“South Ossetian Areas of Control (geor-SO).” The areas in blue are controlled by Georgia, while the pink red areas were controlled by the South Ossetians.
The above map comes courtesy my friend Lyndon (who, it turns out, is way fun to wander with through a Budapest at once flush with and devoid of good shawarma), finally back from his vacay to Moldova. As you might have guessed from his vacation destination, the man really knows his Caucasus—his presence during the worst of the fighting was sorely missed, but his current post is beyond excellent, and more than makes up for it.
judging from what I’ve seen in the few mainstream media outlets I’ve had time to read/watch/listen to over the course of the conflict (I haven’t been online much), only the laziest pundits and pontificators have refrained from weighing in on the crisis. Sometimes it is fruitful to hear a generalist’s take on a region one follows closely; but often, it shows that the people who have to say things to fill air time and write things to fill column-inches are not always so careful when it comes to the facts. On just one day last week, reading two op-ed pages, I found a glaring error on each…
Exactly. His collection of maps of the Caucasus, with some interesting pre-Soviet ones as well, is worth a few hours’ read as well. But the point he makes—that generalist pundits and bloggers have little of real value to add—is one I really wish more people had noticed in the rush to comment, John McCain-style, on a conflict whose complexities they clearly misunderstand.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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Obviously your critique is directed more at Ruth Marcus types, but I was curious if you had heard Strobe Talbot’s interview on Weekend Edition NPR and whether you thought he is knowledgeable enough to be considered as a legitimate source of information / commentary.
I’ve been blown away by your knowledge of this issue, and have been directing friends to your website.
Talbot is certainly legitimate. But only if we also understand his foundation and biases. In the Clinton administration, he was known for his optimistic, pro-Russia views, and opposed U.S. support of the BTC pipeline because it would antagonize Russia (LeVine documented this in “The Oil and the Glory”).
That doesn’t mean his opinion is invalid, because he’s at least coming from a position of knowledge, but he isn’t a neutral analyst — he’s been an inside player, with well known biases. As long as we understand that, I think he has some very relevant things to say.
One of the more insightful things I’ve heard said about this (not because I hadn’t thought of it myself, having received email alerts on Friday Aug 7th about the falling RTS and Georgia’s savvy outreach to its foreign investors) was said by Talbott last Thursday at Brookings’ panel discussion on the conflict (yes, I attended it on the day I left town for Moldova – to respectfully correct Josh, it’s not that we’ve just returned from MD, it’s that we’ve just arrived here).
Talbott noted that in ’56 and ’68 no one had to think about the impact of military actions on the Soviet stock market (without adding, “because there wasn’t one”). Implicit, I think, in this observation is that perhaps stability-loving capital can be a mitigating force against militarism. You can read a transcript of the event here – http://www.brookings.edu/events/2008/0814_georgia.aspx
Hm, I didn’t properly finish writing that comment – what I wanted to say is that I liked the comment by Talbot (correctly spelled this time) not because the idea of economic ties adding a new dimension to such conflicts is so original, but because he put it so succinctly. I blame my sloppy commenting on the distraction created by the kids playing multiplayer online games clambering around me at the internet cafe, cursing all the while. At least the place is air-conditioned…