Department of No DOY.
Georgia is one of the closest US allies in Eastern Europe. President Mikheil Saakashvili has visited the White House three times in the last four years. Yet this warm relationship did not stop the Kremlin from unleashing a ferocious military response after Georgian troops entered the separatist province of South Ossetia.
US efforts to expand Western influence and spread democracy along Russia’s borders may now be threatened. US relations with Russia itself, at the least, are in flux.
“This gets at the stability of the framework the US thought was going to govern the post-cold-war world,” says Stephen Sestanovich, senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Well no doy, Steve-o. That’s what happens when you deliberately dismantle “the framework the US thought was going to govern the post-cold-war world”. That’s what happens when you tie down 3/4 of your army in a desert quagmire.
President Bush, for his part, on Aug. 11 demanded that Russia end its dramatic escalation of violence in Georgia and agree to an immediate cease-fire and international mediation.
“Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century,” said Mr. Bush in a statement televised shortly after his return to the US from the Beijing Olympics.
But since the crisis began, there has been no hint that the United States would consider any kind of military move, even logistical aid for Georgian forces, that would bring it into direct conflict with Russia. The US and the West appear to have little leverage over a Moscow that is flush with oil money and eager to reestablish its position along its borders.
That’s because we have no cards to play. We can’t send our army in. We can’t get the Russian angry over Iran. The Russians are currently quite wealthy from oil profits, while we are quite poor, having drained our treasury to fight an unnecessary war (which, I might add, we are losing).
Other possible moves include threatening Russia with the loss of the 2014 Winter Olympic games at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
“The United States, its allies, and other countries need to send a strong signal to Moscow that creating 19th-century-style spheres of influence and redrawing the borders of the former Soviet Union is a danger to world peace,” said Ariel Cohen, senior research fellow in Russian and Eurasian studies at the Heritage Foundation, in an analysis of the impact of the crisis.
OH NOEZ!!!1! Mr. Cohen, who works for the Bush-loving right-wing Heritage Foundation, certainly sounds tough, but you’ll notice that outside of threatening to take away the Olympics, he’s not really calling for airstrikes or military action to save our supposed ally.
Georgian President Saakashvili has long been one of the Bush administration’s favorite world leaders. Georgia contributed 2,000 troops to the US effort in Iraq, and Mr. Saakashvili has talked often of his support for Bush administration efforts to spread freedom and democracy among the countries of the former Soviet Union.
Saakashvili and Bush seem to share a good personal chemistry. Bush visited Georgia in 2005; during Saakashvili’s return visits to the White House, the two joshed about folk dancing and their wives’ luncheon plans.
In March, at a White House appearance, Saakashvili thanked Bush for supporting Georgia’s aspirations to join NATO and for “protecting Georgia’s borders.”
“I think this is a very unequivocal support we’re getting from you,” the Georgian leader told the US president, for the cameras.
Silly Saakashvili: you must not have been paying attention when Bush Senior abandoned the Kurds and the Shiites after they’d outlived their usefulness.
Perhaps the Georgian leader thought the US would come to his aid if he got in trouble. If so, he did not take into account the drain that Iraq has been on US forces and the US standing in the world – or the American need to work with Russia on other important geopolitical issues, such as the effort to curb Iran’s nuclear program.
…adding that all those promises of NATO membership, the radar installations in Georgia, and the tacit egging on of Mr. Saakashvili’s fantasies didn’t help the cause of sanity all that much.
Oh and look: the New York Times is reporting that Russia’s not actually leaving Georgia. That’s also a file from the Department of No DOY:
The commander of the Russian battalion that the Russian soldiers were looking for Georgian fighters who were violating the cease-fire agreement; Russia could argue that the agreement allowed for such activity. Occasional gunfire could be heard around the city.
The Russian soldiers were letting civilians leave Gori but were preventing anyone from entering.
Bitterly criticizing the United States and other Western countries for letting Georgia down, its president, Mikheil Saakashvili said Russia had flagrantly defied the accord and effectively severed the country in two.
The accord is not specific about where Russian and Georgian troops are allowed to be in Georgia. Under the deal’s somewhat vague terms, Russia may claim that it is allowed to send troops where it believes its interests are threatened. Mr. Saakashvili’s protests were joined by the leaders of several former Soviet countries from Eastern European, who were in Tbilisi to show their support for Georgia.
And Saakashvili sure is playing the pity card after his idiotic decision to incite a war with his far bigger, far meaner, and far better armed neighbor ended as predicted:
“Today, the West’s very will is tested,” Mr. Saakashvili said in a telephone call with journalists. “The main thing is if the West fails now, then it will have tremendous consequences for the world for years to come.”
Mikheil? If I were you, I’d worry about the consequences for YOU if your countrymen figure out what your “leadership” has done to their future.
August 14th, 2008 at 6:46 am
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