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.”

The Israelis blowing something up is hardly news worthy. But when they punched a hole in the paper thin Syrian air defense and leveled something in late September 2007, it became a story because the Israelis seemed to be doing back flips to get it out of the spotlight.

First it was nothing, then an air strike, then the online analysts started putting things together and thinking this was something big. But something big didn’t make sense either; if the Syrians were two rods away from a nuke it only seems logical that the U.S. and Israel would be yelling it from the rooftops.

Instead, we got more stories about the event than the local VFW. Until the other day when President Bush started beating the Syria nuclear drums again. The intelligence was unveiled for a number of really damn odd reasons. “One would be to the North Koreans to make it abundantly clear that we may know more about you than you think,” was the President’s reason du jure. I’m not entirely sure what it is “we know that they don’t know that we know,” but even I know that the fat man from Pyongyang already has  nukes, he made them and tested them in the face of some of the most furious finger-shaking I’ve seen since Catholic school. So we’ve really got nothing explained here.

If the war voices hadn’t been evangelizing Iranian nukes for a year or so I might be able to get a grip on why the lid was kept on the information. It’s not like we’re cozy with the Syrians. We can’t even get them to control their border, which has been a huge entry point into Iraq for various and sundry bad guys since the beginning. So why wouldn’t there be singing and dancing in Washington for a good solid reason to slap Syria around?

When you get down to possible reasoning there’s not a lot of cause to celebrate. We’ve already pretty much figured out that withholding the information doesn’t make any sense. So what are we left with?

One possibility is that Syria had managed to put a nuke program together and almost put together a bomb without anyone noticing. If this is the case it probably qualifies as one of the biggest intelligence blunders in a long, soiled history of intelligence blunders. Given that the intel now claims the Syrians built their stuff using North Korean technology, this really makes the Ballgunner’s head turn backwards. If North Korea, a country we’re supposedly watching like 20 hawks, managed to sneak it’s nuke program out of the country and set it up, right next to a gigantic U.S. theater of operations without anyone noticing then that implies a whole slew of people asleep at an impressive array of switches.

The other possibility, and one the Ballgunner hopes is accurate, is that a story is being cooked up to cover butts from the Potomac River to the Golan Heights. It could be the Israelis acted on bad intel, the Syrians had something they weren’t necessarily supposed to have (doesn’t have to be nukes), maybe a high ranking terror leader popped his head up for a second, who in the world knows? Syria, for its part in the mess, hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with details. They assure us they are the victims just as loud as we assure them they were the aggressors. For all I know it was a wink and a nod at Iran to not get too froggy. But none of these make much sense in the grand scheme.

The Ballgunner is going to be waiting to see what’s next in this field. There are lots of conflicting stories bumping around that only look good right at the surface.

It’s the big news that the heap-big “Surge” doctor is going to be taking over at Central Command (CENTCOM) and the number two in Iraq (slightly less heap-big ) Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno is getting promoted to full-bore “heap big.” Stars and Stripes had a glowing article about how the nomination means the military is going to “embrace counterinsurgency” and that the move is “…part of a shift in the military’s warfighting philosophy to the counterinsurgency tactics that both men embrace.”

But let’s take this pill with a bit of realism.

The last CENTCOM commander just got patted on the head and shuffled off somewhere nice and quiet and away from the media for being rather blunt about his disagreements with the Heap-Biggest in Chief who resides in the White Teepee in DC. Admiral William Fallon didn’t mince many words about the powers rooting for attacking Iran when he said ”This constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me which is not helpful and not useful. […] I expect that there will be no war and that is what we ought to be working for.” (USA Today) This didn’t sit to well with the democr-issars, partly because rumors have been floating around for some time that either we’re already set for a bombing strike into Iran or we’re already set to act shocked when the Israelis execute a bombing strike into Iran.

Given CENTCOM’s dirty laundry flapping gently in the breeze for the world to enjoy, President Bush nominating his shining champion of Iraq to take up the banner is about as shocking as sand on the beach. But this also represents a pretty big tossup for the big military command. Petraeus made his bread and butter during the surge. Everyone’s lined up to pat him on the back, but the long and short is we don’t know if the tree is going to bear good fruit or just those crappy apples the squirrels knock down before they’re ripe. If Iraq winds up good to go as the Surge forces decline (not looking likely as agitations continue in Basra and Sadr City) then our new CENTCOM commander can ride is as the hero who saved the day. But if Iraq continues circling the bowl we’re going to be dealing with a powerful military commander whose face has been thoroughly egged.

If the latter turns out to be the case it will likely appear that Bush the Junior (just like Clinton the Male-er) packed up a military full of administration-friendly commanders. The military can afford infighting in the post-November maelstrom like I can afford a Ferrari.

Petraeus’ legacy as a counter-insurgent strategist won’t be fully played out for a few year. But as the chief of CENTCOM his ability at politicking will be judged much quicker.

He might find that he enjoyed Iraq better, if you lose there, all they cut off is your head.

The chief chair-warmer in the White House is getting spun up for the big NATO conference in Bucharest, Romania, and the event is already interesting to nerds like me. The main event, is Bush going head to head with the two powerhouses of Europe, France and Germany, over NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, and Russia has made it very, very clear that this is not an option that would behoove anyone.

White House press secretary Dana Perino, has espoused what is either boat loads of moxie or thundering ignorance by saying , “The last time we checked, Russia didn’t get a vote. And this is a NATO discussion, a NATO exercise, and it will be a NATO decision.”

This blithe little statement is nothing short of the White House saying to Russia and West Europe, “Let’s you and him fight.” America might be more or less insulated and isolated from the geopolitics in Europe, but France and Germany don’t have that claim. It gets bloody cold up on that fertile plain, and a whole lot of Russian fuel goes into heating German and French homes.

Russia is also likely hedging bets that Europe wouldn’t like to see the simmering conflict in Serbia and the faux-state of Kosovo blow up. Kosovo, being primarily Muslim, is really and truly an outlier in the European world, which for the last long stretch of history has been divided into Orthodox (east) and Catholic/protestant (west). Russia has the gasoline to pour on the Orthodox fires in Serbia, and given the general instability that lingers in the Balkans, no one is willing to write off a reignition of the ethnic fires of the 1990s.

This dolts at the cable news, of course, are missing the broader picture here. Bush is making an unprecedented attempt to redraw the political lines of Europe, and his failure or success is going to be important for generations.

Irritants in China — or irritants to Beijing, I should say — are ceasing the increasingly bright spotlight in the run up to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. The million-dollar wager, is that the Communist Party will lay off the billy club while the world is watching and the repressed groups can yank a little rope out for themselves from the national government. The Chinese government is trying, quite desperately, to dissuade them of these notions.

This has lit some fires in Tibet, which is showing that pacifism gets pretty old after 50 some-odd years of having your day ruined by the People’s Liberation Army. Most reports on the ground say that loathing is mutual between the PLA and the Tibetans. The Tibetans intentionally do not speak Mandarin. In fact, most people I’ve spoken with who have visited Tibet said there are generally two languages spoken- English and Tibetan (surprise!). This means that the PLA, which is mostly comprised of ethnically Han Mandarin speakers, is unable to assimilate into the local culture. When you give a 19-year old kid a uniform and a rifle and stick him among people he can’t communicate with or understand he’s going to vent his resentment on the population.

Realizing this, China is now trying to “Han-ify” Tibet by moving lots of people with lots of money into the area. This has met with some success, because as much as people hate being bossed around by soldiers, they often love taking well-paying jobs. It is these efforts, combined with Beijing’s efforts to interfere with Tibet’s long standing belief in reincarnation of the Buddha (the source of the Dalai Lama’s authority,) that has triggered the most recent protests.

Chances are we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to unrest in China. From the Falun Gong and Falun Dafa , the Tibetans, the Muslim separatists in Xinjiang province (graciously declared terrorists with the blessing of the U.S.,) democratic reformers, a handful of smaller ethnic groups (55 ethnic groups is the official count in China) and a generous helping of democratic reformers and other antagonists are betting that Beijing is going to go light on the stick with all the international attention.

This also puts the rest of the world in a sticky situation. China is the up and coming big boy, and everyone is trying to find ways to play nice while putting on just the right amount of poopy-face about the fact that China remains a repressive dictatorship.

How this plays out will greatly effect China’s military relations with the world. Hu Jintao is not about to show the world a divided China this summer, at the same time, he surely realizes that a repeat of Tiananmen Square with the entire world not only watching, but in the mix, would be disastrous for the efforts to present China as a forward-thinking, progressive nation.

The importance of this summer’s events cannot be understated.

First, this is pretty much China’s debutante ball - the big coming out as a world player. China has signified that it really doesn’t give a rat’s removal orifice what the world thinks. But if the world were so appalled that the western powers started slapping trade restrictions China’s boom could deflate quickly.

Second, China is busy reinventing it’s military. The PLA was born as an internal revolutionary movement, and spent decades as more of an internal police force rather than an external military. The PLA conducted one of the most masterful guerrilla campaigns the world has ever seen against Chiang Kai-Chek and the Kuomintang. Then, only a few years later, they fought the Americans using the slightly less masterful tactics of throwing human meat against machine guns until the barrels melted. But China’s economic explosion is pushing the military ahead in leaps and bound, and the PLA is being recast as a credible force, capable of projecting power beyond the boundaries of China.

Finally, many of the world’s political chips are up in the air. For all its strengths, China is and always has been resource poor. While athletes compete in the smoggy cloud of Beijing’s armpit like summer, there will be other competitions going on that will shape Asia throughout the 21st century.

In other words, keep an eye on the news this summer, in addition to the Olympics.

    Muqtada Al Sadr has extended the cease-fire for an additional six months. The absence of the Mahdi Army is undoubtedly beneficial to U.S. efforts in the region, but the “deafening silence” from those who have pledged to defeat us brings some questions of their own.

Primarily, it’s not clear what Al Sadr gains from prolonging his cease fire. The elements in Iraq and the surrounding region with animosity toward the U.S. have not gone away, and unless the U.S. military is fielding experts in mental judo, they haven’t decided they like us, either. Al Sadr got his name into the books by taking a ragtag band and making at least a credible stand against U.S. forces. People started heading his way because they thought it meant a chance to stand against the Americans. If Al Sadr starts coming across as weak or timid, his following might dissipate as fast as it formed.

So, what gives?

One theory is that the big cheese has lost control of his Mahdi Army and is trying to reestablish himself. This could go either way for the U.S., if the force remains fractured then they’ll remain impotent as a side effect. Being able to write the whole group off would be about as awesome as apple pie falling from the sky, and about as likely. The other possibility is that that someone else will elbow he of the black turban out of the way. Al Sadr’s got a legacy in the area because, as they say in the sticks, “his pa was big doin’s.”  Bumping the Al Sadrs out of SADR CITY would be a mutiny right up there with the HMS Bounty.

The other thought is that aid from Shia Iran might have suddenly become lean. Al Sadr might just be a nut with a martyr complex, but he’s not a stupid nut with a martyr complex. He’s not up to bleeding himself purely for Iran’s benefit. We’re not hearing as much mouth out of Iran, and there appears to be some dissension in the ranks between the clerics who run the country and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who serves as sort of a Daffy Duck spokesman. So it’s likely there’s some sorting going on in Iran, too. I’d expect the volume to come back up around November.

This doesn’t even exclude the possibilities, that Al Sadr is being bought off by the U.S. with the knowledge that in a post U.S. Iraq he will have some serious leverage. This would be politically risky, because if he is seen to be collaborating with the Americans his claim to fame will be up.

It’s an odd game being played. But Al Sadr has shown himself to be pretty adroit at following the music. He’s only 34-years old, so he’s likely to be around for quite some time.

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    But if silence in Sadr City is the upside, the U.S. may be forced to pay for the blessing in the north. Turkey has already announced that they have begun military ground operations into northern Iraq in attempts to quell violence from the Kurdish-nationalists in the PKK.

    Turkey has invaded Iraq, a nominally sovereign country.

    What this will mean for the region is unclear. No one is naive enough to assume that Turkey is doing this on the sly. Someone is feeding them intelligence, and no one has better intelligence in Iraq than the U.S. Given that the president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, is Kurdish, this encroachment into what is supposed to be sovereign Kurdish territory will undoubtedly echo through the Iraqi parliament and into Iraq - U.S. relations.

    The Kurdish north has long been the U.S. success story of the war. The Kurds were third-rate citizens under Saddam and have seen a cultural and ethnic revival since the 2003 invasion. A destabilization of the region would be a tremendous setback for U.S. goals in the are, and a worst case scenario where the Kurds make a sovereign break for it would mean a dog pile between Syria, Turkey, Iran and the Kurdish north, with the U.S. being forced to take a side that would hurt its goals either way. This would also give the Russians a chance to return the favor for Kosovo by rushing aid to the Kurds. A whole lot of regional ugliness would ensue.

    A number of events are playing out within Iraq and internationally that are going to be making waves for years to come. The next few weeks will be interesting to watch.

    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.