Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 12 – Mart Laar, a
former Estonian prime minister and defense minister, draws ten lessons from the
August 2008 Russian-Georgian war, lessons that are applicable to other
countries living next to the Russian Federation of today and important for all
those in the West who would like to see those countries survive and prosper.
In an article published in Tallinn’s
“Postimees” on Friday, Laar, who advised Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili
in the past, notes that while many aspects of the conflict that remain unclear,
Estonians and by implication others nonetheless can draw some important lessons
from the events of five years ago. He
offers ten such lessons.
(Laar’s article is available in Estonian
at arvamus.postimees.ee/1326502/mart-laar-vene-gruusia-soda-10-oppetundi-eestile,
Russian at regnum.ru/news/polit/1693681.html
and English at news.postimees.ee/1334808/mart-laar-russia-georgia-war-10-lessons-for-estonia.)
The first
lesson, Laar says, is that it is better to face “the bitter truth” rather than
continue to harbor “fancy illusions.”
Moscow had been “preparing for the war for years knowing exactly what it
wanted. Georgia didn’t.” Worse, it allowed itself “to be dawn into the conflict
at the most unfavorable time” – its best brigade was in Iraq, its defense
minister was on holiday, and part of its army was being re-equipped.
Related to this, the Georgian
military was “living a life of illusion.” It had not made “serious preparations
for the defense of the country.” Tbilisi did not believe that Russia would go
beyond what it had done in the early 1990s. And consequently, the Estonian
leader says, the invasion came as “a total shock and surprise” for the
Georgians, “predestining them to defeat.”
The second lesson is that
headquarters work and advanced planning “determine the course” of any
conflict. Russia had prepared everything
down to the last detail. “Georgian forces were to be forced into launching an
attack in South Osetia; then they were to be surrounded and crushed. After that,”
Moscow calculated, “it would be easy to attack” the rest of the now “defenseless
Georgia.”
Georgian plans “in contrast were
very hazy.” The country’s military planners assumed they could move around
Tskhinvalia and race to the Gupta Bridge and Roki Tunnel and thus block any
Russian advance. They never made there and “that determined the outcome of the war.”
The third lesson, Laar suggests, is that
“intelligence equals sight.” In the Russian-Georgian war, both sides assumed
they had enough. But “Russian intelligence lacked precise information on
Georgia and thus severely underestimated Georgia’s ability to resist.” And
Georgian intelligence, while it had lots of information on data, did not put it
together in a useful way. That reflected
both their willingness to rely on “technical NATO surveillance” which “sadly
missed the massing of Russian troops” at the Georgian border and their
presumptuous belief that “Russia will not attack its neighbors.”
The fourth lesson is that “psychological
defense matters.” Russia launched a massive media campaign before the conflict
to “present to the world a view of Georgia as a small, aggressive and
unpredictable country led by crazy and morally corrupt bastards.” That isolated Georgia from her allies and
made Tbilisi’s warnings “sound unreliable.”
Ultimately, Russia lost the information war during the fighting, but its
advance work set the stage for Moscow’s broader victory.
The fifth lesson Laar draws is that “today’s
wars are by nature total.” That is, they involve cyber-attacks as well as other
non-traditional means.
The sixth lesson is that decent
medical services really do save lives.
Many of the 1200 Georgian soldiers wounded in the conflict would have
died had such services not been in place. Because such services were, only
three percent of them died of their wounds.
The seventh lesson is that “controlling
air space is vital.” Georgia had and has
a tiny air force and it participated in only one mission during the war. Had it
tried to do more, it would have been destroyed.
Georgian anti-aircraft forces were quickly suppressed, and after their
radar sites were destroyed, Georgian commanders were forced to operate “in the
dark.”
Mobile units proved “more efficient,”
but there were too few of them, even though “the Russian air force proved
incapable of making use of its absolute superiority in the skies.” Coordination
between Russian air and ground forces was “extremely poor,” and consequently,
Russian planes shot down other Russian planes. Indeed, half of Russia’s air
losses were from friendly fire.
The eighth lesson Laar offers is
that tanks and cannon still matter. Georgian tanks “helped stop the Russian
offensive” in the first hours of the conflict and played “a decisive role” in
destroying the 58th Army column on August 9th. And Russian sources have praised the work of
the Gori artillery brigade in slowing the Russian advance toward Tskhinvali.
The ninth lesson is that fewer but
better equipped and trained units are far more effective than more but really “paper”
ones. Those Georgian units without decent
communications or transport simply did not make any contribution to the battle,
however attractive they appeared on paper.
And the tenth lesson, one more for
Estonia than for Georgia, is to “trust in NATO but keep your powder dry.” As
important as alliances are, in the end, nations “can count only on themselves.”
The Georgians hoped for and even expected outside help, but had they not fought
on their own, Laar says, the Georgian state would have been wiped off the map
and a new government installed.” Only “the Georgians themselves saved the
Georgian state.”
Laar’s article is offered in the
first instance as a set of recommendations for Estonia, but the lessons of the
Russian-Georgian war have broader applicability, not only for other neighbors
of the Russian Federation but also for countries further afield who deal with
them. And unless these lessons are both
learned and remedies applied, the future could be very bleak indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment