Know Your Friends

Alright. There's been quite a length of time since the Colonel and I last posted anything up here, but now that the school year is soon to begin I thought I would get back into the swing of things with some comments on a recent development in world affairs. It's been a topic both on and off the campaign trail, though the implications are obviously much farther reaching than that.

Earlier this month, Georgia invaded South Ossetia. Of course, since Georgia (under President Saakashvili) has doubled it's troop commitment in Iraq, they have been staunchly supported by the Bush administration and almost every right-winger here in the states - much like the dictatorship of Musharraf was supported in Pakistan due to his vocal support for the war on terror. Before we jump to conclusions about the uncalled-for aggression on the part of the Russians, we should perhaps examine more closely our relationship to this "democracy."

Saakashvili took office in early 2004, vowing to bring Georgian economics into the modern world and to stop corruption. While he has undoubtedly helped the Georgian economy leap forward with his devotion to free markets - and corruption with government has visibly decreased - there are still unanswered questions as to some of his decisions. Saakashvili's human rights record is, at best, questionable. Soon after ascending to the office of the president, he claimed that massive coordinated prison riots were being set up by criminal masterminds and therefore ordered a "shoot to kill" in the event of anything that remotely resembled instigation of riots in the prison system. In his inaugural statement, according to his own website, he stated that it was time for the government to be afraid of the people. He also has declared a state of emergency and ordered police force on relatively small political protests, leading to denunciations from organizations inside and outside Georgia.

Up until extremely recently, Saakashvili has supported a "diplomatic resolution" to the South Ossetia question. It was, however, Georgia that invaded South Ossetia, triggering the military response of Russia. As Mikhail Gorbachev pointed out in an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times, Russia didn't need to do this to "assert dominance" in the region, as some western officials and pundits have claimed. Much of South Ossetia was under attack long before the Russians arrived.

Unfortunately (and though I hate to agree so heavily with Gorbachev . . . he was far too friendly with Reagan), this issue has been painted as black and white in the western media. Instead, it is intensely multi-faceted, with at least as many sides as the still-poorly-understood relations between various religious sects ethnicities in the Middle East and South Asia.

As far as the presidential campaign goes here in the states, Mr. McCain has advocated for the removal of Russia from the G8, while Mr. Obama has been somewhat more cautious. Mr. McCain's proposal is, frankly, ridiculous. If his idea of diplomacy is a knee-jerk reaction to cut ties when this kind of situation arises, how will he react to even more subtly shaded relationships in other parts of the world? It doesn't exactly inspire optimism.

The Cold War is over. Russia knows this, and recent actions in no way indicate a return to "a desire to rebuild the empire." It is the U.S. that has so far failed to treat Russia as potential partner, and without the recognition of this possibility (however distant), no real progress will be made.

-The Ambassador