The recent flareup between the Republic of Georgia and Russia has yet again brought up the issue of how far powerful nations will go to protect what they perceive as their national interest. As much as the United States can cry foul over the supposedly heavy-handed response Russia exercised over the ill-advised military incursion by Georgia into the breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, it (the U.S.) paved the way for the Russian government to engage in this blatant disregard for international norm and political decorum.
When we invade other countries at will, threaten others with “all options are on the table” and overtly encourage countries in the Russian “sphere of influence” to engage in acts that Russia could perceive as threatening there had to be a perception in Washington that something like this was bound to happen. The complications in the implementation of U.S. foreign policy is the lack of consistency in our actions. On the one hand, we are encouraging Kosovo to declare its independence from Serbia and on the other, we are encouraging Georgia to bomb a territory that is clamoring for autonomy. We have no problem encouraging China to grant autonomy to the Dalai Lama and his people in Tibet, yet we do not see anything wrong in Georgia’s unnecessary use of force in South Ossetia. There is a larger question that has not been asked and that is why did Georgia attack South Ossetia. Given the bitter history between Putin of Russia and Saakashvili of Georgia, the Georgian leadership must have known that Russia will respond with force. Could it be that the Georgian administration was promised some form of protection to warrant their brazen action? Why did the U.S. agree to ferry Georgian troops from Iraq back home to engage in the fighting instead of trying to arbitrate? That the Saakashvili government grossly miscalculated in this case is not in question. Perhaps, they have been westernized to the extend that they thought they were already a member of NATO and were anticipating that the NATO forces will attack Russia should there be a military response from Medvedev and Putin. The bigger picture here is that the Russians are obviously sending a strong message that they will not allow the United States to build a military presence in their backyard. The Nuclear Shield program had never been favored by Russia and the military operation in Georgia is to let the nations who are thinking of signing on to beware of what could be their fate. To quote Russian president Medvedev, “Peace needs to be re-established in the region and guaranteed and underpinned so that no one again will get idiotic ideas, and this I see as the main task of the Russian Federation”.
This is even more ominous now that Russia is comparing its operations in Georgia to the U.S. operations in Iraq. It is funny that Secretary of State Rice is complaining of the Russian leader “not keeping his word” to abide by a truce that was signed. Even more laughable was President Bush accusing the Russians of “bullying and intimidation”. I guess he is in a very good position to know – it takes one to know one. The fact of the matter is that the United States is not in any position at the moment to have any influence on world affairs involving powerful countries like Russia and China. That perhaps explains why it is the French president who is mediating a ceasefire while the U.S is sending Secretary Rice to Georgia to “show our support”. What impression would the families of the people that were slaughtered by the Georgian army have? Why did the Bush administration not rebuke Saakashvili for his reckless actions which resulted in the loss of thousands of lives and the rendering of thousands more homeless in all of this? We seem too focused on short-sighted goals sometimes that we appear to miss the bigger picture.
There is no doubt that the U.S. government has pumped in a lot of money into the Georgian economy, and that we are training their military personnel. There is also no doubt that the Russians are aware of this. How would the U.S. government react if Russia was in Venezuela training their military and building military infrastructures there and installing military satellite systems? Would the U.S., for example, get involved and go into Mexico if a there was a breakaway region that had our support and got attacked by the Mexican government? What would be our reaction today if China or Russia suddenly decided to station “defensive” nuclear missile batteries in Cuba? For some reason, our leaders seem to think it is okay for the U.S. to do something and unacceptable for other nations to do the same thing.
Governor Tim Kaine, perhaps captured this most succintly when he said “In much of the world now, we’re talking loudly and have no stick because what we’ve done is we’ve so focused on Iraq that we’ve let victory escape from our grasp in Afghanistan, and in regions of the world like Russia, we’ve let the dangers grow more intense.”
