Fórum Defesa Brasil

rodrigo escreveu:

Com o que temos no Itamarati hoje em dia, tenho lá minhas dúvidas...

Iam mandar munição pro Paraguai.

Georgia demolishes Soviet memorial, angering Russia
17:51

TBILISI, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Diggers tore into a Soviet World War Two memorial in Georgia on Dec. 17 to make way for a new parliament in the former Soviet republic, angering Russia and opponents of pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Saakashvili wants parliament sessions to be relocated to Georgia's second city of Kutaisi under an initiative to revitalise the former industrial hub.

But the demolition of a 46-metre-high concrete and bronze war memorial at the proposed construction site has been criticised by Georgia's opposition and Russia, which fought a brief war with U.S. ally Georgia last year.

The Russian Defence Ministry issued a statement saying it was "concerned", and Duma deputy and former prime minister Sergei Stepashin said it was "sacrilege".

Critics said the move reflected an indifference to public opinion by authorities under Saakashvili, whose rejection of Georgia's Soviet past has been his signature policy since taking power on the back of the 2003 "Rose Revolution".

Some 300,000 Georgians died fighting for the Soviet army during World War Two.

"The decision to dismantle this memorial without asking the people and without asking the author of this memorial is a very good example of how our leadership ignores public opinion," said Georgy Akhvlediani of the opposition Christian Democrats.

NAKED HORSEMAN

One part of the monument, a statue of a naked Georgian horseman in front of the main concrete structure, has already been removed. Authorities said it would be relocated within Kutaisi, 236 km (147 miles) west of the capital Tbilisi.

Municipal construction official Jemal Tsuladze told Reuters the bronze sections of the monument, built in 1982, would be kept in storage, but the main structure was too big to move.

"It was a government decision and we are just implementing it," he said.

Kutaisi city officials could not confirm Russian media reports that the main structure -- designed by Georgian sculptor Merab Berdzenishvili -- would be blown up on Dec. 21, the birthday of Saakashvili which he shares with Josef Stalin.

A spokeswoman for Saakashvili declined to comment when contacted by Reuters. Russian officials said it was a crime. "The ... criminal nature of such evil acts must be raised at all international events," Alexei Ostrovsky, a committee chairman in the Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, told RIA Novosti.

Relations between Russia and Georgia show no sign of improving since they fought a five-day war in August last year, when Russia crushed an assault by U.S. ally Georgia on the breakaway pro-Russian region of South Ossetia.

The monument dispute has echoes of Estonia in 2007, when Russia reacted furiously to the removal of a statue of a Soviet Red Army soldier in the capital Tallinn.

Reuters

Bush Aides Weighed Attack to Halt Russia-Georgia War: Books

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- As Russian tanks rumbled into Georgia in 2008, a post-Cold War turning point was at hand.

George W. Bush’s national security team considered launching air strikes to halt the invasion. Vladimir Putin boasted that he alone could be trusted. And Nicolas Sarkozy badgered Georgia’s leader into signing a cease-fire.

These are just three peeks behind the diplomatic curtain presented in “A Little War That Shook the World,” Ronald D. Asmus’s absorbing account of the five-day clash in the Caucasus that August.

Asmus, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, now runs the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund. He pieced together this tale of realpolitik and diplomatic dead-ends by unearthing previously unpublished documents and interviewing Western and Georgian officials. Taken together, the evidence illustrates how the West failed to get to grips with an emboldened Russia.

Written with a diplomat’s feel for policy nuance and a journalist’s eye for detail, the book traces how Russia exploited U.S.-European divisions -- magnified by the festering sore of the Iraq war -- to put a stop to Georgia’s headstrong embrace of the West.

Thus we learn that “several senior White House staffers” urged “at least some consideration of limited military options,” such as bombing the mountain tunnel that served as Russia’s main supply line.

Bush Backs Off

Four days after the war started on Aug. 7, 2008, Bush cut off the discussion. A top-level White House meeting produced “a clear sense around the table that almost any military steps could lead to a confrontation with Moscow,” Asmus writes.

In the end, neither the lame-duck administration nor the fractured trans-Atlantic alliance could do much to save Georgia once it stumbled into war. The clash would renew Russia’s claim to great-power status after two decades of strategic decline.

Russian voices are largely absent in these pages; senior Kremlin officials rebuffed Asmus’s interview requests, he says. The resulting account is more sympathetic to Georgia than, for example, a European Union-sponsored investigation that last year blamed Georgia for firing the first shots.

The fin-de-regne Bush comes across as chastened into pragmatism, unwilling to pick a fight with Russia and unable to charm allies such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel into backing North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership for Georgia.

‘Stark and Threatening’

Late-term tensions between Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney punctuate this story. Cheney’s office grew concerned that Bush inadvertently gave Russia the all-clear to attack by staying mute in response to Putin’s “stark and threatening language” about Georgia during a meeting between the two men in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in April 2008. One Cheney staffer, reading a memo of that encounter, fretted that Bush might have given Russia a “green light.”

“A Little War” eavesdrops on a telling conversation Putin had with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, the architect of Georgia’s pro-western policies, in February 2008.

“You think you can trust the Americans, and they will rush to assist you?” Putin asked according to a Georgian record of the talk. “Nobody can be trusted! Except me.”

Georgian ‘Hothead’

Saakashvili, seen as a reformer by some, a demagogue by others, was central to the non-meeting of minds between the U.S. and Europe over how to bring Georgia closer to the West. In European capitals he was seen as “an American-backed hothead who spelled trouble,” Asmus writes.

Trouble was preprogrammed when the equally histrionic Sarkozy shuttled between Moscow and the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to negotiate a ceasefire. The choice of the French leader, in his role as holder of the EU presidency, reflected concern in Washington that high-profile U.S. involvement would further rile the Kremlin.

Asmus’s account of Sarkozy’s seat-of-the-pantalons diplomacy includes the insight that at least one senior U.S. official was “appalled” by the ambiguous ceasefire text improvised by the French leader in Moscow on Aug. 12.

Later that evening, with 100,000 Georgians happily chanting “Sar-ko-zy, Sar-ko-zy” outside the parliament in Tbilisi, the French president confronted Saakashvili with the document and told him that he wouldn’t get a better deal.

“Where is Bush? Where are the Americans?” Sarkozy is quoted as snarling at the Georgians. “They are not coming to save you. No Europeans are coming, either. You are alone. If you don’t sign, the Russian tanks will be here soon.”

“A Little War That Shook the World: Georgia, Russia and the Future of the West” is published by Palgrave Macmillan (254 pages, $27, 20 pounds).

(James G. Neuger writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

kurgan escreveu:Saakashvili nombra a John McCain héroe nacional de Georgia

Tbilisi, 11 de enero, RIA Novosti. El presidente de Georgia, Mijaíl Saakashvili, adjudicó hoy el título de "Héroe Nacional de Georgia" al senador de Estados Unidos, John McCain, para agradecer su apoyo a la república caucásica, reveló la agencia "Noticias-Georgia".

La ceremonia de la entrega del título, destinado a exaltar "sus postura heroica en beneficio de Georgia", tuvo lugar en el puerto georgiano de Batumi, donde el senador republicano se encuentra para celebrar reuniones con las autoridades políticas del país.

No es la primera vez que McCain, antiguo candidato a la presidencia de EEUU, es homenajeado en Georgia. Así, en otoño de 2009, la Asociación georgiana en Estados Unidos, destacó con un premio al político por su papel del político en el conflicto bélico entre Georgia y Rusia en agosto de 2008.

"El hecho de que hoy día Georgia goce de independencia se debe a sus amigos", afirmó Saakashvili durante su intervención en el acto.

Por su parte, McCain confesó que el título de de "Héroe Nacional de Georgia" es "la distinción más relevante" que ha recibido.

"Para mí es un honor defender la independencia de Georgia. Es el reflejo de aquella gran amistad que existe entre nosotros, así como de la solidaridad y compañerismo entre dos naciones", recalcó el político estadounidense.

En la noche del 8 de agosto de 2008, las tropas georgianas atacaron Osetia del Sur, dejando en ruinas su capital Tsjinvali. Para defender a los habitantes de la república, muchos de los cuales tienen ciudadanía rusa, Moscú introdujo sus unidades en Osetia del Sur y tras cinco días de combates expulsó a las tropas georgianas del territorio suroseto.

A finales de agosto de 2008, Rusia reconoció la independencia de Osetia del Sur y de otra ex autonomía georgiana, Abjasia. En respuesta a eso, Tbilisi rompió relaciones diplomáticas con Moscú y declaró dichas repúblicas territorios ocupados.

http://sp.rian.ru/onlinenews/20100111/124646837.html

George W. Bush’s national security team considered launching air strikes to halt the invasion

Carlos Mathias escreveu:

George W. Bush’s national security team considered launching air strikes to halt the invasion

Isso tem que ir lá pro tópico das piadas.

Bolovo escreveu:

Carlos Mathias escreveu:

Isso tem que ir lá pro tópico das piadas.

O pior é que eu não duvido. Os "conselheiros" de Bush em sua maioria são doidos fundamentalistas.