Streetwise Professor

The New York Times published an article that provides further detail–and concrete intelligence–relating to the sequence of events leading to the Russo-Georgian War. Cellphone intercepts of South Ossetian calls provided by Georgian intelligence indicate that Russian armor was moving through the Roki Tunnel well before the 2330 commencement of the Georgian bombardment of Tskhinvali. Indeed, according to the intercepts, Russian AFVs were moving through the tunnel almost 20 hours earlier, at 0341 on 7 August.

The reports appear credible. They are consistent with other reports–from Russian sources–and with Matt Bryza’s contemporaneous account of what the Georgians told him. Moreover, the reports contain key details, most notably the mention of a Colonel Kazachenko, known to be an officer in the 135th Motorized Rifle Regiment which was the van of the Russian advance into Ossetia.

But the strongest evidence for their credibility is that the Russians have not denied them. Moreover, their attempts to explain the movement are risible. Gen. Lt. Nikola Uvarov, a Defense Ministry spokesman lamely states that “military hardware regularly moved in and out of South Ossetia, supplying the Russian peacekeeping contingent there. ‘Since we had a battalion, they need fuel, they need products; naturally you have a movement of troops. . . But not combat troops sent there to fight.”

Riiigghht. It was a fuel shipment. At 330 in the morning. That’s the ticket. What’s more, there is no mention in the intercepts of “fuel trucks”–just armor. Moreover, the Ossetian guards were apparently taken by surprise by the movement–this is hardly consistent with routine resupply.

It should also be noted that in the extremely tense conditions prevailing in early August, a resupply operation under cover of night accompanied by armor was incredibly stupid, risking the possibility of misinterpretation. Moreover, this points out the absurdity of having an interested party–and Russia has clearly asserted its interest in South Ossetia before and after the crisis–serve as a “peacekeeping” force. The ambiguity inherent in such an arrangement is an invitation to confusion, confusion that can lead to conflict.

Certain aspects of the story support the hypotheses that I have advanced; namely, that the Georgian attack was a response to a Russian incursion. I also acknowledge that that incursion itself could have been made in anticipation of a Georgian move.

Another article in Transitions Online, however, suggests that at least the Georgian soldiers at the pointy end did not understand their role to be a desperate lunge to stop a Russian incursion:

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 8 August, 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 8 August. “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. . . .

After nearly encircling the city, Georgian troops then tried to establish control over a key road to the north that led to South Ossetia’s border crossing with Russia, one mid-ranking commander said. A 300-strong South Ossetian garrison near the village of Tbeti was defending the road.

As Georgian troops battled the garrison, the first convoy of Russian tanks appeared, the commander recounted. The showdown occurred in a relatively narrow field of battle. “We destroyed one tank after another, but they kept coming,” the commander said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The tanks were traveling 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.”

This account states that the South Ossetians, not an advancing Russian force, were the Georgian’s objective. It is possible to reconcile this with the Georgian government’s assertion that the Russian advance triggered the actual attack; the Georgian troops were deployed initially to attack the Ossetian artillery, but were hurled into action only when Saakashvili heard of the Russian advance. But this information could also support the Russian position that the Georgians attacked on their own initiative. That is, the causal connection between the by now well documented Russian advance into Roki before the commencement of the Georgian attack and Saakashvili’s decision to attack is ambiguous. Some evidence suggests that the final decision to attack was driven by the intelligence of a Russian advance; other evidence suggests that the attack was proceeding for reasons other than the Russian advance, but that the Russian advance (triggered by what?) upset Saakashivili’s plans.

The NYT article also puts to the fore questions about the intelligence capabilities of each side. It provides a glimpse on Georgian sigint and elint capabilities. We know that Georgian UAV reconnaissance capabilities were the subject of a concerted Russian campaign, so it is unclear as to whether Georgia had access to UAV information. It is also intriguing to ponder whether the US was sharing any intelligence with Georgia.

It is also interesting to ponder the sources of information available to the Russians that allowed them to anticipate the Georgian move (and I think the vast preponderance of the evidence shows that they did anticipate the move and actually entered Ossetia before the Georgian bombardment began). This Moscow Times piece damns Russian intelligence capabilities. Russia had virtually no UAV capability, and was forced to use TU-22 bombers to perform recon operations for which they were unsuited. It is also well understood that Russian satellite intelligence capabilities are substantially degraded from Soviet days. Presumably due to geographic proximity Russia had good elint and sigint capabilities, but arguably it was highly reliant on reports from Russian “peacekeeping” forces, and even more, from South Ossetian forces with eyes on the battlefield. This last is particularly troubling because the Ossetians would have had an incentive to color intelligence reports so as to get the Russians to act on their behalf.

This would not be the first time that two sides blundered into war based on faulty information, and perhaps distorted information supplied by interested parties.

I think it’s also worth pointing out that even when one can establish the chronology of a battle with some precision, that is not always sufficient to establish the motives for commanders’ decisions.

Well, Ike has come and gone.   Here in College Station, a little wind, a lot of rain, but no big deal.   I’ll return to Houston tomorrow, but the main issue there seems to be power.   Could have been worse.

This afternoon’s blogging–and presumably this evening’s blogging to come–comes from a hotel room in College Station, TX, whence I have decamped in anticipation of Hurricane Ike which is barreling down on Houston. Although the storm will certainly hit College Station, (a) it will be less intense this far inland than in my Houston neighborhood, and (b) it gives me an opportunity to spend some time with my eldest daughter, a student at Texas A&M.

The primary reaction at this stage is a sense of unreality. The weather is still beautiful here, and there is an air of normalcy with people going about their business around 12 hours before the storm is expected to hit here. Having little idea of what to expect (and I think that even veterans of earlier storms don’t know exactly what to expect with any particular hurricane), I am just taking a fatalistic, wait-and-see attitude. Que sera, sera.

The worthy Beldar takes well-warranted umbrage at Tom Brokaw’s and the excreable David Gregory’s attempt to twist a Sarah Palin quote to mean that she doesn’t know what the Vice President does.   Beldar reproduces the entire quote, but in a nutshell what Palin said was that she knows that the responsibilities of the Vice President are essentially negotiated with the President, and she wanted to make sure that the job would be offered to her on terms that she considered attractive.   In other words, she took to heart what FDR’s VP, Cactus Jack Garner, said: the Vice Presidency is “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”   [This quote was subsequently softened to “not worth a bucket of warm spit” out of deference to tender ears.]   In other words, Palin was making it clear that she would be interested in the job as long as the responsibilities were not limited to guarding the thunder pot (or the spittoon, for you sensitive types.)   Smart lady, in other words.

Putin recently claimed that the Russo-Georgian War was the result of a conspiracy to elect John McCain.

I really doubt that he actually believes this. It is more likely propaganda, an attempt to redirect blame and criticism. I imagine that Putin is somewhat surprised at the intensity of the blowback (although it’s mostly talk and very little action), and thinks that he can play into widespread anti-American sentiment by attempting to shift blame in our direction. Whatever.

But perhaps he does believe it. I could readily imagine a KGB guy thinking “That’s what I’d do” and projecting his own beliefs and motivations on the devilish Americans.

Regardless of his true beliefs, it is still something of a surprise that he would make this claim personally. For isn’t this an admission that he was played by the Americans? That they manipulated the judo master into an action that was in their interests, not his, or his country’s? Now he might say that the US pulled Saakashvili’s strings, but even so, what compelled Putin and Russia to react? Didn’t we effectively pull his strings as well by exploiting his well-known rage at Georgia and Saakashvili?

The eeeevil plan would succeed only if Russia responded to Georgian actions in a way that raised the specter of a new Cold War, to the benefit of the candidate with stronger national security credentials. For Putin’s argument to make any sense, the cabal planning this elaborate conspiracy would have to count on Russia to take the bait and smash into Georgia, meaning that Putin was used, played, to advance the interests of an anti-Russian candidate; that he acted exactly as his enemies thought he would. That’s not something I would admit to even if it were true–but especially if it weren’t.

Here are two very important sources of information regarding the timeline of the outbreak of the Russo-Georgian War. The first is from the intrepid Michael Totten. The most important aspects of Totten’s report are that (a) the Russians were debouching from the Roki Tunnel almost simultaneously with the commencement of the bombardment of Tskhinvali, and (b) the Georgians launched a desperate attack on a bridge south of the tunnel in an attempt to stall the Russian advance. Given the time to transit the Roki Tunnel, a long, single-lane road winding through the mountain, it is evident that the Russians had a rolling start. Moreover, the improvisational nature of the Georgian attack on the tunnel–which resulted in the deaths of the paratroopers sent on the mission–is consistent with Totten’s source’s assertion that the Georgians were improvising a response to a situation that they did not initiate but which was spiraling out of control. If the Georgian operation in Ossetia had been a planned effort to seize control of the province, step one would have been to seize or disable the entrance to the tunnel. Failure to do so would have been rank incompetence. Instead, from Totten’s description, the Georgians were responding to Ossetian attacks; in the middle of their response, they learned of the Russian advance, and ad libbed a Hail Mary play in an attempt to block the tunnel. They evidently inflict serious losses on the Russians, but didn’t have the combat power to stop them for long.

In my view, these events suggest the following: The Ossetians, in connivance with the Russians, dramatically escalated their aggressive actions against the Georgian troops/peacekeepers in the area surrounding Tskhinvali. The Georgians responded by desperately attempting to reshuffle units from the Abkhazian front–perceived as the more likely trouble spot. At the same time the Russians were moving through the Roki Tunnel–indeed, it is highly likely that their movement began simultaneously with the Georgian move at the latest, and probably before. The Georgians made their forlorn hope stab at the Roki Tunnel with their paratroopers, and tried to fight through Tskhinvali with their main force units in a vain attempt to shut the road before the Russians could deploy. They failed in Tskhinvali, and their forlorn hope was destroyed at Roki. The rest was a foregone conclusion.

If Totten’s timeline is correct, this was clearly a planned Russian invasion of long planning. An extended period of stoking tensions in Abkhazia to serve as a feint diverting attention from the site of their planned attack, drawing Georgian heavy units (such as they were) to that front. Maneuvers designed to put heavy units in place on the borders of Ossetia were carried out in late July. The infiltration of irregulars, followed soon after by a quantum escalation of violence in Ossetia. Nearly simultaneously with the Georgian response to this escalation, the Russian 58th Army moves before the Georgians can react. Every piece makes sense as part of a coherent operational plan. In contrast, the Georgian actions bear all the hallmarks of an ad hoc response to an unexpected escalation in hostilities.

It is very difficult to square this timeline with Russia’s characterization that they were responding extemporaneously to an unprovoked, genocidal attack by Saakashvilli. The Georgians were the ones extemporizing, the Russians the ones acting according to an operational plan. The evidence is that the Russians acted with premeditation, the Georgians without it. That speaks volumes on where the guilt lies.

The Washington Post presents a less detailed chronology that gives the Russians more of a benefit of the doubt than Totten’s, but which nonetheless supports important pieces of his reporting.

Richard Fernandez provides some very interesting news regarding the American flotilla arriving off the Georgia coast:

Wired describes the allied flottila closing on Georgian coast, including a DDG, an SSN, the command ship USS Mount Whitney (“onsidered by some to be the most sophisticated Command, Control, Communications, Computer, and Intelligence (C4I) ship ever commissioned”) and the Coast Guard cutter USCGC Dallas. Wired describes the naval force:

“The vanguard includes the Burke-class destroyer McFaul (pictured)and the armed Coast Guard cutter Dallas. (Another Dallas, a nuclear submarine, is also in the area.) Trailing behind is the command ship Mount Whitney with, reportedly, Polish and Canadian frigates as escorts.”

The dispatch of a sophisticated 4CI vessel like the Whitney is very interesting. More interesting is the dispatch of an SSN (an attack sub, which is capable of carrying large numbers of land attack cruise missiles, and is not, to state the obvious, optimized for the delivery of humanitarian aid).

Most interesting of all is that Turkey has allowed all of this through the straits. A primary purpose of the Montreux Convention is to deny the ability of major sea powers from using the Black Sea to attack Russia. By letting a large naval force with substantial firepower (in the form of cruise missiles on the DDG and the SSN, and a command ship capable of coordinating combined air and cruise missile strikes) into the Black Sea, Turkey is putting Russia on notice that it opposes the latter’s excellent Georgian adventure.

Committing such a large naval force is also a pretty bold move on the part of the US. One wonders what is next. Although the McFaul entered the port of Batumi, rather than Russian-occupied Poti, if the Russians continue their hold on the latter port one could imagine a scenario in which a humanitarian relief ship is directed to Poti. The Russians would be forced to stop it or let it go. Either alternative would pose grave dangers for the Russians. If they stopped it using any force, or prevented it from delivering its supplies to needy Georgians, or seized the supplies, it would risk escalating the confrontation with the US. If they let it go, they would look weak. A humanitarian naval mission to Poti could be the equivalent of the US quarantine of Cuba during the missile crisis.

Richard Fernandez makes a good point in his piece about the fact that American air and naval power is essentially free from any commitment at the moment. Everybody wailing about our complete lack of military capability due to commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan is thinking only in terms of ground combat power. I’m sure the Russians aren’t. Nor are we.

As Fernandez notes, the Russians can’t be happy about the presence of powerful naval forces in the Black Sea, and the message this sends about the Turkish position. Yet another indication that the unintended consequences of the invasion of Georgia proper may make Russia the biggest loser.

In the end, the verdict on Putin’s Georgia gambit may be the same that Talleyrand delivered in response to Napoleon’s murder of the Duc d’Enghien: “It was worse than a crime. It was a blunder.” Let us hope.

In recent days I had a very hard time crediting rumors that Obama would choose Joe Biden for his VP. Now that it is a fact, I am still puzzled. The party line seems to be that Biden will appeal to working class, white, ethnic, male voters. In other words, Biden is Obama’s outreach to bitter clingers.

I’ve had the misfortune of observing Joe Biden for over 21 years. During that time, of the many (printable) phrases that have come to mind, none of them are: “Regular guy”; “Joe Sixpack”; or “Common Touch.” They apparently took the Scranton out of the boy when they took the boy out of Scranton. Hardly any senator seems appealing to ordinary guys, and Biden, with his starched shirts, cufflinks, hairplugs, and pomposity doesn’t scream working class appeal. This seems a by-the-numbers, focus-group and consultant driven choice. Not that I’m complaining.

With the wonderful assistance of Dana at my webhost, Andrew Lehman Design, I have upgraded from the prehistoric version of WordPress that I had been using since SWP started to the shiny new version 2.6.1.   The primary impetus for the upgrade was comment spam, and the new version of WordPress has much better spam filtering capabilities. As a result, I should be able to manage comments more efficiently.

The downside–in the transition process, all previously approved comments disappeared.   No, it’s not some crafty plot to consign some of you pesky critics to the memory hole, so the more hair-triggered of you, don’t get your drawers all knotted up over this.   Stuff happens.

I do have most (and perhaps all) approved comments from registered users saved in the emails that were sent to me.   I would be glad to take the effort to repost those comments if you request.   Just submit a comment to this post requesting that I do so, and I will.

Dana also helped out with a couple of other things.   The site should be more readable now as she’s adjusted the type spacing.     Also, the text editor now allows me to configure posts so that links open in new windows.

Feel free to provide other suggestions on how to improve the site.

Yup, just like Freddie Kreuger. The blogging hiatus occurred because I was visiting Italy. I gave a talk at the Italian Federation of Applied Mathematics conference in Champoluc, Italy (in the Valle d’Ayas, near the Valle d’Aosta.) What a great time. The conference was quite good, the Alpine scenery spectacular. Moreover, much history in the area–numerous Roman sites (especially in nearby Aosta), but also many wonderful 14th and 15th century castles, both restored and in ruins. Thanks to FIMA, and especially Elisa Luciano for inviting me to speak. It was a very memorable week.