The small war in South Osetia leaves an obsessive question behind: did President Şaakasvili act without the U.S. consent?
The small war in South Osetia leaves an obsessive question behind: did President Şaakasvili act without the U.S. consent?
At a first glance, Washington has been taken by surprise by the leader of Tbilisi and has done everything it could to confirm their surprise. At the time of the attack and several days afterwards, President Bush was on the stadiums of the Beijing Olympics, where he discussed calmly with Prime Minister Putin. The American reaction towards the great Russian counterattack was and remained moderate and, in any case, especially rhetoric. As the Georgian army suffered their predictable correction from Russia, the diplomatic channels were spreading the information that America did not have anything to do with Georgia’s suicidal moves.
Logic also pleads in the favor of the authenticity of the surprise feeling of the U.S. administration. What did the White House think when it pushed Mikhail Şaakasvili adventurously into that attack? It is impossible for the Americans to have been unaware of the number of soldiers that Russia had in the Caucasus, soldiers that were fully equipped and ready for battle. It was more than likely that the leaders from Kremlin will use their means to perform their duties of "imposing peace" and give a lesson to Georgia, in order to prove that inviting them to join NATO was risky and, therefore, not recommended, or even impossible. Why would the U.S. send their total ally, for the military equipment of which they had spent so much money, to a certain defeat and risk deteriorating their relations with Russia and probe their inability or lack of willingness to use force in the complicated region in the South Caucasus?
However, it is hard to believe that
