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> If West reacted in 2008 how they react now - we could have saved 100s of thousand of people AND avoided 2 wars and billions in military and humanitarian spend

• ajuc 3y ago
  In the particular case of Georgia they weren't as insane in 2008 as it seems from the first glance. Russia was separated from Georgia by Caucasian mountains. Upto 5000 meters high. There are a few routes (famously the "Georgian war route" which I visited recently) going through long mountain tunnels which if collapsed would make the defense pretty easy (assuming NATO provides air defence weapons and intelligence). Georgia is pretty sparsely populated apart from the capital - half of the population lives in Tbilisi. Relatively easy to create air defense for such a country. Georgians took one of these routes early on and tried to collapse the tunnels but were driven back by russian airforce before they could do it. Given enough material support it was perfectly possible to stop Russia there. But I wasn't even talking about that - even just introducing serious sanctions in 2008 would probably prevent the further escalations by Russia. Instead we persuaded Putin that we are divided and won't react. So he tried in Ukraine and Syria. And Ukraine again. And when we finally reacted seriously he's suddenly surprised and accuses us of "trapping him" :)