Georgia/Russia: So now I'm in a fight and Sarko is seriously not helping. I feel Saakashviliesque.

By Paul Wells - Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 3:41 PM - 0 Comments

So much has happened. Let me catch you up.

In addition to umpty-dump blog postings on the current unpleasantness in South Ossetia and points west, south and east, I have today published a column in our print edition saying, more clearly than the blog posts do, that I think Georgia must be left, with regret, more or less to its fate.

Now Andrew Coyne rebuts.

And there it will have to stay until this evening, when I will have much to say.

UPDATE: Let me briefly, while the rest of my flight boards ahead of me, outline what can only be called the villainy of Nicolas Sarkozy, who spent the weekend “negotiating” a “peace” on behalf of half a billion Europeans. We have already seen that Sarko gave away the farm to the hard-nosed Russians. But it’s worse than that. The language of the deal gave the Russians a pretext for pushing their action after the nominal ceasefire hour. And it turns out that when in Moscow, Sarko told Medvedev that there was no point demanding the ouster of Saakashvili because the Georgian president had already “cooked” himself.

You stay classy, Nicolas.

Georgia on my mind

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 3:01 PM - 0 Comments

Here are a few things that are not especially relevant in assessing the situation in Georgia today.

1) Whether the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was reckless and provocative in attempting to retake control over the separatist-minded provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, given Russian sponsorship of both.

2) Whether the West humiliated Russia in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, specifically by recognizing the secession of Kosovo from Serbia earlier this year over Moscow’s objections.

3) Whether the Bush administration was unduly confrontational in proposing Georgia for membership in NATO at last spring’s Bucharest summit — or, for that matter, whether the Germans and French signalled weakness by opposing its entry.

4) Whether the United States and its allies are hypocrites for opposing Russia’s invasion of Georgia as behaviour incompatible with 21st century states, having bombed Serbia and invaded Iraq within the last decade.

These explanations of events, repeated in dozens of newspaper op-eds and magazine articles since the Russians invaded, may be true. Or they may be untrue. But what all of them overlook is one rather salient fact: Georgia is a sovereign, independent country. Whatever its internal disputes, whatever its external alliances, whatever the West’s strategic blunders or moral blinders, they do not justify Russian tanks rolling through the streets of Gori, Poti and other Georgian cities. One country, and one country alone, bears responsibility for this invasion. That country is Russia. Continue…

Georgia/Russia: Sounds like mixed messages to me

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 4:10 PM - 0 Comments

From the Los Angeles Times:

A senior U.S. official involved in Russia policymaking vehemently denied that the administration had sent mixed messages, arguing that although Saakashvili had long received strong support from the most senior American officials, Georgians were warned not to engage Russia militarily.

“We have consistently, and on Thursday also, urged the Georgians not to move their forces in. We were unambiguous about it,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity when discussing private talks with the Georgians. “Saakashvili had always told us he could not stand by while Georgian villages were being shelled, and we always knew this was a point of pressure. We always told him that he should not give in to the kind of provocations we knew the Russians were capable of.”

But Phillips said he believed that even if the State Department was warning the Russians, the Georgians heard a different message.

“I think the State Department was assiduous in urging restraint, and Saakashvili’s buddies in the White House and Office of the Vice President kept egging him on,” Phillips said.

Georgia/Russia: This just gets better and better

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 2:27 PM - 0 Comments

I know I am beginning to try the patience of some readers who wonder why a little warlet in a tiny distant country matters. Hush, dissenters, or I’ll start writing about my iPod again.

In the meantime, events are turning out to have consequences. Even words! Turns out words have consequences! Who knew?

Not John McCain, who got up on his hind legs yesterday and announced, “We are all Georgians.” That was yesterday. Like, a day ago. And now, a day later, here’s the president of Georgia, who has paid McCain’s top foreign-policy advisor $800,000 in lobby fees since 2004, saying, in effect, Time to put your money where your mouth is, big boy.

“Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, ‘We are all Georgians now,’” Saakashvili said on CNN’s American Morning. “Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it’s time to pass from this. From words to deeds.”

What kind of deeds does Mikheil Saakashvili have in mind? He’s coy for the moment, but in case you’re looking for a f’rinstance, here’s Max Boot suggesting “the Pentagon should rush delivery” of Stinger anti-aircraft and Javelin anti-tank missiles to Georgia.

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Georgia/Russia: When France negotiates with Putin, it sucks to be Georgian

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 12:23 PM - 0 Comments

A dynamite article by Arnaud Leparmentier in Le Monde gives the tick-tock of France’s participation in ceasefire talks between Russia and Georgia. The article makes it obvious that Mikheil Saakashvili had to make huge concessions in return for almost no gains against the Russians. Substantial excerpts, translated by me, follow:

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Georgia/Russia: McCain/Obama: Tomato/Tomahto

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 8:06 AM - 0 Comments

This is what makes democracy so great. Choice:

On Monday, though, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama found themselves on the same page in dealing with the current crisis, perhaps reflecting the delicacy of the situation. 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.

At last, hard-won bipartisan consensus around a set of exquisitely useless proposals. The Security Council? Russia has a veto. Path toward NATO membership? That puts off to tomorrow the question whose answer could not have been more obvious today: “Is Georgia worth a U.S. war?” As for an international peacekeeping force, the Russification measures Saakashvili tried to stop by force are, themselves, primarily non-military: passport distribution, propaganda, administration by Russian government. All of that would continue under the noses of peacekeepers.

Georgia/Russia: Mr. Yglesias is from Missouri, Mr. Obama from inside the box

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 11:14 PM - 0 Comments

John McCain today said “We are all Georgians.” Matthew Yglesias, a formidable young liberal U.S. blogger (now at a new, frankly partisan home after leaving The Atlantic), dissents. Cleverly. If Russia’s armies had invaded Georgia the state, Americans would respond differently than McCain probably wants them to respond this week. So McCain’s statement is meaningless at best and pernicious at worst. I’ll let Matt finish the thought.

But I want to say a word about Barack Obama’s response to the Georgia war. He (or his campaign; he’s supposed to be on vacation) has played catch-up to McCain all week. Which you only do if you think the other guy is going somewhere useful.

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Georgia/Russia: Saakashvili's candidate

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 5:49 PM - 0 Comments

The president of Georgia speaks at a rally in Tbilisi, flanked by the presidents of Poland and Ukraine (the three Baltic countries’ leaders were there too), and quotes John McCain:

I should also note this communiqué on the Georgia Young Lawyers’ Association website, signed by more than a dozen NGOs that have often been sharply critical of the Saakashvili regime. Those fights are or another day; today, they call on “the World democratic community to take quick and effective measures to stop violence in Georgia.”

Georgia/Russia: Tom Friedman can't be right about everything

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 8:55 AM - 0 Comments

I ate in the Tbilisi McDonald’s in December, so never mind this little gem: “No two countries that both had a McDonald’s [have] fought a war against each other, since each got its McDonald’s.”

Also problematic: “In the Cold War, the most frequently asked question was ‘How big is your missile?’ In globalization, the most frequently asked question is ‘How fast is your modem?’”

Georgia/Russia: Ante up, he said

By Paul Wells - Monday, August 11, 2008 at 9:42 PM - 0 Comments

Slate‘s Fred Kaplan wonders why the hawks are so half-hawkish:

A few counterquestions for those who rise to compare every nasty leader to Hitler and every act of aggression to the onset of World War III: Do you really believe that Russia’s move against Georgia is not an assertion of control over “the near abroad” (as the Russians call their border regions), but rather the first step of a campaign to restore the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe and, from there, bring back the Cold War’s Continental standoff? If so—if this really is the start of a new war of civilizations—why aren’t you devoting every waking hour to pressing for the revival of military conscription, for a war surtax to triple the military budget, and—here’s a twist—for getting out of Iraq in order to send a few divisions right away to fight in the larger battle? If not, what exactly are you proposing?

Georgia/Russia: The neighbours will talk

By Paul Wells - Monday, August 11, 2008 at 5:39 PM - 0 Comments

The presidents of Poland and the Baltic states — Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia — release a joint statement on the Russian invasion of Georgia. The statement contains a direct rebuke of NATO for putting Georgian accession to NATO on the slow track:

We regret that not granting of the NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia was seen as a green light for agression in the region.

And, perhaps crucially, the statement closes with this (slightly wonkily-translated) open invitation:

“This Declaration is open for the accession by the leaders of other democratic countries.”

So there’s an option for, say, Canada’s prime minister, if he shares the analysis of its Central and Eastern European colleagues.

I wouldn’t sign it, because I disagree with the paragraph I cite above. But the prime minister has, on occasion, sought to get noticed in what’s sometimes called New Europe. Here’s his chance…

Georgia/Russia: Gori and Senaki by bomblight

By Paul Wells - Monday, August 11, 2008 at 12:26 PM - 0 Comments

(Source: BBC)

Russian troops have now moved far inland into Georgia from both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, launching attacks on the towns of Gori in the North and Senaki in the West. I just got off the phone with a guy who works at an NGO in Washington, and he’d just got off the phone with Georgia government types in Tbilisi, and they confirm what the BBC is reporting.

Here is a blog the Georgia Foreign Affairs Ministry is running with constant updates on the conflict. Readers should of course be aware that the Georgian government is one of the belligerents in a shooting war and you can’t take every word they put on their blog to the bank. But if nothing else this blog will give you a hint of the scale of the carnage.

QUICK UPDATE: From the Georgia government blog, a map of alleged Russian air strikes against Georgia ground targets, up-to-date as of late yesterday (click to embiggen):

Georgia/Russia: Escalate!!!

By Paul Wells - Monday, August 11, 2008 at 8:05 AM - 0 Comments

No, that’s not my advice, it’s William Kristol‘s in the New York Times:

Georgia, a nation of about 4.6 million, has had the third-largest military presence — about 2,000 troops — fighting along with U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq. For this reason alone, we owe Georgia a serious effort to defend its sovereignty. Surely we cannot simply stand by as an autocratic aggressor gobbles up part of — and perhaps destabilizes all of — a friendly democratic nation that we were sponsoring for NATO membership a few months ago.

For that matter, consider the implications of our turning away from Georgia for other aspiring pro-Western governments in the neighborhood, like Ukraine’s. Shouldn’t we therefore now insist that normal relations with Russia are impossible as long as the aggression continues, strongly reiterate our commitment to the territorial integrity of Georgia and Ukraine, and offer emergency military aid to Georgia?

Emphasis mine, although I’m not sure how you could read those two paragraphs and put the emphasis anywhere else. This advice has the virtue of clarity, even if it is devoid of all the other big virtues. It goes spectacularly beyond what even John McCain proposed in his quicker, more-hawkish-than-Obama response to the South Ossetia war. And it would transform a Georgia-Russia war into a Russia-U.S. war in about a second and a half. If you like that sort of thing, that’s the sort of thing you’ll like.

COMPARISON-SHOPPER UPDATE: When even the Daily Telegraph is more dovish, you know you’re a hawk.

Georgia/ Russia: McCain/ Obama

By Paul Wells - Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 7:01 PM - 0 Comments

I just wanted to nod briefly at the way the South Ossetia unpleasantness is playing out in the U.S. presidential election: as a chance for some fairly nasty mudslinging. Here’s the tale, from Talkingpointsmemo. Discuss.

Georgia/ Russia: Blame Merkel?

By Paul Wells - Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 2:17 PM - 0 Comments

Edward Lucas, The Economist’s Central and Eastern European specialist, says the current unpleasantness in South Ossetia was made possible by a spineless West.

Our fatal mistake was made at the Nato summit in Bucharest in April, when Georgia’s attempt to get a clear path to membership of the alliance was rebuffed. Mr Saakashvili warned us then that Russia would take advantage of any display of Western weakness or indecision. And it has.

In this view, the villainess in the piece would be Angela Merkel, whose economic politics are centre-right but whose foreign policy often diverges sharply from that of her Anglosphere colleagues. She said at the NATO summit in May that countries “entangled in regional conflicts” mustn’t become NATO members, and she stared down advocates of quick NATO membership for Georgia, including George W. Bush and Stephen Harper.

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Our man in Tskinvali

By Paul Wells - Friday, August 8, 2008 at 2:48 PM - 0 Comments

Actually, for the moment, we don’t have one. But the Georgia Messenger is liveblogging the unpleasantness in South Ossetia, and it will be worth checking in with them for updates through the weekend.

Another Georgia blog here.

NATO's adventures in the real world I: Proxy war with Russia, anyone?

By Paul Wells - Friday, August 8, 2008 at 10:31 AM - 0 Comments

“If it’s true that Russian troops and armaments have been sent to Georgia, it means that we are in a state of war with Russia,” Georgia’s National Security Council secretary Alexander Lomia told AFP today. Well. Above is an LA Times photo of Russian troops and armaments being sent into South Ossetia, a multi-ethnic breakaway province which Georgia still defines as Georgian territory.

Already both the Russians and the Georgians have exchanged artillery fire and there are conflicting reports about who has the upper hand. Whether the two countries are now at war depends on your definitions, but it’s hard to see how one can be avoided at this point.

The stakes here could hardly be higher, for many reasons, including this one:

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Georgia on my border

By Paul Wells - Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 7:33 PM - 0 Comments

The first or second file on Dimitry Medvedev’s desk when he becomes Russia’s president on Wednesday will be the increasing likelihood of a border war with Georgia. A week in Tbilisi last December didn’t qualify me to decipher the competing claims of aggression and provocation now poisoning the relationship between the two countries, but for what it’s worth, Russia’s skittishness is greater than it would already have been because (a) its ally, Serbia, lost Kosovo through a UDI that Canada (eventually) supported; (b) Georgia is a candidate for NATO membership, extending the alliance right to Russia’s border. Its candidacy is supported by Canada. Continue…