President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia said Sunday that he planned to rebuild his country's shattered army, and that even after its decisive defeat in the war for control of one of Georgia's two separatist enclaves he would continue to pursue a policy of uniting both under the Georgian flag. "It will stay the same," he said of his ambition to bring the enclaves, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, under Georgian control. "Now as ever."
The Russians are right: This guy is somewhere between delusional and insane. Note also in the article that Saakashvili brags of talking personally to John McCain twice a day. If that is the truth, then John McCain is as much a crackpot as is Saakashvili.
You want more proof that Saakashvili is a mental case? Try these quotes from the same article:
"We had a choice here," he said. "We could turn this country into Chechnya — we had enough people and equipment to do that — or we had to do nothing and stay a modern European country."
He added: "Eventually we would have chased them away, but we would have had to go to the mountains and grow beards. That would have been a tremendous national philosophical and emotional burden."
Beyond that, note that his model for an alternative conflict is Chechnya. Maybe he should have checked with the Chechens to see how well that has worked for them. (It hasn't.)
I think the Russians are hoping that the Georgians do something that will make it acceptable for them to flatten Tblisi. As for Saakashvili's threat to "go Chechen", as you point out it hasn't worked out too well for the Chechens (Putin did everything necessary to suppress that rebellion and a few brigands in the mountains aren't any serious threat to Russian rule there), not to mention that, well, Georgians aren't Chechens. Duh.
ReplyDeleteAs for Saakashvili and his plan to rebuild the Georgian Army, he'd need to take some lessons from the Israelis on that one -- i.e., build a really kick-ass air force with first-rate Western aircraft and Western-trained pilots, and buy some really kick-ass air defenses to ensure air superiority, then get some really kick-ass tanks (not those damned tin can T-72's) to ensure ground superiority. How is he going to pay for this? He can't. And the U.S. isn't going to give him the tens of billions of dollars needed. Without that, all he can do is buy more shitty Warsaw Pact surplus as the Poles and Hungarians finish retiring their T-72's and MiG-29's in favor of more modern gear such as Leopard II's and Saab Gripens. And as long as he has shitty Warsaw Pact gear, he loses because he doesn't have the quality to overcome Russian quantity.
In short: Delusional. Sigh.
But ol' Darth Cheney is going to visit Saakashvili to egg him on.
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