Russia invaded Georgia last Friday. The Russian army has been moving fast getting control of South-Ossetia and Abkhasia and is moving further in direction to the capital, Tblisi. Now, let's look at a few facts:
Georgia is a European country in the South-East corner of Europe. It used to belong to the Soviet Union but is independent now. It has a democratically elected government and president, Sakashvili and has applied for membership in NATO.
South-Ossetia is populated by 90% Russian ethnic people. They want independence from Georgia which is what Georgia was trying to prevent. The Russians say the same is happening here, as was happening in Kosovo, and therefore the West is being hypo critic supporting Georgia on this one and Kosovo in the other.
Russia's military force is by far superior to the Georgian military force. Russia has about 1200 fighter jets but Georgia has only 7. Russia has about 7.000 tanks while Georgia has 82.
So does Georgia have a chance? In direct military conflict - No. That would just be an unnecessary bloodshed. But they can still "win the war". Iceland won the Cod wars in the fifties and the seventies against the UK, and Iceland doesn't even have an army! Georgia can apply the same strategy, referring to International laws, not obeying to the superior force even though they can not fight back, and that is what they are doing. By offering ceasefire from day one, withdrawing the army from the conflict and calling for international diplomatic assistance they put strong diplomatic pressure on Russia. By continuing Russia is not just dealing with Georgia, it is risking their diplomatic relationship with the European Union, the US and the former Soviet Republics surrounding it. This is where the PR war is fought and on this front Georgia is doing a lot better. Internationally at least. Domestically Russia seems to be doing an excellent PR job proofing that Russia is still a superpower, proofing that if the west supports unilateral separation of Kosovo from Serbia, Russia can support unilaterally the separation of South Ossetia from Georgia.
In the PR fight, authenticity matters, just as in social media marketing. Here Russia also seems to be doing a worse job, saying they are withdrawing when they are advancing, saying they want the regime removed and that they don't. Georgia has had some problems here to, as on what they were doing to the Russians in South-Ossetia before the invasion, but less discrepancies have been proved there.
Another front in the war is the digital front. Mashable published an interesting article earlier today where they tell about hacker attacks on Georgian institutions that seem to be coming from Russian hackers. Estonia experienced similar attacks in 2005 when they had a "dispute" with Russia. Having good military defense seems to be not only on the physical borders, but on the digital front as well, guaranteeing information security and continuous uptime of their databases, computer systems and protecting their information assets. Therefore, the foreign ministry has moved their hosting to Estonia and civil.ge, the national news site, has moved their site to a Google Blogspot domain. Georgia has even got Estonian cyberdefense advisors to help fight the hacker attacks.
We haven't seen the war spreading into social media yet, but the next move in the war 2.0 might be a blogger or a twitter account reporting directly from the life within the conflict zone and getting sympathy for your cause. Let's hope it wont be long enough for that to develop.
Hjörtur
This is a very salient piece on how the interactive world is being dragged into conflicts the world over. I also like the advice on how to win an asymmetrical conflict; Georgia is a civic, democratic nation and should be left unmolested.
Posted by: Brent Willen | August 12, 2008 at 01:41 AM
@Brent Thanks. I studied "Peace negotiations, diplomacy and conflict resolution" in Sweden and wrote my Master thesis about asymmetrical negotiations when the Faroe Islands were trying to get independence from Denmark, so asymmetrical separatist conflicts is something I've studied.
Posted by: Hjortur Smarason | August 12, 2008 at 07:54 AM
first of all i will correct your figures...
Russia has 2,233 fighters, and 23,200~ tanks
and Russia did NOT "invade" Georgia... Georgia was murdering innocent people... women and children!
Russia saved them!
google: I survived the Georgia war, and this is what i saw
Posted by: Misha | December 01, 2008 at 06:16 AM