Russians Have
Introduced Ballistic Missile Launchers Into South Ossetia.
Democracy Now Interviews Col. Sam Gardiner, retired Air
Force Colonel. - Transcript and Audio
11/08/08 -- - -The Russians put into
their doctrine a statement, and have broadcast it very loudly,
that if the United States were to use precision conventional
weapons against Russian troops, the Russians would be forced to
respond with tactical nuclear weapons.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn to the escalating conflict between
Russia and Georgia. Amidst reports of over 2,000 dead and 40,000
displaced, NATO’s Secretary General and President Bush have both
condemned Russia’s “disproportionate” use of force in Georgia.
After four days of heavy fighting, Russian tanks are now
approaching central Georgian cities away from the separatist
regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian officials say
Georgia provoked the assault by attacking South Ossetia late
last week, causing heavy civilian casualties. Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili told journalists he signed a ceasefire
proposal Monday, but news reports indicate the fighting
continues.
Georgia is a close US ally, and despite Russian objections,
the US has backed Georgia’s bid to enter NATO. On Friday, at the
Security Council, the United States and Britain appeared to back
the Georgian invasion. Georgia also plays a pivotal role in the
supply of oil from the Caspian region to the West, as the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline runs through much of the
country.
Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner has been closely
following the conflict. His reports are available on Danny
Schechter’s “News Dissector”
blog.
Colonel Sam Gardiner joins us now on the phone. Welcome to
Democracy Now!
Colonel Gardiner, are you with us? Colonel Gardiner is
speaking to us from his home in the Washington, D.C. area. We’re
just checking that phone line. Are you there? We’ll go to a
music break, and then we’ll come back to what’s happening in
Georgia. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We turn back now to the escalating
conflict between Russia and Georgia. Amidst reports of over
2,000 dead, 40,000 displaced, NATO’s Secretary General,
President Bush, both condemning Russia’s "disproportionate” use
of force in Georgia.
After four days of heavy fighting, Russian tanks are now
approaching central Georgian cities away from the separatist
regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian officials say
Georgia provoked the assault by attacking South Ossetia late
last week, causing heavy civilian casualties. The Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili told journalists he signed a
ceasefire proposal Monday, but news reports indicate the
fighting continues.
Georgia is a close US ally. Despite Russian objections, the
US has backed Georgia’s bid to enter NATO. On Friday, at the
Security Council, the United States and Britain appeared to back
the Georgian invasion. Georgia also plays a pivotal role in the
supply of oil from the Caspian region to the West, as the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline runs through much of the
country.
We’re now joined on the telephone by retired Air Force
Colonel Sam Gardiner, who’s been closely following the conflict.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
COL. SAM GARDINER: Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this area that probably most
people in this country have never heard of before.
COL. SAM GARDINER: Yes. It’s very interesting that it
is probably what some analysts have called an area of frozen
conflicts. After the Soviet Union dissolved, there remained
areas in which, despite the fact that new states were created,
there were tensions. One of those is the Ossetia or South
Ossetia, which is where we’ve seen the fighting, and the other
one, inside Georgia, is Abkhazia. There were agreements signed
in the early 1990s that sort of solidified these as
semi-independent territories. In one, there is a UN peacekeeping
force, and then in South Ossetia, there is essentially
independence, and, you know, they sort of ran their operations
separate from the Georgian government.
And then, tensions began to increase over the past few
months, because the president of Georgia has promised to
retake—his words—retake the—particularly South Ossetia. That was
a problem, because, by now, 90 percent of Ossetians there were
holders of Russian passports. They had voted to become part of
the Russian Federation. There was clear movement in the
direction of this enclave, closer and closer ties with Russia.
And then, last week, almost without announcement, the Georgians
launched a strike into Ossetia with the apparent objective of
putting this back under the Tbilisi control, back under the
control of the Georgian government.
The Russians responded, responded probably in a way that was
a great deal surprise to the Georgians, probably was also a
surprise to the United States. And as of this morning, the
Georgians seem to have pulled out of South Ossetia and the
Russians have control of the capital city and are beginning to
put in humanitarian aid.
The one issue left up in the air has to do with the other
enclave, Abkhazia. There was a small portion of that enclave
that was controlled by the Georgians. It was called the Kodori
Gorge. Operations were launched there yesterday, some on
Saturday night, in attempt to dislodge the Georgians and turn
that territory over and completely make it independent from
Georgian control. So, this morning, the fighting seems to be
waning, although there are reports of still air strikes going
on. It appears as if we have gotten through the heavy part of
the fighting, but certainly not the important strategic
consequences.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about significance of this,
in terms of nuclear warfare in Russia? Do we have anything to
fear along those lines?
COL. SAM GARDINER: Absolutely. Let me just say that if
you were to rate how serious the strategic situations have been
in the past few years, this would be above Iraq, this would be
above Afghanistan, and this would be above Iran.
On little notice to Americans, the Russians learned at the
end of the first Gulf War that they couldn’t—they didn’t think
they could deal with the United States, given the value and the
quality of American precision conventional weapons. The Russians
put into their doctrine a statement, and have broadcast it very
loudly, that if the United States were to use precision
conventional weapons against Russian troops, the Russians would
be forced to respond with tactical nuclear weapons. They
continue to state this. They practice this in their exercise.
They’ve even had exercises that very closely paralleled what
went on in Ossetia, where there was an independence movement,
they intervene conventionally to put down the independence
movement, the United States and NATO responds with conventional
air strikes, they then respond with tactical nuclear weapons.
It appears to me as if the Russians were preparing themselves
to do that in this case. First of all, I think they believe the
United States was going to intervene. At a news conference on
Sunday, the deputy national security adviser said we have noted
that the Russians have introduced two SS-21 medium-range
ballistic missile launchers into South Ossetia. Now, let me say
a little footnote about those. They’re both conventional and
nuclear. They have a relatively small conventional warhead,
however. So, the military significance, if they were to be
conventional, was almost trivial compared to what the Russians
could deliver with the aircraft that they were using to strike
the Georgians.
I think this was a signal. I think this was an implementation
on their part of their doctrine. It clearly appears as if they
expected the United States to do what they had practiced in
their exercises. In fact, this morning, the Russians had an air
defense exercise in the southern part of Russia that borders
Georgia in which they—it was practicing shooting down incursion
aircraft that were incursion into Russia. They were prepared for
the United States to intervene, and I think they were
prepared—or at least they were wanting to show the United States
that their doctrine of the use of tactical nuclear weapons, if
the US attacks, was serious, and they needed to take—the United
States needs to take Russia very seriously.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Colonel Sam Gardiner
about this war that is taking place. Would you call it a war,
Colonel Gardiner?
COL. SAM GARDINER: Well, you know, I like that term,
and I wish I had invented it: it’s called "frozen conflicts.” It
is in resolution of a conflict that’s been around for seventeen
years. It was pushed off-center by the Georgians. Even the
Georgians were reluctant to declare war. They declared a state
of emergency. Certainly, the Russians haven’t declared war. In
fact, I guess I would say, Amy, you know, with our war on
terrorism, I don’t even know if there’s a definition of “war”
anymore. Probably it’s best to call it a very serious conflict
that could have been escalated.
AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of the pipeline that
is there?
COL. SAM GARDINER: Well, the United States, beginning
about ten years ago, obviously saw the vulnerability of the flow
of oil out of the Persian Gulf. So the United States pushed very
hard to set up a pipeline that went from Baku in Azerbaijan,
taking out the Caspian Sea oil, to a port in Turkey, Ceyhan.
That oil pipeline carries about one percent of the world’s oil
supply.
Two weeks ago, that pipeline was blown up in a Turkish area
by the Kurdish rebels that the Turks are fighting. There were
reports that the Russians had bombed this over the weekend.
Reports this morning, however, say—suggest that there hasn’t
been an interruption, except that Azerbaijan has shut off flow
in the pipeline. So this interferes with a major flow of oil to
the economies of the West. It’s an important source of the oil
flow.
AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Gardiner, I also wanted to ask
you about the presidential candidates’ responses to the
conflict—Senator Barack Obama and John McCain—the report coming
out about John McCain’s adviser, Scheunemann—
COL. SAM GARDINER: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —who helped a US firm win a Georgian
energy firm deal while lobbying for Georgia’s NATO membership.
COL. SAM GARDINER: I must say that I have not heard a
lot of good words from the McCain campaign about how to deal
with this. It’s painful that the standard answer one gets is the
testosterone-based foreign policy that we’ve seen for the last
eight years. This is a very complex situation. And John McCain
has said earlier that he wants to throw Russia out of the G8.
That is absolutely the worst thing the United States could do.
Russians have been saying—and the White House has not been
listening—“We are a major player, and you have to listen to us.”
This is the way the President said the Chinese are major
players, and we now listen to them. The Russians have been
saying that. The White House has ignored that.
I also would say, on the other hand, that this is one of
those situations where Obama’s talk about it is probably not a
good solution, either. The United States made some errors when
it left the impression with the Georgians that our support
somehow meant they were free to undertake this operation. That
was clearly a bad idea that we communicated with them.
The other thing that is significant here is, there is an
Israeli dimension to the problem. Israel has been training and
supplying the army of Georgia. That’s caused some tensions
within Israel, because there are those who believe that this
just encourages the Russians to provide conventional arms to the
Iranians. Israel has talked about it over the weekend, decided
not to stop providing arms to the Georgians.
It isn’t over. There are a lot of strategic things that are
going to fall out of this. Probably most important is that it’s
not now Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, it’s now Russia, Iraq,
Afghanistan and Iran that our new president is going to have to
deal with.
AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Sam Gardiner, I want to thank you
for being with us. We’ll certainly continue to follow this
conflict. Colonel Gardiner, retired Air Force colonel, has
taught strategy and military operations at the National War
College, as well as the Air War College and the Naval War
College.
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