Today marks the three-year anniversary of the end of the 2008 war between Georgia and Russia, and this week we've seen all sorts of retrospectives looking back at what it means (a particularly good one is Julia Ioffe's in The New Yorker). One casualty of the war that has been little discussed, however, is the U.S.'s credibility in the former Soviet Union. An exception is a good piece in the most recent issue of the academic journal Central Asian Survey (subscription required), The war in Georgia and the Western response, by British scholar Mike Bowker.
[A]t a time of growing tension between Georgia and Russia, the Bush administration gave unequivocal backing to President Saakashvili. Instead of cooling passions in Tbilisi, Washington stoked them. As Saakashvili prepared for war, the US trained Georgian troops, provided military equipment, conducted military exercises on Georgian territory and lobbied hard for Georgia to become a member of NATO. Although Washington always emphasized its opposition to the use of force, Bush did not retract his support when his will was apparently defied. On the contrary, Washington continued to support Saakashvili after the assault on Tskhinvali. Indeed, Dick Cheney declared a few days after the war had started that ‘Russian aggression must not go unanswered’...
Washington['s problem] was that its backing of Tbilisi meant that a local defeat for Georgia became what Stephen Blank called, ‘a resounding strategic defeat for the West’. America’s outspoken support for Saakashvili indicated that Washington had a stake in the outcome of the war, but the White House never had any intention of intervening in any meaningful way against the Russians in the Caucasus. However, when Moscow showed itself willing to use force, the outcome was never in doubt. It seemed that Moscow had challenged the US and prevailed. On the other hand, Washington appeared unwilling to act effectively to defend its allies on the territory of the former Soviet Union. This fact led to some concern in Moldova and Ukraine which, like Georgia, also contained pro-Russian national republics with secessionist ambitions. This was the exact reverse of the message which Bush had intended.
In other words, the U.S. spoke loudly but carried a small stick. This is where critics of the Obama administration's "reset" with Russia are missing the point. They complain that the U.S. is abdicating its influence in that part of the world and impotently allowing Russia to exert its influence -- but the Bush administration did the same thing, it just pretended otherwise. Shortly after the war, I argued that the U.S. was getting kicked out of Manas because Kyrgyzstan didn't trust the U.S. as a strategic partner after Washington stood by and watched Georgia get clobbered. Obviously events quickly overtook that analysis, and the U.S. was able to regain access to Manas. But since then, the U.S. has made it more and more clear that its interests in the region are primarily a function of the war in Afghanistan, not as a strategic end to expand U.S. influence in and of itself. You might criticize that policy (as I have) as creating imbalanced U.S. priorities in the region, but at least the policy is credible.
You can't say that for the U.S. Senate resolution, passed July 29, condemning Russia's "occupation" of Georgia. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev blew off the resolution, calling it the "views of some of its senile members". But the Georgian government ate it up:
Georgian Ambassador to the US, Temur Iakobashvili, assessed the Resolution as “yet another confirmation” that Georgia’s territorial integrity is an important issue for Washington. “This is yet another step of Georgia’s strategic partner to support Georgia. This official document adopted by the US Senate, along with the statement made earlier on this issue by the White House, proves one more time that the issue of Georgia’s territorial integrity is a principal issue for the US,” the Ambassador said.
The lessons of three years ago should have taught Georgia better. One might wonder if the ambassador, to borrow his own words, is "smoking bad-quality hash."
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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