West urges end to South Ossetia fighting

[editec]

I suggest everyone read the happenings from 1936 to 1939 in Europe. Russia will continue to push till the force a war.

They will if they cannot win by diplomacy or threats, I quite agree.

Russia IS threatened by the move by Georgia to align with the west.

Russia's power elite know perfectly well that their power right now comes from their enormous petroeum and natural gas dominance in the Eurasian sphere.

Georgia's decision to reroute energy sources via a pipeline not going through Russia is probably the primary cause of this event.

 

[Zoomie1980]

Really? Russia can't intervene when Georgia attacks a semi-autonomous province which contains a great many Russian citizens?

Russia is using hugely disproportionate force, but assuming that Georgia initiated this conflict (details are still a bit sketchy), it seems like Russia does have a legitimate interest in the region. This, of course, does NOT give them the right to use the force that they are using, and they need to agree to the cease-fire immediatelly.

Oh...and as for comparisons to Iraq, the legitimacy of Russias "invasion" is exponentially greater than the United States into Iraq. So those who cheered war in Iraq can shut the hell up about rebuking Russia.

Regardless of what the ethnic mix of these provinces are, they are inside the internationally recognized border of Georgia and are part of Georgia. The Russians are in direct violation of international law and will have to vacate and turn the provinces back over to Georgia. Nothing else will be acceptable to Europeans or the US.

The problem is, no one has any leverage at all over the Russians in this case, which is why they did it. Europe ticks off Russia too much and they just shut of Europe's natural gas, most all of it comes through Russia. As for the US, we are mired down in Iraq and Afghanistan, so we can't do anything at all. Well maybe we could send the Pacific fleet to destroy Vladivostok or something comparable....

 

[Zoomie1980]

If nobody acts to stop them, Russia will not stop. They want to rebuild their Empire and they are not going to be easily persuaded from doing so.

As far as Georgia being our ally. It is kinda a joke that they are. They are not exactly run by the greatest people. They are our ally only because of Oil and Gas, we would be wise to stay out of this one.

Military wise, we really cannot do anything. The closest bases an troop concentration are ironically in Iraq??? We could provide the Georgians Air support but that would require flyover privileges from Turkey and Azerbaijan and/or Armenia. The other route is over Iran....

As I said elsewhere, we could send the Pacific Fleet to the Russian Far East and threaten to take out Vladivostok or Petropovlovsk or such if they don't retreat. They would be as helpless against a US carrier task force as the Georgians are against the Russian air force.