Russia seizes US vehicles

By John Matthew Hall and AP

Russian soldiers in a armored personnel carrier tow away a US-built Humvee, in the Black Sea port city of Poti. Russian soldiers today held blindfolded Georgian servicemen at gunpoint and commandeered US Humvees in a dramatic sequence of events in Poti, a key Black Sea port.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe stated that if Russia has seized any US military equipment in Georgia, it must return it immediately.

In Poti, on the Black Sea, Russian forces blocked access to the naval and commercial ports this morning and towed the missile boat Dioskuria, one of the navy’s most sophisticated vessels, out of sight of observers. A loud explosion was heard minutes later.

Several hours later, an Associated Press photographer saw Russian trucks and armored personnel carriers leaving the port with about 20 blindfolded and handcuffed men riding on them. Port spokesman Eduard Mashevoriani said the men were Georgian soldiers.

The Russians also took with them four Humvees that were at the port awaiting shipment back to the United States after taking part in earlier US-Georgian military exercises.

The deputy head of Russia’s general staff, Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, said in Moscow that Russian forces plan to remain in Poti until a local administration is formed, but did not give further details. He also justified previous seizures of Georgian soldiers as necessary to crack down on soldiers who were “out of any kind of control … acting without command.”

A small column of Russian tanks and armored vehicles left Gori on Tuesday, and a Russian officer said they were heading back to South Ossetia and then Russia. It was the first sign of a Russian pullback of troops from Georgia.

The column, which also apparently included a mobile rocket-launcher, passed the village of Ruisi, outside Gori on the road to South Ossetia on Tuesday afternoon.

Col. Igor Konoshenkov, a Russian military officer, told The Associated Press at the scene the unit was headed for South Ossetia and, ultimately, back to Russia. He gave no timetable for when the unit would reach Russia.

Konoshenkov said it was part of the Russian pullback mandated by a cease-fire that requires both sides to return to positions held before fighting broke out Aug. 7 in South Ossetia, a separatist Georgian province with close ties to Russia.

Elsewhere, Russia they exchanged POWs with Georgia and pulled back some troops from the strategic city of Gori. It was a day of deeply mixed messages that left the small, war-battered country full of anxiety about whether Russia was aiming for a long-term military presence in Georgia or whether it was just trying to inflict maximum damage before adhering to a EU-brokered cease-fire and troop pullout.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-seizes-us-vehicles-902432.html

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Top US General In Georgia For Talks On Military Aid

The top U.S. military commander in Europe, Gen. John Craddock, arrived in Tbilisi Thursday for talks on rebuilding Georgia’s armed forces, which were routed by Russia two weeks ago.

“I’m sure we are going to talk about their military,” Craddock, who is also the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s supreme allied commander in Europe, told reporters after arriving in Tbilisi from Brussels.

“We will have to help them rebuild because they are a partner in the war on terror. They are going to ask us, I’m sure, to replace and rebuild. I think that is probably what will happen.”

Craddock was to meet with President Mikhail Saakashvili and Georgian military leaders during his two-day visit to Tbilisi.

The U.S. provided military training to Georgia, which contributed troops to Iraq, and has been a strong supporter of Georgia’s bid to join NATO.

Asked if any U.S. trainers were involved in fighting with Russia, Craddock said: “I have no information. I cannot confirm or deny that. We have no one missing. There were no reports of anyone wounded among U.S. trainers.”

Link

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India places two billion dollar order for Russian missiles

Designers of the Indo-Russian supersonic cruise missile BrahMos hope to receive an order for the production of missiles for submarines of the Indian Navy, the chairman of board of directors of the joint-venture, Alexander Dergachev said.

“The missiles will be made for submarines of the Indian Navy. The nearest order is seven submarines. We do not know yet when exactly it is going to happen. I hope soon,” the official said at a press conference devoted to ten years since the establishment of the joint venture BrahMos.

Dergachev said that India would announce the tender for seven submarines in the nearest future. Submarine-makers from Russia and other countries of the world will participate in the tender. The tender stipulates BrahMos cruise missiles for the submarines.

Sivathanu Pilai, the chief executive of the Indo-Russian aerospace joint venture BrahMos, stated that India already had a contract for the production of six submarines on the base of Scorpio project (France).

India’s order to the joint enterprise is evaluate at $2 billion, Pilai said. BrahMos makes land and sea-based supersonic cruise missiles for the Indian Armed Forces.

BrahMos Aerospace is a joint Indo-Russian venture established in 1998 to design, develop, produce and market a unique supersonic cruise missile.

BrahMos is a supersonic cruise missile that can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft or land. The acronym BrahMos is perceived as the confluence of the two nations represented by two great rivers, the Brahmaputra of India and the Moskva of Russia. It is a joint venture between India’s Defense Research and Development Organization and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroeyenia who have together formed the BrahMos Corp. Propulsion is based on the Russian Yakhont missile, and guidance has been developed by BrahMos Corp. At speeds of Mach 2.5 to 2.8, is the world’s fastest cruise missile. It is about three and a half times faster than the American subsonic Harpoon cruise missile.

Between late 2004 and early 2008, the missile has undergone several tests from variety of platforms including a land based test from Pokhran desert, in which the S maneuver at Mach 2.8 was demonstrated for the Indian Army and a launch in which the land attack capability from sea was demonstrated.

Source > Pravda.ru

http://www.effedieffe.com/content/view/4222/183

Rice in Poland to sign defence deal

Kaczynski has said the signing is an important day in Poland’s history File.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, has arrived in Poland to sign a deal that will see a US missile defence base built on the soil of the former Soviet satellite.

Rice and Radek Sikorski, her Polish counterpart, are to sign the deal on Wednesday in Warsaw, the capital, in the presence of both the Polish president and prime minister.

But the plan has infuriated Russia, which says the Poles risk attack, if the deal goes ahead.

The deal to site 10 US interceptor missiles by 2011-2013 at a base 180km from Russia’s westernmost frontier has further strained Moscow’s ties with the West.

Russia is already at war with Georgia, a former Soviet republic backed by the US.

‘Important day’

Lech Kaczynski, Poland’s president, said on Wednesday that the signing ceremony would be “an important day in our history”.

The deal “strengthens Poland’s position in the world”, Kaczynski said in a televised address on Tuesday evening.

The country has in recent years joined the EU and is wishing to join Nato.

Philip Coyle, a senior adviser with the Centre for Defence Information in Washington DC, said the Bush administration has been trying for about 18 months to reach this deal, but the timing has turned out to be “most unfortunate from a Russian point of view”.

“The tragedy in all of this confrontation with Russia is that the system that’s proposed for Poland and the Czech Republic is a scarecrow,” he told Al Jazeera.

“It’s not something that Europe can rely on, it is not dependable. If Iran had missiles that could reach central Europe, which they don’t yet, this system couldn’t be relied on to defend against them anyway.”

‘Sword-rattling’

The “commotion and sword-rattling with Russia is for nothing”, Coyle said.

“Some of this may be just a threat, but Russia has shown in just the past week or so it has a formidable military force, so if I were Poland or the Czech Republic, I would be more worried about Russia than I would be about Iran or North Korea.”

The US says the missile defence system is aimed at protecting it and Europe from future attacks from states such as Iran.

It rejects Moscow’s insistence that it is a threat to Russia.

For Poles, it has a further dimension at a time when Russia’s actions in Georgia have generated alarm throughout Eastern Europe.

They see it as offering a form of protection beyond that of Nato in light of a resurgent Russia to the east.

The two countries spent a year and a half negotiating, and talks recently had stalled on Poland’s demands that the US bolster Polish security with Patriot missiles in exchange for hosting the missile defence base.

Washington agreed to do so last week, as Poland invoked the Georgia conflict to strengthen its case.

Short-range missiles

The Patriots are meant to protect Poland from short-range missiles from neighbours – such as Russia.

Kaczynski stressed that the missile defence shield was purely a defensive system and not a threat to any nation.

“For that reason, no one who has good intentions toward us and toward the Western world should be afraid of it,” he said.

Poles have been shaken by Russian threats against their nation in punishment for accepting the US site.

A day after Warsaw and Washington reached agreement on the deal last week, a leading Russian general made his country’s strongest warning to date against the system.

“Poland, by deploying the system is exposing itself to a strike – 100 per cent,” General Anatoly Nogovitsyn was reported as saying on Friday by the Interfax news agency.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2008/08/20088204579879999.html

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syria’s assad to visit Moscow

MOSCOW: Syrian President Bashar Assad plans to visit Russia on Wednesday at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

“On August 20-21, 2008, the president of the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar Assad, will make a working visit to Russia at the invitation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev,” the Kremlin said in a statement, providing no further details on the agenda for the visit.

It was announced as Russia faced mounting international pressure to pull its forces out of Georgia and as Moscow signaled it was in no rush to do so.

Assad visited Moscow in December 2006, when he said that, as an influential power in the Middle East, Syria was open to dialogue with the United States but would not take “instructions” from Washington.

Russia’s conflict with Georgia has also turned into a standoff between Moscow and Washington. The United States has strongly supported Georgia and also backs Syrian adversary Israel in the Middle East.

In remarks to soldiers near the conflict zone on Monday, Medvedev warned that no one should have any “illusion” about Russia’s determination to ensure security in the Caucasus region

Last year, Russian media reported that Moscow had delivered MiG-31 fighter planes and modern air-defense systems to Syria, angering Israel. – AFP

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=95203

‘Russia to deploy missiles in Syria’

Russia plans to deploy Iskander missiles in Syria:

Russia plans to place its advanced missile systems in Syria to counter US and Israeli interventions in South Ossetia, an Israeli website says.

DEBKAfile said in a report on its website that Moscow appears to be eying Poland, the Middle East, and possibly Ukraine, as the main arenas for its reprisals against Israel and the US for supplying arms to the Georgian army.

“The retaliatory plan includes the establishment of big Russian military, naval and air bases in Syria and the release of advanced weapons systems including, the S-300 air-missile defense system, and the nuclear-capable Iskander to Syria,” the report said on Tuesday.

It further said that Russia is arming warships, submarines and long-range bombers in the Baltic and Middle East with nuclear warheads.

Reacting to the report it said Israel’s army should revamp its anti-missile defense array and Air Force assault plans for the third time in two years.

The chairman of the Israeli Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee, Tzahi Hanegbi, slammed Ehud Olmert’s plan to cut military budget, claiming that the regime faces grave confrontations in the coming year.

Meanwhile, the official Syrian SANA news agency reported on Tuesday that President Bashar Assad pays a visit to Russia on Wednesday at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.

Russia has condemned both Israel and the US for their alleged role in arming the Georgian army with sophisticated weapons and elite training to face Russian troops in South Ossetia.

MMS/PA

Link

Foreign ministers have concluded there can be “no business as usual” with Russia so long as Moscow keeps its forces in Georgia

Foreign ministers have concluded there can be “no business as usual” with Russia so long as Moscow keeps its forces in Georgia.

Nato made the statement following a meeting in Brussels to discuss the situation in Georgia, where Russia has been slow to honour a peace agreement brokered last week.

US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice called for a “neutral peacekeeping force in Georgia… because Russia is clearly party to this conflict.

“Russian peacekeepers>’Russian peacekeepers’ have engaged in wanton destruction and this has isolated Russia; the US has not isolated Russia.”

Meanwhile foreign secretary David Miliband said there was unity among his peers that Russia should abide by the ceasefire and said Britain would be supporting Georgia “starting on the road to Nato membership”.

“The use of force is not a basis to redraw the map of countries around Russia,” he added.

Russia was due to begin its pullout of troops in Georgia proper yesterday, but reports on the ground claim tanks and soldiers remain in place around South Ossetia.

Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said after today’s meeting in Brussels on the issue that there are no plans for the Nato-Russia council to meet while Russian forces continue to occupy a “large part” of Georgia.

“There can be no business as usual with Russia under the present circumstances,” he said.

“The future of our relations will depend on the concrete actions Russia will take to honour the words of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to abide by the peace plan – which is not happening at the moment.

“It is now in the hands of Russia to take action. Russia should adhere to the six-point plan and Russians should go back to their positions on August 6th.

“I should add we will certainly not have the intention to close all doors in our communication with Russia. The future will depend on concrete actions on the Russian side.”

While shunning cooperation with Russia on the one hand Nato has opted to strengthen its links with Georgia on the other. Most importantly, Mr de Hoop Scheffer said, a Nato-Georgia commission is being set up “which can be seen as the same kind of consultation mechanism we have with our other partner Ukraine”.

The alliance will also attempt to prop up Georgia’s ability to resist further attacks. The state of the Georgian armed forces will be assessed, Nato will help re-establish Georgia’s air traffic system and efforts will be made to help Tbilisi improve its cyberdefence capability.

And Nato’s special representative is being dispatched to Tbilisi, while 15 civil emergency planning experts are being sent to assist the Georgian government.

“Georgia is a sovereign country with a democratically elected government. At the moment that principle is not accepted by some,” Mr de Hoop Scheffer added.

US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said Nato would not allow Russia to achieve its “strategic objective” of undermining democracy in Georgia.

She said: “There was very strong language around the table of the need for Russia to honour the ceasefire commitment that its president has undertaken.

“It is time for the Russian president to keep his word – to withdraw Russian forces from Georgia back to the August 6th/7th status quo ante.”

Georgian shelling of the breakaway province earlier this month sparked a ten-day conflict that saw the Russian army advance on Tbilisi and both sides accuse the other of genocide.

http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/international-affairs/nato-puts-freeze-on-russian-relations-$1237002.htm

U.S. presses Turkey to allow NATO forces’

deployment to Black Sea

The United States is expected to pile pressure on Turkey to deploy permanent NATO navy forces for patrol missions in the organization’s summit which would start in Brussels. Turkey is concerned that such move would open a debate on the 1936 Montreux Convention and eventually harm its sovereign rights on the straits.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan attended the meeting of 26 NATO foreign ministers that met in Brussels on Tuesday. The members are expected to reaffirm their support for Georgia and send a strong message to Russia without freezing out Moscow diplomatically.

Turkey has long opposed to the deployment of NATO navy forces on the Black Sea, saying the region is safe and the Blackseafor’s, which was formed by the contribution of the surrounding countries, patrol mission is sufficient.

Diplomatic sources, however, told hurriyet.com.tr that the clashes between Georgia and Russia had weakened Turkey’s thesis, prompting the U.S. to relaunch its bid for deployment of NATO forces on the Black Sea.

The deployment of NATO forces in the Black Sea would breach the Montreux Agreement, which limits the total weight of the warships that a country who does not have border with the Black Sea can deploy to 45,000 tons.

The Turkish Straits are considered as one of the most strategic waterways of the world and located within Turkey’s territorial waters. The Montreux Convention, reinstating its sovereignty over the strategic Turkish Straits, and regulating navigation through them, was signed in 1936.

Link

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US left isolated over Nato plans to maintain relations with Russia

The United States has been left diplomatically isolated after European members of NATO moved to reject an American proposal to scale back ties with Moscow following Russia’s invasion of Georgia.

By Adrian Blomfield in Tbilisi

The Telegraph’s Group Foreign Editor explains that it’s not just Georgia who have been alarmed by Russia’s actions. ; http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1488655367/bctid1738801465

http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=1139053637

US diplomats attending an emergency NATO summit in Brussels had called on the alliance to suspend ministerial meetings with Russia, held twice a year, as a way of demonstrating the West’s disapproval of the war.

But other members of the alliance, including Britain, rejected the plan, saying that it would be foolish to isolate Russia. Instead diplomats released their strongly-worded statement, stopping short of concrete action, at least for now.

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, implicitly criticized Washington’s proposal to suspend the Nato-Russia council, established six-years ago to improve dialogue between Moscow and the West, as short-sighted.

“I am not one that believes that isolating Russia is the right answer to its misdemeanours,” he said. “I think the right answer is hard-headed dialogue.” A French diplomat, however, signaled that Nato was getting fed up with Russia’s failure to carry out repeated pledges to withdraw its troops from Georgian territory and warned that the time could come for a re-examination of the West’s ties with Moscow.

“We are at risk of entering, if there is not a very rapid evolution on the ground, into a relationship which will be of a different nature to what it was until now,” he said.

Russia, however, seemed unfazed by the mounting criticism. Its troops smashed their way into the Black Sea port of Poti, blockaded it and then took 22 Georgian servicemen prisoner.

Russian forces last week used explosives to sink Georgian naval ships and coastguard vessels in the port as part of what appears to be a plan to damage the country’s civilian and military infrastructure.

Russia has brought transport and the passage of goods, including oil bound for the West, to a halt by blowing up an important railway bridge, closing down the country’s main highway and attempting to bomb a crucial BP pipeline.

There was also little sign of a Russian military withdrawal from other towns in undisputed Georgian territory where, far from pulling out, troops have been digging trenches and building concrete barricades.

Russia yesterday warned that its withdrawal was being hampered by Georgia’s refusal to abide by the terms of a French-brokered ceasefire to pull back its own forces to positions held before the fighting erupted.

“Such actions seriously complicate the general situation and impede the withdrawal process,” Gen Anatoly Nogovitsyn said.

With Russia in control of much of the country, there has been little sign of Georgian forces attempting to return to the positions they fled after suffering a crushing victory on the battlefield.

Russian troops, on the other hand, have taken advantage of the truce to advance within 25 miles of the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

Link

Rice says NATO will defeat Russian aims in Georgia,

not allow new Cold War split

MATTHEW LEE 

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that Russia is playing a “very dangerous game” with the U.S. and its allies and warned that NATO would not allow Moscow to win in Georgia, destabilize Europe or draw a new Iron Curtain through it.

On her way to an emergency NATO foreign ministers meeting on the crisis, Rice said the alliance would punish Russia for its invasion of the Georgia and deny its ambitions by rebuilding and fully backing Georgia and other Eastern European democracies.

“We have to deny Russian strategic objectives, which are clearly to undermine Georgia’s democracy, to use its military capability to damage and in some cases destroy Georgian infrastructure and to try and weaken the Georgian state,” she said.

“We are determined to deny them their strategic objective,” Rice told reporters aboard her plane, adding that any attempt to recreate the Cold War by drawing a “new line” through Europe and intimidating former Soviet republics and ex-satellite states into submission would fail.

“We are not going to allow Russia to draw a new line at those states that are not yet integrated into the trans-Atlantic structures,” she said, referring to Georgia and Ukraine, which have not yet joined NATO or the European Union but would like to.

Rice could not say what NATO would eventually decide to do to make its position clear but said the alliance would speak with one voice “to clearly indicate that we are not accepting a new line.”

At the same time, she said that by flexing its military muscle in Georgia as well as elsewhere, including the resumption of Cold War-era strategic bomber patrols off the coast of Alaska, Russia was engaged in high-stakes brinksmanship that could backfire.

This “is a very dangerous game and perhaps one the Russians want to reconsider,” Rice said of the flights that began again with frequency about six months ago. “This is not something that is just cost-free. Nobody needs Russian strategic aviation along America’s coast.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, the NATO ministers will consider a range of upcoming activities planned with Russia — from military exercises to ministerial meetings — and decide case-by-case at the meeting Tuesday whether to go ahead or cancel each.

They will also discuss support for a planned international monitoring mission in the region and a package of support to help Georgia rebuild infrastructure damaged in its devastating defeat at the hands of the Russian armed forces.

And, she suggested that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who signed an E.U.-backed cease-fire brokered by the French, may be unable to exert power behind the scenes against his powerful predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, or the Russian military.

She said she thought the French would be seeking “an explanation from the Russians for why the Russian president either won’t or can’t keep his word.”

“It didn’t take that long for the Russian forces to get in and it really shouldn’t take that long for them to get out,” Rice said.

Amid worsening relations with Moscow, NATO ministers were expected to review a range of military, ministerial and other upcoming activities planned with Russia — and decide on a case by case basis whether to cancel each activity.

Russian troops and tanks have controlled a wide swath of Georgia for days. They also began a campaign to disable the Georgian military, destroying or carting away large caches of military equipment.

Two senior U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity Monday that intelligence also showed the Russian military had moved several SS-21 missile launchers into South Ossetia, in range of Tbilisi.

The move Friday allows Russia to pull out of Georgia proper as promised, but punish Tbilisi at any moment with the push of a button. Experts said it is the same weapon system used in October 1999, when missiles slammed into the Chechen capital of Grozny and killed at least 140 people.

All of the missiles that were fired into Georgia during the conflict were fired from Russian territory, one of the administration officials said.

Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to confirm the report of the missile launchers, but said such positioning would be prohibited by the cease-fire that Russia agreed to.

“Anything such as that, or any other military equipment that was moved in, would be in violation of the cease-fire and should be removed immediately,” Whitman said.

Meanwhile, Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, warned that an anti-Russian propaganda campaign could jeopardize existing security cooperation. “We hope that tomorrow’s decisions by NATO will be balanced and that responsible forces in the West will give up the total cynicism that has been so evident (which) is pushing us back to the Cold War era,” he told reporters Monday.

Washington has denied Rogozin’s claims that it is out to wreck the NATO-Russia Council — a consultative panel set up in 2002 to improve relations between the former Cold War foes.

“We don’t want to destroy the NATO-Russia Council, but Russia’s actions have called into question the premise of the NATO-Russia relationship,” U.S. Ambassador Kurt Volker said ahead of the NATO talks.

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http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=303110

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World Opinion Favors Russia – Winning the Media War!!!

Even Americans are saying, “Thank you Russia for standing up to the crackpots in control of our government.” As much as the corporate elitist media in the west blathers and carries on with lies and obfuscation about the events in Georgia and South Ossetia, as much as they try to cover up the facts and the truth and the war crimes committed by their puppet state, Georgia, they have failed to convince the world community.

Their all too numerous outlets are pummeling the world community with distortions, trying to shove the castor oil of the empire down our collective throats, but the gag reflex is well intact and their lies remain unpalatable. The empire is used to and expects everyone to jump when told to and to believe what they hear and read. They don’t expect and can’t understand when someone or some country tells them to back off with their egotistical, haughty, self important orders or pronouncements. But their “orders” and pronouncements have become irrelevant. We are again living in a multicolor world.

Comments from the World Community

In a recent Internet tally asking respondents who they favor, 75.8% were in favor of Russia and only 24.2% in favor of Georgia. Some American respondents actually came right out and thanked Russia for standing up to their government, referring to their government as “crackpots“ and “lunatics.”

One respondent said that South Ossetia and Abkhazia should become independent and the west lives under double standards. Another wrote, “the Abkhaz, Ossetian and Adjarian people will never agree to live under Georgian arrogant oppression.”

Yet another respondent said, “This is NATO’s prime moment to show that it as an organization is not yet obsolete.” Of course we heard this when Yugoslavia was bombed too. In another comment he said, “I literally laughed out loud when President Bush made his speech toward Russia about how ‘bullying is unacceptable in foreign policy in the 21st century.’”

A respondent who considers himself a Republican wrote, “There is no reason that we should be antagonizing them on their border. It scares me that this oilman president will take us into another war with a much more deadly foe over an oil pipeline through Georgia. I am a registered Republican, but enough is enough. Impeach George Bush, if he gets us involved in the Russo-Georgian war.”

Some notable and succinct quotes from another:
“I feel like I am living in the bizarro world. Do you people not realize that Georgia started the conflict. Do you people not realize that Georgia attacked civilians and peacekeeping troops in an INTERNATIONAL ZONE. Do you not realize that the news media has been caught showing footage of the destroyed cities in Ossetia (destroyed by Georgians) and claims it is Gori and Russian aftermath. Do you not realize that the Caucasus Region is an oil pipeline area. Do you not realize that the US armed and trained the Georgians.”

“Georgia’s president is the new Hitler. He is invading areas and his lies are so incredibly manipulative. The American Media is really showing stupidity here in hopes for new cold war ratings. Neo-cons and globalists are thrilled because now Russia has taken its eye off of the Iran situation.”

Another poll taken in Greece yielded the following results:

Who is responsible for the war:

1. Georgia who started the attack and the US who encouraged them

(77.86%, or 3559 votes)

2. The Russians

(3.22 %, 147 votes)

3. All of them

(15.99 % , 731 votes)

4. I don’t know

(2.93 %, 134 votes)

South Ossetia and Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in the 1990s when Georgia itself broke away from the Soviet Union. Saaskashvili was determined not only to reincorporate them into Georgia again, entirely against the will of their inhabitants, but to punish them for wanting to be independent. There are no military installations or targets in the city of Tskhinvali, none whatsoever. It is an industrial center, with quiet civilian residential areas. It was the home to 30,000 South Ossetians.

When Saakashvili ordered the city to be bombed by warplanes and shelled by heavy artillery, he knew that he would be killing hundreds of civilians in their homes and neighborhoods. But he was determined to have what he wanted and ordered the bombing anyway. What took place in South Ossetia was not merely an invasion or a siege, it was a bloody massacre, a genocide. The people had no way to defend themselves against a fully equipped modern army. It was a war crime and the world community is fully aware of that fact despite the best efforts of the western corporate media to conveniently omit reporting on the crime.

By the time the Georgians along with their American and Israeli enablers were driven out, the city’s downtown area was in engulfed in flames and strewn along streets and sidewalks were the bodies of those who had been killed by sniper fire. Those who did not flee and stayed behind were simply too old, handicapped or infirm to leave. They had to seek shelter in basements waiting for the shelling to stop. It was a bloodbath. The city’s only hospital was deliberately targeted and destroyed, another war crime. Over 2,000 people were killed in an operation that was clearly engineered with the full knowledge, planning and assistance of the Bush White House.

An independence referendum was held in 2006: 99% of South Ossetians said they wanted independence from Georgia. The voter turnout was 95% and the balloting was monitored by 34 international observers from the west. No one has challenged the results. The province has been under the protection of Russian and Georgian peacekeepers since 1992, and has been a de facto independent state ever since.

If Russia applied the same standard as Bush did in Kosovo, he would unilaterally declare South Ossetia independent from Georgia and then thumb his nose at the empire and anyone else objecting.

The representative of Russia to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, was quite blunt in announcing some home truths. “If we all respect the territorial integrity of Serbia in regards to its Kosovo province, then we are also going to honor the territorial integrity of Georgia. But if someone doesn’t respect Serbia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over Kosovo and Metohija, then they better shut up about the territorial integrity of Georgia”, Rogozin said.

Meanwhile it is absurd to listen to Bush, Rice and Gates jump up and down about borders, territorial integrity and sovereignty when they have shown no respect for any international laws, treaties or agreements they have made. Borders and sovereignty are only concepts they talk about when convenient for their interests. Hypocritically they speak of “bullying” and of the 21st Century as one where nations don’t go around invading other nations…while they themselves have done so seemingly with impunity and certainly with the complete disapproval of the world community.

Lisa KARPOVA

PRAVDA.Ru

New world order’ seen as powers square off on Georgia

By Christopher Boian

Russia has signalled that it considers the rules of the international game as it has been played for the past generation are a thing of the past

WHEN Georgia attacked South Ossetia late the night of August 7, it was clear that something out of the ordinary was afoot.

But few could have guessed the events which transpired with breathtaking speed over the next week would ring alarm bells around the world and, according to analysts, instantly alter the international order for many years to come. Fundamental principles for developing relations with Russia and other countries once part of the Soviet Union, taken for granted in the West at least since the 1991 Soviet collapse, have abruptly been called into question.

At the same time, Russia has signalled that it considers the rules of the international game as it has been played for the past generation are a thing of the past, a thought that will give its ex-Soviet neighbours something to ponder. “The recent conflict will have dramatic repercussions for Russia and the international community as a whole for quite some time to come,” said Yevgeny Volk, a political analyst with the US-based Heritage Foundation think tank.

“It is the biggest geopolitical turning point since the 1991 Soviet collapse. It is a new stage in international relations, the end of any illusion about the peaceful nature of development in East-West relations,” he said. Numerous other experts agreed with this, saying that regardless of how the crisis is viewed looking back and how it plays out in the future a seminal event has now occurred that has already deeply impacted the global landscape.

“The status quo ante has gone forever,” James Nixey, manager of the Russia and Eurasia programme at the London-based research centre Chatham House, wrote in an essay as the crisis unfolded. “Whatever happens now in the Caucasus, relations between Russia and the West (and Russia’s West-leaning neighbours) must surely, from this moment on, be re-evaluated by all,” Nixey said.

In repelling Georgia’s bid to take control of the separatist province by force and then launching its own massive offensive into Georgia proper, Russia had a number of aims, several of which it has attained, experts said. These included the general aim of bolstering its weight in world affairs, the strategic aim of fortifying its presence in the Caucasus and the economic aim of stepping back into a vital oil and gas transport corridor.

“Russia’s reaction was a predetermined policy in search of an appropriate application,” Martha Brill Olcott, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said at a seminar last week in Washington. “The situation in South Ossetia proved a perfect storm for Moscow,” she said, according to a transcript of her remarks published by the Brookings Institution, another US policy research organisation.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is strongly supported by the United States and Washington has for years said it backs his objective of reasserting Georgian control over South Ossetia and another breakaway province, Abkhazia. Sporadic violence between rebel fighters and Georgian troops in both areas had been a feature of life in Georgia since the two regions, both backed by Russia, de facto split from the country in the early 1990s.

But what surprised many about the fighting that erupted there last week was how quickly it rocketed into a major confrontation between Russia on one side and the United States and much of western Europe on the other. The long-term implications of that confrontation are only now beginning to dawn on policymakers around the world, analysts said.

“Russia had said for many years that it was ready to use force outside its borders” in defence of Russian citizens and interests, explained Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the foreign policy review Russia in Global Affairs. “But the fact of actually doing it changes the strategic situation,” he said, adding: “At the critical moment, it appeared the United States could not actually do anything” to help Georgia counter the Russian onslaught.

And this, analysts say, may further shake up the international system as Georgia, Ukraine and other ex-Soviet republics re-assess the balance in their own relations with Russia, the United States and the world. Countries like Ukraine and Georgia which have for years pursued resolutely pro-Western policies aimed at integration into NATO and the European Union may change course or demand protection the West has been reluctant to give. “It is a signal that those who decide to bank exclusively on the United States might want to think about this” and either diversify their relations more or extract more solid security guarantees, Lukyanov said. According to a report by the Russian television news network Vesti, one nation once under Moscow’s sway – Poland – managed to do the latter in short order.

Poland obtained US assent to “all conditions” it had been holding out for before agreeing to host elements of a new US missile system, Vesti said. Those included delivery of Patriot missile batteries and training in their use. Russia has for years lashed out at what it perceived as unchallenged US global hegemony, and Turkish President Abdullah Gul, whose country is a close US ally in NATO, said the time had come to change the system.

“A new world order, if I can say it, should emerge,” Gul told the British daily Guardian in an interview published Saturday. It is precisely such a realignment in the relationship among the powers of the world – a change that enhances Moscow’s authority vis-a-vis that of Washington – that is already in progress, according to experts. In two terms as president, Vladimir Putin concentrated on consolidating Russia’s post-Soviet existence as a state and exploiting the country’s vast natural resources to put it back on a more robust economic footing.

As that process took place, the Kremlin began increasingly to believe that, despite talking of partnership, US actions like blocking Russian WTO membership showed Washington was more interested in domination than co-operation. So as an actor in the world, Russia has been aware for years of its sinking relationship with the United States in particular and is less likely to be moved by US threats that its actions in Georgia will worsen them further.

“Frankly speaking, the Western alliance does not have strong leverage to counter” Russia’s actions in the Caucasus, Volk said. “I don’t see that Russia is winning the psychological-information war. But from a point of view of political and economic achievements, I believe Russia has the stronger hand now,” he said. Threats like excluding Russia from the G8, boycotting the 2014 winter Olympic Games in Sochi and others are “not very significant to contain Russia” or coerce it to get in line with the West’s demands, he added.

Link

Russia has warned Poland that it is risking an attack -

even a nuclear one

A senior Russian general warned Poland today that it was leaving itself open to retaliation – and possibly even a nuclear strike – by agreeing to host a US missile base.

General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the Russian armed forces’ deputy chief of staff, issued the extraordinary threat in an interview with Interfax, a Russian news agency.

“Poland, by deploying [the system] is exposing itself to a strike – 100 per cent,” he was quoted as saying, before explaining that Russian military doctrine sanctioned the use of nuclear weapons “against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them”.

The bleak warning comes as tensions between Moscow and the West reached their worst state since the end of the Cold War

After a brief conflict between Russia and Georgia the international community has struggled to secure a peaceful resolution in the Caucasus. Moscow has yet to withdraw troops from its neighbour despite pressure from the European Union and United States.

In a provocative move, Washington followed robust rhetoric against Russia’s foreign policy motives in the region by announcing an agreement to station US missiles in Eastern Europe.

After months of negotiations American officials chose yesterday to announce that an agreement had been reached with Warsaw over a missile defence shield to be built on Polish soil.

American officials insist that the missile battery will be installed as a safeguard against rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, but Moscow says that it is being directly threatened by the deployment of weapons.

President Medvedev said that the deal “absolutely clearly demonstrates what we had said earlier – the deployment has the Russian Federation as its target.”

He did, however, take a far more conciliatory approach to the disagreement. At a joint press conference with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, he said: “It is sad news for all who live on this densely populated continent, but it is not dramatic.”

The relatively conciliatory tone of Mr Medvedev, who succeeded Vladimir Putin three months ago, did little to ease the tension. At a press conference in Washington, President Bush denounced Russian foreign policy as “bullying and intimidation”.

“The Cold War is over,” he said. “The days of satellite states and spheres of influence are behind us.”

But echoes of Cold War diplomacy were clear as it emerged that the US-Polish missile agreement included a “mutual commitment” between the two nations to come to each other’s assistance “in case of trouble”.

Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, hinted that the US had pledged to back Warsaw in the event of Russian aggression towards Poland. He said that he only agreed to host the US defence shield on the condition that the US agreed to help augment Poland’s defences with Patriot missiles, which are intended to ward off any threat from Russia.

“We have crossed the Rubicon,” he said after agreeing the landmark deal after more than 18 months of negotiations. In the past few days, Polish leaders told a domestic audience that the fighting in Georgia has justified Warsaw’s willingness to form such a significant alliance with the US.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4541613.ece

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Heavy storms slam Europe, 6 killed

WARSAW, Poland – Heavy storms hit parts of Europe, killing at least six people, injuring scores and damaging houses, according to media reports Saturday.

Southern Poland was hardest hit, with three deaths and 34 injuries when a tornado and heavy rain storms late Friday tore the roofs off homes, knocked down trees and overturned vehicles.

Two of those killed were in the southern province of Silesia, where a man near Czestochowa died after a tree crashed into his vacation home and a woman was crushed by the ceiling of her house in Rusinowice. Separately, a woman in the central city of Lodz was electrocuted by wires pulled ripped off by heavy winds.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26237629/

______________________________________

see also:

Navy Research Paper: ‘Disrupt Economies’ with Man-Made ‘Floods,’ ‘Droughts’

The U.S. government routinely conducts experiments on weather modification

Chemtrails-Chemtrails-Chemtrails-Chemtrails

Scalar Quake Weapons Being Aimed At Oak Ridge?

Earthquakes:Natural or Man-Made?

Collapsing Cities – The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

Russian military concerned by U.S. cargo flights to Georgia

Russia’s General Staff said Thursday it was concerned by the nature of cargoes the United States was airlifting to Georgia, questioning if they were really humanitarian aid.

The U.S. sent two C-17 military planes to Georgia late Wednesday and early Thursday as part of a Pentagon humanitarian mission.

In a statement Wednesday, President George W. Bush said Washington would “use U.S. aircraft, as well as naval forces” to distribute supplies, and demanded Russia withdraw troops from Georgia.

At a news conference Thursday, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of the General Staff, urged the media to press U.S. officials for trustworthy information on the U.S. role in Georgia.

“What is going on there?” he asked. “We, the Russians, are extremely concerned about it.”

“U.S. military transport aircraft are reported to have been airlifting some humanitarian cargoes to Tbilisi airport. Two days ago, reports said we had destroyed the airport,” Nogovitsyn said

Nogovitsyn denied reports by Georgian officials and Western media that Russian troops had blown up Georgia’s Black Sea port of Poti.

“This is not true. We have not been engaged in any military action for two days, only conducting reconnaissance,” he said.

He also denied that Russia had sent tanks into the strategically important Georgian town of Gori, near the South Ossetian border, but said armored vehicles with military personnel were there to take care of ammunition abandoned during the almost weeklong fighting.

“There are a lot of weapons which need to be guarded to prevent them from being stolen and used,” Nogovitsyn said, adding Russian servicemen’s other tasks in the city were to protect the transport communications and evacuate the injured.

He said the Russian military had contacted the city authorities over the issues.

Nogovitsyn said Russia had stopped the buildup of troops in the region, but has not yet set a withdrawal date.

“The withdrawal plan has not been approved yet. The buildup of the units has been suspended,” he said.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier Thursday that Russia could increase its peacekeeping contingent in South Ossetia. The country has maintained peacekeepers in Georgia’s separatist regions since the 1990s, when Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away following bloody conflicts.

Asked whether the fighting will influence the pace of Russia’s army modernization, Nogovitsyn said the country would “draw serious conclusions” from the events.

Western nations have strongly criticized Russia for a “disproportionate” use of force in its counterattack against Georgia’s military offensive to regain control of the province, warning it may hamper its international relations.

Moscow has accused the West of bias, saying it had no choice but to reinforce its peacekeepers in the region and protect the civilian population.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080814/116045281.html

Vladimir Putin’s mastery checkmates the West

Russia has been biding its time, but its victory in Georgia has been brutal – and brilliant

Michael Binyon

The cartoon images have shown Russia as an angry bear, stretching out a claw to maul Georgia. Russia is certainly angry, and, like a beast provoked, has bared its teeth. But it is the wrong stereotype. What the world has seen last week is a brilliant and brutal display of Russia’s national game, chess. And Moscow has just declared checkmate.

Chess is a slow game. One has to be ready to ignore provocations, lose a few pawns and turn the hubris of others into their own entrapment. For years there has been rising resentment within Russia. Some of this is inevitable: the loss of empire, a burning sense of grievance and the fear that in the 1990s, amid domestic chaos and economic collapse, Russia’s views no longer mattered.

A generalised resentment, similar to the sour undercurrents of Weimar Germany, began to focus on specific issues: the nonchalance of the Clinton Administration about Russian sensitivities, especially over the Balkans and in opening Nato’s door to former Warsaw Pact members; the neo-conservative agenda of the early Bush years that saw no role for Russia in its global agenda; and Washington’s ingratitude after 9/11 for vital Kremlin support over terrorism, Afghanistan and intelligence on extremism.

More infuriating was Western encouragement of “freedom” in the former Soviet satellite states that gave carte blanche to forces long hostile to Russia. In the Baltic states, Soviet occupation could be portrayed as worse than the Nazis. EU commissioners from new member states could target Russian policies. Populists in Eastern Europe could ride to power on anti-Russian rhetoric emboldened by Western applause for their fluency in English.

Nowhere was such taunting more wounding than in Ukraine and Georgia, two countries long part of the Russian Empire, whose history, religion and culture were so intertwined with Russia’s. Moscow tried, disastrously, to check Western, and particularly American, influence in Ukraine. The clumsy meddling led to the Orange Revolution.

Georgia was a different matter. Relations were always mercurial, but Eduard Shevardnadze, the wily former Soviet Foreign Minister, knew how to keep atavistic animosities in check. Not so his brash successor, Mikheil Saakashvili. From then on, hubris was Tbilisi’s undoing.

It was not simply the dismissive rhetoric, the open door to US advisers or the economic illiteracy in forgetting dependence on Russian energy and remittance from across the border; it was the determined attempt to make Georgia a US regional ally and outpost of US influence.

Big powers do not like other big powers poaching. This may not be moral or fair but it is reality, and one that underpins the Security Council veto. The Monroe Doctrine – “hands off the Americas” – has been policy in Washington for 200 years. The US is ready to risk war to keep out not only other powers but hostile ideologies – in Cuba and Nicaragua.

Vladimir Putin lost several pawns on the chessboard – Kosovo, Iraq, Nato membership for the Baltic states, US renunciation of the ABM treaty, US missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. But he waited.

The trap was set in Georgia. When President Saakashvili blundered into South Ossetia, sending in an army to shell, kill and maim on a vicious scale (against US advice and his promised word), Russia was waiting.

It was not only Mr Saakashvili who thought that he had the distraction of the Olympics to cover him; the Kremlin also knew that Mr Bush was watching basketball, and, in the longer term, that the US army was fully engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. From the day that the Russian tank brigade raced through the tunnel into South Ossetia, Russia has not made one wrong move. Mr Bush’s remarks yesterday notwithstanding, In five days it turned an overreaching blunder by a Western-backed opponent into a devastating exposure of Western impotence, dithering and double standards on respecting national sovereignty (viz Iraq).

The attack was short, sharp and deadly – enough to send the Georgians fleeing in humiliating panic, their rout captured by global television. The destruction was enough to hurt, but not so much that the world would be roused in fury. The timing of the ceasefire was precise: just hours before President Sarkozy could voice Western anger. Moscow made clear that it retained the initiative. And despite sporadic breaches – on both sides – Russia has blunted Georgian charges that this is a war of annihilation.

Moscow can also counter Georgian PR, the last weapon left to Tbilisi. Human rights? Look at what Georgia has done in South Ossetia (and also in Abkhazia). National sovereignty? Look at the detachment of Kosovo from Serbia. False pretexts? Look at Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada to “rescue” US medical students. Western outrage? Look at the confused cacophony.

There are lessons everywhere. To the former Soviet republics – remember your geography. To Nato – do you still want to incorporate Caucasian vendettas into your alliance? To Tbilisi – do you want to keep a President who brought this on you? To Washington – does Russia’s voice still count for nothing? Like it or not, it counts for a lot.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4525885.ece

The American Military Crisis

All you really need to know is that, at Robert Gates’ Pentagon, they’re still high on the term “the Long War.” It’s a phrase that first crept into our official vocabulary back in 2002 but was popularized by CENTCOM commander John Abizaid in 2004 – already a fairly long (war-)time ago. Now, Secretary of Defense Gates himself is plugging the term, as he did in April at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, quoting no less an authority than Leon Trotsky:

“What has been called the Long War is likely to be many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world in differing degrees of size and intensity. This generational campaign cannot be wished away or put on a timetable. There are no exit strategies. To paraphrase the Bolshevik Leon Trotsky, we may not be interested in the Long War, but the Long War is interested in us.”

The Long War has also made it front and center in the new “national defense strategy,” which is essentially a call to prepare for a future of two, three, many Afghanistans. (“For the foreseeable future, winning the Long War against violent extremist movements will be the central objective of the U.S.”) If you thought for a moment that in the next presidency some portion of those many billions of dollars now being sucked into the black holes of Iraq and Afghanistan was about to go into rebuilding American infrastructure or some other frivolous task, think again. Just read between the lines of that new national defense strategy document where funding for future conventional wars against “rising powers” is to be maintained, while funding for “irregular warfare” is to rise. The Pentagonization of the U.S., in other words, shows no sign of slowing down. Here, by the way, is the emphasis in the new Gates Doctrine – from a recent Pentagon briefing by the secretary of defense – that should make us all worry. “The principal challenge, therefore, is how to ensure that the capabilities gained and counterinsurgency lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the lessons relearned from other places where we have engaged in irregular warfare over the last two decades, are institutionalized within the defense establishment.” Back to the future?

And here’s a riddle for our moment: How long is a Long War, when you’ve been there before (as were, in the case of Afghanistan, Alexander the Great, the imperial Brits, and the Soviets)? On the illusions of victory and the many miscalculations of the Bush administration when it came to the nature of American military power, no one in recent years has been more incisive than Andrew Bacevich, who experienced an earlier version of the Long War firsthand in Vietnam. His new book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, has just been published. Short, sharp, to the point, it should be the book of the election season, if only anyone in power, or who might come to power, were listening. (The following piece, the first of two parts this week at TomDispatch, is adapted from section three of that book, “The Military Crisis.”) But if you want the measure of our strange, dystopian moment, Barack Obama reportedly has a team of 300 foreign policy advisers – just about everyone ever found, however brain-dead, in a Democratic presidential rolodex – and yet Bacevich’s name isn’t among them. What else do we need to know? Tom

Illusions of Victory

How the United States did not reinvent war… but thought it did
by Andrew Bacevich

“War is the great auditor of institutions,” the historian Corelli Barnett once observed. Since 9/11, the United States has undergone such an audit and been found wanting. That adverse judgment applies in full to America’s armed forces.

Valor does not offer the measure of an army’s greatness, nor does fortitude, nor durability, nor technological sophistication. A great army is one that accomplishes its assigned mission. Since George W. Bush inaugurated his global war on terror, the armed forces of the United States have failed to meet that standard.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush conceived of a bold, offensive strategy, vowing to “take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.” The military offered the principal means for undertaking this offensive, and U.S. forces soon found themselves engaged on several fronts.

Two of those fronts –- Afghanistan and Iraq – commanded priority attention. In each case, the assigned task was to deliver a knockout blow, leading to a quick, decisive, economical, politically meaningful victory. In each case, despite impressive displays of valor, fortitude, durability, and technological sophistication, America’s military came up short. The problem lay not with the level of exertion but with the results achieved.

In Afghanistan, U.S. forces failed to eliminate the leadership of al-Qaeda. Although they toppled the Taliban regime that had ruled most of that country, they failed to eliminate the Taliban movement, which soon began to claw its way back. Intended as a brief campaign, the Afghan War became a protracted one. Nearly seven years after it began, there is no end in sight. If anything, America’s adversaries are gaining strength. The outcome remains much in doubt.

In Iraq, events followed a similar pattern, with the appearance of easy success belied by subsequent developments. The U.S. invasion began on March 19, 2003. Six weeks later, against the backdrop of a White House-produced banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” President Bush declared that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” This claim proved illusory.

Writing shortly after the fall of Baghdad, the influential neoconservatives David Frum and Richard Perle declared Operation Iraqi Freedom “a vivid and compelling demonstration of America’s ability to win swift and total victory.” Gen. Tommy Franks, commanding the force that invaded Iraq, modestly characterized the results of his handiwork as “unequaled in its excellence by anything in the annals of war.” In retrospect, such judgments – and they were legion – can only be considered risible. A war thought to have ended on April 9, 2003, in Baghdad’s al-Firdos Square was only just beginning. Fighting dragged on for years, exacting a cruel toll. Iraq became a reprise of Vietnam, although in some respects at least on a blessedly smaller scale.

A New American Way of War?

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Just a few short years ago, observers were proclaiming that the United States possessed military power such as the world had never seen. Here was the nation’s strong suit. “The troops” appeared unbeatable. Writing in 2002, for example, Max Boot, a well-known commentator on military matters, attributed to the United States a level of martial excellence “that far surpasses the capabilities of such previous would-be hegemons as Rome, Britain, and Napoleonic France.” With U.S. forces enjoying “unparalleled strength in every facet of warfare,” allies, he wrote, had become an encumbrance: “We just don’t need anyone else’s help very much.”

Boot dubbed this the Doctrine of the Big Enchilada. Within a year, after U.S. troops had occupied Baghdad, he went further: America’s army even outclassed Germany’s Wehrmacht. The mastery displayed in knocking off Saddam, Boot gushed, made “fabled generals such as Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian seem positively incompetent by comparison.”

All of this turned out to be hot air. If the global war on terror has produced one undeniable conclusion, it is this: Estimates of U.S. military capabilities have turned out to be wildly overstated. The Bush administration’s misplaced confidence in the efficacy of American arms represents a strategic misjudgment that has cost the country dearly. Even in an age of stealth, precision weapons, and instant communications, armed force is not a panacea. Even in a supposedly unipolar era, American military power turns out to be quite limited.

How did it happen that Americans so utterly overappraised the utility of military power? The answer to that question lies at the intersection of three great illusions.

According to the first illusion, the United States during the 1980s and 1990s had succeeded in reinventing armed conflict. The result was to make force more precise, more discriminating, and potentially more humane. The Pentagon had devised a new American Way of War, investing its forces with capabilities unlike any the world had ever seen. As President Bush exuberantly declared shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, “We’ve applied the new powers of technology … to strike an enemy force with speed and incredible precision. By a combination of creative strategies and advanced technologies, we are redefining war on our terms. In this new era of warfare, we can target a regime, not a nation.”

The distinction between regime and nation was a crucial one. By employing these new military techniques, the United States could eliminate an obstreperous foreign leader and his cronies, while sparing the population over which that leader ruled. Putting a missile through the roof of a presidential palace made it unnecessary to incinerate an entire capital city, endowing force with hitherto undreamed-of political utility and easing ancient moral inhibitions on the use of force. Force had been a club; it now became a scalpel. By the time the president spoke, such sentiments had already become commonplace among many (although by no means all) military officers and national security experts.

Here lay a formula for certain victory. Confidence in military prowess both reflected and reinforced a post-Cold War confidence in the universality of American values. Harnessed together, they made a seemingly unstoppable one-two punch.

With that combination came expanded ambitions. In the 1990s, the very purpose of the Department of Defense changed. Sustaining American global preeminence, rather than mere national security, became its explicit function. In the most comprehensive articulation of this new American Way of War, the Joint Chiefs of Staff committed the armed services to achieving what they called “full-spectrum dominance” – unambiguous supremacy in all forms of warfare, to be achieved by tapping the potential of two “enablers” – “technological innovation and information superiority.”

Full-spectrum dominance stood in relation to military affairs as the political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s well-known proclamation of “the end of history” stood in relation to ideology: Each claimed to have unlocked ultimate truths. According to Fukuyama, democratic capitalism represented the final stage in political economic evolution. According to the proponents of full-spectrum dominance, that concept represented the final stage in the evolution of modern warfare. In their first days and weeks, the successive invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq both seemed to affirm such claims.

How Not to “Support the Troops”

According to the second illusion, American civilian and military leaders subscribed to a common set of principles for employing their now-dominant forces. Adherence to these principles promised to prevent any recurrence of the sort of disaster that had befallen the nation in Vietnam. If politicians went off half-cocked, as President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had back in the 1960s, generals who had correctly discerned and assimilated the lessons of modern war could be counted on to rein them in.

These principles found authoritative expression in the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine, which specified criteria for deciding when and how to use force. Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense during most of the Reagan era, first articulated these principles in 1984. Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the early 1990s, expanded on them. Yet the doctrine’s real authors were the members of the post-Vietnam officer corps. The Weinberger-Powell principles expressed the military’s own lessons taken from that war. Those principles also expressed the determination of senior officers to prevent any recurrence of Vietnam.

Henceforth, according to Weinberger and Powell, the United States would fight only when genuinely vital interests were at stake. It would do so in pursuit of concrete and attainable objectives. It would mobilize the necessary resources – political and moral as well as material – to win promptly and decisively. It would end conflicts expeditiously and then get out, leaving no loose ends. The spirit of the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine was not permissive; its purpose was to curb the reckless or imprudent inclinations of bellicose civilians.

According to the third illusion, the military and American society had successfully patched up the differences that produced something akin to divorce during the divisive Vietnam years. By the 1990s, a reconciliation of sorts was under way. In the wake of Operation Desert Storm, “the American people fell in love again with their armed forces.” So, at least, Gen. Colin Powell, one of that war’s great heroes, believed. Out of this love affair a new civil-military compact had evolved, one based on the confidence that, in times of duress, Americans could be counted on to “support the troops.” Never again would the nation abandon its soldiers.

The all-volunteer force (AVF) – despite its name, a professional military establishment – represented the chief manifestation of this new compact. By the 1990s, Americans were celebrating the AVF as the one component of the federal government that actually worked as advertised. The AVF embodied the nation’s claim to the status of sole superpower; it was “America’s Team.” In the wake of the Cold War, the AVF sustained the global Pax Americana without interfering with the average American’s pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. What was not to like?

Events since 9/11 have exposed these three illusions for what they were. When tested, the new American Way of War yielded more glitter than gold. The generals and admirals who touted the wonders of full spectrum dominance were guilty of flagrant professional malpractice, if not outright fraud. To judge by the record of the past twenty years, U.S. forces win decisively only when the enemy obligingly fights on American terms – and Saddam Hussein’s demise has drastically reduced the likelihood of finding such accommodating adversaries in the future. As for loose ends, from Somalia to the Balkans, from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf, they have been endemic.

When it came to the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine, civilian willingness to conform to its provisions proved to be highly contingent. Confronting Powell in 1993, Madeleine Albright famously demanded to know, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about, if we can’t use it?” Mesmerized by the prospects of putting American soldiers to work to alleviate the world’s ills, Albright soon enough got her way. An odd alliance that combined left-leaning do-gooders with jingoistic politicians and pundits succeeded in chipping away at constraints on the use of force. “Humanitarian intervention” became all the rage. Whatever restraining influence the generals exercised during the 1990s did not survive that decade. Lessons of Vietnam that had once seemed indelible were forgotten.

Meanwhile, the reconciliation of the people and the army turned out to be a chimera. When the chips were down, “supporting the troops” elicited plenty of posturing but little by way of binding commitments. Far from producing a stampede of eager recruits keen to don a uniform, the events of 9/11 reaffirmed a widespread popular preference for hiring someone else’s kid to chase terrorists, spread democracy, and ensure access to the world’s energy reserves.

In the midst of a global war of ostensibly earthshaking importance, Americans demonstrated a greater affinity for their hometown sports heroes than for the soldiers defending the distant precincts of the American imperium. Tom Brady makes millions playing quarterback in the NFL and rakes in millions more from endorsements. Pat Tillman quit professional football to become an army ranger and was killed in Afghanistan. Yet, of the two, Brady more fully embodies the contemporary understanding of the term patriot.

Demolishing the Doctrine of the Big Enchilada

While they persisted, however, these three illusions fostered gaudy expectations about the efficacy of American military might. Every president since Ronald Reagan has endorsed these expectations. Every president since Reagan has exploited his role as commander in chief to expand on the imperial prerogatives of his office. Each has also relied on military power to conceal or manage problems that stemmed from the nation’s habits of profligacy.

In the wake of 9/11, these puerile expectations – that armed force wielded by a strong-willed chief executive could do just about anything – reached an apotheosis of sorts. Having manifestly failed to anticipate or prevent a devastating attack on American soil, President Bush proceeded to use his ensuing global war on terror as a pretext for advancing grandiose new military ambitions married to claims of unbounded executive authority – all under the guise of keeping Americans “safe.”

With the president denying any connection between the events of Sept. 11 and past U.S. policies, his declaration of a global war nipped in the bud whatever inclination the public might have entertained to reconsider those policies. In essence, Bush counted on war both to concentrate greater power in his own hands and to divert attention from the political, economic, and cultural bind in which the United States found itself as a result of its own past behavior.

As long as U.S. forces sustained their reputation for invincibility, it remained possible to pretend that the constitutional order and the American way of life were in good health. The concept of waging an open-ended global campaign to eliminate terrorism retained a modicum of plausibility. After all, how could anyone or anything stop the unstoppable American soldier?

Call that reputation into question, however, and everything else unravels. This is what occurred when the Iraq War went sour. The ills afflicting our political system, including a deeply irresponsible Congress, broken national security institutions, and above all an imperial commander in chief not up to the job, became all but impossible to ignore. So, too, did the self-destructive elements inherent in the American way of life – especially an increasingly costly addiction to foreign oil, universally deplored and almost as universally indulged. More noteworthy still, the prospect of waging war on a global scale for decades, if not generations, became preposterous.

To anyone with eyes to see, the events of the past seven years have demolished the Doctrine of the Big Enchilada. A gung-ho journalist like Robert Kaplan might still believe that, with the dawn of the 21st century, the Pentagon had “appropriated the entire earth, and was ready to flood the most obscure areas of it with troops at a moment’s notice,” that planet Earth in its entirety had become “battle space for the American military.” Yet any buck sergeant of even middling intelligence knew better than to buy such claptrap.

With the Afghanistan War well into its seventh year and the Iraq War marking its fifth anniversary, a commentator like Michael Barone might express absolute certainty that “just about no mission is impossible for the United States military.” But Barone was not facing the prospect of being ordered back to the war zone for his second or third combat tour.

Between what President Bush called upon America’s soldiers to do and what they were capable of doing loomed a huge gap that defines the military crisis besetting the United States today. For a nation accustomed to seeing military power as its trump card, the implications of that gap are monumental.

Andrew Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. This piece is adapted from his new book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (Metropolitan Books, 2008). He is also the author of The New American Militarism, among other books. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic Monthly, the Nation, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=13289

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