The good news for you all is that it confirms my strong suspicion that the man who should take most of the blame is Cheney. Scarily for us all, McCain was no less strident in his criticism and I think Obama said something about hope.
The last few years have not been happy times for US foreign policy, the results are most evident in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the longer-term failures and missteps have been in energy foreign policy. Cheney’s speech to the API, has been covered elsewhere, but it is the result of that policy which is now coming home to roost in the Freedom Corridor. Well that combined with criminal stupidity by Saakashvilli.
I have been a spanked a couple of times recently for my less than perfect compliance with copyright law, so I will not provide a full c&p service. But here are some outtakes (the paras cannot be read together – they are standalone statements):
The bloody conflict over South Ossetia will have been good for something at least if it teaches two lessons. The first is that Georgia will never now get South Ossetia and Abkhazia back. The second is for the west: it is not to make promises that it neither can, nor will, fulfil when push comes to shove.
Western governments should exert pressure on Georgia to accept this solution (ed – the de jure separation of S. Ossetia and Abkhazia). They have a duty to do this because they, and most especially the US, bear a considerable share of the responsibility for the Georgian assault on South Ossetia and deserve the humiliation they are now suffering. It is true that western governments, including the US, always urged restraint on Tbilisi. Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, was told firmly by the Bush administration that he must not start a war.
Instead, according to European officials, the Bush administration even put heavy pressure on international monitoring groups not to condemn flagrant abuses by Saakashvili’s supporters during the last Georgian elections. Ossete and Abkhaz concerns were ignored, and the origins of the conflict were often wittingly or unwittingly falsified in line with Georgian propaganda.
Finally, the US pushed strongly for a Nato Membership Action Plan for Georgia at the last alliance summit and would have achieved this if France and Germany had not resisted. Given all this, it was not wholly unreasonable of Mr Saakashvili to assume that if he started a war with Russia and was defeated, the US would come to his aid.
It was indeed surprising that the FT – for a UK paper – had a reasonable take.
I find it impossible to believe that Saakashvili was not prepped or given at least a nod by the US. As you note in another post, Georgian stocks, trade and more importantly, remittances from Georgians working in the RF are all at risk.
Despite Saakashvili’s penchant for having EU and NATO flags on the rostrum whenever he speaks, he isn’t a bona fide member of either and can’t be guaranteed a handout.
And he will have known he sent an army into certain death. Call me conspiracy theorist, but it had to be Cheney behind Condi’s back.
No conspiracy theory needed for the Cheney-pulling-the-strings concept. until he repudiates his API speech the policy is clear.