Since the Russia-Georgia
war of August 2008, much has been debated, rehashed, and argued about the
circumstances and events before and during the war. But one item that seems
to be almost universally agreed upon by all parties is that the Georgian
military performed poorly. It’s hard to argue with this assessment, to be
sure, given the obvious military outcome of the short conflict: Georgia
lost. Sure, there have been a few contrarian pieces sprinkled around the
media qualifying that Georgia ‘actually won the war’ but even they are
quick to point out that the Georgian military was hardly a match for the
Russia’s much larger and comparatively better-equipped forces. That seemed
to be the end of it.
But a recently-released cables via Wikileaks has
brought the issue back into focus again. The cables in question cite
sources that cast serious doubt on the ability of the sprawling, but
famously creaky, Russian conventional military as being of little threat to
NATO. According to an AP article, “Russian armed forces were able to
respond only to a small to mid-sized local conflict in its western
regions.” The “assessment followed two large maneuvers
in Russia’s western regions. They were carried out to test the Russian
military after its lightning 2008 victory over Georgia.”
Inevitably, some
commentators have used this news as a measuring stick to extrapolate the
fighting prowess of the Georgian military. In a post in the prestigious defense blog Ares, Christina Mackenize
hooks a low blow by suggesting that the US-trained Georgian military is
even worse.
“The NATO report cited in
the U.S. cable could have been an exercise to reassure allies in eastern
Europe who had expressed extreme concern over the Russian army’s lightning
response to a surprise attack by Georgian forces,” said Mackenzie.
“Georgia’s U.S.-trained army was demolished within a week. But if Russia’s
military is as obsolete as claimed, what does this say about the quality of
the training provided by the U.S. to Georgian troops?”
Setting aside the obvious
problems with this inference (even had the Georgian military been composed
entirely of ex-SAS and US Navy SEALs, it still would not have been likely
to beat the much larger Russian military), it’s worth putting the common
assumption that Georgia losing the war means that Georgian troops were
badly trained in context.
So, in true web 2.0
fashion, EVOLUTSIA.NET presents: 5 reasons why Georgia lost the August war
(in no particular order).
#1. Size
Russia’s
military, like the country, simply dwarfs Georgia’s.
Did you know that
Georgia’s military is smaller than Russia’s?
Although this point may
seem stunningly obvious, it is surprising just how rarely this fact is
cited when considering the performance of the Georgian military against
Russia. For example, the concentration of forces in the North Caucasus
military district alone is over 100,000 troops, including hundreds of
tanks, armored personnel carriers, and artillery
pieces. And this does not even include Russian force multipliers like air
power and lift/logistics.
For comparison, Georgia’s
entire military numbers only approximately 35,000 soldiers and fewer than
130 tanks, a number that includes personnel performing rear-echelon duties
like intelligence, maintenance, and administration. No one should be
surprised that Georgia’s formations were quickly overrun by the larger and
better equipped Russian military.
#2. Doctrine & Training
Russian
military doctrine emphasizes combined arms; Georgia, not so much.
During the First and
Second Chechen Wars, the Russian military exhibited a nearly complete
inability, bordering on unwillingness, to prosecute their wars against
Chechen rebels using the kind of counter-insurgency (COIN) tactics that
have become synonymous with US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead,
Russian forces launched Soviet-style ground assaults and devastating air
attacks to fight the separatist rebels. Notably, it failed in the first war
and only succeeded in the second war after much of Chechnya, military and
civilian centers alike, was laid to ruin.
Conventional assaults
against North Caucasus rebels holed-up in craggy mountain passes and urban jungles
proved costly, but against the relatively well-organized, large-formation
Georgian military in the relatively open country north of Gori, it was brutally effective.
Somewhat ironically, the
Georgian military in 2008 was probably a far better exemplar of urban COIN
training than the Russian’s. By the late 1990s, the Georgian military was
little more than a collection of uniformed militias operating with titular,
and sometimes competing, authority in different parts of the country. To
support modernnization efforts, in 2002, the US
began training the Georgian military under the Georgia Train and Equip
Program (GTEP). GTEP was a $64 million, 18-month program to train limited
numbers of Georgian troops in basic techniques. Interestingly, part of the
major impetus for the program was Tbilisi’s limited control over the Pankisi Gorge area, which was inhabited by ethnic
Chechens and said to be harboring rebel Chechen
fighters in refugee camps. Vladimir Putin, for his part, threw support
behind GTEP. GTEP was also the first step in moving Georgia towards NATO
military standards.
GTEP’s successor,
instituted after the Rose Revolution, was the Georgia Sustainment and
Stability Operations Program (SSOP), which was meant to build upon GTEP to
train Georgian forces in COIN and peacekeeping tactics for their
deployments to Iraq. These and similar trainings — entirely in stability
operations — were conducted right up to the 2008 war. Most recently,
Georgian troops have been trained for deployments to Afghanistan. While the
training and combat experienced gained by the Afghanistan deployment is
more rigorous than for Georgia’s much more limited role in Iraq, Georgian
troops are still not being trained for territorial defense
or pure combined arms operations.
COIN training did very
little, if anything, to prepare Georgian troops for a Fulda Gap-lite scenario with Russia. This is why citations of ’US
training’ to Georgian troops have limited relevance in the context of the
August war; in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, the performance of Georgian
troops have been rated quite highly.
#3. Georgia’s Elite
Georgia’s best
trained troops were deployed to Iraq.
Speaking of Iraq, it’s
worth remembering that the bulk of Georgia’s best-trained, equipped, and
most experienced troops weren’t even in Georgia during the war. Georgia had
2,000 soldiers deployed in Iraq, and they didn’t even have a chance to fire
a shot in the conflict. By the time all these forces were withdrawn to
Georgia, the war had ended. Had they been involved in the conflict,
however, one does wonder if it might have altered the outcome somehow
(although perhaps not). But what is sure is that the world would have had a
much better chance to assess how the ‘US-trained’ Georgian troops measured
against the Russians.
The absence of Georgia’s
best troops has also been cited as being one of the clearest signs that
Tbilisi did not have a premeditated intention to get into a war, and
certainly not one with the Russian military. It stands to reason that if
that had been Georgia’s aim, it would have much preferred to have their
combat-tested, well-trained battalions in Georgia instead of watching their
country get trampled from TV screens in Mesopotamia.
#4. Force multipliers
Russia used a number force multipliers to great effect. Georgia had
virtually none.
A force multiplier is
exactly what it sounds like: something that can act to ‘multiply’ the
effectiveness of combat operations. For example, say army A is fighting
army B, and both have equal numbers and training. But if army A had an
observation balloon, and army B did not, army A has a decisive advantage in
the manner that it can conduct its operations. They might observe that army
B is exposed on the left flank, and send troops to exploit that weakness.
Surprised, army B falls into disarray. Clearly, the observation balloon
acted as a force multiplier in this case.
Russia had such advantages
versus Georgia, not including its superior size, suitable training, and
preparedness for combat. One such force multiplier that Russia enjoyed was
complete and near-uncontested control over Georgian airspace. Sure, the
Georgian air defense network scored some
surprising hits, but Russian air superiority was never in doubt. This
allowed Russian rotary and fixed-wing assets to collect information, attack
Georgian positions and targets, and psychologically subjugate the Georgian
population.
Other force multipliers?
Information & satellite surveillance; lift and logistics; and large
naval flotilla on the Black Sea (which opened a second front), to name a
few.
#5. Command and control
Command and
control problems plagued Georgia’s ability to react to rapidly changing
conditions.
“I have heard (read) that
there was little resistance after the first couple hours of combat between
the Georgians and the Russian advance guard at the southern front line,”
noted a commenter on the forum of the Small Wars Journal in the early
period of the August 2008 war.
“It sounded a lot as if
the Georgians were withdrawing even without proper delaying actions – Russian
[reconnaissance] units were able to ‘take & occupy’ objectives. Gori, for example, was apparently evacuated when the
Russians arrived. There was apparently no numerical or equipment
superiority to speak of at the front lines.”
Many observers agree that even
if Georgia did premeditate the August 2008 war (and that is a big if), it
was not counting on Russian involvement, and certainly not Russian
involvement at the speed, pace, or extent (e.g. expanding the war of the
conflict zones) that occurred. And whether or not Georgia planned for it,
it was clear that those who were responsible for strategic and
tactical-level planning were not up to the job. Once Russian forces
intervened, Georgian resistance collapsed, and spectacularly so.
On the command level, Georgian
forces did not adapt to the quickly-changing circumstances and inevitably
were dispersed. Even the calling up of reserve forces, meant to be the
country’s insurance plan for territorial defense,
was a total failure and brought together too few soldiers with too little
equipment and nothing in the way of a plan or organizational readiness.
Unsurprisingly, the old reserve system was unceremoniously scrapped and
totally rebooted after the war.
Problems seemingly existed
on every level of the military hierarchy — from ministerial level all the
way down to unit leadership. And plans for maintaining territorial defense, the supposed raison d’etre
of every national military force, were either not in place or horribly
executed. Had Georgian troops forced Russia’s troops into a series of
high-casualty impasses, one can’t help but wonder if the terms ending the
war might have been better for Georgia.
About the author:
Michael Hikari Cecire is a writer and independent analyst living in
Tbilisi. A former Peace Corps Volunteer in Georgia, he is a frequent
commentator on economic development and South Caucasus policy issues. In
addition to being the Managing editor at Evolutsia.Net, Cecire
has also written for the Caspian Business Journal, the London Telegraph,
World Politics Review, and TCS Daily, among others.
|