There’s been a big stink between Russia and Georgia lately, which is to say Russia is doing what it wants and Georgia is complaining to NATO.

The latest from Reuters:

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Russia’s deployment of extra troops in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war “very close”, a minister of ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday.

Separately, in comments certain to fan rising tension between Moscow and Tbilisi, the “foreign minister” of the breakaway Black Sea region was quoted as saying it was ready to hand over military control to Russia.

“We literally have to avert war,” Temur Iakobashvili, a Georgian State Minister, told reporters in Brussels.

Asked how close to such a war the situation was, he replied: “Very close, because we know Russians very well.”

To start with, Georgia does not go to war against Russia in the same sense that Junior’s pee-wee team does not play football against the New York Giants. Whatever its failings, during the 90s, Vladimir Putin’s reign as president (which ends today) saw the resurgence of the Russian military. The Russians have a military tradition a bit beyond extraordinary, they lost 3 million people in the first World War, then fought a long, bloody civil war, to the tune of 9 million, then lost 20 million people in the second World War and still weren’t giving an inch when the U.S. forces in Europe thought they’d be a push over. When you put 32 million people into the meat grinder in half a century while standing firm on the mat you get your hardcore military culture bona fides. Then to spike the ball, you release a picture of a guy doing this:

and the Ballgunner is really willing to concede that his manhood is measured in fractions, possibly even fractions with decimals.

When you take this and put it against the Georgians, whose military consists of, uh……… Well you get the point. The Georgian military is defensive oriented, but defensive against other military power houses like Azerbaijan, Armenia or possibly the dreaded Ossetians. Georgia vs Russia would not look even remotely like a fight. The Russians tried the touchy feely stuff in Chechnya, and got embarrassed. Then, someone on the command staff realized they had been reading from the American book, they took a big swig of vodka, proclaimed Мы Русский! and put the hammer down. Do you hear of any problems from Chechnya?

When you consider that every country in the former Soviet sphere is chock full of Russian intelligence agents throughout the government and the military, there arises the even more delightful scenario that Georgia might try to assemble the military only to find half of them already lined up on the other side.

In a lot of ways this is really fun to watch. Russia was warning the west to leave Serbia alone in the Kosovo matter. But in a monument to hardheadedness, NATO got involved in the Orthodox/Catholic/Muslim debacle that predates every standing government in the world and will still be raging when NATO is listed next to League of Nations and Chechnya in the book of “Ooops!” But the U.S. signed off on Kosovo by playing the ethnicity card, oblivious to the fact that the “area” of Kosovo is about as Serbian as Bunker Hill is American. Now, the Russians are saying, “Look! The poor Abkhazians are ethnically distinct from the Georgians, they should have their own country too! It’s even better that they want their country to join our country!” I’m sure it has nothing to do with those lovely Black Sea shipping lanes that are up for grabs (not that Russia doesn’t already have some, but you can never have too many ports.)

Now, the west really looks silly. They can try the, “No, no. That’s not fair,” routine and wind up looking like hypocrites. Or they can throw Georgia under the bus, at which point an alliance with NATO will be shown as worth less than a big pile of doody. Meanwhile, Russia gets to sit back, enjoy the show and ponder their next move. What about those large Russian populations in the Baltic nations? What about the divided population in Ukraine? There are opportunities aplenty for Russia to thank NATO, the E.U. and the U.S. for stomping on its toes for the last few years.

We’re reminded of one of those people from long ago, when folks seemed to know what they were talking about. That someone was Otto von Bismark, who left us this: “The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.”

    I’d imagine the booze joints around the Pentagon are doing a pretty brisk business over the last few days. There seem to be a lot of ropes unraveling at the same time, and the rabbit-hole we’re dangling over is looking deep and dark and probably not a wonderland at the bottom.

Pakistan’s recent elections have all the appearance of near total annihilation of Musharraf’s Muslim-League Q- party. The general displeasure of Pakistanis toward the ruling party, seen largely as an American puppet, is hardly a shock, and the American refusal to denounce November’s crackdowns and the bloody siege of the Red Mosque worked overtime to undermine the pillars of Washington support in the country. But the magnitude of the loss must be reverberating through the halls of U.S. foreign policy makers.

Via the New York Times 

  From unofficial results the private news channel, Aaj Television, forecast that the Pakistan Peoples Party would win 110 seats in the 272-seat National Assembly, with Mr. Sharif’s party taking 100 seats.

Mr. Musharraf’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, was crushed, holding on to just 20 to 30 seats. Early results released by the state news agency, The Associated Press of Pakistan, also showed the Pakistan Peoples Party to be leading in the number of seats won.

Already rumors are circulating about Musharraf’s resignation, meaning the U.S. might be about to lose one of it’s allies in the region. The U.S. still has substantial influence given the amount of aid that flows into Pakistan. But the incoming parties will not have the same enthusiasm in dealing with the U.S. as the State department is accustomed  to. The new Pakistani government will be in the position to make some demands of their own, especially given the importance of Pakistan’s tribal regions.

Put bluntly, the U.S. cannot succeed in Afghanistan without Pakistan’s help in the border region. Nor can the U.S. act unilaterally within Pakistan without risking regional destabilization. The new Pakistani parliament will be more than willing to play hardball, complete with the knowledge that a good number of the people who elected them would like to see the U.S. fail in Afghanistan.

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Things have also been complicated by recent announcement of independence from Kosovo. The following days and weeks will be ones of rather loud discomfiture between NATO, which largely supports independence, and Russia, that has sided with Serbia in rejecting the declaration.

There are plenty of other European nations who are worried that a European Union recognition of Kosovo would rekindle other internal nationalist movements. Any member of the European Union can kill an official recognition, since such an act requires consensus. Given Spain, Greece, Romania and Slovakia are all facing similar issues, the odds of consensus seem slim.

Similarly, Russia will kill any United Nations measures toward recognition. This will put Kosovo in an odd sort of limbo, recognized by individual states but not by the international bodies.

Already, there are reports of violence breaking out in the region. While NATO and UN forces are present, it is not clear to what extent they are willing to serve as peace keepers or peace makers. More importantly, this comes at a time of increased tensions between Russia and NATO.

Russia has voiced opposition to this plan from the start and now appears to have egg on its face. A new Russian president will be elected on March 2, and baring some intergalactic anomaly, that president will be Dimitry Medvedev. His presidency will begin with humiliation if Russia doesn’t respond.  If the EU cannot come to a consensus as to Kosovo, the U.S. will be left alone in a staring match against the resurging Russians. The field is complicated by the addition of China,  ever aware of it’s own nationalist-separatist movements, who is siding with Serbia and Russia.

The developments in Pakistan are going to affect how the military does business in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and developments in Kosovo are going to shape NATO and European Union relations for years. The U.S. has had the privilege of unopposed decision making for several years, due to the weakness of other powers and the strength of its alliances. How Washington and the Pentagon handle a return to parity will be interesting to watch.