The
Caucasus — Washington Risks Nuclear War by Miscalculation
By
F. William Engdahl 11 August 2008
The dramatic military attack by the military of the Republic of Georgia on South Ossetia in the last days has brought the world one major step closer to the ultimate horror of the Cold War era—a thermonuclear war between Russia and the United States—by miscalculation. What is playing out in the Caucasus is being reported in US media in an alarmingly misleading light, making Moscow appear the lone aggressor. The question is whether George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are encouraging the unstable Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili in order to force the next US President to back the NATO military agenda of the Bush Doctrine. This time Washington may have badly misjudged the possibilities, as it did in Iraq, but this time with possible nuclear consequences.
The
underlying issue, as I stressed in my July 11 piece, Georgia,
Washington and Moscow: a Nuclear Geopolitical Poker Game, is
the fact that since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 one
after another former member as well as former states of the USSR have
been coaxed and in many cases bribed with false promises by
Washington into joining the counter organization, NATO.
Rather
than initiate discussions after the 1991 dissolution of the Warsaw
Pact about a systematic dissolution of NATO, Washington has
systematically converted NATO into what can only be called the
military vehicle of an American global imperial rule, linked by a
network of military bases from Kosovo to Poland to Turkey to Iraq and
Afghanistan. In 1999, former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and
the Czech Republic joined NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Romania, and Slovakia followed suit in March 2004. Now Washington is
putting immense pressure on the EU members of NATO, especially
Germany and France, that they vote in December to admit Georgia and
Ukraine.
The roots of the conflict
The
specific conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia and Abkhazia has
its roots in the following. First, the Southern Ossetes, who until
1990 formed an autonomous region of the Georgian Soviet republic,
seek to unite in one state with their co-ethnics in North Ossetia, an
autonomous republic of the Russian Soviet republic and now the
Russian Federation. There is an historically grounded Ossete fear of
violent Georgian nationalism and the experience of Georgian hatred of
ethnic minorities under then Georgian leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia,
which the Ossetes see again under Georgian President, Mikhel
Saakashvili. Saakashvili was brought to power with US financing and
US covert regime change activities in December 2003 in what was
called the Rose Revolution. Now the thorns of that rose are causing
blood to spill.
Abkhazia and South Ossetia—the first a
traditional Black Sea resort area, the second an impoverished,
sparsely populated region that borders Russia to the north—each
has its own language, culture, history. When the Soviet Union
collapsed, both regions sought to separate themselves from Georgia in
bloody conflicts - South Ossetia in 1990-1, Abkhazia in 1992-4.
In
December 1990 Georgia under Gamsakhurdia sent troops into South
Ossetia after the region declared its own sovereignty. This Georgian
move was defeated by Soviet Interior Ministry troops. Then Georgia
declared abolition of the South Ossete autonomous region and its
incorporation into Georgia proper. Both wars ended with cease-fires
that were negotiated by Russia and policed by peacekeeping forces
under the aegis of the recently established Commonwealth of
Independent States. The situation hardened into "frozen
conflicts," like that over Cyprus. By late 2005, Georgia signed
an agreement that it would not use force, and the Abkhaz would allow
the gradual return of 200,000-plus ethnic Georgians who had fled the
violence. But the agreement collapsed in early 2006, when Saakashvili
sent troops to retake the Kodori Valley in Abkhazia. Since then
Saakashvili has been escalating preparations for military
action.
Critical is Russia’s support for the Southern
Ossetes. Russia is unwilling to see Georgia join NATO. In addition,
the Ossetes are the oldest Russian allies in the Caucasus who have
provided troops to the Russian army in many wars. Russia does not
wish to abandon them and the Abkhaz, and fuel yet more ethnic unrest
among their compatriots in the Russian North Caucasus. In a November
2006 referendum, 99 percent of South Ossetians voted for independence
from Georgia, at a time when most of them had long held Russian
passports. This enabled Russian President Medvedev to justify his
military's counter-attack of Georgia on Friday as an effort to
"protect the lives and dignity of Russian citizens, wherever
they may be."
For Russia,
Ossetia has been an important strategic base near the Turkish and
Iranian frontiers since the days of the czars. Georgia is also an
important transit country for oil being pumped from the Caspian Sea
to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and a potential base for Washington
efforts to encircle Tehran.
As far as the Georgians are
concerned, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are simply part of their
national territory, to be recovered at all costs. Promises by NATO
leaders to bring Georgia into the alliance, and ostentatious
declarations of support from Washington, have emboldened
Saakashvili to launch his military offensive against the two
provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Saakashvili and likely, Dick
Cheney’s office in Washington appear to have miscalculated very
badly. Russia has made it clear that it has no intention of ceding
its support for South Ossetia or Abkhazia.
Proxy War
In
March this year as Washington went ahead to recognize the
independence of Kosovo in former Yugoslavia, making Kosovo a de facto
NATO-run territory against the will of the UN Security Council and
especially against Russian protest, Putin responded with Russian Duma
hearings on recognition of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria,
a pro-Russian breakaway republic in Moldova. Moscow argued that the
West's logic on Kosovo should apply as well to these ethnic
communities seeking to free themselves from the control of a hostile
state. In mid-April, Mr. Putin held out the possibility of
recognition for the breakaway republics. It was a geopolitical chess
game in the strategic Caucasus for the highest stakes—the
future of Russia itself.
Saakashvili called then-President
Putin to demand he reverse the decision. He reminded Putin that the
West had taken Georgia's side. This past April at the NATO summit in
Bucharest, Romania, US President Bush proposed accepting Georgia into
NATO’s "Action Plan for Membership," a precursor to
NATO membership. To Washington’s surprise, ten NATO member
states refused to support his plan, including Germany, France and
Italy.
They argued that accepting the Georgians was
problematic, because of the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
They were in reality saying that they would not be
willing to back Georgia as, under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which
mandates that an armed attack against any NATO member country must be
considered an attack against them all and consequently requires use
of collective armed force of all NATO members, it would mean that
Europe could be faced with war against Russia over the tiny Caucasus
Republic of Georgia, with its incalculable dictator, Saakashvili.
That would mean the troubled Caucasus would be on a hair-trigger to
detonate World War III.
Russia threatens Georgia, but
Georgia threatens Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia looks like a
crocodile to Georgia, but Georgia looks to Russia like the cats' paw
of the West. Since Saakashvili took power in late
2003 the Pentagon has been in Georgia giving military aid and
training. Not only are US military personnel active in Georgia today.
According to an Israeli-intelligence source, DEBKAfile,
in 2007, the Georgian President
Saakashvili “commissioned from private Israeli security firms
several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train
the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and
artillery combat tactics. They also have been giving instruction on
military intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi
also purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems
from Israel. These advisers were undoubtedly deeply involved in the
Georgian army’s preparations to conquer the South Ossetian
capital Friday.”
Debkafile
reported further, “Moscow has
repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to
Georgia, finally threatening a crisis in bilateral relations. Israel
responded by saying that the only assistance rendered Tbilisi was
‘defensive.’” The Israeli news source added that
Israel’s interest in Georgia has to do as well with Caspian oil
pipeline geopolitics. “Jerusalem has a strong interest in
having Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port
of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are
afoot between Israel, Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan
for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil
terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there,
supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the
Indian Ocean.”
This means that the attack on
South Ossetia is the first battle in a new proxy
warfare between Anglo-American-Israeli led interests and Russia. The
only question is whether Washington miscalculated the swiftness and
intensity of the Russian response to the Georgian attacks of
8.8.08.
So far, each step in the Caucasus drama has put
the conflict on a yet higher plane of danger. The
next step will no longer be just about the Caucasus, or even Europe.
In 1914 it was the “Guns of August” that initiated the
Great War. This time the Guns of August 2008 could be the detonator
of World War III and a nuclear holocaust of unspeakable horror.
Nuclear Primacy: the larger strategic danger
Most
in the West are unaware how dangerous the conflict over two tiny
provinces in a remote part of Eurasia has become. What is left out of
most all media coverage is the strategic military security context of
the Caucasus dispute.
In my recent
book (in German), and also
here I describe the developments by NATO and most directly by
Washington since the end of the Cold War to systematically pursue
what military strategists call Nuclear Primacy. Put simply, if one of
two opposing nuclear powers is able to first develop an operational
anti-missile defense, even primitive, that can dramatically weaken a
potential counter-strike by the opposing side’s nuclear
arsenal, the side with missile defense has “won” the
nuclear war.
As mad as this sounds, it has been
explicit Pentagon policy through the last three Presidents from
father Bush in 1990, to Clinton and most
aggressively, George W. Bush. This is the issue where Russia has
drawn a deep line in the sand, understandably so. The forceful US
effort to push Georgia as well as Ukraine into NATO would present
Russia with the spectre of NATO literally coming to its doorstep, a
military threat that is aggressive in the extreme, and untenable for
Russian national security.
This is what gives the
seemingly obscure fight over two provinces the size of Luxemburg the
potential to become the 1914 Sarajevo trigger to a
new nuclear war by miscalculation. The trigger for such a war is not
Georgia’s right to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Rather, it
is US insistence on pushing NATO and its missile defense right up to
Russia’s door.