We Are All Georgian Protesters Now

Well, well, well.

Remember last summer, when Russia and Georgia waged war over two breakaway republics? Pretty much every five minutes on cable news you'd see Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, the US-educated darling of the neocons, who played the perfect martyr for his people. He was seen as the benevolent leader gallantly facing down the Russian Bear. John McCain almost immediately picked up his struggle and termed it "the most severe international crisis since the Cold War," and pledged American solidarity with the Georgian people.

Does McCain still agree, now that the people want Saakashvili removed from office?

They crammed into the streets by the tens of thousands Thursday, students and pensioners and merchants. They stood on the same scrap of ground, in front of the Stalinist stone hulk of the Georgian parliament building, demanding democracy and screaming the same slogan: Tzadi! (Go!)

This time, adoring crowds were not gathered to sweep the young, flamboyant Mikheil Saakashvili to power. Little more than five years after they cheered the U.S.-backed politician into the presidency, people returned with an air of disgust, in the hope of shaming him into a resignation.

Saakashvili is besieged by protest in his own capital, with a broad consortium of opposition figures -- including some former members of his government and onetime political allies -- vowing to keep the crowds in the street until he steps down. Opposition leaders insulted and reviled the president Thursday, calling him a coward and a womanizer and mocking his moments of public fear [...]

Against a backdrop of growing popular disaffection, Saakashvili's presidency has been punctuated by moments of scandal. His government has shut down critical news media, beaten and tear-gassed peaceful demonstrators, and, most disastrously, charged into an ill-advised war with Russia that in effect left Georgia's two breakaway republics under Russian occupation.

The Bush Administration basically propped up this guy when he swept into power, and he immediately became dictatorial in the name of democracy. And while the protests are partially a function of the economic crises gripping Eastern Europe, they also betray a personal enmity for this guy made the symbol of the people here in the US during that conflict with Russia.

The people beg to differ.

World Report

Here are a few things that caught my eye.

• Will you look at that, another foreign policy failure for the Bush Administration. They're basically saying that, with the Israeli government in a fair bit of turmoil, there isn't likely to be any movement on a Mideast peace deal. This is what happens when you wait 7 1/2 years to pay any attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict. I know the economic crisis is all-consuming, but Obama would do well to attack this early in his Administration, because it truly is the linchpin to peace throughout the region, and ignoring it for years will only cause more violence and resentment.

• Not that Israel is necessarily going to be inclined to cooperation with Obama. Tzipi Livni, who is the more "dovish" of aspirants for the Prime Minister's post, warned the President-elect that dialogue with Iran would be unwise because it may project "weakness." I don't think Obama will agree - but this gives you an insight into the prevailing mindset in Israel regarding Iran, driven more by paranoia than facts (the consensus of the US intelligence community is that Iran has no nukes, a fact that is conveniently forgotten).

• The E.U. is eager for financial reforms to regulate international banks, but waiting for President Bush to do the right thing is a Godot-like experience. Their plan, to hammer out reforms now and reassess them when Obama takes office with his input, is decent enough, I just think it's wishful thinking.

• Practically the only politician coming out of the financial fallout looking sound is Gordon Brown, who was one of the few to implement a solution that matched the problem. Voters in England appear to be responding by giving his party a boost, as Labour won a key byelection in Scotland. Brown was part of the Blair regime that was as asleep at the switch as every other world government leading up to the crisis, so I'm not sure he deserves all this praise, but I do think he's recovered enough to actually contend for his re-election instead of the sure defeat to the Tories predicted earlier.

• All hell is breaking loose in Zimbabwe, and right on schedule. After negotiating a power-sharing agreement, Robert Mugabe is now going to form his own government and deny cabinet posts to his rival Morgan Tsvangirai. The only surprise is that this didn't happen sooner. I hope Tsvangirai has a food-taster. Mugabe plays for keeps.

• Remember when the Russian "invasion" of Georgia was the greatest international crisis since the end of the Cold War? Turns out that it not only was not a consequential crisis on par with, say, the war in Iraq, but it was not a Russian invasion.

TBILISI, Georgia — Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.

Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.

This is good journalism but you could have considered the source of the scaremongering - neocons with an agenda - back when the whole thing was in the news, and drawn the same conclusion. Neocons are wrong about everything. And the way to break their lock on power is to find everyone who hasn't been wrong about everything, regardless of ideology or political party, and put them in a room together, and unify them against these clowns. There's a lot at stake.

Four More Wars

I'm going to step cautiously with this bit of newsmaking from Sarah Palin's first national interview.

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.

Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

Now, let's be crystal clear on this, even if our friends on the right would certainly not be. Palin is accurately describing the state of affairs if a NATO member country is attacked. Signatories to the treaty would be obligated to go to war with them.

What you can be terrified about is her absolute certainty that Ukraine and Georgia ought to be allowed into NATO. That would put the United States in a position of restarting the Cold War with Russia if Georgia provokes them by invading South Ossetia first and trying to massacre Russian peacekeepers. Of course, that is also John McCain's position, and he's quite adamant about it. What you can also be terrified is that John McCain thinks Palin knows Russia very well because she lives next door to them, and yet she continues to argue for NATO expansion and a generally belligerent attitude toward Russia. (She also has national security credentials because she "knows energy." Really, that's the terrible interview of the day.)

Now, the other issue here is that Barack Obama has argued for something similar to NATO inclusion for Georgia.

Going forward, the United States and Europe must support the people of Georgia. Beyond immediate humanitarian assistance, we must provide economic assistance, and help rebuild what has been destroyed. I have consistently called for deepening relations between Georgia and transatlantic institutions, including a Membership Action Plan for NATO, and we must continue to press for that deeper relationship.

There is a difference between arguing for expansion of NATO and arguing for a Membership Action Plan. The MAP is a process where the country in question must prepare a long list of qualifications for possible future membership. It does not mean instant membership.

However, it's not the polar opposite of what Palin has advocated, either. It's part of the way there.

Later in the interview she offers a slightly more cogent imminent threat standard for pre-emptive military action, but of course George Bush offered the same standard, he just lied about the imminent threat coming from Iraq and now Iran. So that doesn't warm my heart. She didn't know what the "Bush Doctrine" was.

I think going on national television and saying we might have to go to war with Russia is perhaps ill-timed, but it also happens to be John McCain's policy. He just won't tell you. She did. Whether or not it's Barack Obama's policy is unclear - there is indeed a difference between an MAP and membership.

UPDATE: Just to make myself clear - Democrats should go after this comment. The Governor is calling for possible nuclear war with Russia over a non-strategic internal skirmish in a region with a history of skirmishes. I agree that it would be tantamount to Russia saying "If the US ever invades Panama again, we'll declare war!" Whether or not the Obama campaign will say anything about this depends on how far they've gone with their Georgia/NATO policy. Maybe seeing the stakes laid out this clearly will show them how dumb it is to argue for NATO expansion.

World Report

Because I'm almost out of here, I'll just mash these together, but they're all important, and would all merit a post of their own.

• So the ruling party in Pakistan chose Benazir Bhutto's widow, Asif Ali Zardari, to be their President. Of course, when Bhutto was Prime Minister, she and Zardari bilked the country for millions upon millions. Zardari doesn't want to reinstate Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the head of the Supreme Court, because Chaudhry might then arrest him. So this is cutting a wedge through the fragile coalition. The former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, wants to slash the Presidential power before Zardari accedes to the position. Sharif's Muslim League also wants Chaudhry back on the bench. Pakistan is a mess, and a mess we can't afford right now.

• While George Bush finally came around on a withdrawal timeline, he's still not all the way where Muqtada al-Sadr needs him to be:

The debate over a deal that would chart the future of U.S. troops in Iraq has reignited the rhetoric coming from Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr, who denounced the plan Friday for not setting a firm date for American withdrawal [...]

Iraq's government spokesman, Ali Dabbagh, reiterated Friday that any departure of U.S. troops was "subject to Iraqi national security" and that the dates were hypothetical. The final departure date "will be jointly set" by Iraq and the United States, he said, downplaying suggestions that the draft was the final deal.

At the weekly prayer service in Sadr's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, chants of "No to the agreement!" rang out through loudspeakers positioned along the street. Worshipers responded with applause and repeated the chant as the service ended and people drifted away [...]

At prayer services across the country, Sadrist preachers said any deal struck with the Americans was a blow to Iraq's sovereignty. In Sadr City, listeners agreed.

"Everyone is talking about how it will really serve the interests of the Americans, not the Iraqis," said Mohammed Fadim, whose well-stocked grocery store overlooks the wide avenue where worshipers knelt side by side in prayer. "Everyone knows the U.S. administration. Once they occupy a country, if they want to make an agreement to stay, 80% of the terms will fulfill their interests."

This is bad news. Sadr leads a cultural movement regardless of who holds the guns, and Maliki was pushed to a timeline in the first place because of pressure from the Sadrists. If Sadr turns against a deal pushed by the Parliament, Maliki's team will be crushed in the provincial elections. Just the act of getting this ratified (Maliki is going through the Parliament) could rip the country to shreds. Not good.

• In a neglected corner of the "war on terror," Somalia is going to crap.

Islamic militants said Saturday they had seized control of Somalia's third largest city after three days of fighting that left about 70 people dead and saw thousands flee Kismayo.

The Islamic courts movement, which controlled the capital, Mogadishu, and much of the south for six months in 2006, said it wrested control of the southern port city of Kismayo from clan militias.

The ICU never really stopped fighting, as the US paid little or no attention, despite the fact that Somalia, with almost no real government and extreme poverty, is a hotbed for extremism. This goes down as another failure of Bush-era foreign policy.

• Russia is leaving Georgia. Mostly leaving. Georgia is apparently disputing the checkpoints Russia has set up in Georgian territory. It's a bit dodgy, but to characterize it as the greatest crisis since the Cold War is king of nuts.

Russia/Georgia Update

Meanwhile, in the most elongated cease-fire in history, it looks, shall we say, unlikely that Russia's leaving.

Russia plans to establish a long-term presence in Georgia and one of its breakaway republics by adding 18 checkpoints, including at least eight within undisputed Georgian territory outside the pro-Russian enclave of South Ossetia, a ranking Russian military official told reporters Wednesday.

The checkpoints will be staffed by hundreds of Russian troops, the official said, and those within Georgia proper will have supplies ferried to them from breakaway South Ossetia.

If implemented, the plan would in effect put under Russian control the border between Georgia and the South Ossetia region, which is seeking independence, as well as a small chunk of Georgia proper.

If we had a news media that was in any way curious, the upshot here would be what McClatchy is saying - that for all the tough talk, all the bluster, the West is essentially impotent when it comes to Russia, especially in the current posturing of pure belligerence. McCain may have play-acted like Gen. Patton and acted like a hothead, but the result was negligible. I mean, what are we going to do, boycott the Olympics in 6 years?

Basically, Mikhail Saakashvili can get his own cable show and it won't matter at all. The Bush/McCain hothead approach to foreign policy yields nothing. In fact, Max Bergmann had the best take.

Each of those statements from McCain sound like they came from an excited media pundit. Well that’s because they did.

McCain’s approach and tone on foreign policy has always been more emblematic of a tv pundit rather than a sober president. While McCain has attacked Obama as the "celebrity" candidate, the fact is that a bad place to be over the last 25 years has been between John McCain and a TV camera. The New York Times on Sunday noted that one of the first things McCain did after 9-11 was go on just about every TV program - where he incidentally called for attacking about four countries. In its biographical series profiling the candidates the Times also noted that McCain was attracted to the celebrity of the Senate with one close associate noting that McCain “saw the glamour of it. I think he really got smitten with the celebrity of power.” McCain clearly enjoys being on television and he has been a constant commentator on the Sunday news shows and the evening talk news programs.

But TV appearances encourage sound bites, over-the-top rhetoric, and good one-liners, not reasoned and nuanced diplomatic language. This is especially true from guests who are not in the current administration, since you are less likely to get invited back on Face the Nation if you down play a crisis or take a boring nuanced position. Thus on almost every crisis or incident over the last decade, McCain has sounded the alarm, ratcheted up the rhetoric and often called for military action - with almost no regards to the practical implications of such an approach.

And TV pundits make lots of money and maybe don't know how many homes they own, but they don't make for an attractive Presidency. McCain is the O'Reilly of politics.

...Mikhail Gorbachev had some interesting thoughts on the conflict.

Stuck In The Middle Of The Road

Russia appears to be having a problem with the withdrawing part of the withdrawal agreement, sounding a bit like the Bush Administration in the process:

Russia claimed that it had begun withdrawing its troops from Georgia on Monday, but there was little evidence of it on the ground: Russian soldiers continued digging in to positions along the highway approaching the capital, Tbilisi, showing no sign of pulling back from the severest confrontation between Russia and the West since the collapse of the Soviet Union [...]

(Dmitry) Medvedev on Monday cautioned that any force used against these soldiers would provoke a response.

“Obviously, if anyone thinks he can kill our citizens, our soldiers and officers who are serving as peacekeepers, and go unpunished, we will never allow this,” Mr. Medvedev said. “Anyone who tries this will receive a devastating response. For this, we have all the means — economic and political and military. If anyone had illusions about this some time ago, then they must part with those illusions now.”

He added: “We do not want to aggravate the situation, but we want to be respected, and our government to be respected, and our people to be respected, and our values.”

They do appear to be trolling for a provocation. The other issue is that the cease-fire agreement, which allows for “security operations” by the Russians inside Georgia, if you read it one way, enables them to be both in compliance and outside of compliance simultaneously. That was bad work by the drafters.

NATO is holding an emergency meeting today on this, but the alliance is not united on what to do:

As Nato's 26 foreign ministers gather in Brussels, the BBC's Jonathan Marcus says there is disagreement among the alliance as to how to respond, so the focus will be on where members can agree.

It is thought that in one camp, Britain, Canada, the US and most Eastern European member states will seek a tough stance on Russia, but most of Western Europe, led by France and Germany, is expected to be more cautious of harming ties with Moscow.

I think Russia is dragging their feet because they can, and they're taking out key installations inside Georgia to try and pre-empt any additional attack on the breakaway republics. Today they detained a bunch of Georgian soldiers at a Black Sea port. It looks like the Russians aren't exactly concerned about a Western response.

The Other Consequence

I think Digby is definitely right in saying that the hostilities in Georgia will give the neocons another historical incident they will use in the future as an example of how we cannot abandon fellow freedom fighters. But there's another consequence of this resumption of Cold War-era rhetoric - the resumption of Cold War-era weapons systems:

The Wall Street Journal's August Cole had an interesting take on Russia's invasion of Georgia this weekend: it's great for Lockheed Martin, Boeing and other mega-defense contractors. A stock analyst is quoted as saying that the invasion was "a bell-ringer for defense stocks."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recently thought out loud about cutting major weapons programs like Lockheed and Boeing's $143 million F-22 Air Force raptor jet and Boeing and SAIC's $160 billion Future Combat Systems. Gates has argued that they bear no relevance to counterinsurgency fighting that is currently taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Russia's invasion of Georgia at least raises the possibility of a future U.S.-Russia conflict. according to Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), who said as much to the Journal.

As the piece notes, this is a bipartisan problem. There are pieces of the military industrial complex in every state and every Congressional district. The perceived threats we face in the world mean absolutely nothing to those who want to build weapons to face those threats. The mere appearance of a new Cold War is enough to build F-22's and missile defense systems and plenty of other prototypes. The Iraq war has been a windfall for contractors and a new arms race would just open that up even more. This is going to be unbelievably difficult to beat back, and without a recalibration of the military budget providing the kind of investments needed in moving to a post-carbon future, providing health care to all Americans and rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure will be next to impossible.

It's the cherry on top of all the neocon warmongering.

The Georgia Saga Continues

The Russia-Georgia conflict has been hard to understand on a day-to-day basis due to the unreliable narrators. Russia claims that Georgia firebombed South Ossetia and committed genocide in their initial attack; Tom Lasseter tours Tshkinvali and finds no evidence for the allegation. Georgia has been claiming repeatedly that Russian troops are advancing on the capital despite a cease-fire agreement, and while this one may be true today, it's not entirely clear. So you kind of have to be a detective and wait until all the facts are in to see where things are going.

But certainly, Russia is dragging its feet on withdrawal, and using the "genocide" of South Ossetia as a casus belli. The cease-fire itself has certainly stalled to some extent, and Russia bombed a Georgian bridge over the weekend that was a key east-west artery for the country. This may eventually serve Putin's goals of teaching its near abroad states a lesson, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia probably will rejoin the federation. But that doesn't mean this operation was an unqualified success for Russia:

The West was never going to actively approve of the Russian invasion, but if Putin had limited himself to a short, sharp clash in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it would have been an almost unalloyed victory. The murky status of the provinces combined with the fact that Saakashvili sent in troops first would have kept Western reaction to a minimum, and Russia's message would still have been sent loud and clear: don't mess with us in our sphere of influence.

But then Putin got greedy — or just made a mistake — and sent Russian troops into Georgia proper. This was almost certainly militarily unnecessary, and it succeeded mainly in uniting virtually everyone in outrage against Russian aggression. Putin can pretend all he wants that he doesn't care about Western opinion, but he obviously does — and what's more, Western unity makes a difference in concrete terms too. Poland's quick turnaround on missile defense is probably just the first example of this. The U.S. has gotten lots of bad reviews for its handling of the situation, but in the end, the countries on Russia's border are more firmly in our camp now than they were even before the war.

I don't know if I agree with that last part. Georgia seems just as mad about our failing to intervene as they are about the Russian invasion. In addition, while Poland's missile defense turnaround is interesting, their pro-Western government has been firmly ensconced for some time. And I'm not so sure who needs who here - does Russia need the West as a market, or does the West need Russia's goods - particularly their energy resources?

Some smarter takes have been given by Joseph Galloway:

Although Vice President Cheney bravely rattled a sword or two and George Bush was talking a little tougher to his old soul mate Vlad the Impaler, the simple truth is that there's not a damn thing we can do about the Russian invasion and perfidy short of nuking them. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made it amply clear that we aren't going to do that, or much of anything else beyond sending some humanitarian medical aid and supplies for the Georgian refugees [...]

Washington can respond only with tough talk. We can threaten to punish the Russians by expelling them from the International Monetary Fund and the Group of Eight wealthy nations, but with a fat bankroll bulging with Arab-size oil earnings, the Russians don’t really need to care about this [...]

Things have truly come to a sorry pass when both our military and our diplomatic threats are as empty as our national treasury, and the Russians of all people can afford to laugh them off.

Bush and Cheney seven and a half years ago inherited control of the world's only reigning superpower, and in that short time they've squandered our military power, our international good name and our national treasury.

Julian Barnes:

WASHINGTON -- In the last week, two major pillars of President Bush's approach to foreign policy have crumbled, jeopardizing eight years of work and sending the administration scrambling for new strategies in the waning months of its term.

From the earliest days of his presidency, Bush had said spreading democracy was a centerpiece of his foreign policy. At the same time, he sought to develop a more productive relationship with Russia, seeking Moscow's cooperation on issues such as terrorism, Iran's nuclear program and expansion of global energy supplies [...]

Since the Georgia conflict erupted, Bush has repeatedly cited that nation's progress toward democracy as he promised American support. "The people of Georgia have cast their lot with the free world, and we will not cast them aside," he said.

Faced with a massive deployment of Russian military power, however, the U.S. response was confined to condemning Moscow's actions, pushing for humanitarian aid and pressing Georgia to accept a cease-fire agreement brokered by France that would leave Russian troops still inside Georgia's two breakaway enclaves.

"What freedom strategy?" asked David L. Phillips, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of a report on Georgia. "It is scorned worldwide. Afghanistan is backsliding. The bar has been set low in Iraq. Georgia is in ruins."

And Michael Dobbs:

It soon became clear to me that the Ossetians viewed Georgians in much the same way that Georgians view Russians: as aggressive bullies bent on taking away their independence. "We are much more worried by Georgian imperialism than Russian imperialism," an Ossetian leader, Gerasim Khugaev, told me then. "It is closer to us, and we feel its pressure all the time."

When it comes to apportioning blame for the latest flare-up in the Caucasus, there's plenty to go around. The Russians were clearly itching for a fight, but the behavior of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has been erratic and provocative. The United States may have stoked the conflict by encouraging Saakashvili to believe that he enjoyed American protection, when the West's ability to impose its will in this part of the world is actually quite limited.

This is the truth of the matter: Ossetians identify with the Russians more; the Georgian invasion was scandalous, though not as bad as the Russians advertised; the Russian incursion into Georgia was deeply wrong; the West was fairly powerless to do anything about it; US-Russian policy on key issues like nuclear proliferation and the Iranian question is in tatters; the cease-fire agreement allows for continued security operations inside Georgia by the Russians, so it's not even clear they're dragging their feet or taking advantage of a bad agreement; Georgia is ruined, America is exposed, and NATO has little recourse.

I agree with Scarecrow - this is good news for John McCain.

The Biggest Crisis Ending In A Cease-Fire In The History Of The World

I think when this is all said and done, the conflict between Russia and Georgia, now reaching an endgame, will be, as Kevin Drum notes, a blip on the radar screen. South Ossetia and Abkhazia were already breakaway republics, Georgia got a full head and attacked one of them, Russia made them pay for such foolishness, and the whole scene ends with Mikhail Saakashvili blubbering on camera. And it's shameful how John McCain seized on it for his own ends and to paint himself as the only true patriot in the entire world.

By the way, this golden beacon of democracy, Saakashvili, isn't so golden:

Saakashvili's recent statements demonstrate how well he has learned to push America's buttons, probably with the help of his government's lobbyists in Washington. In several interviews and articles, including an op-ed in yesterday's Post, he has compared the recent Russian attack on Georgia to the Soviet invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. He has also invoked former president Ronald Reagan and tried to frame the war as a Russian assault on Western values. "We are attacked because we wanted to be free," he said on CNN.

But the situation inside Georgia belies Saakashvili's rhetorical commitment to freedom. Most glaring was his handling of opposition protests last fall. The State Department's 2007 Human Rights Report, released just a few months ago, found "serious problems" with Georgia's human rights record and notes "excessive use of force to disperse demonstrations"; "impunity of police officers"; and declining respect for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and political participation. Ana Dolidze, a democracy advocate and former chair of Georgia's Young Lawyers Association, has described in detail how Saakashvili acted quickly after entering office to empower the executive branch at the expense of parliament and to strengthen the government by "stifling political expression, pressuring influential media and targeting vocal critics and opposition leaders" -- including by using law enforcement agencies. Saakashvili is far from the morally pure democrat he would have the West believe he is.

Meanwhile, this deal with Poland on missile defense, supposedly as a result of Russia's belligerence, is the real destabilizing event going on in Eastern Europe this week. We are needlessly pushing this useless defense system to antagonize Russia and endanger many lives.

And finally, we can't even get humanitarian assistance right:

President Bush Wednesday promised that U.S. naval forces would deliver humanitarian aid to war-torn Georgia before his administration had received approval from Turkey, which controls naval access to the Black Sea, or the Pentagon had planned a seaborne operation, U.S. officials said Thursday.

As of late Thursday, Ankara, a NATO ally, hadn't cleared any U.S. naval vessels to steam to Georgia through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, the narrow straits that connect the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, the officials said. Under the 1936 Montreaux Convention, countries must notify Turkey before sending warships through the straits.

Ugh.

Looking The Part

It's amazing that all it takes for the media to swoon over John McCain is for him to huff and puff while Russia goes ahead and does whatever it wants anyway.

For the last several days, Senator Barack Obama has seemed to fade from the scene while on his secluded vacation here, as his opponent, Senator John McCain, has seized nearly every opportunity to display his foreign policy credentials on the dominant issue of the week: the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

Only once, at the beginning of the week, did Mr. Obama discuss the fighting in public, when he emerged from his beachfront rental home to condemn Russia’s escalation, in a way that seemed timed for the evening television news. He took no questions whose answers might demonstrate command of the issue.

Mr. McCain and his surrogates, however, have discussed the situation nearly every day on the campaign trail, often taking a hard line against Russia to the point of his declaring the other day, “We are all Georgians.”

First - Honolulu is a major city, and not secluded in any way. Second, McCain has "displayed" his foreign policy credentials in ways that are ignorant:

My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression.

Presumptuous:

Standing behind a lectern in Michigan this week, with two trusted senators ready to do his bidding, John McCain seemed to forget for a moment that he was only running for president.

Asked about his tough rhetoric on the ongoing conflict in Georgia, McCain began: "If I may be so bold, there was another president . . ."

He caught himself and started again: "At one time, there was a president named Ronald Reagan who spoke very strongly about America's advocacy for democracy and freedom."

And thuddingly stupid, not to mention dangerous, involving himself in a foreign conflict where one of his staffers is a registered lobbyist for one side, talking to the Georgian President several times a day, which obviously sends mixed messages, and advocating what amounts to war with nuclear-armed Russia.

But none of that, of course, matters. I understand fully the optics of this. Whether McCain is cynically using the conflict to make himself look Presidential or not, the contrast between the two candidates when you have the sound off is pretty glaring. If Obama comes back tomorrow at the Saddleback Church event in Orange County (the first joint event of the campaign) and looks the part a little bit then this could blow over. However, there is a contrast here that the right will be sure to exploit. And it certainly gives reporters the shakes to see bravely bold McCain strongly calling for the mass deaths of their sons and daughters. That makes him "serious."

International Incident Watch

It's upsetting to see the glee with which John McCain has taken to this crisis in Georgia, the thrill in his eyes as he attempts to re-fight the Cold War while claiming the opposite, and with all the honor and moral authority that goes with it. Only he's leaving some things out:

In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.

You hear that, George Bush? McCain's coming for you! Nations don't inv- what, he supported the surge?

Hey, every rule has its exception, right?

McCain also is sending envoys (his Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Graham and Lieberman) to the region, and consulting with the Georgians daily - you know, like a real live President. How presumptuous! Do you think all this back-channel meddling is kind of hurting efforts to bring peace to a still-fragile situation?

Consider, then, the other loose cannon in all of this, Georgian President Saakashvili:

President Saakashvili today told Georgians that the US military was moving in to take over control of the country's air and seaports -- which would be a pretty big deal since much of the country still appears to be an active war zone.

And about five minutes later the Pentagon said he didn't know what he was talking about.

"We are not looking to, nor do we need to, take control of any air or seaports to conduct this mission," said Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary. "The role of the U.S. military is strictly to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the victims of this conflict."

When McCain promises air cover for the next strike against Russian forces, is he going to fly to the region himself and apologize to all those Georgian mothers for the deaths of their sons?

What a nightmare.

UPDATE: See too this backgrounder from Scarecrow. I know Obama's on vacation and all, but he needs to push back on this. McCain is being reckless and needlessly belligerent.

Why Is Randy Scheunemann Still Employed?

This is indicative of John McCain's entire campaign.

Sen. John McCain's top foreign policy adviser prepped his boss for an April 17 phone call with the president of Georgia and then helped the presumptive Republican presidential nominee prepare a strong statement of support for the fledgling republic.

The day of the call, a lobbying firm partly owned by the adviser, Randy Scheunemann, signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government in Washington.

The McCain campaign said Georgia's lobbying contract with Orion Strategies had no bearing on the candidate's decision to speak with President Mikheil Saakashvili and did not influence his statement. "The Embassy of Georgia requested the call," said campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.

Um, so what? The guy's a registered lobbyist for a foreign agent embroiled in a conflict with the Russians. McCain has rushed to Georgia's side, telling the country that "we are all Georgians." His top foreign policy advisor is being paid by them. Can you say "conflict of interest"?

Scheunemann is a C-level neocon, and Georgia is a C-level neocon entity, but the fact that this war has burst to the surface not only gives the appearance of impropriety, it damages our foreign policy. You can't tell me that this isn't very harmful.

(CNN) – Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili on Wednesday called for John McCain and other American leaders to do more for Georgia in their response to the conflict in his country.

“Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, ‘We are all Georgians now,’” Saakashvili said on CNN’s American Morning. “Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it’s time to pass from this. From words to deeds.”

So McCain's freelancing is putting pressure on the Bush Administration to act - by attacking the Russians or something just as foolhardy. And there's a foreign lobbyist right in the middle of all this.

Scheunemann should clearly be fired. But I think Obama's campaign has this right:

Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the Democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, said Scheunemann's business ties to Georgia raise questions about how much he influenced McCain's position on the Georgia conflict.

"It's these sorts of appearances of a conflict of interest that are a natural consequence of having a campaign run by lobbyists, staffed by lobbyists and being ensconced in a lobbyist culture for over a quarter of a century," Sevugan said.

It's bigger than Scheunemann. It's about the culture of Washington that permits this gross conflict of interest.

Think Progress has more on how Scheunemann likely orchestrated McCain's nomination of Saakashvili for the Nobel Prize, for his own financial gain. This is unbelievable.

Wolverine!

So today John McCain let me know that we are all Georgians - especially the guys on his staff being paid by their government, I guess. Now, Russia and Georgia set conditions for a cease-fire and withdrawal, under a French framework (French!?), so I guess by "we are all Georgians" McCain means that "we are all losers of brief wars where we belligerently try to take over breakaway regions by force using indiscriminate violence and suffer the consequences." There are no noblemen in this conflict, but to signal some kinship with the Georgians is tantamount to allying with them in a dirty war against the Russians, which is just a fair bit of madness. Josh Marshall details just how dangerous this is.

The people that are pulling McCain's strings are the people who want to push us into a new Cold War with the Russians -- and ironically and a bit improbably with the Chinese too. But the Russians are probably more willing to oblige us since their power remains limited to oil reserves and military power. In other words, they're people McCain's folks can understand and vice versa.

McCain is going out of his way to cast this as a replay of 1938 and 1939. Is it really in our interest to get into a renewed Cold War with Russia right now? Do we have the military resources for a proxy/advisor war in the Caucasus at the moment? Should we find ourselves in the situation where the Russians want to reassert their sway in Eastern Europe, we would have some very serious and consequential decisions to make. But this just is not that. The key is that McCain, both in terms of policy and temperament, wants to court that result.

Not only that, they're wrong on the facts. Russia has no interest in holding on to Georgia - their history in the Caucasus is one of much pain for their prestige and military power. They sought to teach a lesson, but an occupation would never have served their interests. So acting like this is 1938 when Russia has no designs on an iota of territory is just crazy. Putin is not a good leader and our failures in US-Russian relations have made him more dangerous, but there are ways to deal with him that are not military. The bluster, the belief that all problems have a solution with a bomb attached to it,

Matt Yglesias has more.

...it's also completely absurd for Obama to suggest NATO membership for Georgia, which is a subtler way of saying the same nonsense as McCain. There's some dispute on this, however; apparently a Membership Action Plan for NATO is not necessarily an endorsement of their entry.

The Power Of Not Being Reviled

So Russia starts bombing targets inside Georgia, the United States huffs and puffs to no avail. Then French President Sarkozy hops on Easyjet and stops off in Moscow, and within a matter of hours, just after he lands, Russia calls a cease-fire.

MOSCOW — President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia announced Tuesday that he had ordered a halt to his country’s military operation in Georgia, although he did not say that troops were pulling out and he insisted that Russian forces were still authorized to fire on enemies in South Ossetia.

The president said Russia had achieved its military goals during five days of intense fighting, which has seen Russian troops advance into Georgian territory and which brought strong denunciations from President Bush and other Western leaders.

Now, there are scattered reports of continued fighting here and there. And Sarkozy was just beginning cease-fire talks and didn't exactly provoke this. But basically, what you have is a country that maintains good relations and holds a little thing called influence, and another country that coddles their neocon friends and looks ridiculous.

(On another note, Sarkosy is a dead ringer for Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless)

UPDATE: According to Jonathan Landay at McClatchy, (h/t K-Drum) we begged Saakashvili not to attack Georgia (which I don't totally believe) and we "had an understanding" with the Russians that they would limit themselves to fighting in South Ossetia and not beyond those borders. That's just kind of stupid, to expect the Russians not to want to dominate their sphere of influence.

UPDATE II: Here's the smartest take on reconciling the Landay article about US entreaties to Georgia, from Robert Farley:

The other possibility is that the Americans said different things than the Georgians heard. This happens ALL THE TIME in international politics; motivated bias on the part of Saakashvili may have led him to believe that the Americans were making encouraging noises, because he wanted to believe that the Americans were encouraging him. Indeed, this would go a long way to explaining how the Georgians were certain of US support, despite the fact that there was no compelling reason for the Americans to give support.

That sounds right to me.

How Does Regime Change Feel On The Other Side?

This has the feel of unintended consequences.

Putin criticized the United States for viewing Georgia as the victim instead of the aggressor, and for airlifting Georgian troops back home from Iraq on Sunday.

"Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shiite villages," Putin said in Moscow. "And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed ten Ossetian villages at once, who ran elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilian alive in their sheds — these leaders must be taken under protection."

Look, there's no doubt that Russia's response, to incur far into sovereign territory and bomb civilian airports and empower separatists, appears disproportionate. But so did the bombing of Baghdad as a response to a terrorist attack they had nothing to do with. The President's denunciations and stern warnings just sound totally hollow. And to hear the Russians tell it, the initial assault on South Ossetia by Georgia has the earmarks of a genocide.

NOTE: It's not completely clear what's happening over there. Georgia is claiming that they're enforcing a cease-fire and yet there are reports of their troops firing on Russian positions. Each side is accusing the other of ethnic cleansing. The Georgians claim that the Russians have taken Gori but there are conflicting reports on that. So all reporting there has to be met with skepticism.

What is clear is that something was offered by the West to Georgia if they chose to blitzkrieg South Ossetia, and the Bush Administration failed to carry through, resulting in an almost impotent response.

Regardless of what happens next, it is worth asking what the Bush people were thinking when they egged on Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's young, Western-educated president, to apply for NATO membership, send 2,000 of his troops to Iraq as a full-fledged U.S. ally, and receive tactical training and weapons from our military. Did they really think Putin would sit by and see another border state (and former province of the Russian empire) slip away to the West? If they thought that Putin might not, what did they plan to do about it, and how firmly did they warn Saakashvili not to get too brash or provoke an outburst?

It's heartbreaking, but even more infuriating, to read so many Georgians quoted in the New York Times—officials, soldiers, and citizens—wondering when the United States is coming to their rescue. It's infuriating because it's clear that Bush did everything to encourage them to believe that he would. When Bush (properly) pushed for Kosovo's independence from Serbia, Putin warned that he would do the same for pro-Russian secessionists elsewhere, by which he could only have meant Georgia's separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin had taken drastic steps in earlier disputes over those regions—for instance, embargoing all trade with Georgia—with an implicit threat that he could inflict far greater punishment. Yet Bush continued to entice Saakashvili with weapons, training, and talk of entry into NATO. Of course the Georgians believed that if they got into a firefight with Russia, the Americans would bail them out.

Georgia has American and Israeli weapons, a long history with the President, troops in Iraq (until yesterday) and an ally in their quest for NATO inclusion. That they received nothing for all that just shows the limits of cowboy diplomacy and a belligerent foreign policy. We cannot back up the tough talk with action everywhere in the world, and by promoting militarism and aggression, people die. Furthermore, the unnecessary war in Iraq eliminated any claim to the moral authority of saying that Russia invaded a sovereign state.

No wonder Russian "expert" Condi Rice isn't coming off her holiday to get involved. This is a disaster.

FWIW, Anatol Lieven has a good backgrounder. And here's Obama's statement today, which is not cribbed from Wikipedia, to my knowledge. Obama's in a tough spot, because the failed foreign policy of the Bush years has made this crisis almost impossible for us to help manage.

Deep Thought

(apologies to Atrios)

You know how it's supposed to be impossible to remove troops from Iraq for years and years because it's supposed to be this logistical nightmare involving convoys and protecting the rear guard and anyone who thinks we can just up and leave (nobody does, but that's the straw man) is deeply unserious?

The Georgians got 2,000 men out, with American support, in a day or two.

Let's keep that one in our holsters.

At Least This Means He May Have Figured Out How To Use The Internet

John McCain's statement today on Georgia, ripped off from Wikipedia.

First instance:

one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion (Wikipedia)

vs.

one of the world's first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion (McCain)

Second instance:

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia had a brief period of independence as a Democratic Republic (1918-1921), which was terminated by the Red Army invasion of Georgia. Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and regained its independence in 1991. Early post-Soviet years was marked by a civil unrest and economic crisis. (Wikipedia)

vs.

After a brief period of independence following the Russian revolution, the Red Army forced Georgia to join the Soviet Union in 1922. As the Soviet Union crumbled at the end of the Cold War, Georgia regained its independence in 1991, but its early years were marked by instability, corruption, and economic crises. (McCain)

Honestly, I don't care if he ripped off basic biographical facts from Wikipedia, though it kind of diminishes his pretensions to having a rich knowledge of the region. I do mind McCain stealing his ideological outlook on conflicts with Russia from General Jack D. Ripper. Contrary to Georgian President Saakashvili's claim that this is somehow a war for the West (which I think tips his hand as to the level of American support he was promised), his country provoked this war and has consistently tried to needle Russia and cement ties with the West. At this point, calling for Georgia's inclusion in NATO is tantamount to calling for war with Russia. Who would want that? Both sides are very clearly at fault, yet with Russia rumbling toward Tblisi and taking over Gori the Russians are clearly the aggressor at this point. I think this statement, however, is very right.

Russia must be condemned for its unsanctioned intervention. But the war began as an ill-considered move by Georgia to retake South Ossetia by force. Saakashvili's larger goal was to lead his country into war as a form of calculated self-sacrifice, hoping that Russia's predictable overreaction would convince the West of exactly the narrative that many commentators have now taken up.

The commitment of troops to Iraq was also a calculated move on Georgia's part, with the expectation, fueled in the minds of the population, of a quid pro quo.

As a Russian jet bombed fields around his village, Djimali Avago, a Georgian farmer, asked me: “Why won’t America and Nato help us? If they won’t help us now, why did we help them in Iraq?”

A similar sense of betrayal coursed through the conversations of many Georgians here yesterday as their troops retreated under shellfire and the Russian Army pressed forward to take full control of South Ossetia.

America may have wanted this kind of proxy attack or at least a show of force on Russia's border, and the massive response took everyone by surprise. As Dylan Matthews says, this is a disaster for the Bush foreign policy. His "freedom agenda" is in tatters as one of the progenitors of it gets crushed by an adversary; NATO expansion is dead, tensions with Russia are on the rise, and the Iraq "coalition" is seen for what it is, pure realpolitik. There are two responses to this mess - more testosterone-fueled foreign policy that would result in tactical nuclear weapon deployment or worse, or a calmer, less belligerent means of dealing with crisis. Guess which one each Presidential candidate fits.

Only Two States Of Mind: War and Shooting War

The Georgians started this mess by invading South Ossetia, and the Russians absolutely turned around and unleashed the full fury of their military. Now, with Georgia calling for a cease-fire, the Russians have decided to make an example out of them. According to Robert Kagan, none of this matters.

The details of who did what to precipitate Russia’s war against Georgia are not very important. Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama.

Kagan's invocation of Godwin's Law is typical of neocon posturing. In this case, the end-state is... a war with Russia? Can that be?

Well, the US has started to fly Georgian troops home from Iraq. And Fourthbranch Cheney was rousted out of his bunker to say that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered." And the typical neocon organs are calling on the US to exert maximum pressure on Russia. So that's certainly where the rhetoric is headed. Not only don't we have the force strength to do that, but restarting the Cold War is about the only thing Bush hasn't done in his eight years in the White House.

It's worth understanding what happened prior to Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia and why Russia might want President Saakashvili out of power. There's an American angle here.

Let’s take a moment to consider this para from Doug’s (the Doug in Tbilisi, that is) first post.

"Second, what will the Americans and EU do? A senior State Department figure was here in Tbilisi last week, and I would expect that the Georgian side at least hinted very broadly about what was up. He would have to deny that, of course, in the way of these things. We can assume that the Americans did not warn them off."

The Americans have more or less encouraged Saakashvili’s dangerously confrontational approach to Russia, and have given them hopes of NATO membership, which was never going to happen. They may also have had unrealistic expectations about US support in the event of a war. This war would likely never have happened if the US had discouraged the Georgians.

The game has switched up now, but the Bushies were clearly encouraging Saakashvili in the way they encouraged all manner of revolutions against the Soviets throughout the Cold War. Now that it backfired horribly, they call for a cease-fire. And there ought to be a cease-fire, but let's not pretend about what caused this and why that matters.

Escalation

While Georgia is apparently acknowledging a catastrophic mistake by provoking a war with a world power, Russia is not letting up:

Russian tanks and troops moved through the separatist enclave of South Ossetia and advanced on the city of Gori in central Georgia on Sunday night, for the first time directly assaulting a Georgian city with ground forces after three days of heavy fighting, Georgian officials said.

Georgian tanks were dug into positions outside Gori and planning to defend the city, said Shota Utiashvili, an official in Georgia’s interior ministry. He said the city of Gori was coming under artillery and tank fire. There was no immediate comment from Russia.

The Russians are claiming that Georgia has not retreated, and they are not recognizing the truce called for by Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili. I think they see an opportunity to pound a Western ally into dust and maybe even take back some of their Soviet-era territory. This is a tense moment for the world.

...oh, and the McCain campaign's claims that Obama is bizarrely in sync with Moscow are laughable, and a typical attempt to paint the Democrat as a scary Communist. McCain is the one with the top advisor who was a lobbyist to Georgia. They tried to pull off a neocon's wet dream of taking on the bug bad bully Russia and they got spanked, like neocon military operations always do. He has absolutely no credibility on this.

Russia, Georgia, South Ossetia

This is shaping up to be a full-blown war between Russia and Georgia for the breakaway republic of South Ossetia. Russia has long maintained peacekeepers in the autonomous Republic, has given Russian passports to citizens there, and after the Kosovar independence it appeared that Russia was encouraging the splinter republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to break away from Georgia. So Georgia invaded, and Russia has responded by bombing positions inside Georgia; the city of Gori experienced many casualties. Abkhazia is also restless, with their forces moving into South Ossetia (through Russia) and launching artillery strikes in the Kodori Gorge. Jerome a Paris says there are no good guys here:

First, let's be clear: there are two reasons only we care about Georgia: the oil pipelines that go through its territory, and the opportunity it provides to run aggressive policies towards Russia.

Second, let's also be very explicit: this conflict is not unexpected: it is a direct consequence of our policies, in particular with respect to Kosovo (and to all those that will claim that "no one could have predicted" this, let me point out to this comment, or this earlier one, or this article). I would even go so far as to say that it was egged on by some in Washington: the neocons.

Third, our claims to have the moral high ground are totally ridiculous and need to be fought, hard. This is not about democracy vs dictature, brave freedom lovers vs evil oppressors, but a nasty brawl by power-hungry figures on both sides, with large slices of corruption. The fact that this is turned into a cold-war-like conflict between good and evil is a domestic political play by some in Washington to reinforce their power and push certain policies that have little to do with Russia or Georgia. That needs to be understood.

The transit oil pipeline from the Black Sea is certainly a factor here, as are the resources in the South Ossetia region. The Georgian leader Saakashvili has been a committed neocon ally, and this reminds me of a Cold War skirmish where we try to bait the Russians into a guerrilla war with an army we have equipped. American statements, with their focus on "recognizing Georgia's territorial integrity," have certainly come down on the Georgian's side, though I doubt that the US would send troops or even advisers to the region (there are a couple hundred there now preparing the Georgian military for deployment to Iraq, where they have 2,000 troops stationed; given this conflict, Georgia is planning to recall all of them).

Robert Farley has a smart take.

I am less sympathetic to the Georgian case because I think that escalating the war (and providing an excuse for Russian counter-escalation) was a damn stupid thing for Saakashvili to do, and a remarkably damn stupid thing for him to do absent an extremely compelling cause. Small, weak states living next to abrasive, unpredictable great powers need to be extremely careful about what they do; in most cases, their foreign policy should, first and foremost, be about avoiding war with the great power. This is what Saakashvili failed to do. The war didn't need to escalate; it was a Georgian decision to move from the village skirmishes that were happening on Tuesday to the siege of Tsikhinvali on Thursday.

I understand that there can be a bit of "blaming the victim" to this analysis. Russia has consistently pursued imperial aims in its Near Abroad (so does every great power, including the US) and has treated Georgia badly, with a succession of threats, boycotts, and efforts to promote the secessionist forces which are causing the trouble today. Georgia had every right to seek NATO membership in order to limit Russian efforts (although NATO had every right to turn Georgia down). Russia has been a bad actor, but it was nevertheless a terrible and unnecessary mistake to pick a fight with Russia over South Ossetia, not least because the balance of perfidy on South Ossetia is uncertain. This is why I'm unsympathetic to Saakashvili and to his claims that Georgia is fighting for freedom against tyranny. For example, I think that the Taiwanese would be considerably more justified in a declaration of independence from the PRC, but such a declaration would still be reckless, and would leave me less sympathetic to Taiwanese calls for aid.

The United States also bears some responsibility. US rhetorical and material support for Georgia may have given the Georgians unrealistic expectations about likely US behavior in a Russia-Georgia confrontation. Specifically, anything other than "we will not support you in any way or under any circumstances" might have led to the Georgians having the wrong idea.

It looks to me like like both sides of this conflict have little reason to de-escalate, for largely political reasons. Let's hope the international community can put pressure on to end this as quickly as possible.