I remember the conversation so clearly, as if it happened yesterday. I was meeting with Alex Rondeli, a tall, smart, well-connected Georgian involved in the formation of the country’s foreign policy. Everyone interested in the foreign policy of the region, I was told, who traveled to Tbilisi, had to meet with him. So I did. Obviously I don’t have my notes of the interview with me, as they are in storage back home in America, but I remember when the conversation turned towards NATO and America helping Georgia. Alex was clear that he thought, from a rational, realpoplitik perspective, that Georgia’s best hope was in joining the West and all its institutions. But he was also realistic enough to realize that Georgia had to find a way of living with its giant northern neighbor.
And I asked him, point blank, “what makes you think the US will keep its promise to Georgia in the event of war with Russia? Can you really trust the US?” And then I made it clear, before he answered, that I thought it was folly to trust the US, that Georgia’s best course was to find a modus vivendi with Russia and develop its economy on its own terms because the Russians aren’t going away. They haven’t. Now they are attempting to split the country. And Georgians are wondering, where is NATO? NATO isn’t coming. Deal with it. Saakashvilli staked his presidency on it and failed. Find new leaders, leaders who will find a way of satisfying Russian demands. Otherwise, nothing will ever get better or change in Georgia.
Alex told me, “the Russian military, they’ve cooked up this bloody dish. But now they don’t know who to serve it to.”
Looks to me like they have found someone to serve it to the Georgians and his name is Saakashvilli. He provoked this fight–just as he did the one with Abashidze in Adjaria–but without realizing one critical difference: the Russians were, for once, prepared. They weren’t going to get caught flat footed like they did in Adjaria. And as they continue their drive to Gori it’s clear that when this is over and the time to make peace arrives Russia will be in a position of strength for a change.
How will Bush and Condi, his Russian expert, deal with the man whose soul he looked into this time?
As for Major Georgi, I would answer his thusly: “democracy, Sir, is not a means to an end, or a means to having powerful allies. It is an end in itself. And that end is in having the freedom of holding your leaders accountable in your hands, not in the hands of powerful allies. If you remember that you may yet keep your democracy.”
It’s a lesson we need to remember here in America too.
Dear Georgians:
Good luck with that.
Enjoy your new Kremlin masters.
Maybe in 150 years or so (when the oil & gas run out), you can try again.
Regards
Rest of world
US to be the policeman to the world? That seems to be what your comment implies. The only thing that will prevent the Russians from the current course would be one of two things: a.) a credible Georgian army that could counter or hold up against the Russians or b.) the credible threat of Western intervention.
Neither will happen. This is the way the world is, not perhaps as we want it, but it doesn’t change facts on the ground.
“Is not our first thought to go on the road? The road is our source, our vault of treasures, our wealth. Only on the road does the ‘traveller’ feel like himself, at home.â€
Ryszard Kapuscinski
if the US government (meaning, Bush/Cheney/Condi) made a commitment to assist Georgia, then it’s up to them to decide whether it’s a promise worth upholding, and what cost they’d be willing to take in upholding said commitment.
You *don’t* make friends with a strong ally just to antagonise the playground bully–that’s a good way to get your face re-arranged (after finding out just how ‘friendly’ those friends really are).
since, in large part due to the poor policies followed by our nation over the past 28 years, our reputation is in the shitter, I think Bush is going to hang Saakashvili out to dry, and Georgia will rejoin the Russian fold (Hobson’s choice there….rejoin or be annhilated like Chechnya). Besides, who seriously thinks Bush is going to pass up signing Sand-volleyball ass to help out a little ally like Georgia?
-5.75,-4.05
“God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.” — Robin Williams
Indeed. Indeed.
in Georgia was the equivalent of what Russia tried in Cuba in the 60s! History is repeating itself.
Georgia is Russia’s sphere of influence; Cuba is in the United States strategic area of interest. There’s no way Georgia launched this attack without the United States knowing about it. Neither country should be violating the other’s area. Very foolish for the United States to arm Georgia and encourage this silly leader to light the fireworks between these two world powers.
Georgia can’t ever be admitted to NATO for obvious reasons.
Will the United States retreat from Georgia as Russia did or continue to put the world at risk?
Part of the retreat has to be an agreement to share oil resources in Georgia. Couldn’t an agreement be drawn up that both have access to oil? Isn’t oil now comparable to having nuclear power? Countries that have it survive–economies without it surely die. What I’m thinking are agreements that guarantee oil to all the world’s countries on the basis of population size and degree of industrialization. Coupled with signed international oil agreements should be controls that monitor pollution and greenhouse gases for every country’s use.
Signed resource agreements means Iran doesn’t have to be attacked. Its oil could be shared with Japan, China, the United States and/or any other country that needs it. Russia’s gas also needs figuring into agreements so EU countries aren’t held hostage. Worldwide reckonings of resources is crucial and needs discussing at the UN and agreements made. Wars over it must not begin and those currently being fought over the black gold, must end including Afghanistan and Iraq. Canada’s (Russia’s, United States’, Norway’s, Sweden’s et al) Arctic depends on civilized agreements such as these being implemented or wars will break out over those rich resources. Very measured development of them between several nations is required with climate protections or the world loses big time! Water too is another vital source needing worldwide debate, but at this moment isn’t causing countries to go to war over it, so it could be put on the back burner for the time being.
So I guess that the “cold war” is not really over. Hmmm, that took a while to figure out. And I guess it won’t be over till Russia is in NATO or Europe is out of NATO.
So lets see. If Russia were in NATO then they would have to integrate their military with the NATO command. That’s a non-starter. So I guess that means that all those European countries in NATO really have simply figured out that they don’t need a real military and can save a lot of money by farming it out to the U.S. via NATO. A bit of loss of sovereignty there but hey that’s what the EU is all about.
And Russia is not in the EU because the U.S. wouldn’t allow it. Sure Russia may have a sub-western-standard democracy and maybe their accounting practices don’t mesh with the EU’s but those could be overcome. No it’s got to be the U.S. calling the shots.
I think I’m getting the hang of this Realpolitik thing. I should post this over at the EuropeanTribune.
this is the reason i come here; that was the best blog post i’ve read yet on this issue. no matter how much we may disagree on various issues (cough, cough
i will always appreciate and respect your ability to present the foreign in such a way that even dumb amurkin bloggers can understand.
i more or less agree with what i think you’re saying here. at our place, another poster was talking about US involvement in the regions, pushing this or that group in the satellite nations, massaging the political scene to produce leadership friend to US interests. i want to add a couple of points about that.
first off, like SP, i think any foreign gov’t or political group that trusts the word of the Bush Regime are *fools.* utter and complete fools. perhaps it’s not as clear elsewhere in the world as it is to us, but the Bush regime is like an evil Lucy holding the football…in almost every respect, every department, every promise. selling out/fucking over the people from whom they extract ‘mutual support’ arrangements is SOP, and they’ve proven that time and time again. wake up, rest of the world. the Bush Regime is made of lies, powered by double dealing, infused with cowardice, and guaranteed to be led by the arrogant, ignorant, ‘take the money and run’ criminal element. the georgian leadership that we helped rise to power must be even more foolish than i had previously thought, and perhaps as peopled by those who subscribe to ‘we create our own reality’ as our republican party.
secondly, when the dust clears, it’s going to be beyond obvious that the US is a paper superpower. for all our wealth and strength, we’re powerless to effect the stated aims of our leadership. why? because as you say, oil wealth is like the nuclear power of this age. and we don’t control enough oil, nor have we been able too align oil producing nations, to work effectively to realize our aims. this is not a surprise. when your allies are tyrants and theocrats, and your policy makers are deliberately ignorant of the world they seek to manipulate, you will fail. to me, the metaphor for the bush regime is found in Ledeen’s 20something daughter, put in charge of creating what would never work in iraq, mishandling billions and producing exactly nothing for her money and effort, slinking home in shame, to a nation ignorant that such even took place. i suspect that historians will find that example repeated over and over in the record of the bush diplomatic corps, as well as in the domestic agencies. cronyism always fails, and is always expensive, beyond the actual cost in money itself. the additional price we’re paying now: the continued reduction in US influence upon all regions of the world.
finally: putin has always scared me. the Chechen war proved that the russians have no interest in pretending to “civilized” standards of warfare and conflict, and i believe he is a true intellectual and experienced player in the Great Game. he is also obviously capable of both long-term thinking, and short term action, to great success. the russian mob/gov’t has its tentacles in everything these days, i’m almost afraid to do more research and theorizing about just how much they are manipulating behind the scenes both in the region in question, and the rest of the world. ruthless, willing to take great risk, empowered by great wealth from oil and nat gas, the russians seemed poised to vie with the chinese and EU for global domination. the US? falling into a depressed economy and social confusion without political will or the intelligence to perceive how much our fortunes have declined in just 8 short years.
thanks again for this post.
But what bugs me is that the US would intervene if Israel attacked Iran first and Iran fought back in self-defense.
Video of fleeing Ossetians stating that soldiers with USA markings found among the dead Georgian forces and I’m hearing rumours that US mercenaries are among the dead wearing black uniforms. (Blackwater?) But any country with money in their wallets can hire them. Probably the bodies in the video were mercenaries?
Video of American citizen, vacationing from Florida, trapped in South Ossetia condemning his own government for supporting Georgia.
Caveat…the above two videos sources are from Russia Today and would be more credible if it was the BBC that was doing the interviewing and filming.
The United States sends $1 trillion a year over to the Middle East, Russians and Chinese. The U.S. and NATO have expended all their resources and allowed themselves to be pinned down in Afghanistan and Iraq. You think Russia does not notice that? What exactly could we do? We have no resources to throw at this problem at all.
I’ll give Russia credit for one thing though, they come in with overwhelming force, and they are always after a trophy from their conflicts. That Georgian pipeline will be sweet in their petro-arsenal against the west. The other coup was their complete takeover of the investments and infrastructure that was held by BP in Russia proper.
It’s breathtaking when you watch a leader that DOES know how to wield power. This battle is about Russia taking over an oil pipeline that the U.S. and British Petroleum have spent at least $5 billion building. It moves 1 million barrels of oil a day to the West that is not in the control of the middle east or Russian, that is 1.3% of daily oil production in the world.
That’s the rub. Iran is different, though. We could buy Iranian oil if we ignored Reagan and Clinton’s EOs banning the purchase of oil and the development of their oil infrastructure through contracts with U.S. companies. You see, we want other countries to line the mullahcracy’s coffers.
Russia and the U.S. don’t want to share Caucus oil with each other. Although I blame us for antagonizing Russia by dangling full NATO membership to Caucus states and going ahead with a dual-use anti-missile base in Eastern Europe, Russia is just as bad an actor. After buying most of the stock in a Georgian energy company they blacked out most of the state. They want to control the oil and, by extension, control European policy.
>Caveat…the above two videos sources are from Russia Today and would be >more credible if it was the BBC that was doing the interviewing and >filming.
I hope this is ironic statement. BBC is currently most biased media: they were formed with goal to do anti-soviet propaganda, and they are continuing their job.
In one these threads there is mention of the Georgian soldiers wearing US cast off uniforms and armor. Last I heard we did have 1300 ‘advisors’ there, so one never knows.
You sound a little like McCain:)
There is no Soviet anymore, and the folks over at the BBC are a bit younger than those who came out of WWII with their anti soviet world view (and who didn’t?). So what news service does not show bias?
Reports are that Gori has been taken by the Russians. Two news stations reporting it now (RT and Fox).
==
Author of Remain Calm
Bush I assured Yeltsin that NATO wouldn’t expand into the Warsaw Pact nations. Clinton made him a liar.
To the extent that Russia is a bad actor today it is to a large extent a result of US policies. This was no accident. The US military-industrial complex needed enemies to continue their protection racket.
If NATO had been disbanded Russia and Georgia could be on track for EU membership.
Just because Bushco is Bushco and the georgians are georgians, it doesn’t mean this is justifiable or that Georgia shouldn’t be defended.
Saying this was is not critically important is plain wrong, because the outcome will change the future path of Europe.
from the war zones:
Georgia conflict: Screams of the injured rise from residential streets
I expect it will be some time before body counts and verification of claims made by the waring parties are made known. Several other credible sources began filing their stories.
—–
Tina, I highly doubt uniformed US soldiers would be fighting…but mercenaries, perhaps, remain a possibility.
Will Russia Get Away With It? By WILLIAM KRISTOL
McCain’s on board.
Meanwhile, the US is overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I don’t hear any calls for a draft yet.
UPDATE:
Joe Klein: Neocons think ‘it’s raining Nazis’ in Georgia
it just occured to me ,learning those articles of wiliam kristol and holbrook and some other lets say right wing articles and john McCain.
it could be a machiavellian trick by the Neo Con Nuts to have a new enemy in the form of Russia for America ,so to give McCain a chance on the elections.
its maybe unlikely but with Cheney in charge ,and Bush in china doing nothing as usual ,you never know…
It’s hilarious. Russia Today is now suggesting CNN and Fox are nothing but Western propaganda, because they reported that Russians had taken Gori, but Russia Today made the same announcement themselves. They expect my memory to last less than a single hour!
==
Author of Remain Calm
that Bush I promised not to expand NATO eastward.
Once again, it’s about the oil.
And bush, like most bullies, likes beating up on people that can’t fight back.
All our GI Joe wanna-be’s will learn what a real war is like should we tangle with Russia.
Let’s pray it doesn’t come to that.
I did inhale.
they are losing they want sympathy? Sorry, I do have real sympathy for the men and women and all the innocents, but the Georgians knew what Saakashvilli wanted when they elected him. It was a central plank in his campaign: national unification.
“Is not our first thought to go on the road? The road is our source, our vault of treasures, our wealth. Only on the road does the ‘traveller’ feel like himself, at home.â€
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Some analysts in Turkish TV are saying that after the USA election is over USA, Russia, and Iran (possible not directly but via Russia) will sit and have a mini Yalta reflecting the new power balance at the region not forgetting of course that USA is defeated at Iraq. This is why Saakashvilli made this move, a gamble may be (hoping his neocon friends will help or Russia will be more cautious) but mainly a desperation move. Since he knows that at such an agreement it is almost certain that Georgia will be returned to the Russian sphere of influence and he will be done. He is a product of the neocon dream of having a smooth Iraq victory and with permanent bases there a much more active player in the region reminding everyone that don’t mess with the US, look what happened to Iraq. If that dream had come true he would be in a very good position aligning his country with the neocons. That dream failed bringing misery to a lot of people and now Georgians are having their share.
I’d say that such an expected agreement between the regional powers and the US also have the explanation power of what is happening in Turkey, how Syria struggles to define its new role in the region and EU’s attempts to take center stage in this conflict. Everybody is preparing for the new order that will be shaped next year and try to position themselves either to effect the outcome or calculating that the outcome of this agreement will touch them in major ways.
The trouble with Georgia
…
For obvious reasons, my view of the Caucasus region has always been colored by my interest in linguistics. While the Caucasus mountains are certainly some of the highest and most impressive in the world, it is also a mountain of exotic and often unrelated languages. While Abkhaz, Chechen, and some others form a single North Caucasian family of languages, Georgian (Kartvelian) is only vaguely related to Basque, spoken in France and in Spain, while Ossetian is distantly related to Persian. For thousands of years, the region has been a mosaic made up of fiercely independent tribes, of which Georgians (Kartvelians) were only one of the largest. This made them more capable of forming a viable political entity (a kingdom, initially), but never could they aspire to dominating their neighbors, to whom they were not even vaguely related, either ethnically or linguistically. And language did play a big role: although bilingualism and even multilingualism were by no means rare, none of the tribes were too eager to learn the language of any other tribe en masse. For instance, prior to their being conquered and absorbed into the Russian Empire, the Chechens were a trilingual society, using Arabic in the mosque, Turkish in the market, and one of the “home languages” in the home village. After the Russian conquest, which was very bloody and resulted in the annihilation of several smaller tribes, among them the Ubykh, who simply would not surrender, the Russian language became the lingua franca of the entire region.
To the conquering Russians, Georgia represented the rich, creamy heart of the incredibly tough nut of the Caucasus region. In contrast to the many small and taciturn mountain tribes, many of them either Moslem or animist, here was an Orthodox Christian nation with great traditions of art, music, architecture, poetry, an unparalleled joie de vivre, and a delicious national cuisine. Georgians easily secured for themselves a pleasant role within the empire. Leaving administrative chores to the Russians and commerce and the trades to the Armenians, they were free to indulge in more pleasant pursuits, such as feasting, falconry, and entertaining foreign visitors. This trend had carried over into Soviet times, making Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic a favored tourist destination, a prosperous place complete with amusing wines, delicious food, an exuberantly friendly population that spoke your language, and majestic mountains for a backdrop. In the interest of maintaining public order, the Russians tried to be even-handed in their treatment of the non-Georgian tribes. Knowing full well just how much trouble they can be, they administered their territories as autonomous units within Georgia. One of the more glaring exceptions to this was the arbitrary administrative inclusion of Abkhazia within Georgia, which was done by Joseph Stalin (Dzhugashvili), who was a Georgian, and which in many ways laid the ground for the current conflict.
Their being so well coddled within the fold of the great empire cultivated in the Georgians a sense of exceptionalism and entitlement vis à vis their smaller and poorer neighbors, which, once the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russians departed, gave rise to a particularly rabid, venomous, and ultimately self-destructive brand of nationalism. The first post-independence Georgian leader, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was killed rather quickly. Part of his nationalist rhetoric involved labeling other tribes, such as the Abkhaz and the Ossetians, as newcomers and gypsies, who are only welcome as “guests” on Georgian soil. Next up was Eduard Shevardnadze, who was Foreign Minister of the USSR under Gorbachev, and who was more or less handed Georgia as his personal fiefdom by the West, as his reward for idly standing by and smiling pleasantly while the Berlin wall was being torn down. He was given UN recognition and foreign aid, and told to go ahead and try to preserve “Georgia’s territorial integrity.” At this he failed miserably, causing a senseless bloodbath and a flood of refugees. Shevardnadze slowly sank into a morass of corruption and national decay, until finally even the West decided that he smelled bad and unceremoniously replaced him with a shiny new face: the American-educated Mikhail Saakashvili. And this brings us to the current conflict, which he started. It is unclear why he decided to start it, but then his American education might offer a clue: the US doesn’t seem to need good reasons to start wars either.
…
I did inhale.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080811/115953426.html
Bush’s War in Georgia; Will it be the Flyswatter or the Blunderbuss?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9791
A noo-cue-lar US/Soviet exchange!
http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/
A Path to Peace in the Caucasus
August 12
Wapo - The past week’s events in South Ossetia are bound to shock and pain anyone. Already, thousands of people have died, tens of thousands have been turned into refugees, and towns and villages lie in ruins. Nothing can justify this loss of life and destruction. It is a warning to all.
The roots of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia’s separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy. This turned out to be a time bomb for Georgia’s territorial integrity. Each time successive Georgian leaders tried to impose their will by force — both in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, where the issues of autonomy are similar — it only made the situation worse. New wounds aggravated old injuries.
Nevertheless, it was still possible to find a political solution. For some time, relative calm was maintained in South Ossetia. The peacekeeping force composed of Russians, Georgians and Ossetians fulfilled its mission, and ordinary Ossetians and Georgians, who live close to each other, found at least some common ground.
Through all these years, Russia has continued to recognize Georgia’s territorial integrity. Clearly, the only way to solve the South Ossetian problem on that basis is through peaceful means. Indeed, in a civilized world, there is no other way.
The Georgian leadership flouted this key principle.
more at the link
“The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy” – Bob Herbert
Now I understand the root of the problem.
“While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” – not a Hugh Hefner quote
If a condition for Georgia’s entry into the EU was that it be united, isn’t the EU partly to blame for this mess? Could Georgia not have become a member without Ossetia and Abkhazia?
“While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” – not a Hugh Hefner quote
Mediation efforts to end Georgia-Russia conflict step up
AFP – International efforts to mediate an end to the conflict between Georgia and Russia were set to intensify Tuesday, but Moscow signaled it opposes a peace plan calling for an immediate truce.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, was due in Moscow to hold talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on a plan to end the conflict.
But Russia’s ambassador to the UN on Monday rejected the proposed Western draft resolution in the Security Council based on a three-point French peace plan…
A “ceasefire agreement is signed by two sides when they meet,” he told CNN television, adding that Georgia must make an accord first with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway region, which has rejected talks with Georgia’s current leaders.
Sarkozy was also expected to travel to Tbilisi to meet with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili…
An extraordinary Russia-NATO council meeting was set to be held in Brussels on Tuesday at Moscow’s request to discuss the conflict, according to an Alliance spokeswoman.
Russia’s ambassador to NATO insisted on the meeting after Georgia announced that its Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili was scheduled to attend a meeting of NATO’s North Atlantic Council in Brussels on Tuesday.
“A war is underway and our colleagues need to listen before consulting with their capitals and making decisions. They need to listen to each party,” Rogozin said.
“The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy” – Bob Herbert
“Is not our first thought to go on the road? The road is our source, our vault of treasures, our wealth. Only on the road does the ‘traveller’ feel like himself, at home.â€
Ryszard Kapuscinski
… any time soon. If Georgia expected to be able to join the EU within a meaningful time frame than the leadership there is truly delusional.
… of saying look we are in no position to do this and you aren’t either, so why don’t we forget about it for now. The EU always does that because just saying ‘No’ is not an option.
US-based NATO hegemony and European reluctance to lose their lives over it.
It’s only the United States and its immediate allies who are willing or have economical needs that allow their arms to be twisted that consent. Countries more removed from American influence are able to say, “No, get out of my face and please pass the potatoes.”