"Brown pledges finances for Georgia"

If they have to waste yet more taxpayer millions, let's hope they pay all this money to the correct Georgia at least.

This one. Not this one!

We don't want a repeat of the unfortunate Newcastle/Newcastle mix-up, eh?

The First Rule Of Warfare

As my theme for today is "half way lucid comments that I have left on other 'blogs", let me round off with my comment over at C-at-W regarding recent Russia/Georgia/South Ossetia unpleasantness*:

"... what the cold warriors forget (on the Russian side and in the West) is The First Rule of Warfare**, that has held pretty well for the last hundred years.

It's quite simple.

Millitarily, it is a piece of piss to invade another country, especially if you're big and they're small.***

Politically and economically, it is impossible to hold on to occupied territories in the long run. The cost of doing so - in money, in lives, in unhappy families of soldiers who've died, in the drain on the economy to support the military spending, the terrorist attacks that you provoke in your own country, the international opprobrium, the trade sanctions, the ignominy of the ultimate withdrawal - always exceeds any short term benefits.

So whatever Russia hoped to gain from smashing up Georgia (and I can sort of sympathise with them) will be outweighed by the long run costs of occupying Georgia. The same applies to the USA and Iraq, BTW. Or Israel and the West Bank. Etc etc.

So sooner or later they will withdraw. And every rouble they waste on that war is a rouble less they can spend on attacking us (in this case, attacking us by proxy via the Islamofascist bastards in Iran).

And they'll have learned their lesson ... for a decade or two before the next power mad shithead in the Kremlin (or in the White House - or the Knesset - or in Tehran or Pyongyang for that matter) - does it again."

* As you may have noticed, this is a topic that does not overly interest me. So far I have restricted myself to posting Denis Cooper's fine fisking of Dave The Chameleon's sub-GSCE drivel.

** I once expounded The First Rule Of Warfare to a history teacher chum and he hummed-and-hahed. A month later, he told me that he quoted this handy rule-of-thumb in his lessons.

*** UPDATE. Make that "Militarily, it is usually a piece of piss, especially if you're big and they're small, but even then, the large country can get its arse kicked e.g. Russia v Finland".

UPDATE, UPDATE. Having now taken the trouble to read up on The Winter War, I conclude that Russia got its arse severely kicked and failed miserably in its original objective, but managed to grab a small slice of S.E. Finland which is still controls to this day. This still fits the overall generalisation that 'invading other countries is a bad idea'.

Dave The Chameleon (2)

Denis Cooper fisks Dave The Chameleon

Orginal article here.

"This is not some quarrel in a far-away land." Yes it is.

"What happens in Georgia directly affects us." Only if we allow it to do so.

"For a start, it's about energy security." Could that be because Thatcher shut down our coal mines, and by accepting and promoting the theory that carbon dioxide emissions would wreck the planet made it difficult for the industry to be re-started?

"The Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline ... runs right through Georgia". It was put there to avoid crossing Russian territory, while also avoiding Iran and Armenia, despite the obvious fact that it would still be vulnerable to Russian attack - so what should we do, base British troops in Georgia to defend it?

"History has shown that if you leave aggression to go unchecked, greater crises will only emerge in the future". That's what Eden thought about Nasser, and look where that got us.

"... stability in the Caucasus ... is a matter for the security of Britain and our allies." Up to a point, but it could also be said about many other troubled parts of the world.

"we should accelerate the path to Nato membership for countries such as Georgia, and other democracies such as Ukraine, if that is what they wish." In other words, the Georgians et al should be given the option of committing all the present Nato members to go to war, including nuclear war, in their defence.

"The lack of clarity about Georgia's prospects of joining Nato contributed to the present crisis." The starting point was the very suggestion that these five former Soviet republics might follow the former Soviet satellite states and the former Soviet Baltic republics by first joining Nato, and then the EU.

"It encouraged Russia ... because the West was divided and uncertain." With good reason - because history has shown that making a solemn promise that you will go to war in the defence of another country can have devastating consequences.

"The knowledge that Nato membership was a real prospect would have provided Allies with greater leverage over the actions of Tbilisi's government." Actually just the rather remote prospect of Nato and EU membership seems to have gone to their heads, with the President appearing on TV flanked by the Georgian and EU flags.

"Of course France holds the EU presidency. But that is not a reason for Britain to sub-contract our entire response to the crisis to our allies." So which party started the process of sub-contracting our foreign and defence policy to the EU, under the Maastricht Treaty?

"We could be pressing for the negotiation of the strategic partnership between the EU and Russia to be suspended." Or we could press to leave the EU out of it, and instead ask the UN to convene a traditional international congress of all interested sovereign states and other interested parties to work out a new and durable settlement.

From Denis Cooper, via email (reproduced with kind permission of the fisker).

"What Georgia means for Europe"

I don't normally 'do' Comment-is-free (barrels, fish and all that), but this one, via Denis Cooper, is priceless:

Which returns me to the Irish referendum. Whatever the Irish thought they were voting on, the Russian military threat wasn't on the radar screen when they recently went to the polls to say 'no' to Europe. But Georgia has decisively placed the security question on the agenda - raising the stakes, and putting a great deal of responsibility on Ireland to reach an accommodation with the rest of Europe that will allow the Union to move forward without another period of anxious renegotiation.

Wasn't one of the (many) reasons for the Irish 'No' the fact that the idea of an EU-Army goes against their desire to remain militarily neutral? Why would it make the slightest teensiest scrap of difference to what Russia thinks or does whether a militarily neutral country with a population of less than 1% of the EU's total at the very Western edge of Europe is lukewarm about further EU 'integration'?

Macavity's back!

Other blogs have noted that The Goblin King was (un)usually silent during this week's Russia v Georgia military bust-up. The Russian President announced this afternoon that they were ready to declare a ceasefire, and guess who popped up on the Channel 4 News just now - once it was all over - to offer his platitudes?

Honestly, what a total and utter shit.