE was crewed by instructors, there not being sufficient trained crew to fly it otherwise. Even more interesting is that the Georgian air defenses so shattered morale that pilots even refused bonuses rather than face them. This somewhat parallels the temporary mutiny of the B-52 crews during Linebacker II when the mission planners wanted to keep using the same deadly SAM infested routes, but the crews refused to fly until wholly new tactics were devised.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/821gzfgw.asp?pg=1

This pub, BTW, definitely has an axe to grind, as seen here.

http://earthboppin.net/talkshop/international/messages/46197.html

Regards,

John Kettler

[costard]

yup, fluff piece. Not a single item of hard data. Quality reporting, that.

[John Kettler]

Russia's chief investigator has revealed countries of origin and other details for foreign fighters involved in the Georgia fray. U.S. is one of those listed and isn't the only NATO member named as having people involved.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081124/ts_nm/us_georgia_ossetia_mercenaries

Regards,

John Kettler

[Sergei]

"There were also two snipers ... one from Ukraine and I believe a Latvian woman," he said.

I, for one, want to see Latvian women snipers in CM:SF.

(that's her rifle at the back wall)

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Bigduke6]

Yeah, the smart woman in Georgia politics Nino Bourdzhanadze just announced a new Georgian political party with the main goal of making Georgian politics more or less responsible, primarily by kicking Saakashvili out of office by democratic means. His only hope is to hold on to term end by 2012, but I bet they get the constitution changed before that. Saakashvili used to be popular, but now plenty of people hate him, and the economy is going to heck.

As to the "foreign fighters" in Georgia, well, consider the source. I wouldn't take the word of the Russian Foreign Ministry that the sun rose in the East this morning, without independant corroboration. In my experience, if the Russian government says something, the only use one can get from its comments is a tea leaf reading: You know the statement has to be some form of a lie so the trick is to use it to get closer to the truth.

In this case, I think Russia claiming "foreign fighters" were on the Georgian side is based on several Russian realities:

1. Russia's leadership right now sees a need to build up domestic fears of an international coalition scheming to fight Russia at every turn.

2. Russia's military performed competently but clearly with nothing like the efficiency of the Americans, and so it there is domestic political expediency in claiming NATO was backing up Georgia, that makes the performance of the Russian military seem better.

3. Russia's military in fact beat up on a military one twentieth its size, and it is hard to stoke the fires of domestic patriotism if you are an NFL team beating up on a elementary school squad.

4. Russian military chauvenism assumes most Caucausian nations cannot or will not fight, and when they do fight the Russians inherently are more competent. In fact, this actually turned out to be mostly the case for the Georgians; but there were exceptions, particularly the Georgian air defence and to a lesser extent artillery. The standard Russian explaination for any military comptetence on the part of Caucausians is, they hired "mercenaries" from nationalities the Russians consider better fighters than Caucasians: particularly Balts and Ukrainians. This plays well to Russian racism (the assumption only fair-skinned, mostly blond ethnicities fight well) and Russian hegemonism (the thinking is that Russia's western neighbors the Balts and the Ukrainians are inherently antagonistic towards Russia and so should for Russia's safety be dominated by Russia.)

5. Given the past decade and a half of history, almost any Russian action in the Caucauses can be justified to the Russian public, provided the enemy includes Chechens (who, by way of exception, are Caucausian but considered by Russians to be the best fighters of all, which neatly (if not quite accurately) helps explain why huge Russia has had so much trouble repressing the Chechen insurgency).

In other words, my read of that Russian government statement is, they are trying first and foremost to use the war to hype up the Russian population to support more strong-armed Russian foreign policy.

As to the reality, well, I'd be willing to bet a few Georgians with dual passports were on hand in uniform somewhere, but I doubt 10 - 20 people with dual passports constitutes massive foreign support. Same thing happens every time Israel has a war, several dozen Iraelis with double passports come home usually from the US to fight with their unit, and the Arab media goes nuts and starts yelling about how American troops now are fighting on the Israeli side in Palestine.

I'd also be willing to believe a few Ukrainian air defence technicians were in-country watching the Georgians operate the updated SAM-6 systems Kiev sold Tbilisi, and since those missiles deployed and crewed by Georgians apparently shot down about a half dozen Russian planes, the Russians are now jumping up and down about how the Ukrainians were operating the missile systems as somehow the Georgians were too stupid. See point (4) above.

As to Chechens fighting on the Georgian side, well, it is not exactly a secret that there is this valley inside Georgia called the Pankisi valley, it is inhabited by ethnic Chechens and their young men get drafted and have to serve in the Georgian army just like every one else. So you have to be clear about which Chechens it was that were supposedly fighting on the Georgian side - was it Georgian Chechens, or Russian Chechens who somehow had decided it was better for jihad to sneak across the mountains and the minefields and join up with the useless Georgian army to fight in a conventional war, than to just stay in Chechnya and kill Russians at home, and have a place to run.

The Russian claim Chechens fought on the Georgian side is especially ironic, when you consider the leading edge of the Russian shock troops that kicked the Georgians out of Tskhinvali's suburbs and later invaded Georgia, was none other than elements from Russia's Vostok and Zapad battalions: a pair of units of ethnic Chechens recruited in Chechnya to fight Chechens, and with the worst reputation for not taking prisoners or only taking prisoners to torture them to death. These were classic mercenaries; guys armed, paid, and equipped by the Russian army, in part because if the Russian army hadn't have done that, they would be insurgents fighting the Russian arm - as in fact many of them did until the Russians bought them out.

As to female snipers, that is an urban myth that's been bouncing around for generations. The idea is that whenever an organized army fights an insurgency, somehow the insurgents are all crappy shots and if one turns up that is, well that's a female sniper mercenary. That way the organized army preserves the fiction that only soldiers in organized armies can shoot straight. I suspect the concept of the mysterious female sniper dates back to the days of the German invasion of Belgium and Francs Tirailleurs, but at least it is as old as Vietnam, heck, you can see it repeated in Full Metal Jacket. Female Chechen snipers have been all the rage in Russian war movies for about the last decade; as depicted they are almost always young, pretty, clean, and fluent in Moscow-accented Russian. (How a woman like that every managed to obtain a fire arm never mind an SVD in an overwhelmingly male-dominated and gun-obscessed Chechen society, is never made clear.) Anyway, female snipers fighting on the Georgian side is just hokum, as far as I am concerned. Snipers are a whole lot more effective in movies than in actual wars.

So all in all what the Russian government served up I would call a fine pack of lies. But fortunately fair is fair, and the Georgian government also seems to be truth-challenged. Over the weekend Saakashvili and one of Poland's Kaczynski brothers took a field trip to the Ossetia border, the Saakashvili press people announced the Ossetians had fired up the convoy, and less than 12 hours later it was clear that the only thing that happened was that some one on the Georgian side of the line fired an AK into the air, the Ossetians and their Russian buddies didn't fire a shot - but that didn't stop the Georgians from lying through their teeth about it.

Friggen' goofballs. Saakashvili and Putin, they deserve each other. It's going to suck for the Russians if Nino gets into power, she's one of those tough high school teacher types, she doesn't take crap and has no use for macho posturing.

[Sergei]

As to female snipers, that is an urban myth that's been bouncing around for generations.

If you're wise, you don't mess with me bouncing my female snipers!!! :mad:

[costard]

Hey BD6, how's it hanging?

"4. Russian military chauvenism assumes most Caucausian nations cannot or will not fight, and when they do fight the Russians inherently are more competent. In fact, this actually turned out to be mostly the case for the Georgians; but there were exceptions, particularly the Georgian air defence and to a lesser extent artillery. The standard Russian explaination for any military comptetence on the part of Caucausians is, they hired "mercenaries" from nationalities the Russians consider better fighters than Caucasians: particularly Balts and Ukrainians. This plays well to Russian racism (the assumption only fair-skinned, mostly blond ethnicities fight well) and Russian hegemonism (the thinking is that Russia's western neighbors the Balts and the Ukrainians are inherently antagonistic towards Russia and so should for Russia's safety be dominated by Russia.)"

I find this difficult to believe - I can understand that the Russians were absolutely delighted that Georgia gave a conventional war for the Russian military to come along to and show off it's stomping ability (hell, the Yanks would be a much happier crew if someone gave them the same opportunity (e.g. GW1)). But the recent history of the Russian military is one of long, hard wars fought against guerillas supported by the local populace - in the Caucasus and regions thereabouts. Whilst I have no doubt that the Russians are at least as good as anyone else at believing their own press, it was in the western press that I first saw reports of Baltic nationals fighting in Georgia - a circumstance that does make some sense (to me).

If it is true that Russian leadership has seen the opportunity to grasp for more power with the exploitation of lies and the whipping up of nationalistic sentiment, then US foreign policy can be said to have been a complete, total f*ckup. Somehow it has managed to turn a moderating, rational leadership into a version of itself - self-obsessed, completely lacking in intellectual honesty and ignorant of the value of anything but power.

Where's Albright when you need her? - another schoolmarmish type (oh, and did anyone else note the civil war that was going on in the US State Department from about 2001-2007? The Albright clique went down fighting hard.)

[SSgt Viljuri]

How come the Estonian midgets don't get any mention? Their counterintelligence work is always first class.

I would guess that the Spetsnaz working for the GRU in the Leningrad military district are not pleased, though:Finland Sees Familiar Pattern in Photos From the Georgia Conflict / New York Times

[Bigduke6]

Hey Costard,

Things are cool, my cute little baby girl crawled for the first time yesterday, time to tape up the electrical outlets.

On the reports of foreign mercenaries in Georgia, take it from me, they were in the Russian/regional press first. Like, on something like the 3rd day of the war, the Georgian army is routed, the Russians are flying around bombing things, and I get this phone call from an editor in Kiev "Could you please check and maybe write a story about Ukrainian mercenaries fighting on the Georgian side?" Then I get a call from I think it was Berlin, they want to know about the Estonian snipers. It only sort of percolated into the major Western media later. (Like the part on how the Georgians started the war by bombarding Tskhinvali, that was no secret and it was widely reported at the time, but it seems like the West only figured it out a week or two ago.)

It was like everything that had been reported from the war before that - the Georgian invasion, the Katiusha and howitzer strikes against Tskhinvali, the Marine landings in Poti - all of that wasn't interesting, what was interesting was if maybe some rabid Ukrainian nationalists had flown to Georgia to fight while the rest of the Georgian army was running.

The idea of foreign mercenaries fighting Russians is pretty much an obscessive topic in the state-controlled Russian media. I mean, here they are, occupying Chechnya, and not kindly either. The Chechens are a nation that glorifies fighting, manhood, tradition, and never laying down to the Russians. Yet, when the Chechens kill some one (as they apparently did today, the mayor of Makhachkala died in a contract hit in front of his apartment building) the Russian media bends over backwards to make the perpetrators any one but the Chechens, who according to the official media really appreciate how Putin and Kadyrov had made Chechnya a "peaceful" place. The last thing the Russians can do is admit, that there are plenty of Chechens who would die before they accept orders from Russia.

(Of course, this is not to say unsupervised Chechens make for safe neighbors, there's plenty of evidence they don't. But since 2000 we don't have to worry about that.)

So anyway, I thought the Georgia mercenary story was a big waste of time, and I still do. The Georgians lost that war fair and square, no one helped them, it was all their fault. FWIW.

On the quality of past US foreign policy, I think I am safely on record in this forums as a long-time critic.

As to the present US foreign policy, the plan seems to be to send Hillary and Bill around the world for the photo ops and the useless Mideast peace talks, while this Marine general Jones runs the violent and security-related stuff out of the NSC, and Gates stays at DoD at least until the Americans are out of Iraq. I read somewhere that the plan is to have a foreign policy agreed upon by Democrats and Republicans, and to avoid to the maximum extent possible making foreign a partisan issue. So I'd say that's a step in the right direction.

But unless I miss my guess the new administration is going make the economy, jobs, and stuff like schools and health care the big priorities. Sounds good to me. I bet the defence budget really gets hacked, if not this year than the next.

Hey BD6, how's it hanging?

"4. Russian military chauvenism assumes most Caucausian nations cannot or will not fight, and when they do fight the Russians inherently are more competent. In fact, this actually turned out to be mostly the case for the Georgians; but there were exceptions, particularly the Georgian air defence and to a lesser extent artillery. The standard Russian explaination for any military comptetence on the part of Caucausians is, they hired "mercenaries" from nationalities the Russians consider better fighters than Caucasians: particularly Balts and Ukrainians. This plays well to Russian racism (the assumption only fair-skinned, mostly blond ethnicities fight well) and Russian hegemonism (the thinking is that Russia's western neighbors the Balts and the Ukrainians are inherently antagonistic towards Russia and so should for Russia's safety be dominated by Russia.)"

I find this difficult to believe - I can understand that the Russians were absolutely delighted that Georgia gave a conventional war for the Russian military to come along to and show off it's stomping ability (hell, the Yanks would be a much happier crew if someone gave them the same opportunity (e.g. GW1)). But the recent history of the Russian military is one of long, hard wars fought against guerillas supported by the local populace - in the Caucasus and regions thereabouts. Whilst I have no doubt that the Russians are at least as good as anyone else at believing their own press, it was in the western press that I first saw reports of Baltic nationals fighting in Georgia - a circumstance that does make some sense (to me).

If it is true that Russian leadership has seen the opportunity to grasp for more power with the exploitation of lies and the whipping up of nationalistic sentiment, then US foreign policy can be said to have been a complete, total f*ckup. Somehow it has managed to turn a moderating, rational leadership into a version of itself - self-obsessed, completely lacking in intellectual honesty and ignorant of the value of anything but power.

Where's Albright when you need her? - another schoolmarmish type (oh, and did anyone else note the civil war that was going on in the US State Department from about 2001-2007? The Albright clique went down fighting hard.)

[costard]

Congratulations! Mine isn't crawling yet - his parents are pushovers and he reckons rolling is just as good anyhow.

I reckon you're right about budget directions in the near future.

Mostly my personal feelings regarding the US foreign policy directions over the last few years have been about the idea that there are so many things the US is rightly admired for around the world: why, oh why did it go THIS way? And the only answer I can come up with that makes sense is that the human race is incapable of learning from it's history, it's members incapable of behaving rationally. Still, as I neither understand [my] history perfectly, nor do I behave rationally at all times, it is a little hypocritical of me to judge. Fun but - throwing rotten tomatoes from the back of the crowd.