The Georgian dogs of August — or schmucks of our time

By Weekly Archive On Aug 27, 2008

Stupid
leaders interpret words to satisfy their political desires. They miss
vital nuances in dangerous international relations. On August 7,
Mikheil Saakashvili ordered Georgia’s armed forces to invade South
Ossetia, a secessionist province bordering Russia. In so doing, he
joined other heads of state who won dunce caps with disastrous
decisions based on failure to understand the obvious.

Georgia’s
President apparently counted on U.S. backing, albeit his “good
friend” George W. Bush had not explicitly promised to send U.S.
forces if needed. The Georgian Army assaulted a piece of its own
country, causing tens of thousands of South Ossetians to flee into
Russia. Did “Saaka” ask Bush the explicit question or merely
extrapolate — as in “good friend must translate into U.S. military
support?”

In
June 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger flew to Santiago to
address the OAS on human rights. Before his speech, he met with
Chilean dictator August Pinochet to try to help boost his tarnished
image. In the conversation, according to a State Department Memcon
(**), K assured P that Washington “approved of his methods” —
probably referring to free market economics and his dispatching reds,
pinkos and rose-shaded elements from the Chilean political scene. But
that “cleansing” activity led to worldwide condemnation for human
rights abuses and provoked the Kennedy Amendment barring Washington
from selling military equipment to Chile. K wanted Chile to buy new
fighter jets. By praising P’s “methods,” K may well have led
the less than suave Chilean general to think that “approval”
included permission to assassinate Orlando Letelier, former Chilean
Ambassador (under Allende) to the United States, in Washington, D.C.,
on September 21, 1976. After all, P may have reasoned, K knows we
assassinate our enemies abroad. Indeed, K had helped Chile set up a
multination hit squad called Operation Condor.

In
1978, the Justice Department indicted Chile’s secret police chief
and other Chilean officials for the assassination. P’s name
remained on an unsigned indictment in the Assistant U.S. Attorney’s
office in Washington, D.C., for conspiracy to assassinate Letelier —
until he died in 2006.

In
1982, Argentina’s military junta thought that praise from
Washington for “ridding their country of subversives” would
surely merit support for a war they planned against England to regain
control of the Falklands/Malvinas islands. Indeed, U.S. diplomats and
military attachés in Buenos Aires offered pats on the back to
the thugs in power who had offered help in the U.S.’ illegal war
against Nicaragua.

When
they reclaimed the Malvinas and England declared war, Washington
sneered at the Argentine request for support, as if it ever could
have considered deserting its closest and longest standing ally for a
bunch of military brutes — and temporary ones at that.

In
1990, before Iraq invaded Kuwait, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told
Saddam Hussein that the U.S. had no “opinion” on Arab-Arab
disputes. Presumably, she thought Saddam planned to take the small
corner of Kuwait that had been in dispute and that legally belonged
to Iraq.

Saddam,
not a man known to detect the nuance in a statement, understood her
words as President Bush’s (I) permission to take all of Kuwait. Oh
well!

Saakashvili
has now earned his status in the ranks of modern blunderers. This
former New York lawyer turned head of state thought he enjoyed full
U.S. support. After all, he had remained loyal when the rest of
Bush’s coerced coalition began pulling out of Iraq. He kept 2,000
Georgian troops there and won in return Bush’s support for NATO
membership — plus hugs, back slaps and even White House dinners and
lunches. Given these outward assurances and lots of U.S. military
aid, and despite occasional warnings about provoking the
semi-sleeping Russian Bear, he dispatched his troops against
secessionist “rebels,” killing Ossetian civilians. As thousands
of Ossetians fled north into Russia, Russian troops poured south
forcing Georgian forces to beat a hasty and less than dignified
retreat.

Russia
removed the Georgian military from both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
It added punishment and humiliation to Saakashvili’s predicament by
occupying Georgian territory and bombing some areas. Presumably, the
Russian leaders had little concern that the West that had armed and
encouraged Georgia would do anything to stop the military push.
As Bush frothed at the mouth in anger, all he could do was dispatch
one military airplane, filled with humanitarian supplies.

The
embarrassed Bushies now leak to the stenographic U.S. press that its
pleas to Saakashvili to act prudently regarding the pro-Russian
enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia fell on deaf ears. Such a
version of events collides with Bush’s authorization to send U.S.
military advisers to integrate into Georgia’s military apparatus.
Could Washington have such a chummy relationship and yet exert no
control over events that could have led to nuclear war?

“It
is inconceivable that the Americans were unaware of Georgia’s
mobilization and intentions,” wrote Stratford military analyst
George Friedman. “It is also inconceivable that the Americans were
unaware that the Russians had deployed substantial forces on the
South Ossetian frontier. U.S. technical intelligence, from satellite
imagery and signals intelligence to unmanned aerial vehicles, could
not miss the fact that thousands of Russian troops were moving to
forward positions.” (August 13, Stratfor.com)

If
true, Bush emerges as strategically more idiotic than Saakashvili.
Bush said nothing when Georgian troops invaded South Ossetia and
Abkhazia. Someone in his entourage must have known the Big Bear would
not tolerate such a provocation. Indeed, Russia showed Georgia and
the world who controlled its sphere. But, whined Bush, the Russian
response was “disproportionate” and “brutal.” This from the
shock and awe man who bombed and invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and
threatens war with Iran!

A
decade ago, Clinton bombed Serbia for almost three solid months and
then sent troops in to “persuade” its government to allow Kosovo
to secede. Compare Serbia’s claim to its territory with Georgia’s
“historic” — as if — hold on Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russia
has signed a peace accord and swore to begin troop withdrawal. But
Konstantin Kosachev, Chair of Russia’s Parliamentary foreign
affairs committee, said Russian forces “sooner or later”
will
leave Georgia, depending on conditions. “If I would ask you,”
Kosachev continued, “how fast the American forces can leave Iraq,
the answer would be, as soon as we have guarantees for peace and
security there. The same answer would be toward this situation.”

In
1991, the United States rejoiced over the break-up of the former
Soviet bloc. But the much heralded principles of self-determination
and sovereignty apply only when the U.S. says they do.

When
some residents of two provinces, not with an ethnically Georgian
majority, seek independence, the United States waxes indignant.
Saakashvili and Bush’s neo cons hold different standards. What the
good guys do is automatically good.

Now
what? President Medvedev has stopped the “well-intentioned” West
from reducing Russian power. In Eastern Europe, NATO had already
absorbed six former Soviet bloc states and three former Soviet
Republics. Washington even induced the Russians to close their only
nuclear pact monitoring base in Lourdes, Cuba to show “sincerity.”

Less
than five years later, Washington has begun a new anti-missile
strategy, by moving sites from Western Europe to Poland and the Czech
Republic — supposedly to defend against non existent Iranian ICBMs
and nuclear weapons.

On
the economic front, Western capital and diplomacy steered a
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia.
No Russian participation — or profit. Western capital and political
know-how poured into Ukraine and Georgia to usher in “democratic
revolutions” — anti-Russian; they tried and failed in Belarus.

The
questions not posed by the U.S. media came from Fidel Castro: “What
are Georgian soldiers doing in Iraq if not supporting a war which has
cost that people hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of
victims? What ideals are they defending there?”

“Saakashvili,
on his own,” wrote Castro, “would never have jumped to the
adventure of sending the Georgian army into South Ossetia, where he
would be clashing with Russian troops.”

Egg
now drips from several faces. But Georgia’s foolish president
doesn’t have a stable of toady neo cons and a distracting media to
help lick it off. The question is: has the Russian military move
taught the West a lesson or will Bush and his successor push until an
even more dangerous “incident” occurs?

(**)
A memcon is a memorandum conversation: a conversation recorded by the
a State Department recorder (equivalent, for example, of a court
reporter).

Saul
Landaus is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. His films are
available on DVD at
http://roundworldproductions.com