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roachboy · 08-13-2008, 06:34 AM

no. it's not the onset of another cold war.
although something like that is a neocon wetdream: the world would once again make sense and their military keynesianism would once again find a (flimsy) rationale.

i don't see much latitude for old-school imperial penis-waving in this one.

a. what mccain says he would do is in this situation meaningless. it says nothing to claim that next year he would back georgia. the bush people backed georgia now.
this is a little overview:

Quote:

After Mixed U.S. Messages, a War Erupted in Georgia
By HELENE COOPER and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — One month ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Tbilisi, Georgia, for a high-profile visit that was planned to accomplish two very different goals.

During a private dinner on July 9, Ms. Rice’s aides say, she warned President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia not to get into a military conflict with Russia that Georgia could not win. “She told him, in no uncertain terms, that he had to put a non-use of force pledge on the table,” according to a senior administration official who accompanied Ms. Rice to the Georgian capital.

But publicly, Ms. Rice struck a different tone, one of defiant support for Georgia in the face of Russian pressure. “I’m going to visit a friend and I don’t expect much comment about the United States going to visit a friend,” she told reporters just before arriving in Tbilisi, even as Russian jets were conducting intimidating maneuvers over South Ossetia.

In the five days since the simmering conflict between Russia and Georgia erupted into war, Bush administration officials have been adamant in asserting that they warned the government in Tbilisi not to let Moscow provoke it into a fight — and that they were surprised when their advice went unheeded. Right up until the hours before Georgia launched its attack late last week in South Ossetia, Washington’s top envoy for the region, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, and other administration officials were warning the Georgians not to allow the conflict to escalate.

But as Ms. Rice’s two-pronged visit to Tbilisi demonstrates, the accumulation of years of mixed messages may have made the American warnings fall on deaf ears.

The United States took a series of steps that emboldened Georgia: sending advisers to build up the Georgian military, including an exercise last month with more than 1,000 American troops; pressing hard to bring Georgia into the NATO orbit; championing Georgia’s fledgling democracy along Russia’s southern border; and loudly proclaiming its support for Georgia’s territorial integrity in the battle with Russia over Georgia’s separatist enclaves.

But interviews with officials at the State Department, Pentagon and the White House show that the Bush administration was never going to back Georgia militarily in a fight with Russia.

In recent years, the United States has also taken a series of steps that have alienated Russia — including recognizing an independent Kosovo and going ahead with efforts to construct a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. By last Thursday, when the years of simmering conflict exploded into war, Russia had a point to prove to the world, even some administration officials acknowledge, while Georgia may have been under the mistaken impression that in a one-on-one fight with Russia, Georgia would have more concrete American support.

After a meeting at the White House on Tuesday, Ms. Rice emphasized the urgency of bringing the fighting to a halt, rather than how and why it started. But around Washington, there are some rumblings already over whether the crisis might have somehow been headed off.

In a flurry of briefings intended to counter the critics and overcome the impression of having been caught flatfooted, senior Bush administration officials tried to paint a portrait of American reason and calm in the midst of hot tempers in what several called “a hot zone.”

Officials at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon said that President Saakashvili did not officially inform the Bush administration in advance of his offensive — let alone ask for support. “The Georgians figured it was better to ask forgiveness later, but not ask for permission first,” said one administration official. “It was a decision on their part. They knew we would say ‘no.’ ”

But critics say the United States may have given Georgia reason to hope.

Ms. Rice went to Tbilisi just as tensions between Russia and Georgia were escalating. Standing next to Mr. Saakashvili during a press conference, she said that Russia “needs to be a part of resolving the problem and solving the problems and not contributing to it.” Mr. Saakashvili, for his part, was clearly thrilled to host Ms. Rice.

“We are also very grateful for your support for our peace plan for the conflicts and for your unwavering support for Georgia’s territorial integrity,” he said.

Ms. Rice left Tbilisi, but the violence between the Georgians and the South Ossetian separatists continued to get worse, until 10 days ago, when it suddenly escalated. Each side accused the other of setting off the fighting, which began on Aug. 1 and involved mortars, grenade launchers and small-arms fire. Troops from Georgia battled separatist fighters, killing at least six people; the Georgians accuse the South Ossetians of firing at Georgian towns from behind Russian peacekeepers.

By Thursday night, Aug. 7, things had gotten out of hand, almost everyone agrees.

At the State Department in Washington, Mr. Fried, the top envoy for the region, received a phone call on Thursday from Georgia’s foreign minister, Eka Tkeshelashvili, who said the country was under attack. The foreign minister said Georgia had to protect its people.

“We told them they had to keep their unilateral cease-fire,” the official said. “We said, ‘Be smart about this, don’t go in and don’t fall for the Russian provocation. Do not do this.’ ”

Around the same time, members of the Georgia army unit assigned to a training program under American advisers did not show up for the day’s exercises. In retrospect, American officials said, it is obvious that they had been ordered to mobilize for the mission in South Ossetia by their commanders.

“This caught us totally by surprise,” said one military officer who tracks events in the region, including the American-Georgian training effort. “It really knocked us off our chairs.”

Ms. Rice did not get on the phone with her Georgian counterpart on Thursday, but left it to Mr. Fried to deliver the “don’t go in” message, a senior administration official said. “I don’t think it would have made any difference if she had,” the official said. “They knew the message was coming from the top.”

A few hours later, in the early morning hours of Friday, Aug. 8, Georgia launched its offensive in South Ossetia, and Russia responded with a tenfold show of force. Ms. Rice, the administration official said, “called Saakashvili on Friday morning, after their folks were in.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/wa...3diplo.html?hp

mccain offers little---a bit more of the same incoherent nonsense.
and at this point, the game has been forcibly changed--so at another level, saying "i'd back georgia for nato membership" isn;t worth the air expended in saying the sentence.
but it appeals to the manly man fantasies of the conservative set i suppose.

one way of seeing all this is as a bit of blowback from the american's imploded credibility and strategic weakness thanks to the overwhelming incompetence of the bush administration.
another is that the russians really did nothing to oppose the american invasion of iraq so the americans did nothing to oppose this.
another is that it really has nothing to do with the americans.

no doubt the central role being played by sarkosy rankles some of the same rightwingers---but it mostly got play on cspan (and who watches that) and in other places like the financial times.

geopolitically, this seems not far off the mark at the moment:

Quote:

Living with the Russian bear

Published: August 12 2008 19:46 | Last updated: August 12 2008 19:46

Russia has, for the moment, more or less ended its assault on Georgia. Diplomacy, led by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French and current European Union president, has entered the arena to try to separate and reconcile the combatants, But Vladimir Putin, re-emerging as Russia’s real leader over the past week, has achieved nearly all of Moscow’s war aims, in the face of a feeble western response. Russia looks in no mood to negotiate anything. This is going to be a difficult crisis to manage.

Russia has seized full control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two separatist enclaves it sponsors on Georgian territory. It has damaged and humiliated the US and Israeli-trained Georgian army, and re-established its writ in the Caucasus. The likelihood of Nato now embracing Georgia and Ukraine – and committing to defend them – has receded, despite Tuesday’s assertion by Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, its general secretary, that the alliance’s pledge to admit them eventually still stands.

Mr Sarkozy arrived in Moscow with a plan for a truce, Russian commitment to Georgia’s territorial integrity, a return to each side’s positions before Georgia attacked the South Ossetian capital last week, and a peacekeeping force under the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Russia pre-empted him on the ceasefire but is unlikely to give too much on the rest. Moscow argues that just as the west acted to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and eventually separated the province from Serbia, so Russia acted to protect its nationals and peacekeepers in South Ossetia from “genocide”. Unlike in Kosovo, the world has, so far, seen no proof of these alleged massacres. The Russian peacekeepers, moreover, acted more as fireraisers than as firefighters.

But, absurd though Moscow’s mimetic argument is, the west should call its bluff. If Russia’s real worry is the humanitarian situation in the enclaves, an OSCE peacekeeping mission should present it with no problem. The future of the disputed territories must be decided by negotiation, not by land-grabs.

The EU and the US have limited leverage with Russia; giving Georgia’s erratic leadership an IOU on Nato entry has not increased it. Yet the west must engage with Moscow and robustly test its intentions. Russia’s membership of the G8, its wish for strategic partnership with Nato and the EU and entry to the World Trade Organisation – all part of its self-image as a world power – should be made conditional on its behaving as a responsible power. That is the least that anxious former Soviet vassals can expect.

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Editorial comment - Living with the Russian bear