The Russia Georgia War

This essay as part of the Nimble Books series "The Decisive Battles of the 21st century" describes the battles carried out in August 2008 around South Ossetia and Abkhazia, after Georgia unleashed an attack upon them. The foreword is by a renowned professor of Geopolitics of the Hellenic Military Academy, Dr Constantinos Grivas. The Russians fought on the side of the breakaway Republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in a war, which is also known as "The Five Day War." There is an extensive analysis on the diplomatic prelude occurring prior to the beginning of the hostilities, debating the causes that led Georgia to attack the breakaways and Russia to defend them. The prelude covers deep historical topics since the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent rise of Gamsakhurdia, the nationalist Georgian leader, Eduard Shevardnadze, whose toppling by the Rose Revolution brought Mikhail Saakashvili to power. Military operations are described and analyzed thoroughly starting from the skirmishes between Georgians and Ossetians and culminating with the war's most decisive battle, the battle of Tskhinvali. The essay sheds light on the new Russian military doctrine and the reforms, which took place in the Russian Army, following the Five Day War, in all sectors including the Army, VDV troops, the Air Force and the Navy. Finally, an extensive analysis is carried out both in the framework of geoeconomics and that of international relations and geopolitics, around Russia's future diplomatic ties with the EU and the US, separately, including the recent events in the US and European Economies, which have led to the manifestation of a European power centralized around Germany. The battle of Tskhinvali may well have settled the fate of the Caucasus for the 21st century, and foreshadowed the campaigns in Crimea, Ukraine, and beyond.

In this monograph, the authors state that Russia planned the war against Georgia in August 2008 aiming for the annexation of Abkhazia, weakening the Saakashvili regime, and prevention of NATO enlargement. According to them, while Russia won the campaign, it also exposed its own military as badly needing reform. The war also demonstrated weaknesses of the NATO and the European Union security systems.

In the summer of 2008, a conflict that appeared to have begun in the breakaway Georgian territory of South Ossetia rapidly escalated to become the most significant crisis in European security in a decade. The implications of the Russian-Georgian war will be understood differently depending on one's narrative of what transpired and perspective on the broader context. This book is designed to present the facts about the events of August 2008 along with comprehensive coverage of the background to those events. It brings together a wealth of expertise on the South Caucasus and Russian foreign policy, with contributions by Russian, Georgian, European, and American experts on the region.

In this monograph, the authors state that Russia planned the war against Georgia in August 2008 aiming for the annexation of Abkhazia, weakening the Saakashvili regime, and prevention of NATO enlargement. According to them, while Russia won the campaign, it also exposed its own military as badly needing reform. The war also demonstrated weaknesses of the NATO and the European Union security systems.

In August 2008, Russia launched an invasion of Georgia that sent shock waves reverberating--first across the post-Soviet space, but then also into the rest of Europe and the world, as the magnitude of the invasion and its implications became clear. This invasion took the world by surprise. But what should have been surprising about it was perhaps the extent of Russia's willingness to employ crude military force against a neighboring state, not that it happened. Indeed, Russia had for several years pursued increasingly aggressive and interventionist policies in Georgia, and had employed an array of instruments that included military means, albeit at a smaller scale. In the several months that preceded the invasion, Moscow's increasingly blatant provocations against Georgia led to a growing fear in the analytic community that it was seeking a military confrontation. Yet western reactions to this aggressive behavior remained declaratory and cautious in nature, and failed to attach cost to Russia for its behavior. After invading Georgia on August 8, Russia did score some initial successes in portraying the invasion as a response to a Georgian decision to militarily enter Tskhinvali, the capital of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia. Yet a growing body of evidence rapidly emerged, implying that Russia's invasion was premeditated, not reactive--or in the words of a leading Russian military analyst, planned, not spontaneous. Indeed, as the chronology included in this paper shows, Russia had been meticulously preparing an invasion of Georgia through the substantial massing and preparation of forces in the country's immediate vicinity. Scholars will debate whether Russian tanks were already advancing inside Georgian territory when Georgian forces launched their attack on Tskhinvali; yet there seems little doubt that they were at least on the move toward the border. And the scope of the Russian attack leave little doubt: it immediately broadened from the conflict zone of South Ossetia, to include the opening of a second front in Abkhazia and systematic attacks on military and economic infrastructure across Georgia's territory. Within days, tens of thousands of Russian troops and hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles roamed Georgian roads. Russia's subsequent decisions to ignore the terms of a cease-fire agreement it signed, and to recognize the independence of the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, all complete the picture of long-hatched plan. The purpose was not merely related to South Ossetia or even Abkhazia: it served to punish Georgia and expose the inability of the west to prevent Russia from moving aggressively to restore its primacy over the former Soviet Union's territory, irrespective of the wishes of the governments and populations of the sovereign countries on that area. It is indeed the predetermined nature of this war that makes its implications so far-reaching. It constituted Moscow's first military aggression against a neighboring state since the invasion of Afghanistan in 1978; and it took place, this time, against a member state of European institutions such as the OSCE and the Council of Europe, and to that a country on track to integration with NATO. As such, political leaders and analyst soon understood that it formed the largest crisis to date in Russia's relationship with the West; some have even come to realize that the Georgian war of 2008 may be the most significant challenge to European Security since the Cold War's end. It is therefore of particular importance to document, already at this stage, how this war started and draw some preliminary conclusions regarding what it means for Georgia, the post-Soviet space, and Europe and the United States. The following pages propose to do so by providing a chronology of events before, during, and immediately after the war; as well as to propose some initial conclusions that could be drawn from this chronology, as well as regarding its implications.--Introduction, p. [3]-4.

The brief war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008 seemed to many like an unexpected shot out of the blue that was gone as quickly as it came. Former Assistant Deputy Secretary of State Ronald Asmus contends that it was a conflict that was prepared and planned for some time by Moscow, part of a broader strategy to send a message to the United States: that Russia is going to flex its muscle in the twenty-first century. A Little War that Changed the World is a fascinating look at the breakdown of relations between Russia and the West, the decay and decline of the Western Alliance itself, and the fate of Eastern Europe in a time of economic crisis.