No, we are not all Georgians
Dick Cheney's pledge of solidarity with Georgia is all about antagonising Russia, securing oil and helping the RepublicansAll comments (45)
Lionel Beehner guardian.co.uk, Tuesday September 09 2008 19:08 BST Article historyRarely does Dick Cheney venture abroad without setting off some sort of tempest in foreign policy circles. And his most recent trip to Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Georgia did not disappoint. The US vice-president offered Ukraine and Georgia Nato membership and promised the latter $1bn in humanitarian aid to put itself back together after its war with Russia.
When did Georgia become America's 51st state? I applaud moves to send humanitarian aid, but $1bn to a country of 4 million inhabitants? What makes me sick to my stomach is that the aid is not one of American generosity - it is a cold, calculated move aimed squarely at Russia. Moreover, we are rewarding the Georgian government's reckless behaviour - invading a separatist province despite reported warnings from Washington not to - and creating a moral hazard in the process.
Cheney, on his visit, called the Georgians "courageous" and said Americans "stand in solidarity with people of Georgia". Really? I bet most Americans couldn't even pinpoint South Ossetia on a map, much less pronounce the name of the province.
The reason for Americans' sudden love of all things Georgian is manifold. First, a renewed cold war-style confrontation with Russia has been in the offing for the past few years. The Yukos affair, Russia's cyber war with Estonia and the British Council row were all signs pointing in this direction. Every time Vladimir Putin clears his throat, something anti-western comes blurting out.
Second, Georgia falls on an important energy corridor. The Baku-Ceyhan pipeline runs east-west beneath its ground and is vital to keeping the paws of Iran and Russia off Caspian crude. Nobody knows this better than Cheney. Before he leaves office, he is eager to shore up energy projects for future clients - the better to pad his retirement earnings out of office. And Georgia pays handsomely, as Randy Scheunemann - who penned a $200,000 contract back in April with Tbilisi while working as John McCain's senior foreign policy adviser - surely knows.
Third, Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili has launched a charm offensive of Ahmed Chalabi-like proportions. Every neoconservative in Washington has been wined and dined by the dapper young English-speaking president. To return the favour, nearly all of Washington turned a blind eye when Saakashvili ordered his troops to fire on unarmed protestors last November and shut down independent television stations, prompting a snap presidential election.
Finally, a cold war with Russia helps the Republicans. The more American voters are twitchy on national security, the more they lean right. Even Putin has hinted that the Georgian operation was hatched in Washington to help McCain. While that idea is a bit far-fetched and conspiratorial, the beneficiary of worsened US-Russian relations is no doubt McCain (and of course Sarah Palin is a well-seasoned Kremlinologist, thanks to her state's close proximity to Russia!).
This is not to excuse Russian behaviour. It would be difficult to defend the Kremlin's actions anywhere in its near abroad over the past decade. But recklessly siding with any state that stands up to Russia or haphazardly expanding Nato eastward is neither a sound policy nor a strategic priority, what with Iran racing forward on its nuclear ambitions and Afghanistan looking more like Iraq every week. Russian cooperation on these issues is needed. That does not mean we should not criticise Moscow, but by poking the Russian bear in the eye, Cheney will only bequeath to the next president a foreign policy mess in the making.
Georgia fits neatly into the Republicans' black-and-white fiction of its foreign policy - the narrative that there is good and evil in this world and Russia falls squarely under the latter. Attempting to parse situations such as Russia's war with Georgia and find nuance is something Democrats like to do, akin to negotiating with evil, a phrase often heard last week in St Paul.
Cheney's reckless foreign policy should be reined in. Promising all sorts of handouts to Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan is not a coherent policy. It is a knee-jerk response to Russian aggression that will only fan the flames.
Interestingly, if Saakashvili is a "political corpse", as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev described him in a fit of anger, then Cheney's recent meeting with the Georgian leader was just one political corpse talking to another.
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09-05-2008, 10:27 PM
Georgia Started This Fight! And Russia Finished It! 
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