ON OUR MOVES FOR GEORGIA

TIME OF NEED

Even though the current crisis in Georgia seems over-shadowed in our media by the Olympics and the Edwards fiasco, we need to pay more attention to the chess-game that's really being played by Russia's Putin (image-WSJ).

As this Times of London piece makes clear, at the very least, we owe the Georgians a little more than what we've been doing over the weekend via jaw-boning at the U.N., NATO, and Europe.

Georgia's President Saakashvili makes a direct, impassioned plea via the pages of the Wall Street Journal this morning (and any western media outlet he can access while being attacked militarily and via cyber-attacks by Russia).

Conservative commentators like Robert Kagan at the Washington Post make additional arguments why this chess-game merits our fuller attention.

Regardless of partisan politics here, it's clear that Russia's Putin is sending a broader message to the 13 countries that were formerly a part of the Soviet Union, and are now independent countries, that it won't pay to try to be too independent from core Russian interests, or to be too close to the west.

And that's something we need to be paying attention to, despite all our other current problems, distractions, and crisis-weariness.

It's interesting that Prime Minister Putin went directly from the opening ceremonies at the Olympics in Beijing to a frontier town in Russia next to South Ossetia and Georgia, to personally supervise the military actions in the area.

By contrast, President Bush stayed behind at the Olympics, and seemed to be enjoying the basketball and swimming events where our teams are doing well at in Beijing.

One out of the box idea may be for President Bush to personally visit Georgia on the way back to the United States, of course assuming that it could be done without compromising our President's security.  It'd be even better if his father, former President Bush, could accompany him there, since he's already attending the games in Beijing with his son.

But a personal visit to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia by at least one President Bush, might send a signal to Prime Minister Putin that we really mean it when we say we want to the situation to return at least to the August 6th pre-war borders.

And President Bush would be supporting an ally who's provided the most forces in Iraq after our second-biggest partner Great Britain.  Not to mention an ally who named the main road from the Tbilisi airport to the town after our current President and still has a big Bush billboard on the road to town.

Comments

[jeremy]

We see this type of world reaction all the time. Ignoring the moral side of the argument b/c it is convenient to do so.

[Alex Tolley]

Welcome to the real world.

The follies of the Bush doctrine, expressed by many in advance of it, has now started to create the talked about backlash. Putin's minions have already joked about the US term "regime change" that signal's Russia's intention to do things just as the US did. While we are mired in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are not going to have any significant resources to challenge Russia, so we will likely sit impotently on the sidelines as Russia has her way with Georgia. The arrogance of out rhetoric for the last 8 years, plus the slapping of Russia's face with the siting of missiles in Poland this summer has finally resulted in a push back, this time from a country we cannot either bully or crush. The folly of the US policy is now being laid bare, in a mere 8 years. How long before China takes Taiwan without so much as a shot being fired?