Georgia war rooted in US ‘self-deceit’
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON – The United States policy of absorbing Georgia and Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which was enthusiastically embraced by Senator Barack Obama and his Democratic running mate Joseph Biden, has undoubtedly been given a major boost by the Russian military operation in Georgia.

In the new narrative of the Russia-Georgia war emerging from op-eds and cable news commentaries, Georgia is portrayed as the innocent victim of Russian aggression fighting for its independence.

However, the political background to that war raises the troubling question of why the George W Bush administration failed to heed

warning signs that its policy of NATO expansion right up to Russia’s ethnically troubled border with Georgia was both provocative to Russia and encouraging a Georgian regime known to be bent on using force to recapture the secessionist territories.

There were plenty of signals that Russia would not acquiesce in the alignment of a militarily aggressive Georgia with a US-dominated military alliance. Former Russian president Vladimir Putin (now premier)made no secret of his view that this represented a move by the United States to infringe on Russia’s security in the South Caucasus region. In February 2007 he asked rhetorically, “Against whom is this expansion intended?”

Contrary to the portrayal of Russian policy as aimed at absorbing South Ossetia and Abkhazia into Russia and regime change in Georgia, Moscow had signaled right up to the eve of the NATO summit its readiness to reach a compromise along the lines of Taiwan’s status in US-China relations: formal recognition of the sovereignty over the secessionist territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in return for freedom to develop extensive economic and political relations. But it was conditioned on Georgia staying out of NATO.

That compromise was disdained by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. After a March 19 speech at the Atlantic Council in Washington, Saakashvili was asked whether Russia had offered a “Taiwan model” solution in return for Georgia stay out of NATO. “We have heard many, many suggestions of this sort,” he said, but he insisted, “You cannot compromise on these issues … ”

Russia, meanwhile, had made it clear that it would respond to a move toward NATO membership for Georgia by moving toward official relations with the secessionist regions.

US policymakers had decided long before those developments that the NATO expansion policy would include Georgia and Ukraine. They convinced themselves that they weren’t threatening Russia but only contributing to a new European security order that was divorced from the old politics of spheres of interest.

But their view of NATO expansion appears to be marked by self-deception and naivete. The Bill Clinton administration had abandoned its original notion that Russia would be a “partner” in post-Cold War European security, and the NATO expansion policy had evolved into a de facto containment strategy.

Robert Hunter, former US ambassador to NATO in the Clinton administration and head of a three-year project for the State Department on reform of the Georgian National Security Council, says the US project of Georgia’s membership in NATO “had to be seen by any serious observer as trying to substitute a Western sphere of influence for Russian” in that violence-prone border region of the Caucasus.

Some officials “wanted to shore up democracy,” said Hunter in an interview, imagining that NATO was “a kind of glorified Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe” – a negotiating and conflict prevention body to which the Russian Federation belongs.

But there were also some in the administration who “genuinely wanted to contain the Russians by surrounding them”, he added.

James J Townsend, director of the International Security Program at the Atlantic Council and formerly the Pentagon official in charge of European relations, said there was enthusiastic support in both the Defense Department and the State Department soon after Saakashvili took power in 2003 for integration of Georgia into NATO “as quickly as possible”.

Townsend believes the project to integrate Georgia and Ukraine into NATO gained momentum in part because Washington “was underestimating just how sensitive this is to Putin”. US policymakers, he said, had observed that in previous rounds of enlargement, despite “a lot of bluff and bluster by the Russians”, there was no Russian troop movement.

Furthermore, policymakers believed they were proving to the Russians that NATO expansion is not a threat to Russian interests, according to Townsend. They did become aware of Russia’s growing assertiveness on the issue, Townsend concedes, but policymakers thought they were simply “making trouble on everything in order to have some leverage”.

In the end, the bureaucracies pushing for NATO expansion were determined to push it through despite Russian opposition. “I think it was a case of wanting to get Georgia engaged before the window of opportunity closed,” said Townsend.

To do so they had to ignore the risk that the promise of membership in NATO would only encourage Saakashvili, who had already vowed to “liberate” the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions, to become even more sanguine about the use of force.

In the same March 19 speech in Washington, Saakashvili minimized the problem of Russian military power in the region. He declared that the Russians “are not capable of enforcing the Taiwan model in Georgia. Their army in the Caucasus is not strong enough … to calm down the situation in their own territory. I don’t think they are ready for any kind of an adventure in somebody else’s territory. And hopefully they know it.”

It was a clear hint that Saakashvili, newly encouraged by Bush’s strong support for NATO membership, believed he could face down the Russians.

At the NATO summit, Bush met resistance from Germany and other European allies, who insisted it was “not the right time” to even begin putting Georgia and Ukraine on the road to membership. But in order to spare embarrassment to Bush, they offered a pledge that Georgia and Ukraine “will become NATO members”.

Hunter believes that NATO commitment was an even-more-provocative signal to Putin and Saakashvili than NATO approval of a “Membership Action Plan” for Georgia would have been.

The Russians responded exactly as they said they would, taking steps toward legal recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And Saakashvili soon began making moves to prepare for a military assault on one or both regions. (On Monday, The Upper House of parliament, or Federation Council, voted 130-0 to call on President Dmitry Medvedev to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent.)

In early July, Rice traveled to Tbilisi with the explicit intention of trying to rein him in. In her July 10 press conference, she made it clear that Washington was alarmed by his military moves.

“The violence needs to stop,” said Rice. “And whoever is perpetrating it – and I’ve mentioned this to the president – there should not be violence.”

David L Phillips, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told the Los Angeles Times last week he believes that, despite State Department efforts to restrain the Georgian president, “Saakashvili’s buddies in the White House and the Office of the Vice President kept egging him on.”

But whether more specific encouragement took place or not, the deeper roots of the crisis lay in bureaucratic self-deceit about the objective of expanding NATO up to the border of a highly suspicious and proud Russia in the context of an old and volatile ethnic conflict.

The U.S despatched USS MacFaul to the Black sea for humanitarian mission and joined by ships from other NATO countries such as Poland and Spain, Russia on Monday despatched her flagship Moskva missile cruiser to test weapons according to the article and soon to despatch Sovremeny type destroyers to the black sea,remember SS-N-22

can’t understand why so many idiots think countries are bent on suicide. Russia knows that despite what the fanboys think, if they open the nuclear box they’ll be a heap of ashes before it’s over.

The U.S knows more than anybody that its landstrip less than 1/2 the size of Russia would be a heap of ash that was the ultimate reason why it shutup during the crisis.Had it been another country like,Iraq ,Yugoslavia or Afghanistan,the U.S would have been there bombing and pounding already.

The first couple of SS18 (mod1) with 24megaton yield of nukes the most feared and powerful ICBM in the universe would melt the whole of NORAD in the cayenne mountain before it’s over.

Idiots tell the real facts as oppose to pompous,arrogant,complacent and unrealistic clowns.

Russia’s Military is really in a poor state and while they may have walked all over poor little Georgia. The rest of the world is hardly impressed…….To me Russia just pulled a Pearl Harbor of the 21st Century. Now the West will re-arm at a far greater pace than Russia could ever hope to compete with……….Russia could have join the free world and been a valued partner within a stronger Europe. Instead it just turn back the clock to the good old days of the USSR! Really, disappointing and the Russian Public will pay the price yet again.

Russia was not in Georgia to impress anybody, what a poor assertion. Russia was in Georgia to kick her out. And by a logical reasoning why should the world rush to arm because of a poor Russian performance, – contradiction he!!!.

What valued partner?,Russia doesn’t want to be a partner with anybody. Russia is alone, and even 27 countries + the U.S was nowhere able to stop Russia militarily- shame except to open their mouths as wide as the galaxy only to yell.

…….does warrant some form of response. NATO’s statement above is clear statement of intent and would, IMO, be a sizeable ruler over Russia’s knuckles.

NATO is a gigantic toothless beast and can’t do a thing, they can only yell and spew rhetoric.

They also aired a statement from both Medvedev and Sucky-villi,

Yeah, it is Sucky-villain. Ha,ha,ha!!!

I am not a rascist, you are saying so. if a teacher teaches an Arabic student how to prove a pythagoras theorem in an old version of a textbook, which is efficient and he can’t, and the same theorem is modified in an abriged version, and he can. If I make a comment,if I make comment does it mean I am rascist ? .

I told you that the U.S cannot use an obselete weapon like those used in Georgia to defeat an enemy which is as capable as Georgia.

Yeah we saw that in Desert Storm

The whole Western world, NATO, and even some countries from mother Africa partook in that storm. I think the Arabs wheren’t so smart to use those obselete against the coalition forces. Had there been an obselete S-200, it would have change the situation.

It is the other way around. Medvedev is the supreme commander, when Putin has to run the government only. Similar to France to give an idea for the others. By the way, looking into the pics of Putin during the opening in Bejing showed the tension of Putin. So in the hindsight we get an idea why?

True Putin looked tense, at a point during a meeting, he pointed a finger at George Bush and waive it in a gesture of warning reminiscent of somebody furious,ang George Bush got the body language message. The fear of all leaders is that Puin being a judo expert could loose his temper and reflexly thump the person down on a flour. I have read somewhere, that he got into a furious argument with Bush and Sarkozy and he told them annoiyingly that Georgia would pay a painful price through military action.