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Morning Bell: Why Georgia Matters

Posted August 13th, 2008 at 9.08am in American Leadership.

Details on the current state of Russia’s invasion of Georgia are still hard to verify at this point. The last 12 hours have seen news of both a claim by Russia that it has stopped the violence, but also many reports that Russian forces continue to push deep into Georgia — looting, burning and killing innocent Georgians along the way. What is becoming more and more clear, however, is that this Russian invasion had been planned for some time and that the scope of its objectives extends well beyond the disputed South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions.

There are multiple reports out this morning that the Russian attack on Georgian sovereignty began well before violence erupted in the South Ossetia region between Russia and Georgia. According to the New York Times, security experts in the U.S. were tracking Russian cyberspace attacks against Georgia weeks before the first bombs fell. The attacks fit into a well-established Russian practice of cyber-warfare, which it has also used against former Soviet possessions Lithuania and Estonia.

Heritage senior research fellow Ariel Cohen enumerates Russia’s far-reaching goals of the war on Georgia:

1. Expulsion of Georgian troops and termination of Georgian sovereignty in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

2. “Regime changeâ€