As the Caucuses Turns

Unsurprisingly, we have reports that Cheney to made promises to support Georgia while there.

Once again, Mr. Deferment is letting his mouth cut checks that someone else's kids will have to cash.

No doubt he promised more welfare for American defense contractors to help rebuild their military, which the Georgians are reportedly very eager to do.

Additionally, it appears that once again, Cheney is determined to make another problem worse, as he is lobbying for the US terminating the civil nuclear cooperation pact with Russia, which is likely to mean more ill-secured nuclear material in that nation.

This isn't to say that Russian diplomatic efforts are going well. They just got the kiss of death diplomatically, when Hugo Chavez of Venezuela backed the Russian recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Also, in the, "I thought that this has already happened," category, we have Georgia severing diplomatic ties with Russia.

I think that the final word on this conflict comes from William Pfaff:

Ukraine and the Baltic states have been given the lesson that great powers do not go to war against other heavily armed great powers just to settle ancient sectarian quarrels or linguistic rivalries in client countries, even if those are prospective NATO members.

Meanwhile, Saakashvili is beginning to see domestic push-back from his failed adventure, with the opposition now saying that some of the blame lays in the, "US educated Georgian leader," for the spanking received from the Russians.

Meanwhile, the EU has been unable to come to a consensus on any diplomatic actions to take, which is an indication that the EU does need a change in governance structure, just not the one that they are trying to ram down the throat of the Irish.

Russia remains completely unapologetic about the whole affair, which is not surprising, as over the top as some of the statements made by Moscow on the conflict are, it's clear that this is a real statement of how Russia feels about both Georgia and NATO expansion.

While I am not as big a fan of delving into the minutiae of military conflicts analysis as, for example, the War Nerd, Aviation Week does have an interesting report on Russian self-analysis on what happened in Georgia. (paid subscription required)

Not surprisingly, the RuAF comes in for most of the criticism. There was apparently little preparation on their point, and no attempts to use long range PGWs to take out Georgian air defense systems.