The New York Times is reporting that Russian troops have detained 21 Georgian soldiers in the Georgian port of Poti. The Georgian soldiers, and 5 U.S.-owned Humvees that were in the port awaiting shipment back to the United States after being used in joint Georgian-U.S. military exercises last summer, were taken to a Russian military base in Abkhazia. The port of Poti is in undisputed Georgian territory, well outside both Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The best article I've read on the entire Georgian situation was an op-ed piece by Michael Dobbs in last Sunday's Washington Post, entitled We Are All Georgians? Not So Fast. In it, Dobbs, who covered the breakup of the Soviet Union for the Washington Post, and who has actually spent some time in South Ossetia, points out that there is plenty of blame to go around for the current mess in the Caucusus, and that it's shared by Russia, Georgia, and the United States.
In what seems to have been a point missed by most reporters covering the story, he points out that Russians have been the oppressors of the Georgians, but that Georgians have also been oppressors of the Ossetians in South Ossetia, and that the ethnic mix in the Caucusus means that the oppressed can quickly become oppressors.
I think the best part of the column is the last two paragraphs:
The bottom line is that the United States is overextended militarily, diplomatically and economically. Even hawks such as Vice President Cheney, who have been vociferously denouncing Putin's actions in Georgia, have no stomach for a military conflict with Moscow. The United States is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and needs Russian support in the coming trial of strength with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.
Instead of speaking softly and wielding a big stick, as Teddy Roosevelt recommended, the American policeman has been loudly lecturing the rest of the world while waving an increasingly unimpressive baton. The events of the past few days serve as a reminder that our ideological ambitions have greatly exceeded our military reach, particularly in areas such as the Caucasus, which is of only peripheral importance to the United States but of vital interest to Russia.
My personal fear is that the very worst thing we could be doing right now is precisely what we ARE doing -- namely, loudly telling the Russians that we won't permit them to do that which we have no reasonable means of preventing them from doing. My thought is that Putin wants to deliver a very clear message to other former Soviet republics that we may talk a great game, but that at the end of the day, we're in no position to back up our brave talk with effective action -- and we're clearly not in any position to do so.
It's cheap to talk about us all being Georgians now, but if that were true, we'd be at war with Russia right now. We're not, and not even the Bush administration would be sufficiently foolish to go to war with Russia over this situation. It's cheap to say, as Condi Rice did a few days ago,
"Russia needs to leave Georgia at once," she said. "This is no longer 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, when a great power invaded a small neighbor and overthrew its government," she added, in reference to the Soviet Union's crushing of the "Prague Spring" liberalization movement.
But if we're not in a position to prevent it from being the equivalent of 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and if the Russians know it (as they clearly do), I fear that this kind of talk just encourages the Russians to demonstrate that our words are empty by acting in an even more oppressive manner than they otherwise would.
I'm certainly NOT saying this is all our fault, or all the Georgians' fault. As Dobbs notes in his article, there is plenty of blame to go around, and the Russians "concern" for the South Ossetians would be a lot more convincing had they not acted in their own autonomous region of Chechnya in pretty much the same manner that the claim to be outraged at the Georgians for acting in South Ossetia. But I think it's way past time to de-escalate our rhetoric and think about how we can advance the cause of democracy without unnecessarily provoking the Russians into even further actions that are counter-productive to the cause of peace and democracy.