Hullabaloo

Monday, August 11, 2008

 
What's The Matter With Georgia

by digby

This situation is very difficult to unravel, but at this moment it appears that the Georgians miscalculated and the Russians are using it as an excuse to overthrow the Georgian government --- or at least inflict some terrible pain on the country.

Matt Yglesias, at his new digs at Think Progress, has predictably been making some sharp observations (just scroll down --- and say hi.) He points to this very troubling piece by Fred Kaplan in Slate:

It’s heartbreaking, but even more infuriating, to read so many Georgians quoted in the New York Times—officials, soldiers, and citizens—wondering when the United States is coming to their rescue. It’s infuriating because it’s clear that Bush did everything to encourage them to believe that he would. When Bush (properly) pushed for Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, Putin warned that he would do the same for pro-Russian secessionists elsewhere, by which he could only have meant Georgia’s separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin had taken drastic steps in earlier disputes over those regions—for instance, embargoing all trade with Georgia—with an implicit threat that he could inflict far greater punishment. Yet Bush continued to entice Saakashvili with weapons, training, and talk of entry into NATO. Of course the Georgians believed that if they got into a firefight with Russia, the Americans would bail them out.

Yglesias adds:

This highlights, I think, some of the limits of the kind of bluff-and-bluster approach to foreign policy that seems popular among conservatives these days. Or, rather, it highlights the fact that popular as bluster-based policymaking is on the American right it can have some extremely high costs and that, tragically, a large proportion of those costs can wind up being borne by the people who were nominally supposed to be the beneficiaries.

When I read the Kaplan piece I couldn't help but be reminded of the fallout from Gulf War I, when Poppy's promises were met with blank looks during the Shia uprising. It was horrible for the Iraqis. It was a great benefit, however, to the neoconservatives who pimped that story for years as some sort of failure of American honor which led to ... well, you know.

If Bush, Cheney and their oil buddies (they only seem to get really excited these days when there's a bunch of oil or pipelines at stake) have been making promises the US can't keep, it only serves to create a sort of martyr cause for them to use down the road. In fact, it's possible that's the whole point. Push for NATO, push for military involvement, push for permanent presence. That seems to be the neoconservative longterm energy plan ---- rule the world. Same as it ever was.

Oh, and the conservos should probably soft peddle the self-righteous screeching about how the Russians broke the law and invaded for the purpose of "regime change" and occupation. I'm pretty sure we recently trademarked that particular move.


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digby 8/11/2008 08:30:00 PM |