Marching Through the Wrong Georgia: a Vignette

Preface: This timeline was originally posted on alternatehistory.com on November 8th, 2015.

Moscow in the year 2008 was a city preparing for war against a power that was so weak in comparison it seemed like international bullying. The small nation of Georgia was host to two republics, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which eagerly wanted their independence and petitioned Russia to aid them; President Putin of Russia was happy to oblige. It would put a damper on Western attempts to undermine his country, or so he thought, and so he saw to it that his counterparts in Sukhumi and Tskhinvali would be brought as much military aid as they needed.

However the war was not yet to begin; the Russian military was busy preparing its strength, mustering its forces in the Caucasus and, in case of an escalation that nobody wanted, nuclear weapons. Putin did not expect the United States and the rest of NATO to get involved in this crisis, but he felt that it was good to have on hand. The Russian bear would flex its muscles once again, having been brought to its knees with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mother Russia would be strong once more, or so thought Putin and his government.

However, when Putin sent out the plans to prepare for an invasion of Georgia, there had been a low ranking officer who had been fooling around with Google Translate in his spare time. He had been putting in phrases and translate them into myriad languages one after another, and would amuse himself with the nonsense that such multiple translations would entail. When he received the order to transmit the invasion of Georgia to the military, he put said message into Google, and, feeling that there was no significant difference in the translation, sent the mangled version to the military.

However, there was a significant difference in the message that this young officer had neglected to notice. The ‘Georgia’ that the message referred to had its meaning changed utterly in the mess of translation; it now referred to a Georgia across the seas, on another continent. This Georgia was, to the misfortune of many, the state of the United States.

The order was met with confusion among the Russian armed forces, but none would dare question the president that had brought them so much glory compared to the weakness of the last two decades. Russia was ascending, and they would not risk the failure of that great project. As such, the navy in both the west in Kaliningrad and in the east in Vladivostok was prepared for a landing on the shores of the Peachtree State. War plans were drawn up to prepare for landings at Savannah, where they would coopt the interstate and take Atlanta, where they would force a peace from the United States.

Within a month, the ships were ready and the men, vehicles, and aircraft were on the ships that would take them to the northern Atlantic; the single Russian aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, was among the ships. Indeed it seemed like the whole Russian Navy was part of the fleet. They were lying in wait.

Soon, President Putin gave the order to attack Georgia; had the message been transmitted directly, the confusion would have been cleared. However, it was not direct, but sent once more to that hapless junior officer with Google Translate. Now, the order was sent once more, to attack the American Georgia.

The planes blasted into the air and began pounding the city of Savannah, the largest coastal city in the state. This came as a complete surprise to the government of the United States; they had not expected an attack so blatant. The American Navy was scrambled from its largest base in Hampton Roads in the southeastern portion of Virginia, and air bases launched their planes to engage the misguided invaders.

By the time the first American planes had arrived the Russians had already begun massing the troops to land on the coast of Georgia, an invasion that would rival D-Day in terms of size and ferocity. American forces bunkered down at the coast and defended the city of Savannah and the Georgian coast, defending their homeland from foreigners.

This was something that clearly stood as a situation under which NATO’s mutual defense agreement could be invoked, the second time since the September 11th attacks in 2001. To the great shock of Europe, it was the United States, not some of the more worried nations in Eastern Europe who had suffered under the jackboot of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact that was attacked by the Russians at first.

Seeing an opportunity to enter the war on their own initiative, the European members of NATO sprung to capture Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea snuggled in between Poland and Lithuania. Kaliningrad was quickly besieged, and forces in Belarus came rapidly to support the Russians garrisoned in that small patch of land.

The world seemed like it was teetering on the edge of nuclear annihilation; given previous fears it was not exactly an unfounded fear. However, Putin was informed of the attack on Kaliningrad and then requested a debrief on the situation. When he was made aware of the situation and the folly of that junior officer was realized, Putin ordered all the forces of the Russian Federation to stand down and negotiate with the West.

Putin contacted the Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon to help negotiate a peace settlement, as the nations of the west, indeed all the world, would not be pleased at this display of aggression. He had attacked the world’s superpower completely by mistake. He would have the stigma of not only aggression, but of incompetence. Incompetence and aggression combined did not make a mix that endeared oneself to the nations of the world. He would have to explain his actions in stride.

Meanwhile, in Tbilisi, President Saakashvili was terribly confused.