Ghost of a flea: Strategic minorities

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August 19, 2008

Strategic minorities

This Georgia post will be updated as time permits.

Christopher Hitchens explains -- with all the patience he can muster -- that South Ossetia is not Kosovo (via the Drink Soaked Trots).

While it is almost certainly true that Moscow's action in the Ossetian and (for good measure) the Abkhazian enclave of Georgia has been, in a real sense, the revenge for the independence of Kosovo (on Feb. 14 Vladimir Putin said publicly that Western recognition of Kosovar independence would be met by intensified Russian support for irredentism in South Ossetia), it is extremely important to bear in mind that this observation does not permit us the moral sloth of allowing any equivalence between the two dramas.

Perhaps one could mention just some of the more salient differences?

RTWT.

* Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt: Those Russian nuclear weapons? What, me worry? If I was the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, I might not have the same confidence on the subject or, for that matter, in NATO.

* Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been accused of avoiding criticism of Russia's war on Georgia in the hopes of securing Russian support for her presidential bid. I confess this news leaves me with conflicted loyalties.

* Signs of resentment in Georgia near the Black Sea coast: a bridge had new graffiti reading, "Russia Occupier" beside a swastika. Careful, Georgian resistance fighters lest ye call down the wrath of Canadian human rights activists. Or snap happy lawyers with nothing better to do in public washrooms.

* Tbilisi has become a new West Berlin. Expect BO to turn up once he realizes this could be his JFK moment. Of course, that would mean actually putting himself in the line of Russian guns today instead of Russian guns forty years after the fact. Georgians know better.

* Instapundit suggests the Ukrainians take precautionary measures.

Just heard talk on the radio about whether Russia will move on Ukraine next. Not sure they can pull that off, but if I were the Ukrainians I'd infiltrate some folks into Russia with instructions to blow up some pipelines, etc., if that happened. It would be cheap and effective.

I say, why wait?

* In lock step agreement with Toronto Star readers, Pat Buchanan defends the "swift and decisive" action of "Russian patriot" Vladimir Putin.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at August 19, 2008 06:57 AM

Comments

Wow, Glenn Reynolds expressed an opinion?

And here I thought he only knew how to blog in hyperlink form. ;)

Posted by: agent bedhead at August 20, 2008 04:53 PM