What Should the West Do About Georgia

Colin has a great com­men­tary from ousted Air Force sec­re­tary Mike Wynne over at DoD Buzz on how the West should respond to Russia’s inva­sion of Georgia.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Russian incur­sion in Georgia raises fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about Western pol­icy responses and the tools avail­able to sup­port Western pol­icy. Russian actions can not be a sur­prise to the West; The Georgian People spoke out at least two weeks prior, and it takes time to move troops into and out of the tun­nel sep­a­rat­ing Ossetia and Georgia. Also; where was the ver­i­fi­ca­tion from the media? Where were the satel­lite images of the destruc­tion of the town in Ossetia that has been heav­ily pro­pa­gan­dized to sup­port the two pronged inva­sion? All this makes one won­der about the real­ity of the event. The abil­ity of the Georgians to see and broad­cast the event was blinded by the Russian shoot­down of the Georgian UAV weeks earlier.

In hind­sight, the Russians sent many sig­nals, yet those sig­nals seem­ingly were ignored or set aside. What is real is the recog­ni­tion of the two break­away provinces,and de-facto occu­pa­tion of the port city.

Russian actions chal­lenge the West to revisit its abil­ity to defend the states bor­der­ing Russia, includ­ing the new states of NATO, against Russian mil­i­tary petro-power. Beyond Georgia or Europe, there is the ques­tion of the cred­i­bil­ity of Western responses to states like Russia that take into their own hands the fate design­ing borders.

After all, the inva­sion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein led to a uni­fied Western response to restore the ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity of Kuwait. But to do this required a 6-month mil­i­tary buildup before a response could be generated.

Can we not do bet­ter now in pro­vid­ing appro­pri­ate mil­i­tary tools for Western decision-makers? We need tools or force pack­ages which let states like Russia know that their actions will not go unob­served or unmit­i­gated. We need flex­i­ble tools for ambigu­ous sit­u­a­tions so that Western decision-makers can make NATO a seri­ous enterprise.

How might have we responded and what can we do now? We could have flown Global Hawks or U2s on the Russian-Georgian bor­der to sig­nal our watch­ful­ness to the Russians. We could have escorted these assets with the F-22s, which fly at high enough alti­tude to oper­ate as a defense of unmanned assets, or can oper­ate to defend key assets in Georgia. If the Russians deter­mined to invade, we could have strength­ened air defenses of key Georgian posi­tions, pro­vided fighter re-enforcements, and placed spe­cial forces or Marines on the ground in the national cap­i­tal. We need to strengthen our capa­bil­ity to shape flex­i­ble force pack­ages which can gen­er­ate fire­break mes­sages rapidly and effec­tively. And Europe, under the lead­er­ship of President Sarkozy, could shape their mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties to inject sim­i­lar force struc­ture capa­bil­i­ties to shape choices and limit Russian options.

With regard to the new states, I have writ­ten else­where about the need to shape cyber­war­riors to defend against Russian attacks, and we need to enhance their abil­ity to pro­vide for air and tank defenses through pro­vid­ing aid to the new states in Europe. When con­sid­er­ing Ukraine, we need to dis­cuss with their lead­er­ship how they would like to enhance their defenses against exter­nal threats. In the 1980s, West Europeans dis­cussed the need to enhance the tools for defen­sive defense. Such tools are stronger now, rang­ing from cyber to ground and air defenses. Europe, as well as American indus­try, has appro­pri­ate tech­nolo­gies at hand to assist endan­gered states to pro­vide fire­break defenses against a Russia which thinks its petrol inter­ests will block the will of the West to respond.

Read the rest of Wynne’s com­men­tary HERE.

– Christian

September 8th, 2008 | Catch the "Buzz" | 406067 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2008/09/08/what-should-the-west-do-about-georgia/What+Should+the+West+Do+About+Georgia2008-09-08+19%3A31%3A33Ward You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.