Georgia Playing a Dangerous Game With Russia

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has been poking the Russian bear with impuny. And it appears Russian President Vladimir Putin is spoiling for a first military move to reaquire territorial losses from the break up of the Soviet Union. Georgia is dependent on Russian gas, yet they keep attempting to embarass Russia for it's excesses. Russia has very little to lose. The criticism they would face for annexing Georgia would be deflected by Russian participation in other bigger fish to fry: North Korea and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Bush appears to be fanning the flames, happy to find a new ally who he can buddy up with after most have abandoned the President as a warmonger. I feel for the people of Georgia who have bore the brunt of the conflict and will suffer the most should the Russian Bear move to stomp out it's wayward neighbor.
Foreign Policy

The relationship, prickly since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, took a sharp turn for the worse in late September, when Georgia arrested four Russian soldiers for alleged spying and threatened to block Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization. Russia responded with a ham-fisted crackdown on all things Georgian, cutting off trade and telecommunications to the country and deporting planeloads of Georgian citizens.


Media coverage of the dispute has focused on the behavior of the principal antagonists, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and Russian President Vladimir Putin. But there is another powerful player who has remained far off stage: the United States. Its fingerprints aren’t obvious, but Washington has helped to fuel this crisis—by showering Georgia with cash and praise, by extending the promise of NATO membership, and by standing silent as Saakashvili and his government made ever rasher attacks on Russia.


[...]Georgia, with fewer than 5 million people, depends on Russia for natural gas, a lesson reinforced last winter when Russia used the excuse of a still-unexplained pipeline explosion to cut off the taps. Last spring, Russia ratcheted up the pressure, shutting its market to wine and Borjomi mineral water, Georgia’s two most important exports. Now, it is threatening the country’s biggest source of hard currency, cash sent home by the nearly 1 million Georgians who work in Moscow and St. Petersburg.


Saakashvili’s claim to be fighting the good fight against a hegemonic Russia has been dented by the way he’s handled his country’s own territorial disputes. He came to power promising to reunite Georgia with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two regions that broke away in the bloodshed following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has spent more time rattling sabers than building trust, however, with the predictable result that many of the residents in those regions have taken Russian passports and now look to Moscow, not Tbilisi, as the more reliable engine of jobs and security.


Saakashvili has also come under fire for his management of the parts of Georgia his government controls. Ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis say they are as marginalized as ever. Human Rights Watch, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and other outside groups have documented judicial corruption, police abuse, and the gross mistreatment of prison inmates, including the deaths of seven prisoners last March in a “riot” that critics say was set off by prison authorities themselves.


That same week in Tbilisi, hundreds of demonstrators protested the government ’s alleged cover-up of the Interior Ministry’s involvement in a high-profile murder. One of the country’s most prominent television newscasters quit her job on camera, to protest attempts to censor the news at the government-affiliated channel.


And where was Saakashvili during all the turmoil? He was at the White House, basking in the glow of President George W. Bush’s praise. Saakashvili “is a man who shares the same values I share,” Bush said. “He believes in the universality of freedom.”