by frog
You have to wonder who Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili had in his ear to think that attacking the separatists in South Ossetia was going to work. Maybe he mistakenly thought the support he got from the US in recent years was cavalry rather than show ponies? Maybe he though that nearly belonging to NATO was close enough? If so it won’t be the first time that NATO has played a negative role in promoting international conflict. Maybe, as The Hive has suggested, this is less about nationalism than it is about gas and oil? (Nice work from The Hive by the way covering this conflict. No Right Turn has a good analysis too.)
Georgia has had the bulk of the good will in the international media to date – probably because people in the West remember fondly Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003. But that does not fairly reflect the shared desire by both sides to warmonger.
On the other side Russia has again shown that the five permanent members of the Security Council do not have the necessary balance and lack of bias to be exercising the role that they do. Russia’s involvement in this conflict means that we cannot expect the United Nations to respond in the way that will save the most lives and lead to long term peace. This is a shame because compromises like that give bodies with less democratic ideals, such as NATO, added legitimacy. Which possibly brings us back to where we started?
Published in Justice & Democracy by frog on Mon, August 11th, 2008
Tags: Frog, frogblog, Georgia, green party, Mikheil Saakashvili, NATO, new zealand, Russia, South Ossetia, United Nations, war
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
The destabilisation of the region has had no end of assistance from the cross border trade in certain agricultural substances. Indeed, the presense of radicalised agents, including many of Osama’s mates in the region has not been becasue they like the food and the climate. The channeling of weapons and money via cricial links, the valleys and passes in and out of the region was noted back in June as one of the priorities of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
“…Russia will expand cooperation with CIS countries to ensure mutual security, combating international terrorism, extremism, drug turnover, transnational crimes and illegal migration. One of the main priorities of the country is neutralizing of terrorist act and drug turnover directed from Afghanistan, prevention of violation of stability in Central Asia and South Caucasus. ”
The trouble is we are not having this conversation… there are so many pretenders to peace and security for whom oil addiction makes it biggest drug of all… but there is a ’self repairing’ pipeline as durable and as flexible and as disguised that carries the ‘black stuff’ – product more fungable than cash, more concealable than a Kalashnikov AK-47 AKM Assault Rifle and more dangerous than an RPG.
Makes humbug of the Amnesty line of thinking… that unless the policy (victim) is hanging at the end of a rope, druggies have no human rights.
Yet there is the nexus. The balkanisation of the caucusus is the french connection all over again, same story, different actors.
Drug Policy has defined international affairs since USA banned opium in the Philipines just over one hundred years ago… only the magnitude is now ‘orders of’.
Where is GREEN thinking on drugs now?
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Hahaha this is such a funny post Frog omg
Frog you do live on planet earth?
Why do people look to the united nations its a cesspool of the most vile human beings on the planet, diplomants. Why NZ is still a member I have no idea, nothing good has ever come from the United nations and nothing good every will
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Good analysis of the pipelines and why Russia doesn’t want them there.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-battle-for-oil-eurs quos-hope-to-bypass-russian-energy-may-be-a-pipe-dream-891499.html
The fact that South Ossetia is ethnically Russia is nice and convenient.
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does anyone know if there is any press verification of mass killing of civilians by the Georgian army in Ossetia, or is it just hot air? Russia was making noises about this for a while before it went in.
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