Georgia's Attack on South Ossetia: Washington's Role
Venik
* Aug. 15th, 2008 at 11:13 PM
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Elusive NATO Membership
At the NATO Summit in Bucharest in April 2008 Georgia was denied
Membership Action Plan. Aside from Russia's vehement opposition, the key
issues outlined in the NATO Individual Partnership Action Plan, accepted
by Georgia in October 2004, remain unresolved. These issues are:
Georgia's antiquated military equipment, insufficient training and
deployability of its forces, and, most importantly, unresolved ethnic
conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Georgia responded to these challenges by requesting US help with
training and rearming its forces. The emphasis was made on reducing the
size but increasing the quantity and mobility of Georgian army
battalions. The 2007 Georgian Strategic Defense Review (SDR) outlined an
overall reduction of the country's armed forces from about 28,000
personnel (excluding civilian contractors and reservists) in 2006 to
just 18,755 in 2015. Despite this reduction, since 2004 Georgia has been
actively acquiring modern weapons. The SDR assumption was that ethnic
conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia will be settled by 2012 and
Georgia will be ready to join NATO.
There was a little problem with this plan, however. President
Saakashvili's second term in office is to end in 2012 and there was no
guarantee that he would still be in office by the time Georgia was ready
to join NATO. With military aid from the US, addressing the issues of
training, restructuring and rearming Georgian armed forces was only a
matter of sticking to the timetable worked out by American advisors. The
simmering ethnic conflicts in the two breakaway republics were the big
unknown. It seemed highly unlikely that either Abkhazia or South Ossetia
would come under Tbilisi's control voluntarily. One option would have
been to grant the two provinces wide-ranging autonomy. However, such an
action would not have been accepted by Saakashvili's ultra-nationalist
supporters in the parliament.
Preparing for War
As part of its rigorous rearmament program, Georgia purchased 30 towed
(122-mm D-30) and 12 self-propelled (152-mm “Dana”) howitzers from the
Czech Republic in 2006; 6 Mi-24B/P and 2 Mi-8MT assault helicopters from
Ukraine in 2005; 31 T-72 main battle tanks from Ukraine and the Czech
Republic in 2005; 25 120-mm mortars from the Czech Republic and Bosnia
also in 2005; 20 BTR-80 armored personnel carriers from Ukraine in 2005;
12 self-propelled 152-mm 2S3M howitzers from Ukraine in 2004; one Mi-35
assault helicopter from Uzbekistan in 2004; 40 BMP-2 APCs from Ukraine
in 2004; 14 120-mm mortars from Bulgaria in 2004; 6 122 mm RM-70 MLRS
systems from the Czech Republic in 2003; and other heavy weapons,
including fast attack craft, more mortars, howitzers and helicopters.
(Source: Jane's Sentinel Security Assessment, August 2008; see the
complete list of Georgia's weapons acquisitions since 2000 at the end of
this article).
Georgia's defense budget has grown from USD 20 million in 2001 to USD
734 million in 2007 and over USD 900 million in 2008. Accounting for
inflation, this is roughly a 40-fold increase in military spending in
just six years. So when Irakli Alasania, Georgia's UN Ambassador, tells
the UN Security Council that his country is “a small and peace-loving
nation”, the logical should be: what does a peace-loving nation need
with so many new howitzers, mortars, armored personnel carriers, tanks,
missile boats, and helicopter gunships? According to the World Bank
statistics, the GDP of Georgia has grown from USD 3.2 billion in 2001 to
USD 6.39 billion in 2005. The CIA World Factbook puts Georgia's GDP for
2007 at USD 10.29 billion – an optimistic estimate so far not confirmed
by the World Bank. Even so, between 2001 and 2007 Georgian military
budget grew 40 times, while the country's GDP increased about
three-fold. Where does Saakashvili get the cash to rearm his army?
Even if Georgia spent its entire ten-billion-dollar GDP on defense, its
army still would not have been a match for the Russian military. Was
Saakashvili throwing money to the wind, wasting precious resources of
his impoverished nation on a hopeless stand-off with Russia? Not at all.
If Georgia was getting ready to fight a war with Russia, its primary
spending category would have been air defenses. However, take a closer
look at the list of Georgia's weapons acquisitions over the past eight
year: there are no signs of any major air defense purchases. Instead, we
see lots of mortars, howitzers, tanks, helicopters, and even two landing
ships. Georgia was preparing for a war against separatists in South
Ossetia and Abkhazia.
So what does Georgia have in terms of air defenses? According to the
August 2008 Jane's Sentinel Security Assessment, Georgian air defenses
consist of the following: “30 SA-7 Strela-2/2M (Igla) Manportable
Surface-to-Air Missile, 5 ZSU-23-4 Self-Propelled Anti-Aircraft Systems,
12 ZU-23-2 Anti-Aircraft Artillery, 4 100 mm Anti-Aircraft Artillery, 4
57 mm Anti-Aircraft Artillery.” In other words, Georgia was hardly a
threat to the Russian Air Force. Still, Georgia was able to down two
Russian aircraft: an Su-25 ground attack jet and the Tu-22M3R
reconnaissance plane (a version of the Tu-22M3 supersonic bomber),
piloted by Col. Igor Zinov, a 50 year-old Tu-22M3 instructor pilot
stationed at the Flight Test Center at Akhtubinsk. The Russians admitted
the loss of the two aircraft and said that the Tu-22M3R was shot down by
the Georgians using an S-200 (NATO designation: SA-5 Gammon) long-range
SAM secretly purchased from Ukraine in late 2007.
The “Georgia Strikes Back With Air Defenses” article in the August 11
issue of Aviation Week cited unnamed US analysts saying that “...the
Georgians are probably operating the SA-11 Buk-M1 (low-to-high altitude)
and the (low-to-medium altitude) Tor-1M mobile air defense missile
systems.” However, neither Buk-M1 not Tor-1M are known to be in
Georgia's inventory and it seems that the Aviation Week editors need to
check their sources more rigorously. Regardless of the situation with
the downed Russian Backfire, it is clear that Georgia did not expect to
fight the Russians in any considerable numbers.
What Were They Thinking About?
According to the Georgian attack maps, obtained on August 11 by a
forward unit of the Russian 4th VDV regiment from a captured
high-ranking Georgian staff officer, Tbilisi's plan called for a
blitzkrieg invasion of South Ossetia in the early morning of August 8,
followed by a three-pronged invasion of Abkhazia on August 11, which was
to involve the Georgian army's naval component. This explains Georgia's
acquisitions of landing craft, naval helicopters, and high-speed missile
boats. Preparations for the war against the breakaway regions, it would
seem, have been carried out for years, starting during the
administration of Saakashvili's predecessor – the USSR's former Foreign
Minister and independent Georgia's second President Eduard Shevarnadze.
It is interesting to note, that, according to the captured plan, a major
portion of the Georgian forces involved in South Ossetia was to be
redeployed for the August 11 invasion of Abkhazia (at least a day's
drive from South Ossetia for heavy vehicles, plus another day would have
been needed for combat deployment). Evidently, Georgia's military
planners did not anticipate any substantial problems in South Ossetia
and fully expected the operation there to be concluded by the end of
Saturday, August 9 at the latest.
It is evident that Saakashvili's generals did not expect an overwhelming
military response from Russia. The Georgians timed their assault on
Tskhinvali – South Ossetia's capital – to coincide with the opening
ceremony of the Olympic Games. With Putin in Beijing mingling with
Western heads of states, perhaps the expectation on the part of Tbilisi
was of a more cautious Russian response, at least until the end of
Putin's visit to China. However, it would have been extremely naïve for
Saakashvili and his generals to pin all of their hopes on Putin's
absence from Moscow and the ability of Bush to contain Putin's reaction.
Georgia had to have something more substantial in terms of guarantees of
Russia's non-involvement.
Washington's Role
On August 10 Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted South Ossetian
official representative in Moscow Dmitry Medoev saying that there were
several Negroes among the Georgian troops killed during the fighting in
Tskhinvali, raising speculation in the Russian press that American
military or private (Blackwater is known to operate in Georgia)
instructors might have been directly involved in combat.
Over the past few years, hundreds of US military instructors were sent
to Georgia to train Saakashvili's army. Several senior Pentagon officers
were permanently stationed in Tbilisi to coordinate these training
activities. According to the captured map of Georgia's planned invasion
of Abkhazia, up to two-thirds of the country's entire military force
were to be involved in the operation. It is inconceivable that the US
military personnel in Georgia was completely unaware of preparations for
such a massive operation.
The Americans had to have known that Georgian artillery was preparing to
slaughter hundreds of civilians in Tskhinvali. They had to have known
about the large-scale movements of Georgian troops and heavy weapons.
Even if American troops stationed in Georgia did not directly
participate in the actual combat, there is no doubt in my mind that they
knew the details of the planned massive operation against the
separatists and, most likely, were involved in the planning stage of
this war.
Did the Russians Know?
No matter how you look at it, this war was a huge gamble on
Saakashvili's part. The headquarters of the Russian North-Caucasus
Military District and well over a hundred thousand of Russia's most
combat-ready units are located in Vladikavkaz – just a 20-mile drive
along the Military-Georgian Road to the Georgian border. Even more
Russian forces are stationed in nearby Ingushetia and Chechnya. Several
large Russian Air Force bases with dozens of combat-ready aircraft are
located within fifteen minutes of flight from Georgia. For Saakashvili –
and, by extension, for his masters in Washington – Russian military
involvement made a difference between a major geopolitical victory and a
humiliating defeat. Whatever the Georgians and the Americans were
planning together, they had to be sure that the Russian military was not
going to interfere. The most interesting question of this war is what
made them think that.
Obviously, one way to look at this situation is to acknowledge the
obvious – the US military personnel in Georgia knew about the planned
actions against South Ossetia and Abkhazia – and to suppose that
Saakashvili jumped the gun before all the preparations were completed.
While it is possible that Saakashvili took an unauthorized initiative,
it is extremely unlikely. Rice's recent trip to Tbilisi and the apparent
ease with which she convinced Saakashvili to sign the peace deal that
heavily favors Moscow is a good illustration of how well Washington
controls the president of Georgia. Therefore, Saakashvili's “Olympic”
jump into South Ossetia had to be, if not ordered, then at least
strongly encouraged by the White House. We have to conclude that the US
had good reasons to believe that the Russians will not get involved; or,
at the very least, that they will not have enough time to respond.
This is another good point: timing might have been the key to this
operation by Georgia. The situation along the border between Georgia and
South Ossetia was never calm. However, during the few weeks leading to
Georgia's attack on Tskhinvali there has been an increasing number of
Georgian mortar attacks against South Ossetia's territory. Some attacks
were quite intense, but none were followed up by any ground operations.
Any military cadet will tell you that sporadic and seemingly random
shelling of your positions by the enemy is a sign of an upcoming attack.
The enemy mortars your positions near the front line to identify their
locations and to gauge your response tactics and your timing.
The Russians, obviously, knew about the attacks but did not respond in
any obvious military way, other than with the usual diplomatic rhetoric
and an occasional incursion of its fighter jets into South Ossetia. Were
they being careless or did they already know about the upcoming Georgian
invasion of Tskhinvali and were making preparations of their own? Some
suggest that Russia's lightning-fast response and the number of forces
involved is a sign that its military was ready and waiting. It's a
possibility: lack of any visible reaction from the Russians to the
mortar and artillery attacks by the Georgians might have convinced
Tbilisi and Washington that it was safe to act. On the other hand,
Russia already had huge military presence at its bases in Vladikavkaz.
These are some of Russia's best troops used regularly in Chechnya.
A few days ago we all had a chance to witness Saakashvili's impressive
self-preservation instincts during his PR trip to Gori. His belligerent
public speeches aside, Saakashvili is not a man who would risk his
political career and his life to go to war, if he was not reasonably
assured of victory. My impression is – and this is strictly my personal
opinion – that Saakashvili did not jump the gun but launched the
invasion of South Ossetia with the express permission from Washington. I
also suspect that the Russians knew about the attack in advance. They
may not have known the exact timing or the details, but they made sure
the tanks were fueled and the soldiers had their milk and Wheaties in
the morning.
Georgians chose to attack as the Olympic Games opened in China. If I was
a Russian commander expecting a Georgian attack in the next few days or
weeks, Friday, August 8, would have been marked on my calendar with a
big red star. Did any of you wonder why Putin and not Medvedev went to
the opening ceremony in Beijing? The Chinese press wrote on August 3
that Putin will be in China to “personally inspire Russian athletes to
win gold medals”, as well as to promote the Sochi-2014 Winter Olympics.
Perhaps Putin was in Beijing to inspire and promote, or maybe he had
good reasons to think that Georgia would invade South Ossetia at the
time of the opening ceremony and did not believe Medvedev would be able
to handle Bush, Sarkozy, and Co.
--
Venik
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