When Donald Trump meets with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg today, the president should give him a direct message: The roster of NATO membership is closed. For good. The United States will not hand out any more war guarantees to fight Russia to secure borders deep in Eastern Europe, when our own southern border is...
Read MoreThe staff of US democracy promotion NGOs, including the son of Transportation Secretary Lahood, are currently experiencing legal travails in Egypt. The Egyptian junta is well aware that democratic agitation abetted by the National Endowment for Democracy, the IRI, and the NDI is often employed to install new regimes when local strongmen running quasi-democracies (featuring...
Read MoreBad Blood in Azerbaijan Cheney in the Caucasus
For the past week, Dick Cheney has been traveling through the Caucasus trying to drum up support for punitive action against Russia for its role in the recent fighting in South Ossetia. The Vice President vowed that the Moscow's action "will not go unanswered". Cheney is determined to establish the United States as the regional...
Read MorePARIS — Pipsqueak Georgia's harebrained and disastrous attack on tiny South Ossetia has produced a full-blown crisis pitting the US and NATO against Russia. In an act fraught with danger, US and NATO warships are delivering supplies to Georgia, watched by Russian men of war. The US Congress may soon vote $1 billion for America's...
Read MoreBarack Obama's endorsement of Joe Biden's call for $1 billion in aid to Georgia for reconstruction dodges the question of reconstruction of what and where. As most of the fighting was in South Ossetia, which almost certainly will wind up as part of Russia, it is not likely that the money will go there. And...
Read MoreThe Bush administration appears to have pulled off its latest military fiasco in the Caucasus. What was supposed to have been a swift and painless takeover of rebellious South Ossetia by America's favorite new ally, Georgia, has turned into a disaster that left Georgia battered, Russia enraged, and NATO badly demoralized. Not bad for two...
Read MoreA fast guy had thought that a wallet was unattended, and tried to snatch it. But to his distress, he was stopped in his tracks by a burly wallet owner. This might be a fair description of Saddam Hussein’s effort to snatch Kuwait. It also fits the war over South Ossetia. Georgian President Saakashvili thought...
Read MoreThe Humiliation of Georgia (and Bush) Revisiting the "Battle of Tskhinvali"
There are no military installations in the city of Tskhinvali. In fact, there are no military targets at all. It is an industrial center consisting of lumber mills, manufacturing plants and residential areas. It is also the home to 30,000 South Ossetians. When Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili ordered the city to be bombed by warplanes...
Read MoreMaster Plan or Screw Up? Georgia and U.S. Strategy
The American-armed and trained Georgian army swarmed into South Ossetia last Thursday, killing an estimated 2,000 civilians, sending 40,000 South Ossetians fleeing over the Russian border, and destroying much of the capital, Tskhinvali. The attack was unprovoked and took place a full 24 hours before even ONE Russian soldier set foot in South Ossetia. Nevertheless,...
Read MorePerhaps I’m missing something big in the “movement conservative’ accounts about what we should be doing to the Russians for their invasion of Georgia. But so far all I’ve encountered is more of the usual neocon blather. For informational purposes: this military action took place after the Georgians had tried to keep their pro-Russian province...
Read MoreBill Kristol's op ed "Will Russia Get Away With It?" in today's The New York Times is a beauty even by his admittedly low standards. Our corrupt thugs in Tbilisi are apparently being bullied by an "autocratic aggressor" from Moscow and we can't let the bad guys get away with it, particularly as the brave...
Read MoreIn the depths of the Pankisi Gorge, a natural fortress in the mountains of northern Georgia shielded from the outside world by its sheer rock walls, kidnappers are holding an Orthodox monk and demanding $1 million for his release. The kidnapping has provoked a public outcry and highlighted the disintegration of Georgia. Demonstrators gathered last...
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