What Is This World Coming To?

Russian tanks rolled towards the capital of South Ossetia and fighters bombed Georgian air bases after Georgia launched attacks on rebels in the Georgian province of South Ossetia. Russian forces suffered about a dozen dead and 150 wounded, according to Russian news agencies, but the civilian toll of dead and wounded is currently numbered in the thousands.

South Ossetia is primarily inhabited by ethnic Ossetians whose native language is related to Farsi, or ethnic Persian.

By tradition, the Ossetians have had good relations with Russians and were regarded as loyal citizens, first of the Russian empire and later of the Soviet Union. They sided with the Kremlin when Bolshevik forces occupied Georgia in the early 1920s and, as part of the carve-up which followed, the South Ossetian Autonomous Region was created in Georgia and North Ossetia was formed in Russia.

As a result, while they’re not actually Russian, about 90% of South Ossetians hold Russian passports. President Dmitry Medvedev announced he was sending in Russian troops to protect ‘Russian’ civilians in South Ossetia and force Georgia into a cease fire. (Which is almost exactly the same excuse used by Hitler for annexing the Sudetenland in 1938.

Georgia launched an offensive to regain control over South Ossetia. Russia responded by sending in columns of tanks.

The Russians are recycling the arguments the West gave for the NATO mission against Serbia in 1999, and the West isn’t any more satisfied with it than the Kremlin was when NATO was delivering it: ‘It’s not a military mission, its a humanitarian one. So mind your own business.’

“Interdependence between Russia and the United States is diminishing, and it is a good thing. We can envisage a point in our relationship where we (Russia) will be able to afford to stop discussing things that are of interest only to the United States.”

“Russia and the United States are no longer enemies, but, unfortunately, are not yet friends, and we are less and less dependent on each other,” read the Foreign Ministry statement.

Consequently, all the reports from Russia term their forces as ‘peacekeepers’ and Georgian forces as ‘rebels’.

This could help to justify air attacks against Georgian cities and infrastructure — just like NATO did in Serbia. And where it goes from there is anybody’s guess.