Stratfor has a very persuasive analysis of the entire situation in Georgia, in particular how it is not the beginning of a new balance of power but rather the manifestation of an already-changed one. It shows that the predictable US response is likely to do little to help Georgia, while hurting US credibility:
By invading Georgia as Russia did (competently if not brilliantly), Putin re-established the credibility of the Russian army. But far more importantly, by doing this Putin revealed an open secret: While the United States is tied down in the Middle East, American guarantees have no value. This lesson is not for American consumption. It is something that, from the Russian point of view, the Ukrainians, the Balts and the Central Asians need to digest. Indeed, it is a lesson Putin wants to transmit to Poland and the Czech Republic as well. The United States wants to place ballistic missile defense installations in those countries, and the Russians want them to understand that allowing this to happen increases their risk, not their security.
The Russians knew the United States would denounce their attack. This actually plays into Russian hands. The more vocal senior leaders are, the greater the contrast with their inaction, and the Russians wanted to drive home the idea that American guarantees are empty talk.
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Recommend employing the wwGKs test when evaluating matters Kremlin. So, what would George Kennan say?
Three things would be prominent in his analysis, applicable as it was then, in the main, to a rigid, dark communist cadre and worldview.
1) That Russians qua the Kremlin act out of an historic sense of xenophobia and paranoia;
2) That their expansionism often centers on regions with, his phrase, “diseased tissue”;
3) That their Stalinist DNA left the Politburo boys incapable of indulging shared or joint power and made their doctrinaire “rightness” a kind of geopolitical sine qua non. Their ideological membrane compelled them to crush and to forever validate their sense of “infallibility.”
Now let it be said that the mortifying days of The Party and Kennan’s world thereof are long gone, obviously, but power politics in Russia today still finds its resonance and inspirations from the communist pathologies of that time. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. By extension we might ask, does the KGB ever really leave a person, even if that person leaves the KGB? And has the “Hannibal at the gates” ruse ever really disappeared from the Kremlin’s playbook?
I think not to both questions. Accordingly, it’s not so much that Volodya wanted to illuminate some balance of power instantiation by invading Georgia. Nor do I suspect he sought to teach his once and mighty satellites a lesson in geopolitical loyalty.
I’m ssticking with Kennan and the law of parsimony, here. I’m guessing Putin heard Stalin whispering in his ear, telling him what he told mindless generations. Kill or be killed, and don’t let the truth
ruin a perfectly simple construct for establihing order, and empire.