The Observation Deck

The Russians are fighting the Georgians. CNN reports they are fighting with guns and tanks. Hopefully it is just a skirmish. Stalin was from Georgia. Maybe they will settle this at the olympics.

Ryan-- The weirdness of this serves to point out how still little we know about this part of an extremely large part of the world.
Stan

Yes. It is even further away than Iraq and Viet Nam and Panama and Gary, Indiana.

My knee jerk reaction was to view Russia as the bully and Georgia as the underdog. Then I read the CNN.com report the conflict is over the South Ossetia region. South Ossetia's majority population are something called "ossetians", which are not ethnically the same as Georgians or Russians. They had tried to secede from Georgia in the early 1990s, and are generally more willing to assimilate into Russia than Georgia. The total population of South Ossetia is about 100,000 people, which is less then many counties in Ohio.

It is harder to get excited this time because neither of the three main participants are Islamic, Communists, or Nazis.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... ml?cnn=yes

Russia will never be as cool as america. America has got bases
thousands of miles from america all over the world. America is fighting two wars/occupations in two large countries half way around the world far from america.

All russia can do is claim a small county immediately adjacent to
russia as a protectorate. The Ossetians have been autonomous from Georgia since the early 1990s. The Ossetians think the Georgians are Jerks, just like the American colonists thought Britain were jerks. Just as the colonists appealed to Authoritarian France to throw out the more liberal British Landlords, Ossetians are appealing to Russia to throw off the yoke of Georgia.

The majority of news articles I've encountered only skim over Georgia invading South Ossetia the day before Russia retaliated.

It makes sense for Russia to retaliate on behalf of its strong ally South Ossetia. The United States retaliated against Iraq when Iraq invaded our strong ally Kuwait and threatened our strong ally Saudi Arabia. Georgia is way smaller than Iraq, so the Russian achievement isn't as impressive as Americas.

Russia is mirroring the United States, only in a smaller and less impressive way. So if the Russian invasion of Georgia is wrong, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was bigger wrong. But if the Russian invasion of Georgia was Right, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was even Bigger Right! It is best to believe Russian invasion of Georgia was Right. Or something. They'll probably be out of there a lot faster than America gets out of Iraq, at any rate.

This is an opportunity for America to develop a greater level of concordance and cooperation with Russia. Russia is a global exporter of oil and natural gas. They aren't as screwed up or over populated as middle east and african fuel exporting nations. they aren't as tragically overpopulated as china or south korea or japan. In the future America will need oil and gas more than chinese factories. china will also need Russian oil and gas more than they need american customers.