WASHINGTON DC - Russia's Vladimir Putin swiftly and decisively checkmated the Bush administration's clumsy attempt last week to expand US influence into the Caucasus. The score in this latest round of the Great Game - Putin: 10. Bush: 0.
We are not facing a return to the Cold War - yet. But the current US-Russian crisis over Georgia, a tiny nation of only 4.6 million, and its linkage to a US anti-ballistic missile system in Eastern Europe, is deeply worrying and increasingly dangerous.
On August 7, Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, ordered his US and Israeli-advised and equipped army to invade the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which has been struggling for independence from Georgia since 1992. Most of its people were Russian citizens who wanted union with Russian North Ossetia.
If not directly behind Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia, Washington had to have been at least fully aware of Saakashvili's plans. The Georgian Army was trained and equipped by US and Israeli military advisors stationed with its troops down to battalion level. CIA and Israel's Mossad operated important stations in Tbilisi and coordinated plans with the Saakashvili, whose political opponents accuse him of being very close to CIA and the Pentagon.
Georgia's attack on South Ossetia was launched while the world was absorbed by the Beijing Olympics, and Putin was in the Chinese capital.
Saakashvili's 'coup de main' was a disaster. Russia's 58th Army responded by routing Georgian forces and delivering a humiliating strategic and psychological blow to the Bush administration. In fact, Saakashvili fell right into Moscow's trap.
Georgia and Russia have been feuding since 1992 over two Georgian ethnic enclaves, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, whose people differ in ethnicity and language from Georgians.
The young, US-educated Saakashvili became Georgia's president in 2003 after an uprising, believed organized by CIA and financed by US money, overthrew the able former leader, Eduard Shevardnadze. I came to know and respect Shevardnadze in Moscow when he was Mikhail Gorbachev's principal ally and architect of Soviet reform.
Saakashvili quickly became the golden boy of US rightwing neoconservatives and their Israeli allies, who held him a model of how to turn former Russian-dominated states into 'democratic' US allies. Georgian critics claim Saakashvili kept power by intimidation, bribery, and vote rigging. The youthful Georgian leader launched a war of words against Moscow.
US money, military trainers, advisers, and intelligence agents poured into the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Israeli arms dealers, businessmen and intelligence agents quickly followed, reportedly selling some $200 million or more of military equipment to the Georgian government.
By expanding its influence into Georgia, the Bush administration brazenly flouted agreements with Moscow made by president George H.W Bush not to expand NATO into the former USSR. President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both violated this pact. Under the feeble Yeltsin regime, bankrupt Russia could do nothing. But under Putin, newly wealthy Russia finally pushed back.
Russia's tough deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov, sneeringly observed that Georgia had become, a 'US satellite.' Ivanov, a former KGB colleague of Vlad Putin, knows a thing or two about satellites. Georgia provided the US oil and gas pipeline routes from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan that bypassed Russian territory. Russia was furious its Caspian Basin energy export monopoly had been broken, vowing revenge.
Now that the Russians have checkmated the US and client, Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia will likely move into Russia's orbit. The west backed independence of Kosovo from Serbia. The peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, who are ethnically and linguistically different from Georgians, should have as much right to secede from Georgia.
Besides thwarting Bush's clumsy attempt to further advance US influence into Russia's Caucasian underbelly, Putin delivered a stark warning to Ukraine and the Central Asian states: don't get too close to Washington. Putin put the US on the strategic defensive and showed that NATO's new eastern reaches - the Baltic, Bulgaria, Romania, and the Caucasus - are largely indefensible.
It's a good thing Georgia was not admitted to NATO, as the White House had reportedly promised Saakashvili. Had Georgia been admitted before this crisis, the US and its NATO allies would have been in a state of war with Russia. Disturbingly, Germany's conservative prime minister, Angelika Merkel, rushed to Tbilisi to assure Saakashvili that her nation still backed NATO membership for Georgia.
Is the west really ready to be dragged into a potential nuclear war for the sake of South Ossetia? Are American and German troops ready to fight in the Caucasus? Georgia is a bridge too far for NATO.
President George Bush, VP Dick Cheney and Sen. John McCain all resorted to table pounding and Cold War rhetoric against Russia. McCain, whose senior foreign policy advisor is a neoconservative and was a registered lobbyist for Georgia, demanded that the US and NATO 'punish' Russia and put it in the diplomatic doghouse. McCain's high indignation was only exceeded by his inability to properly pronounced 'Abkhazia.'
America's neocon amen chorus demanded a confrontation with Russia, invoking their usual mantra about Munich and appeasement. Not a few cynics wondered if the Caucasian imbroglio had not been staged by the Republicans to provide Sen. McCain with the 'three am phone call' he has been longing for.
Hypocrisy flew thicker than shellfire. Bush, who ordered the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, and is threatening war against Iran, accused Russia of 'bullying' and 'aggression.' Putin, who crushed the life out of Chechnya's independence movement, piously claimed his army was saving Ossetians from ethnic cleansing and protecting their quest for independence.
Bush and McCain demand Russia be punished and isolated. The humiliated Bush is sending some US troops to Georgia to deliver 'humanitarian' aid. Equally worrisome, the US rushed to sign a pact with Warsaw to station anti-missile missiles and anti-aircraft batteries, manned by US troops, in Poland. This response is dangerous, highly provocative, and immature.
The west must accept Russia has vital national interests in the Caucasus and the former USSR. Russia is a great power and must be afforded respect. The days of treating Russia like a banana republic are over.
The US's most important foreign policy concern is keeping correct relations with Russia, which has thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at North America. Georgia is a sideshow. US missiles in Poland and radars in the Czech Republic are a dangerous, unnecessary provocation that is sowing dragon's teeth for future confrontation.
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