How Putin wins
That Dmitry Medvedev issued his instructions to the Russian military to pull out of Georgia just before he met with Nicolas Sarkozy for peace negotiations seems significant. Russia ended this war exactly when they wanted to, without waiting to be told. It was also a nice touch that it was Medvedev who made the anouncement. ...
That Dmitry Medvedev issued his instructions to the Russian military to pull out of Georgia just before he met with Nicolas Sarkozy for peace negotiations seems significant. Russia ended this war exactly when they wanted to, without waiting to be told.
That Dmitry Medvedev issued his instructions to the Russian military to pull out of Georgia just before he met with Nicolas Sarkozy for peace negotiations seems significant. Russia ended this war exactly when they wanted to, without waiting to be told.
It was also a nice touch that it was Medvedev who made the anouncement. Remember that it was Vladimir Putin who said "war has started" last Friday. This good-cop-bad-cop approach to world affairs seems quite effective for the tandem.
The war itself was pure Putin tough: a brutal yet measured display of force. Russia certainly demonstrated that its troops could have marched right into Saakashvili’s office without the world doing anything about it. But this is not a repeat of the Cold War and Putin is not Leonid Brezhnev. Occupying Georgia is probably more trouble than it’s worth when Russia can simply "throw it against the wall" to show it is possible.
When Putin has opposition political leaders jailed or beaten up, it’s not because they pose much threat to him — he and his allies could win any national election fair and square — but because he wants to destroy the perception that a meaningful opposition even exists.
Georgia never really posed much of a threat to Russian security, but Georgia’s government and citizens had the perception that Western support allowed them to determine their own destiny, even if that meant opposing their powerful Northern neighbor. That perception has now been effectively destroyed.
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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