Newsweek, NYT & LAT - Russia/Georgia - Tough Talking Neocons Lead To Another Major FP Screw Up

[Median Democrat]

It is amazing how consistently stupid the Neocons are. After ignoring the threat of terrorism to focus on Iraq, which helped lead to 9/11, then squandering international good will, and invading Iraq while the Afganistan mission was still ongoing, the US has also managed to royally screw up the Georgia and Russia situation, which is leading us closer to war with Russia than we have been in decades. Worse, the neocons are leading the way, and McCain is taking these failures as a sign that Neoconservatism FP is working! With all the tough talk that comes from Neocons, can you blame Georgia for thinking that the US has his back when he picked a fight with Russia? Worse, did the US encourage Georgia to provoke such a confrontation? Either way, it is either incredibly stupid or deliberately planned, and it is difficult to determine which is worse.

Here are three separate articles that provide a nice overview of the genesis of this screw up, which gets precious little play on cable news:

Newsweek: Pushing Russia’s Buttons - Putin's invasion of Georgia is unforgiveable. But let's face it: the West helped to provoke Moscow's aggression.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/152087

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There is no excusing Vladimir Putin's bloody invasion of Georgia (yes, it was Putin; Dmitri Medvedev has been the president since May, but it was now-Prime Minister Putin who flew to a border staging area to confer with Russian generals). Still, we ought to try to understand what is motivating Putin and his fellow Russian revanchists. And, as the West confronts its own weakness in response—Putin well knows that NATO is bogged down in Afghanistan, America is stretched thin in Iraq and Europe depends on his energy lifeline—we should acknowledge that at least some of the blame lies, as it does so often, with our own hubris. Since the cold war ended, the United States has been pushing the buttons of Russian frustration and paranoia by moving ever further into Moscow's former sphere of influence. And we have rarely stopped to consider whether we were overreaching, even as evidence mounted that the patience of a wealthier and more assertive Russia was wearing very thin.

The proximate cause of what one U.S. official said Monday "appears to be a full invasion of Georgia"—though Medvedev announced a ceasefire today—is the long-festering dispute between that country's ambitious pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and Moscow over two separatist regions. But the seeds of Russia's aggression lie in the sense of humiliation that Moscow's proud power elites have felt at the hands of the West going back to the Clinton administration's unceasing efforts to bring what used to be the Soviet bloc—and post-Soviet Russia itself—into the West's sphere of influence. The policy started with the high-handed (and mostly failed) economic advice we gave to Moscow on free-market economics in the early '90s—the era of "privatization" (the Russians called it "grabitization"), which led directly to the reign of the hated oligarchs.

It continued with our efforts to encourage the former Soviet satellites and republics to come and join the West's party, both as members of NATO and, prospectively, the European Union. That policy began with the former satellite states of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, which joined NATO in 1999, continued with the Baltic states, and then forged ahead with Washington's active support of the Orange and Rose Revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia and its feckless encouragement of their Westernized, pro-NATO presidents. Last April NATO invited in two more Eastern European members: Croatia and Albania.

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New York Times: "After Mixed U.S. Messages, a War Erupted in Georgia."


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

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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.

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LA Times: Georgia conflict may spark new U.S. policy battle over Russia

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-usrussia13-2008aug13,0,7104516.story

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But the conflict in Georgia this week has left efforts to engage Russia in disarray, and there are increasing signs that administration hard-liners are using the crisis to reassert their view that Moscow should be isolated.

Vice President Dick Cheney's declaration Saturday that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered" was seen by some experts as the first salvo of what could be a new battle over administration policy.

Some conservatives believe the administration has not been tough enough with Russia. Frederick W. Kagan, a neoconservative scholar who has advised the Bush administration, praised Cheney's comment and faulted President Bush for failing to outline to the Russians the consequences of pressing their assault.

Kagan and others are marshaling arguments for the policy deliberations already underway over how to deal with the aftermath of the Georgian crisis.

Some Bush administration officials are likely to press for kicking Russia out of the Group of 8, which includes the seven major industrial countries and Russia, and blocking its admission to the World Trade Organization. The U.S. also could pledge to rebuild the Georgian military and cut Russia out of discussion over the missile defense system in Europe.

A tougher stance would represent a significant shift for the administration, which recast its approach to Russia in Bush's second term. During Rice and Gates' March visit to Moscow, they carried a personal letter from Bush to then-President Vladimir Putin, now prime minister, that tried to strike a conciliatory tone on a variety of issues.

That was a contrast from the opening months of the Bush administration, when advisors pushed the White House to unilaterally pull out of arms control treaties and propose American military bases in former Warsaw Pact countries.

"There has always seemed to be a split within the government, so a consistent policy for dealing with Russia has been absent," said James J. Townsend Jr., who handled European relations at the Pentagon before joining the Atlantic Council of the United States think tank last year. "In the first term, there were a lot of hard-liners on Russia who did not look kindly on cooperation."

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