>Tskhinvali was a rapid
> attack on a city using somewhat unsophisticated weapons but using
> those weapons to cause maximum disorder to opposing forces, not to
> kill or demoralize a population.
By "unsophisticated weapons" I mean to indicate the Grad artillery rocket launchers and by "unsphisticated" I mean to imply "brutal" without getting too emotional.
Despite the vast mischaracterizations, I've never had a kind word to say about the Georgian attack on South Ossetia. It was stupid in the extreme, badly planned and threw aside proper consideration for the civilians in and around Tskhinvali. I don't feel the need to condemn it because it condemns itself and I dislike moralizing.
What it was not was a surprise attack or attempted genocide against civilians. It was clearly a military-to-military attack limited by the weapons available because that's really all it could have been. For the Georgians to move their troops into Tskhinvali, even if they wanted to kill every living South Ossetian they simply could not have wasted the firepower during the battle. You can assume that the Georgians entered Tskhinvali in order to murder all South Ossetians later. You can assume anything you want. But the action itself simply was not consistent with the Russian story.
And now we see that the real casualty figures bear out my assessment.
The Russian reports of casualties were not mistaken by an order of magnitude, they were deliberate propaganda put out as political cover for their counter-offensive. All wars are propaganda wars. But to analyze what the war is really about and what it means obviously you have to look beneath the propaganda.
In my view, absolutely everything Saakashvili says can be safely ignored. He's not only a propagandist (which is part of his job) he's really, really bad at it. Therefore we can assume that the Russians completely ignored the five-hour Georgian "cease-fire" with South Ossetia on August 6 and knew through their sophisticated military intelligence that Georgia was moving its weapons into place. So much for the "surprise attack" nonsense.
The Russian counter-offensive was also (by military definitions) a military-to-military attack - extremely well executed - that took advantage of the huge edge the Russians could create with their most-modern equipment. The Russians struck very deeply and very precisely into Georgian territory in order to completely rout the Georgians and absolutely paralyze their ability to project force in any tactically meaningful way - and to accomplish other aims.
Part of the reason we know that the invasion of Georgia was not simply a reaction is the massive deployment of Russia's most-accurate and most-sophisticated troops and weapons to fight this tiny army. The Russians could have used a Grozny-type strategy, keeping their most valuable assets distributed as normal and responding to the Georgians with massive firepower. However, the Russians clearly wanted to make the defeat of Georgia as fast, bloodless and complete as possible. So, they invested far more than was militarily necessary because it paid huge political-strategic dividends.
We need not simply assume that the Russians had other aims, because they practically announced their aims before they went in and have acted consistent with those stead and all-but-stated aims.
Russian aims:
1) To make it impossible for Georgia to enter NATO.
Accomplished. First, the borders of Georgia are in dispute. Second, NATO would have to be willing to risk directly engaging Russian troops.
2) To enhance Russia's political and economic power in the West.
Largely accomplished. BP is now held in checkmate, and will surrender large parts of their assets in Russia in order to keep their Caspian assets viable. Russia has also shown NATO to be badly outflanked and America/Israel to be belligerently stupid.
Putin has even offere the West a little 'blood money" by suggesting he might put some smaller Russian state assets up for sale.
3) To threaten CIS and former Warsaw pact states.
Accomplished. States are sorting themselves out according to willingness to follow Moscow by their reactions to the Russian actions in Georgia
4) To control oil flow from the Caspian to Europe.
First steps accomplished. The BTC pipeline, scheduled to re-open next week, will only open with Russian forbearance. Russia has secured even-greater access to the Black Sea, putting in place an unstable, rebel regime in Abkhazia which will offer a pretext for action in the Black Sea area at any time. Russians have also put missiles into South Ossetia which can hit most meaningful targets in Georgia.
Russians control Poti and have sunken Georgian military vessels so that tankers accessing Poti will have NATO protection or no protection from Russia at all - which means they will have no protection at all.
Even if the Russians give up Poti - and I now think they will - south of the city there is the lately-rebellious Black Sea province of Ajara and south of them the Armenian and Kurdish resistance movements - both of which the Russians can either blame for "mishaps" or support directly or both.
All of these aims - all - have been prefigured by statements from, and actions by the Kremlin. Therefore, it is simply logical to conclude that the Kremlin had in the front of their minds these strategic considerations when they decided to completely change their attitude towards breakaway ethnic minorities - in this instance - and help the South Ossetians by taking some big political risks with some very, very expensive military hardware.
Good for the South Ossetians. Bad, I think, for the world in general.