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 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.

Georgia, Georgia, No Peace I Find

Well, I guess the rumors of a cease-fire in the Caucasus were very overstated, as the Russians have held their positions, warned the United States not to get involved, and basically redrew the map:

Russia's foreign minister declared Thursday that the world "can forget about" Georgia's territorial integrity, and officials said Russia targeted military infrastructure and equipment — including radars and patrol boats at a Black Sea naval base and oil hub.

...the comments from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared to come as a challenge to the United States, where President Bush has called for Russia to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia."

"One can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity because, I believe, it is impossible to persuade South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree with the logic that they can be forced back into the Georgian state," Lavrov told reporters.

And that, as they say, is that. The US has astonishingly little leverage in this conflict, considering their sustained support for Georgia and inability to be seen as an honest broker, as well as a reluctance to get into a shooting war with Russia. It ought to give the whole nation pause as to the effectiveness of the cowboy diplomacy of the Bush years, which John McCain wants to further and even enhance.

It's EASIER for someone like McCain to put on his combat boots and strut about and make belligerent statements against the Russians. It's a war that neoconservatives understand and find more potential in as an electoral tool than talking about Iraq and Afghanistan.

And it's hard not to recognize that sad figure in the Max Boots and John McCains and Bill Bennetts and all the rest with their sustaining roots planted firmly at AEI HQ. After all, what happened to the long twilight struggle against radical Islam? So yesterday, I guess. Or can we do both simultaneously, even though the Russians are themselves up against hostile Islamic groups on their southern periphery?

Watching the Bennetts and the Krauthammers get all jazzed up about Georgia as the new Afghanistan, with all the painfully awkward nostalgia and excitement of an 80s era Gilligan's Island reunion flick is entertaining. But much less so when you realize these jokers might be running the government in six months.

Meanwhile, McCain can't even keep his own words straight on the conflict when they're not completely fed by Randy Scheunemann.

In effect, this is a local conflict where Russia is settling a Near Abroad dispute in their sphere of influence, and the degree to which we have to have a policy on that, especially when Georgia kicked off this conflict by indiscriminately firing on the South Ossetians, is dubious. I agree with Matt Yglesias:

The reality, however, is that Russia has no actual ability to move from Tblisi to Kiev. Georgia is tiny, poor, and geographically located so as to make it difficult for the West to provide it with any practical support. Ukraine has 10 times Georgia's population, 20 times its economic output, and extensive land borders with countries firmly in the Western orbit. The practical impossibility of conquering Ukraine, not American threats, is what will keep the Russians out of Kiev. Meanwhile, it turns out that, contrary to the fears of the hysterics, Russia isn't even going to Tblisi today, much less Ukraine tomorrow or Estonia the day after that. Vladimir Putin, unlike the leader of the United States, is apparently shrewd enough to recognize that military occupations of foreign territories have high costs and scarce benefits.

But while Russia's punishment of Georgia may not have major consequences for America or for world security, a hysterical American response just might. Most obviously, if we were to take things like John McCain's Aug. 12 proclamation that "we are all Georgians" seriously, we would be in the midst of a shooting war with Russia and literally risking the end of human civilization in a nuclear exchange.

By all accounts, McCain just wants to engage in some irresponsible posturing rather than to follow through on the implications of his words, but even excessive posturing and loose talk of a new Cold War with Russia would have real costs. Specifically, both McCain and Barack Obama have recognized that an agreement with Russia related to nuclear-weapons reductions is key to revitalizing the global nonproliferation regime. Russia can't conquer Ukraine or Estonia, but it can play a key role in helping or hindering American efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. And unlike the status of South Ossetia, nuclear proliferation is actually important to the United States. Having frittered away the past seven years on a foreign policy driven by hubris, the United States can ill-afford to misplace its priorities. With the active phase of the war over, we need to move beyond it as quickly as possible to more important issues, not indulge baroque fantasies of renewed great-power conflict.

Exactly. Humanitarian assistance to an ally is fine, but the talk of World War III is very dangerous.

Peter at Duck of Minerva has more.

Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?

Either we're ruled by idiots, or we're ruled by people who think we're idiots, but either explanation is no excuse:

The Bush administration suggested yesterday that an apparent cease-fire in Georgia came about because Moscow feared it would be banished from Western-dominated international economic and political institutions if it did not stop its "aggression" in the former Soviet republic.

"Russia has one foot into the international community . . . and one foot that is not," a senior administration official said. Membership in institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the Group of Eight major industrialized nations "is what is at stake when Russia engages in behavior that looks like it came from another time."

Yeah, that was it. It wasn't that there was no need for Putin to occupy a fractious republic because they see the model of an imperialist power being bled dry by trying to control the territory of a people who reject their presence.

I hate to interrupt the "we did it!" party at the White House, but we actually aren't always the central factor in global conflicts. The biggest evidence of that being that Russia is still moving military convoys inside Georgia.

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.

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.