Georgia on our . . . tab

President Bush has vowed to send $1 billion in disaster-relief and economic aid to the small country of Georgia, showing once again his tendency to conduct foreign policy by emotion and puffing up his chest (with our money; the deficits are apparently not big enough), even when it is painfully apparent that there is really not much at all that he can do to protect Georgia if Russia is truly determined to dominate it, as it has for most of the time since about 1800. Here's the Register's editorial arguing that it's not our fight, that a smart country picks fights it has a chance of winning instead of money pits. Probably the best we can hope for is is that Russia will be content to neutralize Georgia (that's why it destroyed or immobilized so much of its military equipment). The best way to get there is through quiet diplomacy, not courting confrontation.

The big Georgia-Kosovo picture

Here's a link to my most recent column for Antiwar.com. With some bows to George Friedman at Stratfor.com, it notes that the roots of the Georgian-Russian conflict lie to a great extent in Kosovo -- not so much that western recognition of Kosovo as independent(though it really isn't) gave Putin a justification for recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but the original US-NATO decision to intervene over Kosovo with a brutal bombing campaign to stop a "genocide" that never was. That decision was taken over the objections of a Russia that was weak in the 1990s, but now that Russia is stronger it's determined to "get a bit of its own back." Intervention leaves a long trail, and we don't know the ultimate outcome for years, but in this era it usually involves blowback. Bomb Kosovo, get an anti-American-inclined new Russian empire. Invade Iraq, get a stronger Iran. And so it goes.

Bluffing on a bad hand

Here's the Register's editorial on the current Georgian crisis. Essentially, the U.S> and Western Europe got outsmarted by Russia, which is feeling its oats now that the high price of oil has pumped so much money into the state sector. It was utterly predictable -- anybody with even a sense of Russia history knew it and many predicted it -- that Russia would want to control the countries in what has been called the "near abroad" since czarist times. Simple geography: its frontier is flat plains and subject to invasion (Napoleon, Hitler) so it wants its neighbors friendly or vassals. Russia interpreted NATO expansion as a threat, so it took Georgia down a couple of pegs when Bush tried to push Georgia into NATO. Putin did it at a time when the U.S. could do nothing -- nothing -- effective to stop him. If the U.S. had wanted to do something (not that who rules South Ossetia is one of our core interests, by a long shot) it should have been through quiet behind-the-scenes diplomacy rather than blister, preaching and self-righteousness that the whole world knows we can't back up.

In the process I had a nice talk with my old friend Tom Henriksen at the Hoover Institution. He's got a new book out, "American Power After the Berlin Wall," the first comprehensive history of how the U.S. has used its power, that I think is intended as a college text and is definitely worth reading.

Lust for the Cold War

It appears, though reports as of this moment suggest the possibility of continuing fighting, that a cease-fire will end the Russian-Georgian conflict, at least for now. The Russians even say they agree to French president Sarkozy's proposal of returning to the troop positions before the conflict, with Medvedev saying it's enough to have punished Georgia and more or less decimated its military. But I doubt if we've seen the last of repercussions.

Perhaps the most striking thing about this conflict is the extent to which it has unleashed nostalgia for the Cold War, with Russia as the easily identified, easily demonized enemy again. From the Wall Street Journal to the Heritage Foundation to AEI to Bob Kagan writing in the WaPo. the calls to "do something" about the evil Russians' aggressions against a valued democratic ally issued plaintively.

Trouble is, as this Register editorial outlines briefly, it isn't all that clear who the bad guys or aggressors were here. Just as Georgia sees Russia as the neighborhood bully, the smaller separatist provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia see Georgia as the neighborhood bully, and for reasons rooted in history and ethnicity among other factors they prefer (at least significant majorities do) to be more closely associated with Russia, perhaps even to be part of Russia.

The timing was surprising, but the conflict wasn't. Russia felt (and was) dissed when it was weak and chaotic in the 1990s, but now that it's waxing fat on oil money and has a canny autocrat at the helm, it's worrying about the "near abroad," as Russian regimes have for hundreds of years. It's not necessarily necessary, but Russia has always wanted only neighbors who are friendly or vassals on its border, and the prospect of a state longing to be in NATO, with Saakashvili talking constantly about eventually "retaking" the two provinces that have been de facto independent and allied to Russia (which made all residents Russian citizens was predictably too much for Russians eager to flex their geopolitical muscles a bit to bear. However it started, the Russians were better prepared (probably have war-gamed it a hundred ways).

However, who rules South Ossetia is hardly a core U.S. interest, so there was no sensible reason for the U.S. to intervene -- and besides it had no way to do so. All the blustering without any concrete way to punish Russia only made Bush and McCain (and to some extent Obama) look silly and exposed how helpless a giant the overstretched imperial power is. And to have the invader of Iraq moralizing about invading sovereign countries? I suspect Bush is so self-righteous he didn't even notice a contradiction.