Security

Russia's 'Full Scale Invasion' of Georgia (Updated, with Video)

"Russia has launched a full scale military invasion," Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said today in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital. Saakashvili is planning to withdraw Georgia’s entire 2,000-men contingent from Iraq within three days to help repel the Russians, even as Saakashvili calls for "an immediate ceasefire" in a conflict that Russian officials claim has killed 2,000 and left 30,000 homeless.

The Russian defense ministry tells the New York Times that "100 planeloads of airborne troops" will be flown into the conflict zone — on top of the 2,500 troops already estimated to be in the country.

A senior Georgian security official said that Russian ships were moving toward Georgia’s Black Sea Cost in order to land ground troops, and that 12 Russian jets were bombing the Kadori Gorge in Abhazia, another breakaway region that hugs the Black Sea.

Russian jets have also been targeting Georgia’s oil pipeline; the Georgians say they’ve already shot down 10 of the Russian jets. President Bush has called for "an end to the Russian bombings."

"The attacks are occurring in regions of Georgia far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia.  They mark a dangerous escalation in the crisis," he added. "Georgia is a sovereign nation and its territorial integrity must be respected.  We have urged an immediate halt to the violence and a stand-down by all troops."

James Taub writes that "the border between Georgia and Russia, in short, has been the driest of tinder; the only question was where the fire would start."

For years, the Russians have claimed that Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has been preparing to retake the disputed regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and have warned that they would use force to block such a bid. Mr. Saakashvili, for his part, describes today’s Russia as a belligerent power ruthlessly pressing at its borders, implacably hostile to democratic neighbors like Georgia and Ukraine. He has thrown in his lot with the West, and has campaigned ardently for membership in NATO. Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s former president and current prime minister, has said Russia could never accept a NATO presence in the Caucasus.

James Joyner wonders whether the seeds of this conflict weren’t planted years ago — in Kosovo. "Russia warned us then that ‘it will set a dangerous precedent for secessionist movements across the former Soviet Union, including Chechnya and Georgia,’" he writes.

Army Colonel Gian Gentile looks at the broader picture and asks, "What does all of this say about the future of war and conflict, specifically toward the US?"

Today’s accepted wisdom is that the days of armies fighting battles against each other in the open are gone forever. If nothing else this shows that the face of future war is not, as some folks like to argue, simply and only more Astans and Iraqs, but a much more complex one involving scenarios and possible contingencies that could require heavy and sustained (regular and irregular) combat by American ground and air forces.

[Photo: AFP/Dimitar Dilkof]

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