Yet more on Georgia

I was going to include this in my previous post, about Russia's Five Principles for Foreign Relations, but decided to break it out separately.

My take on the whole Russia-Georgia thing goes as follows.

• Massive unrest among Latino population of Southwest USA, probably fomented by those Aztlan whackos. Rioting, murder, kidnapping, sabotage, terrorism, the works.
• USA moves against whackos.
• Mexico declares that it is protecting it's People, and invades USA.

Granted that the relative sizes of the nations in this scenario are reversed from those in the Russia/Georgia crisis, Russia has no more business invading Georgia, or the USA, over internal affairs than Mexico would the USA, or vice versa.

Note also that the USA and Canada have large populations of ethnic Russians, many of them first generation. While it's hard to imagine Russia landing troops in Seattle to stop local, state,. or Federal Law Enforcement acting against ethnic Russians, say "The Russian Mafia", there are parts of Alaska where they could get there quicker than we could...

(Now, what was that about Sarah Palin's inexperience again...?)

In the meantime, there are some links over on the right side of the screen to blogs that have some excellent posts on the subject, by people who know far more about the subject than I.

Mike Totten's Middle East Journal has an extemely informative post entitled The Truth About Russia in Georgia.

I got there from Blackfive, Georgia Roundup 08/31 and Return Of The Great Game.

That latter post links to JD Johannes' Outside The Wire--hey, I can't read, let alone link to, every MilBlog!--in which he discusses the possibly-apocryphal origin of Russia's urge for World Domination, AKA "The Great Game". It notes the fact that there are a lot of Russians on Forbes Billionaire List, and that they are predominantly in the Raw Materials line; i.e., they dig up or pump or cut down stuff and either make other stuff from it, or sell it to others to make other stuff from.

Below is a list of the modern version of the Great Game countries and their resources as listed in the CIA World Factbook.

Afghanistan--natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chromite, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, iron ore, salt, precious and semiprecious stones
Armenia--small deposits of gold, copper, molybdenum, zinc, bauxite
Azerbaijan--petroleum, natural gas, iron ore, nonferrous metals, bauxite
Georgia--forests, hydropower, manganese deposits, iron ore, copper, minor coal and oil deposits; coastal climate and soils allow for important tea and citrus growth
Iran--petroleum, natural gas, coal, chromium, copper, iron ore, lead, manganese, zinc, sulfur
Kazakhstan--major deposits of petroleum, natural gas, coal, iron ore, manganese, chrome ore, nickel, cobalt, copper, molybdenum, lead, zinc, bauxite, gold, uranium
Kyrgyzstan--abundant hydropower; significant deposits of gold and rare earth metals; locally exploitable coal, oil, and natural gas; other deposits of nepheline, mercury, bismuth, lead, and zinc
Tajikistan--hydropower, some petroleum, uranium, mercury, brown coal, lead, zinc, antimony, tungsten, silver, gold
Turkmenistan--petroleum, natural gas, sulfur, salt
Ukraine--iron ore, coal, manganese, natural gas, oil, salt, sulfur, graphite, titanium, magnesium, kaolin, nickel, mercury, timber, arable land
Uzbekistan--natural gas, petroleum, coal, gold, uranium, silver, copper, lead and zinc, tungsten, molybdenum

Many of the 'stans are following Putin in lock-step, whether because they are lead by unreconstructed commies, or because they are affair of Putin and Russia, I am not qualified to say.
But many of the former SSRs could not shake the legacy of Lenin and Stalin fast enough.

Unfortunately, the European Union seems to be inclined to act more like Goatropistan, settling for mild remonstrations rather than actual meaningful deeds that might actually, you know, annoy the Russian Bear... (AP: Moscow claims victory at EU climbdown; BBC: Russia praises EU over sanctions.)