Georgia and US commitments

If this proposed agreement doesn't include specific defense commitments, it may not be a bad idea: U.S., Georgia to Sign Strategic Pact by Nathan Hodge, Danger Room 12/26/08. But I do wish our national reporters and Pod Pundits could stop themselves from talking about the non-scandal of Obama's non-involvement with Rod Blagojevich's apparently crooked schemes long enough to focus on stories like this. You know, because they have to do with war and peace and so on?

Ray McGovern talks about the Russia-Georgia summer war with Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio (11/17/08). He says straightforwardly, without explaining his sources, that Dick Cheney and McCain foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann were behind Georgia's attack on Russia. I don't buy that story without something more solid. But when you look at the well-established evidence that Nixon in 1968 delayed the Paris Peace talks when he first ran for President, and the circumstantial evidence of the Reagan campaign's dirty dealings with Iran in 1980, such a thing is not unthinkable. But, unlike the standards the press applied to non-scandals with Democratic Presidents or Presidents-elect are the ones that aren't involved but the press wants to insinuate they are, in my mind "not unthinkable" is a very different thing than "evidence".

Joe Galloway wrote about the brief Georgia-Russia war when it was happening in A sad week for Georgia, America and the world by McClatchy Newspapers 08/14/08. Being one of the real journalists left in America and working with what has become a quaint rarity in the US - a decent news service - he was able to state factual information clearly without the political hype distracting him:

Encouraged by their warm relations with George W. Bush's administration and the weapons and military training the U.S. has provided them in recent years, the Georgians pulled the Russian bear's tail in one of their own breakaway territories, South Ossetia, and promptly got pounded.

That was their bad.

The Russians invaded and expelled Georgian military forces from South Ossetia, and then invaded Georgia itself, rolling up the demoralized Georgian Army and sending it and a horde of frightened refugees falling back on the Georgian capital of Tblisi.

The fact that the Georgian leadership recklessly initiated that conflict was always an important and highly relevant fact. But most of our punditocracy seemed oblivious to it and its practical implications.

Michael Dobbs in'We Are All Georgians'? Not So Fast. Washington Post 08/17/08 was also sensibly cautious:

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 why it would be good to know a more complete story of how Georgia came to their decision to launch the August attack. We know from what's in the public record that Georgia almost certainly assumed that they had a good chance of receiving American backing, although they apparently hoped for more than they got. That's why Congressional hearings on these agreements could serve a useful purpose.

Ian Trainor reported in real time on Six days that broke one country - and reshaped the world order by Guardian 08/16/08. He points out that the Russian response to the Georgian conflict was a reflection of a policy shift that Vladimir Putin had declared in a public way:

In a seminal speech in Munich last year, Putin confidently warned the west that he would not tolerate the age of American hyperpower. Seven years in office at the time and at the height of his powers, he delivered his most anti-western tirade[.]

To an audience that included John McCain, the White House contender, and Robert Gates, the US defence secretary and ex-Kremlinologist, he served notice: "What is a unipolar world? It refers to one type of situation, one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making. It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. This is pernicious ... unacceptable ... impossible."

This week, he turned those words into action, demonstrating the limits of US power with his rout of Georgia. His forces roamed at will along the roads of the Southern Caucasus, beyond Russia's borders for the first time since the disastrous Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

And it's worth recalling that Russia had also declared the Georgian case to be a parallel to that of Kosovo, whose independence the US recognized over the opposition of Russia, a long-time ally of Serbia.

As former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer said at the time, NATO countries can't let Russian threats dictate their policies toward Georgia and Ukraine.

But they also have to be realistic about the power relations in the region and clear on the commitments they make and the real implications of those commitments.

Tags: georgia, russia