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South Ossetia, Georgia,

Russia and Abkhazia.

You know, I think this one really might be all about the oil.

Not the drilling of it, the transport of it.

Have a look at this map.

If you want to get oil and gas from the Caspian to Europe (which we do want to do) without going through Russian territory (which we do want to do and which Russia would prefer we didn\’t) then you\’ve pretty much got to go through Georgia.

And if you\’re Russia, knowing that your own economy is hugely dependent upon oil and gas, that the countries just to your south are gearing up to increase production, you\’d rather like to be able to control the transport of that, wouldn\’t you?

So, if not toppling the regime and installing a puppet, at least browbeating the Georgians so that they don\’t get uppity ideas about allowing more pipelines across the country…..well, attractive geo-political manouvre, no?

You\’ve even got a couple of minor little ethnic disputes that you\’ve kept bubbling away or 15 years to act as pretexts….

I\’m not normally this cynical, but perhaps this really is all about the oil (pipelines)?

10 thoughts on “South Ossetia, Georgia,”

  1. Remember the Sudetenland?
    A year later, Prague was occupied.
    Who would support Georgia if Tbilisi was occupied?

  2. It’s not about oil, it’s about gas. Oil can be easily trasported by sea. Gas, being gaseous, is best transported by pipeline. And there’s a proposed pipeline that would go from Azerbaijan, through Georgia, to Europe, bypassing Russia.

  3. Russia has been and will always be a backward country, its large geographic space shapes its culture, just like ours (surrounded by the sea) shapes ours. Its is always looking to shore up its boarders and keep all the competing populations under control.

    Energy has replaced socialism as its latest zero sum game, (whats bad for the west is good for us sort of thing) its contribution above a few books to world history and culture is minimal, its knows it and as such will always be resentful towards the west, after all its open societies that make the oil into something more valuable.

    Not much can be done at the moment, apart from rounding up all the Russian citizens on holiday in the west and sending them home, but we are not even capable of that. Other than that ignore them as best we can, and get the French and Germans to start treating them with suspicion.

    Putin thinks he is a clever man, we need to show him he is not.

  4. ..oh yeah I forgot, start building 20 nuclear power stations immediately. They should do till we get fusion reactors in the middle of this century, if all goes to plan.

  5. Hmm. I’m not sure the Russian invasion of South Ossetia to the delight of South Ossetians, is particularly different from the NATO invasion of Kosovo to the delight of Kosovars.

    If Russia were to invade Georgia, rather than a place that shouldn’t be in Georgia filled with Russians who don’t want to be Georgian, then it’d be significantly more worth-worrying-about.

  6. Iā€™m not normally this cynical, but perhaps this really is all about the oil (pipelines)?

    I don’t think so. The BTC pipeline was shutdown last week due to an explosion in Turkey, and the oil price instead of going up, dropped. Now we have Russia bombing Georgia in the area of the pipeline, yet the oil price dropped $15 over the weekend. I don’t see the BTC pipeline being all that important, certainly not important enough to go to war over.

  7. If the people of South Ossettia want to be Russian, and it appears that they do, why should they not get their wish?

    The people of Kosovo got theirs. Didn’t they?

    Perhaps we need to stop the panic about who has oil, or who has gas. Whoever has those resources has to sell them, or go hungry. They can’t eat their oil.

  8. Cabalamat

    How do transport oil from Central Asia by sea to the West? You have to get it to a Black Sea or Mediterranean port first. Time for you to get the Cillin’s map out, methinks.

    Tim Newman

    You don’t think that explosion in Turkey was slightly convenient for the Russians do you(as well as the Iranians).

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