The US Navy is concentrating its forces in the Persian Gulf. The arrival of the three new American strike forces in the next few weeks will raise to five the number of US strike forces in Middle East waters. This is an unprecedented build up since the "crisis" began over Iran's nuclear program. This huge US naval and air strength of more than 40 vessels consists of carriers, warships and submarines, some of which are nuclear armed. It is a repeat of the concentration last seen before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
All this needed a distraction. Enter Mikhail Saakashvili, the President of Georgia, who went on television on Thursday, August 7 to announce that he had ordered an immediate unilateral cease-fire in some smaller boundary skirmishes between Georgian forces and a small breakaway province. Hours after his announcement, Georgian troops began an all-out offensive with tanks and rockets to "restore constitutional order" to a region that won de facto independence from Georgia in a vicious civil war in 1992. Georgian troops seized a dozen villages and bombarded the capital, Tskhinvali, with air strikes, missiles and tank movements that left much of it destroyed. Georgia's leaders in Tbilisi had originally provoked the conflict in the Caucasus with an offensive against separatists in South Ossetia along the Russian border. Civilians told reporters that Georgian tanks had fired indiscriminately during the two-day seizure of the city. Most of South Ossetia, which is roughly 1.5 times the size of Luxembourg, has been under the control of an internationally unrecognised separatist government since 1992. This war is real.
In recent times, the Pentagon has made an effort to overhaul Georgia's forces from top to bottom. At senior levels, the US helped rewrite Georgian military doctrine and train its commanders and staff officers. At the squad level, American marines and soldiers trained Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of battle. More than 1,000 US Marines and US soldiers were at a Georgian military base as late as last month to teach combat skills to Georgian troops. Georgia has sent about 2,000 troops to Iraq.
Georgia, meanwhile, began re-equipping its forces with Israeli and American firearms, reconnaissance drones, communications and battlefield management equipment, new convoys of vehicles and stockpiles of ammunition. US military C-17s flew Georgia's 2,000-troop contingent in the coalition force in Iraq back to Tbilisi on Monday, August 11, in response to a Georgian government request. Russia protested.
Georgian forces launched a major offensive that captured the South Ossetian capital. Russian forces drove them out two days later and then rolled right over the Georgian Army which retreated in a total rout. As of August 13, Russian forces were 25 miles from the capital of Georgia where they are stopped. After five days of fighting, President Medvedev of Russia ordered Russian troops in South Ossetia to hold their fire and fixed a six-point peace plan with President Sarkozy of France. Russia then convened an emergency session of the UN Security Council, there calling on both sides to immediately cease hostilities, return to the negotiating table and renounce the use of force. The last part about renouncing the use of force is exactly what Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili refused to do.
Declaring that "the aggressor has been punished", President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia announced on August 12, that Russia would stop its campaign. It was over, with Georgia defenceless, routed.
In the midst of all this, the US State Department got a classic case of cold feet while President Bush was enjoying the Olympic Games. A US State Department official made it clear on Saturday, August 9, that there was NO chance the United States would intervene militarily. "There is NO possibility of drawing NATO or the international community into this," said a senior State Department official in a conference call with reporters. "There is none. There is not a danger of a regional conflict in our mind." After that, the Russian offensive went into overdrive and slammed its armoured columns towards Georgia's capital.
President Medvedev then declared later on Tuesday, August 12, that "The aggressor has been punished."
A US client state has been routed in full global view. The US Bush Administration did not lift a finger.
