Engdahl: Washington Risks Nuclear War by Miscalculation

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Russia Georgia War
Washington Risks Nuclear War by Miscalculation

By F William Engdahl

11/08/08 "Market Oracle" - The dramatic military attack by the
military of the Republic of Georgia on South Ossetia in the last days
has brought the world one major step closer to the ultimate horror of
the Cold War eraba thermonuclear war between Russia and the United
Statesbby miscalculation. What is playing out in the Caucasus is
being reported in US media in an alarmingly misleading light, making
Moscow appear the lone aggressor. The question is whether George W.
Bush and Dick Cheney are encouraging the unstable Georgian President,
Mikhail Saakashvili in order to force the next US President to back
the NATO military agenda of the Bush Doctrine. This time Washington
may have badly misjudged the possibilities, as it did in Iraq , but
this time with possible nuclear consequences.

The underlying issue, as I stressed in my July 11 piece in this
space, Georgien, Washington, Moskau: Atomarer geopolitischer
Machtpoker , is the fact that since the dissolution of the Warsaw
Pact in 1991 one after another former member as well as former states
of the USSR have been coaxed and in many cases bribed with false
promises by Washington into joining the counter organization, NATO.

Rather than initiate discussions after the 1991 dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact about a systematic dissolution of NATO, Washington has
systematically converted NATO into what can only be called the
military vehicle of an American global imperial rule, linked by a
network of military bases from Kosovo to Poland to Turkey to Iraq and
Afghanistan . In 1999, former Warsaw Pact members Hungary , Poland
and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Bulgaria , Estonia , Latvia ,
Lithuania , Romania , and Slovakia followed suit in March 2004. Now
Washington is putting immense pressure on the EU members of NATO,
especially Germany and France , that they vote in December to admit
Georgia and Ukraine .

The roots of the conflict

The specific conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia and Abkhazia
has its roots in the following. First, the Southern Ossetes , who
until 1990 formed an autonomous region of the Georgian Soviet
republic, seek to unite in one state with their co-ethnics in North
Ossetia , an autonomous republic of the Russian Soviet republic and
now the Russian Federation . There is an historically grounded Ossete
fear of violent Georgian nationalism and the experience of Georgian
hatred of ethnic minorities under then Georgian leader Zviad
Gamsakhurdia, which the Ossetes see again under Georgian President,
Mikhel Saakashvili. Saakashvili was brought to power with US
financing and US covert regime change activities in December 2003 in
what was called the Rose Revolution. Now the thorns of that rose are
causing blood to spill.

Abkhazia and South Ossetiabthe first a traditional Black Sea resort
area, the second an impoverished, sparsely populated region that
borders Russia to the northbeach has its own language, culture,
history. When the Soviet Union collapsed, both regions sought to
separate themselves from Georgia in bloody conflicts - South Ossetia
in 1990-1, Abkhazia in 1992-4.

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In December 1990 Georgia under Gamsakhurdia sent troops into South
Ossetia after the region declared its own sovereignty. This Georgian
move was defeated by Soviet Interior Ministry troops. Then Georgia
declared abolition of the South Ossete autonomous region and its
incorporation into Georgia proper. Both wars ended with cease-fires
that were negotiated by Russia and policed by peacekeeping forces
under the aegis of the recently established Commonwealth of
Independent States. The situation hardened into "frozen conflicts,"
like that over Cyprus . By late 2005, Georgia signed an agreement
that it would not use force, and the Abkhaz would allow the gradual
return of 200,000-plus ethnic Georgians who had fled the violence.
But the agreement collapsed in early 2006, when Saakashvili sent
troops to retake the Kodori Valley in Abkhazia. Since then
Saakashvili has been escalating preparations for military action.

Critical is Russia 's support for the Southern Ossetes . Russia is
unwilling to see Georgia join NATO. In addition, the Ossetes are the
oldest Russian allies in the Caucasus who have provided troops to the
Russian army in many wars. Russia does not wish to abandon them and
the Abkhaz, and fuel yet more ethnic unrest among their compatriots
in the Russian North Caucasus . In a November 2006 referendum, 99
percent of South Ossetians voted for independence from Georgia , at a
time when most of them had long held Russian passports. This enabled
Russian President Medvedev to justify his military's counter-attack
of Georgia on Friday as an effort to "protect the lives and dignity
of Russian citizens, wherever they may be."

For Russia , Ossetia has been an important strategic base near the
Turkish and Iranian frontiers since the days of the czars. Georgia is
also an important transit country for oil being pumped from the
Caspian Sea to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and a potential base for
Washington efforts to encircle Tehran .

As far as the Georgians are concerned, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are
simply part of their national territory, to be recovered at all
costs. Promises by NATO leaders to bring Georgia into the alliance,
and ostentatious declarations of support from Washington , have
emboldened Saakashvili to launch his military offensive against the
two provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Saakashvili and likely,
Dick Cheney's office in Washington appear to have miscalculated very
badly. Russia has made it clear that it has no intention of ceding
its support for South Ossetia or Abkhazia.

Proxy War

In March this year as Washington went ahead to recognize the
independence of Kosovo in former Yugoslavia, making Kosovo a de facto
NATO-run territory against the will of the UN Security Council and
especially against Russian protest, Putin responded with Russian Duma
hearings on recognition of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria,
a pro-Russian breakaway republic in Moldova. Moscow argued that the
West's logic on Kosovo should apply as well to these ethnic
communities seeking to free themselves from the control of a hostile
state. In mid-April, Mr. Putin held out the possibility of
recognition for the breakaway republics. It was a geopolitical chess
game in the strategic Caucasus for the highest stakesbthe future of
Russia itself.

Saakashvili called then-President Putin to demand he reverse the
decision. He reminded Putin that the West had taken Georgia 's side.
This past April at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, US
President Bush proposed accepting Georgia into NATO's "Action Plan
for Membership," a precursor to NATO membership. To Washington 's
surprise, ten NATO member states refused to support his plan,
including Germany , France and Italy .

They argued that accepting the Georgians was problematic, because of
the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia . They were in reality
saying that they would not be willing to back Georgia as, under
Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which mandates that an armed attack
against any NATO member country must be considered an attack against
them all and consequently requires use of collective armed force of
all NATO members, it would mean that Europe could be faced with war
against Russia over the tiny Caucasus Republic of Georgia, with its
incalculable dictator, Saakashvili. That would mean the troubled
Caucasus would be on a hair-trigger to detonate World War III.

Russia threatens Georgia , but Georgia threatens Abkhazia and South
Ossetia . Russia looks like a crocodile to Georgia , but Georgia
looks to Russia like the cats' paw of the West. Since Saakashvili
took power in late 2003 the Pentagon has been in Georgia giving
military aid and training. Not only are US military personnel active
in Georgia today. According to an Israeli-intelligence source, DEBKA
file, in 2007, the Georgian President Saakashvili bcommissioned from
private Israeli security firms several hundred military advisers,
estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian armed forces in
commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat tactics. They also
have been giving instruction on military intelligence and security
for the central regime. Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence
and electronic warfare systems from Israel . These advisers were
undoubtedly deeply involved in the Georgian army's preparations to
conquer the South Ossetian capital Friday.b

Debkafile reported further, b Moscow has repeatedly demanded that
Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia , finally
threatening a crisis in bilateral relations. Israel responded by
saying that the only assistance rendered Tbilisi was bdefensive.'b
The Israeli news source added that Israel 's interest in Georgia has
to do as well with Caspian oil pipeline geopolitics. b Jerusalem has
a strong interest in having Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the
Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan , rather than the Russian network.
Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia ,
Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence
to Israel 's oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of
Eilat . From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far
East through the Indian Ocean .b

This means that the attack on South Ossetia is the first battle in a
new proxy warfare between Anglo-American-Israeli led interests and
Russia . The only question is whether Washington miscalculated the
swiftness and intensity of the Russian response to the Georgian
attacks of 8.8.08.

So far, each step in the Caucasus drama has put the conflict on a yet
higher plane of danger. The next step will no longer be just about
the Caucasus , or even Europe . In 1914 it was the bGuns of
Augustb that initiated the Great War. This time the Guns of August
2008 could be the detonator of World War III and a nuclear holocaust
of unspeakable horror.

Nuclear Primacy: the larger strategic danger

Most in the West are unaware how dangerous the conflict over two tiny
provinces in a remote part of Eurasia has become. What is left out of
most all media coverage is the strategic military security context of
the Caucasus dispute.

In my book, Century of War , I describe the developments by NATO and
most directly by Washington since the end of the Cold War to
systematically pursue what military strategists call Nuclear Primacy.
Put simply, if one of two opposing nuclear powers is able to first
develop an operational anti-missile defense, even primitive, that can
dramatically weaken a potential counter-strike by the opposing side's
nuclear arsenal, the side with missile defense has bwonb the
nuclear war.

As mad as this sounds, it has been explicit Pentagon policy through
the last three Presidents from father Bush in 1990, to Clinton and
most aggressively, George W. Bush. This is the issue where Russia has
drawn a deep line in the sand, understandably so. The forceful US
effort to push Georgia as well as Ukraine into NATO would present
Russia with the spectre of NATO literally coming to its doorstep, a
military threat that is aggressive in the extreme, and untenable for
Russian national security.

This is what gives the seemingly obscure fight over two provinces the
size of Luxemburg the potential to become the 1914 Sarajevo trigger
to a new nuclear war by miscalculation. The trigger for such a war is
not Georgia 's right to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Rather, it
is US insistence on pushing NATO and its missile defense right up to
Russia 's door.

By F. William Engdahl
www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net

COPYRIGHT B) 2008 F. William Engdahl. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

* F. William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-
American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press) and Seeds
of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation ,
www.globalresearch.ca . The present series is adapted from his new
book, now in writing, The Rise and Fall of the American Century:
Money and Empire in Our Era. He may be contacted through his website,
www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net .

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