Mistakes on both sides?

Finally, a partly convincing reason why the Georgians didn't close the Roki tunnel in the war as their first  move.

According to this assessment on EurasiaNet of Georgian strategy, the Georgians (or perhaps just Saakashvili) didn't think the Russians would risk their military reputations after the defeat in Afghanistan and the ongoing war in Chechnya. 

"We expected that the Russians would fight with the hands of the separatists".

Georgian soldiers who fought in South Ossetia told EurasiaNet that they thought their initial mission in the breakaway region was to stop separatist attacks on Georgian villages in the area. On the morning of August 8, the Georgian government cited shelling on two Georgian villages as the reason for its decision to move on Tskhinvali.

"Our goal was to put an end to fighting in the area  and take control," said one senior lieutenant from Georgia's 3,500-strong 4th Brigade, a unit that bore the brunt of the fighting on August 8. "Nobody in the army expected a war with Russia."

The realization that Georgian forces were not up against South Ossetian militia, but an opponent who could vastly outnumber the Georgian army in numbers and firepower came as a shock, sources say. "The main thing is that the scope of the threat was underestimated, while our own combat capabilities were overestimated," commented one defense ministry source, who asked not to be named.

That seems very strange.  Even I knew that Russian troops had been carrying out exercises in the Caucasus in July; that Russian railway troops had repaired the railway in Abkhazia and there had been a build-up of Russian peacekeepers in the two breakaway regions, as well as "North Ossetian militias" probably from Kadyrov the Russian backed "ruler" in Chechnya.

According to the Georgian interviewed,

The (Russian) tanks (arrived) from the southern mouth of the Roki tunnel, a border passage that provided the conduit for Russian forces and materiel. The Georgians’ failure to seal off the tunnel has been repeatedly cited as a critical strategic error. Georgian officers were aware of the tunnel’s significance, but they lacked the force to seal it. "Had we had a chance to destroy the Roki tunnel we would’ve done it," said Deputy Defense Minister Kutelia. "The tunnel is tucked under a rock and it is very hard to destroy or block it unless you get really close."

So that's it then.  Saakashvili thought he would go and give a few South Ossetians a bloody nose (as Putin would say) with his new American trained army, and found he had walked into a trap containing Russian tanks which had coincidentally just been waiting to come through the tunnel.  And nobody thought about bombing the tunnel, rather than blowing it up?
 

On the other hand, there are plenty of articles eg here (some improvement on Chechnya but poor coordination, and poor equipment) and here (Georgians had a good plan, but Russians responded more quickly with overwhelming force, was one view; another that there was a failure of Russian forces to use air power to knock out key Georgian institutions and especially Georgian artillery) about the performance of the Russian army in this war, which don't make happy reading either.   The seond article (from the NY Times) concludes

there is a very real danger that the war between Russia and Georgia will drag on, with the possibility that the United States will resupply Georgia or provide it with various kinds of technologies that Russian forces are not currently capable of neutralizing except at the cost of far greater losses than they have suffered up to now

Well so far that hasn't happened, though Putin has produced a much larger budget for re-equipping the armed forces with more Russian equipment. But will that solve the problem?

I have only the following hearsay stories to add.

The Russian soldiers are so badly supported that they have been begging for food (reported by people working for the UN, sorting out emergency assistance).  No wonder they are looting.  It's clearly one thing to get tanks through the Roki tunnel and another to get supplies.  Presumably Russian soldiers are just billeted on the local population.  Probably the South Ossetians were not so pleased to have to feed the army as well as cope with war.  No wonder they took some it out on the Georgian villages. If you are going to make a habit of invading other countries, especially those without railways, then you are going to have to develop your logistics.  The railway troops are not going to be able to do it.  There can't have been many railways in Afghanistan before it was bombed back to the stone age either. 

The Russian soldiers who broke into the well-equipped Senaki barracks were caught on the closed circuit TV cameras.  When they saw the stocks and equipment which the Georgian soldiers had, they became really angry.  No wonder they were reluctant to withdraw until they had managed to cart it all away. That's going to give them something to think about when they get back over the border.

Anyway, like the rest of us capitalists, the Russian government has other things on its mind at the moment, dealing with that phenomenon pointed out by Marxism Leninism: the crisis of capitalism.  Let's hope it is just an "ordinary" crisis of business confidence rather than the terminal "historic crisis of capitalism" when all the inherent contradictions of the capitalist system cause it to collapse. 


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