Did the U.S. Give Georgia the Green-Light?

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 10:05 AM on August 12, 2008.

Looking at the war between Russia and Georgia, which reportedly is still ongoing, from a purely political perspective, John McCain is clearly looking to use the conflict to his advantage. He's characterizing Obama's position as "appeasement," and using some strikingly caustic language towards Russia.

McCain is not, however, actually moving beyond bluster. The NYT noted this morning that McCain and Obama, verbal sparring notwithstanding, are largely "on the same page in dealing with the current crisis." The Times reported, "Both said Russia had escalated the dispute beyond its catalyst, the conflict over South Ossetia; both said the United Nations Security Council should call for an end to the violence; both called for putting Georgia on a path toward membership in NATO; and both spoke of deploying an international peacekeeping force in the disputed areas that set off the fighting."

With this in mind, there's probably less of a story here about this war and the next U.S. president, but more of a story about this war and the current U.S. president.

The NYT ran a separate report on Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who many Georgians apparently consider "headstrong and reckless, endangering the country's security by rashly ordering an attack on the Russian enclave of South Ossetia on the eve of the Olympic Games in Beijing, and badly underestimating Russia's determination to respond militarily."

And why would Saakashvili be "headstrong and reckless"? The WSJ noted this morning that President Bush "lionized Mr. Saakashvili as a model for democracy in the region to a point that the Georgian leader may have held unrealistic expectations about the amount of support he might receive from the U.S. and the West."

That is, in all likelihood, understating the case by quite a bit.

Slate's Fred Kaplan fleshed this point out very well.

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.

Ask yourself this: would the Georgians not have given us any hint that they planned an assault on South Ossetia? I think that's really unlikely. In any case, if they didn't tip us off before getting into a shooting war with Russian troops (who were in South Ossetia as peacekeepers), that should, in my book, put paid to the idea of them as good potential allies.

If they did, what did we say in response? There are things we could have said that would have deterred any but the most completely suicidal Georgian leader. Saakashvili has been unbelievably reckless, but it would have been orders of magnitude more stupid to do what he did had we said, clearly and emphatically, not just that if he did this, he was on his own, but also that taking this step would seriously damage his relationship with us, and would put paid to his hopes of joining NATO in the foreseeable future.

Which is to say: we had a lot of leverage. It is hard to believe either that we didn't know this was going to happen, or that we used our leverage to prevent it. And that is inexcusable. Thousands of people are dead, the freedom of action of Russia's neighbors has been drastically reduced, and our own credibility, such as it was, has been badly damaged.

Again, just to preempt a predictable response: I am not saying it's all our fault. Russia and Georgia are independent actors, and their leaders are responsible for their decisions. But we are also responsible for ours, and if we knowingly encouraged, or even green-lighted, Saakashvili's actions, that is, to my mind, a piece of idiocy on a par with encouraging the Iraqi Shi'a to revolt after the Gulf War. We should not create expectations we are not prepared to meet.

Tagged as: bush, russia, putin, nato, georgia, south ossetia, mikheil saakashvili

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.