Georgia on my mind

It takes quite an effort to be heard above the wall-to-wall media lovefest of the Beijing Games, but Vladimir Putin seems to have managed it. Of course, there are plenty of people in the punditry class who see the scrap between Russia and Georgia as a chance to revive the... uh... excitement of the Cold War.

The battle lines were drawn in the press as fast as they were in the Georgian countryside, and the narrative established: the mean old Russian Bear, revived by Putin, is once again chomping down innocent democracies. So naturally, this is a U.S. problem, right?

Let's be frank: there are no "good guy" governments in that part of the world (if anywhere at all). Russia, after a brief post-communist flirtation with democracy, settled into a quasi-capitalist autocracy under Putin. Georgia, meanwhile, professes the trappings of a western democracy, but unresolved issues in South Ossetia and Abkhazia have meant heavy-handed government and repression of various ethnic groups. From Russia's point of view, any complaints we make about their treatment of our 'friends' in Georgia bear about as much consideration as their protests in 1999 about our treatment of Serbia over the issue of Kosovo. This doesn't mean I believe Russia's actions are justifiable. It simply means I believe we have little room to point fingers given our track record since the fall of the Soviet Union. We had an opportunity in the 1990s to gradually dismantle NATO and extricate ourselves from being big brother to the world. Instead, we pushed the frontiers of an allegedly defensive alliance right to the doorstep of our defeated Cold War foe, humiliating the Russian people and virtually guaranteeing we'd be drawn into something like this sooner or later.

Meanwhile, the press makes much of Georgia's contribution of troops to Iraq, noting they've been the "third largest" presence, after the U.S. and Britain. But if we end up finally going to daggers with Russia over a perceived debt to Georgia for the contribution of 2,000 soldiers to a flytrap venture in the Middle East, then the Iraq War's legacy may turn out even more bitter than the most pessimistic dared fear.