Russian Incursion

While the rest of the world is in full of bustle where athletes and world leaders gather in China as the Beijing Olympics unfurled its elaborate opening ceremony at exactly 8:08 pm of 08 August 2008, at the same Putin’s Russia is gearing up for war against its fledging neighbor Georgia.

This after Prime Minister and former KGB Vladimir Putin sent his military hardware to Georgia in what could be seen as a repeat of its invasion of Afghanistan. The former USSR has gone but the new Russia is trying to rise up from the rubble of disintegration of the Soviets.

The pro Western Georgia which has been battling rebels from the separatists region of South Ossetia is facing a military confrontation with mighty Russia headed by its hawkish judo master Putin. Russia, having its new version of T-tanks and MiG fighter jets, had entered the territorial sovereignty of poor Georgia.

The Georgian people headed by Mikhail Saakashvili, the US educated President of the former Soviet territory, have all the reason to denounce Russia for interfering in its domestic problem. It is clear on the map that South Ossetia is perched inside Georgian territorial integrity. Russia has ulterior motives to tear apart Georgia by helping a small band of rebels and to derail Georgia’s NATO and European Union membership.

But because Georgia is on the doorstep of nuclear armed Russia, it is vulnerable to Russia’s bullying. The military of Georgia is dwarfed by its giant neighbor and so its democracy and sovereignty are threatened. As a friend of the West, Georgia needs NATO and the US in particular to protect the country’s fledging democracy. 

International intervention is what Georgia needs ASAP. If the West does not act immediately, the democracy it is being preached to the rest of the world will be wasted in time. Mikhail Saakashvili who was the instrument of West’s democracy to his country has called on NATO and the US not to allow Russia to trample Georgia’s new found democracy.

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