Subject: RE: GEORGIA'S MURKY MOTIVES/ Saakashvili under Pressure from EU Probe
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009
From: "Bob Hamilton" <BHamilton@csis.org>
OK, I'm back in DC and able to offer some thoughts on this article. My first piece of advice in evaluating this claim is to consider the source. Der Spiegel is one of the most skeptical of all German media outlets about Georgia in general and about the war with Russia in particular. As far back as September, Der Spiegel was publishing articles seeking to cast doubt on the Georgian account of the war's beginning (15 September issue: "West Begins to Doubt Georgian Leader"). This does not mean that there might not be some grains of truth in what Der Spiegel publishes on the war, but it certainly would be wise to weigh its claims against those from other sources.
Second, I'd say we need to examine the evidence - in this case the now-famous Order #2. Der Spiegel claims that the Georgian government refuses to release the order, claiming that it is a secret document. In fact, the Georgian government denies the existence of the order itself (http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=20605), which was allegedly intercepted and publicized by Russian intelligence sources. Since Der Spiegel never named the Georgian officials who said they could not make the document public because if its level of classification, that claim is hard to confirm or deny.
In fact, Julia Latynina, in an article in yesterday's Moscow Times ("A Global Game of Broken Telephone") claims that the order is a forgery perpetrated by the Russian intelligence services, citing the poor Georgian grammar and factual errors in the document. Latynina chides Der Spiegel for blindly repeating information first published in the Russian press without first checking its validity - Order #2 was first referenced by Komsomolskaya Pravda on November 21. It is entirely possible that Order #2 may eventually go the way of the wild Russian and South Ossetian claims of 2000 civilian casualties in Tskhinvali: debunked by the evidence and quietly shelved as an argument by those who blame Georgia for the war.
But let's assume for the sake of argument that the order does exist and does reference "restoration of constitutional order" in South Ossetia. Even if this is the case, the claim that this language proves that Georgia had a long-standing plan to use force in South Ossetia and that Georgia then started a war of choice does not necessarily hold water. The language "restoration of constitutional order" might well imply that Georgia had decided to attempt to regain sovereignty over South Ossetia, but it doesn't point to a long-standing plan to do so.
The fact is that the Georgian government made a decision to use force in South Ossetia after a long series of Russian actions designed to destabilize the situation there and in Abkhazia and after a period of intense attacks on Georgian peacekeeping forces and Georgian villages in South Ossetia. I've spoken to many U.S. and Georgian military and civilian officials who were in Georgia before and during the war, and while many are highly critical of Georgian military planning and operations in the war, not a single one has implied that this was an operation that had been planned in advance and launched as a war of choice. To a man, they have described a government and a military where confusion, poor communication and worse awareness of what was actually happening in South Ossetia reigned, not a government that was executing a carefully rehearsed plan to launch an invasion and then trick the world into thinking they were the victims. And let me reiterate here that among the Georgians I've spoken to are those who were opposed to the operation and who remain highly critical of its execution by their government, and still not a single one of these people claims it was a pre-planned war of choice.
Der Spiegel's assertion that Georgia planned and then started the war appears to rest upon two pieces of evidence: the claim that Georgia had amassed 12,000 troops and 75 tanks on the border with South Ossetia on the morning of August 7, and the claim that Saakashvili waited until four days after the war had started to announce that Russian troops had entered South Ossetia on August 7. Even if true - and they are not - neither of these claims is especially relevant in assigning guilt for the beginning of the war.
First, it is frankly impossible that there were 12,000 troops "massed on the border with South Ossetia" on the morning of August 7. The entire Georgian force that launched the operation late on August 7 consisted of around 12,000 troops; the units involved were the 3rd Infantry Brigade (3300 troops), the 4th Infantry Brigade (3300 troops), a task force consisting of two special forces battalions, a tank battalion, and the pipeline security company (total, about 1200 troops), the artillery brigade (about 1500 troops) and other smaller units, mostly of the support variety. Of these units, two of them (the tank battalion and artillery brigade) are permanently stationed in Gori, very close to the administrative border with South Ossetia. Even if these units left their garrisons and even if they were joined by the units from the task force and the support units, this force constitutes at most 5000-6000 troops. We know that the infantry brigades (totaling 6600 troops) did not arrive in the vicinity of Gori until the afternoon/evening of August 7. We know this because the 4th brigade had been at its base in Vaziani in a U.S. training program until the morning of 7 August, when its commander told the U.S. trainers that he had been ordered to move his brigade to the vicinity of Gori. For the rest of that day, the unit had to be reorganized, weapons and ammunition had to be issued, and armored vehicles had to be loaded onto a train for movement. The U.S. Embassy had observers there the entire time and they confirm that the train with the armored vehicles on board had not departed as of mid-afternoon. In short, the claim of a massive Georgian force on the border with South Ossetia is at best an exaggeration. Furthermore, Georgian troop movements toward South Ossetia did not necessarily point to an imminent operation there. Instead, the intent more likely was to show resolve in an attempt to prevent further deterioration of the situation there and to be postured for an operation in case this attempt at deterrence failed. This is simply prudent military planning.
Which brings us to the claim that Saakashvili waited until four days after the beginning of the war to assert that Russian forces were the first to enter South Ossetia. This is simply untrue. I remember reading a statement from Saakashvili on 8 August stating that he launched the operation after having been informed by his intelligence services that 150 Russian armored vehicles were in the Roki Tunnel. And the chronology of the conflict on the globalsecurity.org website in its entry for August 8 says that "Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said a Russian armored column with 150 vehicles had entered South Ossetian territory." And a Reuters article published just before midnight GMT on 7 August said, "The Georgian government said it had information about 'hundreds of mercenaries, tanks and other equipment' entering South Ossetia through the Roki tunnel from Russia." In short, Der Spiegel simply didn't check its facts before making this claim - Georgian assertions that Russian troops and volunteer formations had entered South Ossetia before Georgia launched its operation were made up front, and not as an afterthought four days later in a retroactive attempt to justify an operation gone bad.
And there is ample evidence that these assertions are true. Interviews with Russian soldiers, accounts from embedded Russian journalists and publications by Latynina and Andrei Ilarioniv all point to the presence of volunteer formations, quasi-official formations such as the Chechen "Vostok" Battalion, and advance guard elements of the Russian 135th and 693rd Motorized Rifle Regiments prior to August 8. In contrast to Georgian troop movements toward South Ossetia, which occurred within the sovereign boundaries of Georgia and which were observed by the international community, Russian and volunteer formations passing through the Roki Tunnel are clearly illegal and were done with no notice and no acknowledgement by Russia. Had Russia intended to deter Georgia it could have openly and publicly moved its units to the north end of the tunnel and announced that they were ready to intervene with overwhelming force if Georgia moved on South Ossetia. Instead of an attempt to deter a Georgian attack, Russian movements into South Ossetia appear to have been designed to posture a force to quickly overwhelm the Georgian military if it responded to any of the provocations of early August, which is exactly what happened.
The question we have to ask ourselves from a military perspective in assigning responsibility for the start of the war is this: what constitutes prudent military contingency planning and what constitutes an attempt to precipitate an armed conflict? Based upon my research, Georgian moves constituted the former and Russian moves tended more toward the latter. This does not mean that Georgia is blameless for the start of the conflict - after all, Georgia took the bait, its forces crossed the administrative boundary of South Ossetia and got themselves into a war they could not have hoped to win, especially given the fact that their opponent's planning and overall strategy for the conflict was so clearly superior to their own.
I recently finished an analysis of Georgian planning and operations in this war. It's been peer-reviewed and is currently being reviewed for publication. Once it's cleared I'll send you a copy.
LTC Robert E. Hamilton
U.S. Army Fellow
Center for Strategic and International Studies
(202) 775-3288
bhamilton@csis.org
robert.e.hamilton@us.army.mil