Matt Yglesias

23 Responses to “Landay: Bush Warned Georgia”

1. DTM Says:
   August 12th, 2008 at 10:12 am

   Don’t be too hasty, Matt.

   This article suggests the State Department was trying to warn the Georgians off taking any provocative action. But there is a very long history in this Administration of the Cheneyites (up to and including Bush) sending different messages to foreign actors than State.

   In that sense, there isn’t a sufficiently unified “Bush Administration” foreign policy structure such that if some Administration officials were saying one thing, that necessarily means all Administration officials were saying the same thing.

2. MattF Says:
   August 12th, 2008 at 10:15 am

   My guess is that there was a mixed message. Rice/Gates probably delivered fairly blunt warnings about what would happen and what would not happen– but Chaney & Co. are not above delivering a different message, if they can get away with it. And the Georgians, given a choice, heard what they wanted to hear.

3. Spackler Says:
   August 12th, 2008 at 10:19 am

   On the other hand, as Kevin Drum notes this story makes the administration’s enthusiasm for expanding NATO to include Georgia all the more baffling.

   Matt, you have to admit that to Saakashvili’s ears, the Administration’s advice quite possibly sounded like giving a battered wife the advice of quit doing [fill in the blank] in order to not provoke her batterer husband.

   Ultimately, I think that you can argue Drum’s point the other way: if Georgia had been granted NATO status earlier, Russia would have been less inclined to be provocative and the West would have had more leverage over Georgia.

4. Grand Moff Texan Says:
   August 12th, 2008 at 10:20 am

   frankly, given the record that Landay and McClatchy have put together over the years

   Uh, they quote their sources as “U.S. officials said Monday,” so this is not their analysis, Matt. They also cite this analysis:

   Some experts, however, wondered whether the administration might have inadvertently sent Saakashvili mixed messages that would have led him to believe he could count on U.S. support if he got into trouble.

   The only contemporary evidence concerns Russia’s provocations:

   In June, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Russia’s “unremitting” political and economic pressure included closing its border with Georgia, suspending air and transportation links, imposing an embargo on Georgian agricultural exports and allowing Russian banks to operate “virtually unregulated” with unlicensed Abkhazian banks.

   Finally, even this new revelation stresses that the warnings were general, and were given to both parties, which sounds like the usual diplomatic static:

   At the same time, U.S. officials said that they believed they had an understanding with Russia that any response to Georgian military action would be limited to South Ossetia.

   “We knew they were going to go crack heads. We told them again and again not to do this,” the State Department official said. “We thought we had an understanding with the Russians that any response would be South Ossetia-focused. Clearly it’s not.”

   Yes, it’s CYA, and it’s not even particularly good CYA.
   .

5. Marshall Says:
   August 12th, 2008 at 10:24 am

   To be fair, Matt, putting us on the right side of the “moral clarity” line while letting our European allies take the blame for the costs of pragmatism is not such a ridiculous thing to do. Cynical, obviously, but that hardly differentiates it from the rest of American foreign policy, even the good stuff.

6. jerri Says:
   August 12th, 2008 at 10:36 am

   “a mixed message”. That must mean no one e-mailed Saakashvili any of the satellite images showing the massive russian build up on the Gorgian border.

7. mpowell Says:
   August 12th, 2008 at 11:00 am

   I disagree on the NATO point. The thing about something like NATO, is that it is a far more credible ‘bluff’ or whatever you want to call it, maybe b/c it’s not a bluff at all. Words only mean so much, but if you preserve the integrity of an organization like NATO, you can indicate that your binding yourself to a certain decision ahead of time. Extending NATO protection to a place like Georgia could be dangerous b/c it could lead to war with Russia or alternatively wreck the credibility of NATO if we don’t respond after a Russian invasion, but it’s like saying, don’t go halfway with your security guarantees. But it would almost certainly discourage the Russians enough that they would really would be unlikely to invade (particulary Georgia proper).

   Even then, you can be discouraging an ally from acting bellicose even while promising him support. It may not be effective, but that may be what you’re looking at here.

8. McKingford Says:
   August 12th, 2008 at 11:02 am

   It’s hard to reconcile this story line with the US (with British support) nixing a UN Security council measure on *Friday* (ie. before Georgia started getting its ass kicked) put forward by Russia calling on both sides to refrain from further acts of violence.

9. rj Says:
   August 12th, 2008 at 11:12 am

   Let’s face it, the U.S. State Dept. just ain’t what it used to be. What Jesse Helms started in the 90s, Cheney et al finished in Bush’s first term. Condi “Oh look, Ferragamos” Rice just doesn’t seem to have that George Marshall stature about her. Our foreign policy is dysfunctional by design. Of course, mixed signals are being sent. But the CYA, that they can do.

10. joejoejoe Says:
    August 12th, 2008 at 11:31 am

    The Landay piece cites DoD and State Department sources but I didn’t see any sources coming out of the White House. I’d say the Landay piece is accurate save for the equating “Bush administration” with “State & DoD”. Cheney and Bush sure as hell weren’t warning anybody off anything, it’s not in their nature. I’d like to see all the people pushing the “Bush is now into realpolitik” line eat some crow. Realpolitik doesn’t involve losing track of Russian armor columns because you are “distracted”.

    I think Saakashvili got one message from the White House and another from State & DoD.

11. Reality Man Says:
    August 12th, 2008 at 1:19 pm

    . But it would almost certainly discourage the Russians enough that they would really would be unlikely to invade (particulary Georgia proper).

    Except that the Russians know that they care a lot more about Georgian issues than we do. The real question is would an American president, facing a plethora of international issues (even without both Iraq and Afghanistan) be willing to risk so much political capital and American on lives on Georgia? I think not. We really don’t need Georgia when it comes right down to it. The bluff only works if it’s credible. In poker, no one can see your cards and you can’t see theirs, so everyone is on a level playing field. Things like geography and history are out in the open, thus making bluffing harder. If Georgia was a small Latin American country like El Salvador with strong disagreements with Russia, Russia would be unlikely to invade because we care a lot more about what happens in Latin America than Russia does. The converse works here as well.

12. Dave Says:
    August 12th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

    One problem in under-estimating the Russian response, another U.S. official said, was “a dearth of intelligence assets in the region.”

    U.S. “national technical means,” the official name for spy satellites and other technology, are “pretty well consumed by Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan,” the official said, and there was only limited monitoring of Russian military movements toward the Georgian border.

    Lovely. Just lovely.

13. Richard Steven Hack Says:
    August 13th, 2008 at 5:21 am

    The evidence indicates that Bush and Cheney orchestrated this entire affair. The purpose is to get Georgia admitted into NATO, which in turn allows NATO – and by extension, the US – to push its military capabilities right up to the Russia border.

    This, Russia will not allow.

    This article describes the situation quite clearly:

    The end of the post-Cold War era
    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH13Ag02.html

    It points out that Condi Rice was just in Georgia, promising US support for Georgia to be admitted to NATO.

    Saakashvili drew inspiration from Rice’s statements endorsing Georgia’s claim for membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and open backing of the Georgian stance in its standoff with Russia. It is a moot point whether Saakashvili unilaterally drew conclusions from Rice’s diplomatic gesture or a tacit Washington-Tbilisi understanding came about.

    At any rate, Saakashvili let loose the dogs of war within a month of Rice’s visit to Tbilisi. And he acted with immaculate timing – when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was on summer vacation and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had left Moscow to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics. On balance, it is inconceivable Washington was in the dark about how Saakashvili’s mind was working.

    But at the outbreak of violence, Russia had tried to have the United Nations Security Council issue a statement calling on Georgia and South Ossetia to immediately lay down weapons. However, Washington was disinterested. As the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, put it, there was an “absence of political will” within the Security Council. It seems Washington expected that a quid pro quo could be worked out as well on a new UN Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions on Iran, which the US has been pressing for, and Russia hitherto resisting.

    Bottom line: Bush and Cheney orchestrated this situation, with Condi Rice acting like April Glaspie in Iraq.

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