U.S., Allies Weigh Punishment for Russia

U.S., Allies Weigh Punishment for Russia

WASHINGTON â?? Scrambling to find ways to punish Russia for its invasion of pro-Western Georgia, the United States and its allies are considering expelling Moscow from an exclusive club of wealthy nations and canceling an upcoming joint NATO-Russia military exercise, Bush administration officials said Tuesday.

But with scant leverage in the face of an emboldened Moscow, Washington and its friends have been forced to face the uncomfortable reality that their options are limited to mainly symbolic measures, such as boycotting Russian-hosted meetings and events, that may have little or no long-term impact on Russia's behavior, the officials said

With the situation on the ground still unclear after Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on Tuesday ordered a halt to military action in Georgia, U.S. officials were focused primarily on confirming a cease-fire and attending to Georgia's urgent humanitarian needs following five days of fierce fighting, including Russian attacks on civilian targets.

"It is very important now that all parties cease fire," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. "The Georgians have agreed to a cease-fire, the Russians need to stop their military operations as they have apparently said that they will, but those military operations really do now need to stop because calm needs to be restored."

At the same time, however, President Bush and his top aides were engaged in frantic consultations with European and other nations over how best to demonstrate their fierce condemnations of the Russian operation that began in Georgia's separatist region of South Ossetia, expanded to another disputed area, Abkhazia, and ended up on purely Georgian soil.

"The idea is to show the Russians that it is no longer business as usual," said one senior official familiar with the consultations among world leaders that were going on primarily by phone and in person at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where alliance diplomats met together and then with representatives of Georgia.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe confidential conversations among the leaders of other nations, said European and other leaders have been blunt with Russia that it must withdraw its forces. Russian leaders have said they do not plan a long-term occupation, the official said. The official was not specific about whether Russia has offered a timeline for withdrawal.

"People are saying, 'You know you cannot stay,"' the official said. "We have been hearing from Russia, 'We don't want to stay."'

For now, the Bush administration decided to boycott a third meeting at NATO on Tuesday at which the alliance's governing board, the North Atlantic Council, was preparing for a meeting with a Russian delegation that has been called at Moscow's request, officials said.

On the table for future action is the possible cancellation or U.S. withdrawal from a major NATO naval exercise with Russia that is scheduled to begin Friday, the officials said. Sailors and vessels from Britain, France, Russia, and the U.S. were to take part in the annual Russia-NATO exercise aimed at improving cooperation in maritime security.

The exercise, which is being hosted by Russia this year, began a decade ago and typically involves around 1,000 personnel from the four countries, the officials said.

In the medium term, the United States and its partners in the Group of Seven, or G-7, the club of the world's leading industrialized nations that also includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, are debating whether to effectively disband what is known as the G-8, which incorporates Russia, by throwing Moscow out, the officials said.

Discussions are also taking place on whether to revoke or review the May 2007 invitation to Russia to join the 30-member, Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which consists primarily of established European democracies, the officials said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions have yet been made and consultations with other countries involved are still under way.

Bush spoke on Monday and Tuesday with fellow G-7 leaders as well as the heads of democratically elected pro-Western governments in formerly Eastern bloc nations, some of which are among NATO's newest members and have urged a strong response to Russia's invasion of a like-minded country.

On Monday on his way home from the Olympics in China, Bush talked with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus and Polish President Lech Kaczynski. He then called Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, the White House said. On Tuesday, he spoke with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Rice, who returned early to Washington late Monday from vacation to deal with the crisis, held a second round of talks with foreign ministers from the Group of Seven countries in which they were briefed on European Union mediation efforts led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who met Tuesday with Medvedev in Moscow.

"They believe that they have made some progress and we welcome that and we certainly welcome the E.U. mediation," Rice told reporters at the White House.

Later, Saakashvili told reporters that he accepted the cease-fire plan negotiated by Sarkozy.

Despite the flurry of activity, there was still uncertainty about whether Russia had in fact halted its military action in Georgia, with reports of continued shelling of civilian and military sites.

The State Department on Tuesday recommended that all U.S. citizens leave Georgia in a new travel warning, saying the security situation remained uncertain. It said it was organizing a third evacuation convoy to take Americans who want to leave by road to neighboring Armenia. More that 170 American citizens have already left Georgia in two earlier convoys.

Just hours after Bush said in a White House address that the invasion had "substantially damaged Russia's standing in the world" and demanded an end to what he called Moscow's "dramatic and brutal escalation" of violence, Medvedev said he had ordered an end to military action.

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Finally! The U.N. is kinda manning up.

However, "their options are limited to mainly symbolic measures" is not a good enough answer if you ask me. That's barely a slap on the wrist!

There's little else anyone can do other than symbolic gestures, however, as the U.S. is all too well aware. We can condemn their actions and urge other allies to do the same, but Russia is a military and economic force to be reckoned with, a super power. A country we couldn't begin to go to war with and don't have the available resources to fight even if we wanted to. Everyone recognizes this fact, which is why we and other nations are pretty much limited to hand-slapping and little else. We can threaten not to hold international meetings there. We can threaten to throw them out of the G8 and go back to being G7. Mr. Putin and his administration don't really care what anyone does. It's a bad situation to be in. Although our current political administration is basically in lame duck mode, I am glad we have Dr. Rice at the Department of State. She is an expert on the workings in that part of the world.

I realize we can't go above and beyond but at least throw in some tough sanctions for goodness sake. Condemming them is a useless tactic because as you mention they really don't give a damn.

I am for making them G7 though. And your correct, Sec. Rice is a great politician. I like her because she has a libertarian view when it comes to social issues. Even though she is in Bush's cabinet her views differ from his in a lot of cases. I always believed that she would make a great VP for McCain.

I would even vote for her as President actually. I don't have an issue with women in power, I am all for it, but I just couldn't stand Hillary.

Tough economic sanctions are hard because Russia is an economic powerhouse on its own and can cause us and the rest of the world some retaliatory economic pain in return if we try to do that. It'd be different if they were a smaller, weaker country that was more heavily influenced by strong-arm tactics, but they're not. Russia has lots of industry and manufacturing and, for instance, can manufacture and export steel at cheaper prices than we do, which makes this a tricky situation. We've already run into trouble with the World Trade Organization trying to impose tariffs on them for steel exports a few years back.

We're in a bad spot, too, because our own economy can't take any further strains at the moment and what we do internationally affects us at home since we're a globally interdependent economy.

Condi Rice is far too smart to want to be a politician or run for office. I admire her for that. I also admire her for the fact that she's a wickedly proficient piano player and can speak Russian, Spanish, French and German in addition to English. I hope she'll return to teaching. She could have lots of far-reaching influence by helping teach future diplomats and probably be much happier doing so.

There's good stuff to be read on the topic of Russia and Georgia at this site and the links it provides.
Moscow sends troops into Georgia; Europe and America wrestle with the ramifications. - By Ben Whitford - Slate Magazine

what about punishment for georgia
georgia uses american and israeli military equipment(planes and tanks) and bombs the capital of south ossetia and kills from 1000-1500 civillians that are defenseless and they kill afew and injure afew russian un mandated peacekeepers.
russia rushes in and defends south ossetia(which hold russian citizenship and un mandated peacekeepers) and bombs afew military and other instillations in georgia proper. they kill about 130 mainly military and some civillians.

Right....Russia invades to stop Georgia from murdering its citizens..wheres the neo-cons and the repubes with them talking points about preventive strikes, ohh wait! it only works on certain people in certain parts of the world. Iraq Iraq

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Originally Posted by birdgirl73

Tough economic sanctions are hard because Russia is an economic powerhouse on its own and can cause us and the rest of the world some retaliatory economic pain in return if we try to do that. It'd be different if they were a smaller, weaker country that was more heavily influenced by strong-arm tactics, but they're not. Russia has lots of industry and manufacturing and, for instance, can manufacture and export steel at cheaper prices than we do, which makes this a tricky situation. We've already run into trouble with the World Trade Organization trying to impose tariffs on them for steel exports a few years back.

We're in a bad spot, too, because our own economy can't take any further strains at the moment and what we do internationally affects us at home since we're a globally interdependent economy.

Condi Rice is far too smart to want to be a politician or run for office. I admire her for that. I also admire her for the fact that she's a wickedly proficient piano player and can speak Russian, Spanish, French and German in addition to English. I hope she'll return to teaching. She could have lots of far-reaching influence by helping teach future diplomats and probably be much happier doing so.

There's good stuff to be read on the topic of Russia and Georgia at this site and the links it provides.
Moscow sends troops into Georgia; Europe and America wrestle with the ramifications. - By Ben Whitford - Slate Magazine

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Condi Rice is a terrible politician---------------
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." condi rice
Or this one "Usama determine to strike" which was thrown under the bus by this condi...................

This was all caused by the west, not just US. When Billy blow job went to Bosnia and then all the rest of the west recognized them as an independent country apart from Serbia the seeds were sown for this. And Russia even predicted it when everybody OK'd the state of Bosnia. Just wait, the Ukraine is probably next. BTW, when are we finally going to get out of Bosnia, Christmas 1995 was a long time ago Billy.

Will there never be any peace on this planet? Sometimes it would be nice to just go back to political asassignations like we use to. Except for the idiots we elect in office would probably kill the wrong ones.

There will never be peace. Some asshole will always fuck it up for everyone. I suppose the only thing to really do is just be a good person individually instead on hoping for governments and others to make peace for us.

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Originally Posted by McDanger

This was all caused by the west, not just US. When Billy blow job went to Bosnia and then all the rest of the west recognized them as an independent country apart from Serbia the seeds were sown for this. And Russia even predicted it when everybody OK'd the state of Bosnia. Just wait, the Ukraine is probably next. BTW, when are we finally going to get out of Bosnia, Christmas 1995 was a long time ago Billy.

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Could you reiterate this? Georgia seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991. I don't quite get the connection.

It's such a shame that conflict is going down in Georgia. I heard it's has such beautiful landscape, like Central California without the ocean, now the landscape is getting destroyed by the bombs.

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Originally Posted by thcbongman

Could you reiterate this? . . . . I don't quite get the connection.

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I'm not sure you're talking to someone who got the connection in the first place, THCBongman. He doesn't seem to be aware that the Bosnia-Serbian situation was a human rights intervention that politicians on both sides of the political aisle would have intervened in, as they stated clearly. He doesn't seem to realize that we've been present in other countries like Japan since the 40s, so I'm not sure why he's making a big deal of our comparatively brief ongoing presence in Bosnia. This is part of McCain's point about our future involvement in Iraq lasting up to 100 years. We won't still be fighting wars in those places decades or centuries from now, as we're not in Bosnia, but it's completely routine for us and/or NATO (in the case of eastern Europe) to stay behind and see that things go the way we want them to.

It's hard to discuss stuff with folks who don't have the full picture.

EG420ne, I'll have to talk to you some other time about some other subject. You don't seem to realize that Secretary Rice is a diplomat, not a politician. She's never run for or held any type of political office.

I got the connection. When the west recognized Bosnia as a Country separate from Yugoslavia the Russians, which backed the Serbs, complained about the west intervening in a civil war over territory. And now Russia is doing the exact same thing they say. That was the reason for the comparison.
And my gripe about us still being there (and we are still in Bosnia) was that Clinton said we would be out by Christmas 1995, but all we hear about is how long we have been in Iraq, well we have overstayed our promissed pull out date by almost 13years but nobody complains about that.

Thank you for that very good clarification. My respect to you. You do seem to be familiar with the situation, which is good.

I had always been under the impression that Clinton meant we'd be out out of active military intervention in Bosnia by that timeframe but that oversight-monitoring (and protection of NATO)--as will be the case with oversight and protection of the reconstruction teams in Iraq, which will go on for a long, long time to come--might be ongoing. That's still an area of the world that's fairly tense from an "ethnic cleansing" standpoint, at least according to the last thing I read.

I can see why you'd be wondering about the similarities with the Russian actions.

I don't want this tension between us and Russia to be heightened. I was going to tag along with a team of medical folks to Russia next summer to have a look at some of their medical facilities. I figure that might not be possible now, but perhaps I'm being pessimistic. I don't much want to go if relations aren't easy.

^ Don't go if there is a chance of being held hostage or something!

Dear god we need you here haha. However with your reasoning skills you might just be able to talk your way out of it!

Only if I were held hostage in Mexico, Spain, France or an English-speaking country. I couldn't talk my way out of a sticky Russian situation to save my life . . . .

Dave and a couple of other people are going to read this, think for just a moment, then pick up the phone and buy me a first-class ticket to Moscow leaving tomorrow from Dallas!!

Hahaha I have my name and John's in Russian on my wall. I can't speak a lick of it but I love the way it looks!

What we are going to have to do is print more money, establish military presence and fight off the russians. It's absolutely our job to police the world and make sure that people do what we want them to, at the expense of hardworking american taxpayers.

This is funny in a bad way :)

Hmmm. Now I know that's one way to look at it. And I certainly have lots of respect for you, Markass.

But this is a lot more complicated a situation than perhaps it seems. Relations with the other global superpowers like Russia and China literally do need to be relatively harmonious in order for the world economy to function well and for our economy to do so. And in the Middle East, we do have a vested interest over there--one that ultimately benefits our taxpayers and citizens and not just because of our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, either.

If we were to simply pull out and leave Iraq and Afghanistan to fend for themselves at this point, we'd leave them and ourselves much more vulnerable to terrorism than we would if we were to stay and finish our work and help with reconstruction of what we've dismantled. This is a lesson we learned after we left unfinished business after intervening in the Afghanistan-Russian conflict in the 80s. By not staying then and completing the Afghanistan reconstruction "end-game," as it was referred to by the officials involved (read the book or see the movie "Charlie Wilson's War"), we left that place vulnerable to the development of the Taliban and its connection with Al Qaeda. Same if we were to leave the Sudan to fend for itself. Often by not intervening, we could ultimately cost our citizens and taxpayers much, much more in security vulnerabilities.

Obviously, any reasonable person wishes we'd had solid actionable intelligence on Iraq in the first place and that we'd directed our resources more toward Afghanistan and Al Qaeda. But a very solid case can be made--no matter which end of the political spectrum you stand on--that we ourselves left Afghanistan vulnerable to the growth of terrorism in the first place.

There are quite literally dozens of situations like these in the world at any given time. Situations where we have to decide to intervene militarily or diplomatically or simply with U.S. assistance (usually money or food or both). When it's a human rights or health question, like the situation in Darfur or the AIDS problem in Africa or ethnic-cleansing, like in the Bosnia-Serbo-Croatian situation, the answer's often easier. Religious tolerance and disease control benefit us all. But in other situations, it's not as easy to understand the potential ramifications of involvement versus non-involvement, and we definitely have to pick and choose what we get involved in.

I just want to remind you to take a step back and look at the bigger picture involved than just what's defined by our borders. We're not an island. The world's more interconnected than ever, economically and medically and security-wise. That's what our leaders and diplomats are taking into consideration even though it may not seem that way when you're simply looking at it from a domestic standpoint. If we were to pull completely out of Iraq and that part of the world went to hell in a handbasket and gasoline began to cost $8.50 a gallon and our economy collapsed, we wouldn't have done right by American taxpayers then, either.

Hope this made sense. Sorry for such a long answer.

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Originally Posted by texas grass

what about punishment for georgia?
georgia uses american and israeli military equipment(planes and tanks) and bombs the capital of south ossetia and kills from 1000-1500 civillians that are defenseless and they kill a few and injure afew russian un mandated peacekeepers.
russia rushes in and defends south ossetia(which hold russian citizenship and un mandated peacekeepers) and bombs afew military and other instillations in georgia proper. they kill about 130 mainly military and some civillians.

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1000-1500 civillian killed! is this true? i admit i don't know much about the situation over there but my thinking all along has been at least the Russian peace keepers stopped this genocide. to me this is not a whole lot different than Kosovo, just with the tables turned. the neo-cons are going ape shit with talk of the new soviet union being formed but the reality is that the Georgia/Russia border was never fully reconciled after the break up of the Soviet Union. This is why Georgia was not eligible for NATO membership. I say if Kosovo can be its own independent nation then why not these two provinces, too? Hell, for that matter, why can't California go independent? ;)

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Originally Posted by boaz

is this true?

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tex, didn't mean to seem like i was doubting your word, it just kills me that we don't hear jack shit about this in the u.s. media.