Remember when this happened, and certain hair-on-fire Plankers lamented the end of the callow, unserious Obama campaign when McCain took his noble, decisive, "We're all Georgians now" stand? And McCain suggested an emergency admittance of Georgia into NATO, which would have put us "at war" with Russia? And that was considered, by some, to be sober, serious and righteous? And these hair-on-fire Plankers went on and on about McCain's bold foreign policy chops while lamenting the naivety of anyone who didn't agree?

Good times. Good times. Seems like a long time ago, though.

"Not Georgians Now"...You are talking about Georgia, right? Damn right we're not Georgians.

Regardless of who started the war, it was very clear that we were not going to intervene in any meaningful way.  Hence it was very clear that "We are all Georgians now" was empty rhetoric.

When you talk smack and can't back it up, you lose credibility.  In that respect, McCain really was following Bush's footsteps.

Now does the Times have the guts to investigate the possibility that the Bush Admin and McCain campaign goaded the Georgians into attacking South Ossetia in order to raise a foreign threat specter (a role Iran didn’t fill as much as hoped)?  This allowed McCain to resurrect Republican claims of strength versus Russia and championing democracy (although Georgia pres Mikheil Saakashvili is apparently rather authoritarian).  The motive and circumstantial evidence is there:  Karl Rove reportedly happened to meet Saakashvili while vacationing on the Mediterranean shortly before the crisis, and McCain’s top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, lobbied on behalf of Georgia for years.  Other suspicious things were reported on the Thom Hartmann radio show.

The Times reporters write:  “But a critical and as yet unanswered question has been what changed for Georgia between 7 p.m. on Aug 7, when Mr. Saakashvili declared a cease-fire, and 11:30 p.m., when he says he ordered the attack.”  Could this be an oblique acknowledgement that pressure from US interests is a possibility?

If so, Rove/McCain/Bush probably broke various national and international laws and regs, AND left Saakashvili to hang out and dry -- but they’ll probably never have to answer for it in the least.

Weird post. Of course Russia was not "the first to fire in this summer's war"; was that ever in doubt? I don't think so, but it's also largely beside the point.

Georgia marched into the secessionist South-Ossetia to reclaim that territory. Then the Russians marched in to take South-Ossetia itself, earning the gratitude of the Ossetians -- but they also took the opportunity to march deep into Georgia proper. This is what alarmed the governments of the US and Europe, and that was the point where they aggressively warned and chided Russia.

Whatever you think of the reckless and violent way in which the Shaakashvili government decided to deal with the secessionist Ossetians, it doesn't really make any difference to the issue at hand on that count. Russia has been stoking ethnic conflicts within what it calls its "near abroad" for a decade and a half now, to teach all too independent-minded governments a lesson and divide and rule. This time, Russia went further and used the excuse of the violent conflict Saakashvili had reignited with the Ossetians to not just step in, but occupy a fair chunk of the rest of the country too. It had little qualms making clear that its aim involved ousting the Georgian government, presumably to replace it with a more pliable one. Call it regime change if you want.

This is what liberals and progressives are supposed to be against. Many of you were rightly against it when it came to Iraq: protecting an autonomous Kurdish zone OK, but invading Iraq proper no. Well Russia took Bush's example and did with Georgia what you condemned Bush for doing with Iraq.

My take is that the EU and especially the US reacted more forcefully, even if it was just in rhetorical terms, than Putin will have expected. For once in his two terms, I think Bush acted correctly here. I think that the hard line the US and to some extent the EU took played a significant role in persuading Russia  to grudgingly accept a resolution that involved its troops retreating at least to South-Ossetian territory, and leaving Georgia proper.

It has done so grudgingly, with the exception of a buffer zone, and in much delayed fashion, but it did so, or mostly. I honestly think that they were half-expecting to get away with a more invasive occupation of Georgia proper, at least to the extent needed to topple Saakashvili - and they didn't, or at least not quite. Ambivalent as that may seem, it was definitely for the better, and it was worth sticking out our neck for.

I'm not a Saakashvili apologete, I think his decision to initiate military action in the long-dormant South-Ossetian question was foolish and criminal. But that doesn't make Russia's actions in this conflict any less reprehensible themselves. And in the bigger scheme of things it's what the Russian regime revealed about itself that's the bigger concern for us, especially here in Europe.

I would hate to think that American liberals are tempted to dismiss the deserved concerns of Georgians, Balts and Ukrainians just because they associate the cause with McCain or Bush or the Republicans. This is not about you. It's not about US domestic politics and its partisan resentments.

Thank you jobeek for making sense of a senseless situation.  Bush has been a train wreck with foreign policy, but finally is getting it after 8 years.  I hope Obama will have a quicker learning curve and see things in shades of gray, rather than black and white..

The fact that Georgia more-or-less started this was, I thought, pretty clear at the time, and I found that the coverage, which swallowed the characterization of naked Russian aggression unquestioningly, to be at odds with the facts reported.  We knew then that Georgia had made a decision to go after separatists in South Ossetia, and that that decision was roundly criticized and warned against beforehand by all knowledgeable adults, even the Bush administration, as a provocation.  We knew that that decision did not appear to be an immediate response to anything in particular, but rather a deliberate choice.  We knew also that Russia claimed that Georgia's action had resulted in large-scale civilian casualties in South Ossetia, a claim that the press did not look into, appearing to simply discard it as bogus.  As I said at the time, I did not know that that claim was false, and nobody else did either.  Now it appears it has support from independent observers.  I am no Russian apologist, but we have to look at these things with a clear eye and a clear head.  One of the candidates did that.

Thank you, jhildner, for *really* making sense of a senseless situation.

Also, one of the things that bothered me about McCain's reaction was the blithe assumption that the Russians weren't so clever, and would just lash out.  It seemed to me that -- without knowing anything like the facts on the ground, of course -- one should at least, as a precaution, assume that the Russians might be a strategic move or two ahead.  Talking to my brother and a few people in different parts of Europe those few days was interesting, as they were worried by this rise in Russian aggression, but also very skeptical of the Georgians' story.  They thought that the Russians had been patiently waiting for the Georgians to make a dumb move.  The fact the McCain didn't seem to grasp that possibility was a major minus for me, as regards his candidacy.

dwleake asks the most important unanswered/unasked question--what on Earth was Shaakasveli thinking when he went from "ceasefire" at 7 pm to "attack" at 11:30 pm August 7? The Georgians committed fairly substantial forces that must have taken at the very least several days to deploy and supply. Georgia's move was deliberate.

There had been a great deal of shelling by the South Ossetians of Georgian villages for the previous three nights, but while possibly more intense such artillery exchanges were routine.

The US conducted joint exercises with Georgian troops in July with over a thousand US troops deployed. The Russians carried out parallel exercises in response. US troops withdrew, while the Russian maneuver force remained in position and formed the core of the invading force. It is inconceivable that we were unaware of Georgia's mobilization and intentions, and similarly inconceivable that we were unaware that Russia had deployed substantial forces on the South Ossetian border. It is difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their attack against US wishes. They rely on the US, and were in no position to defy it.

This was a monumental breakdown of intelligence in which we either miscalculated Russia's fairly obvious intentions; or something else. While I think its impossible to overestimate the chances of catastrophic intelligence failure given the record, I vote for "something else".

RP: I am not a conspiracy theorists and, I think, the record of this Administration speaks eloquently and convincingly of a major Fuck Up - of, yet again, monumental proportions.

And yet, Cal is right, in the sense that even a cockroach can be taught the contours of a kitchen after eight years of repeatedly falling off the counters.  For this reason, we can assume that after eight long years, the Bush Administration might well have finally got its house in order - enough to fuck up deliberately rather than out of sheer incompetence or ideological blindness - the "something else" appears increasingly to have been the case.

My dad's first internal exile under the Shah was to an outpost on the Iran-Soviet border; his second one was to Azerbaijan, occupied by the Soviets after the War until Truman pushed them out. (Who says nuclear weapons are not strategically effective?)  And my uncle is half-Georgian.  One thing you learn with Russia sitting on top of you - tread carefully and don't be goaded by allies to senselessly attack; you don't need to be friends with them, but you have always to take account of the Russian National Interest.  Emotional responses to Russia can only bring grief.

Woody: My first impulse, reading the post when it appeared, was to write what you did.  But ... the McCain reaction to the crisis and some Planktons' reaction to McCain is actually sad - and mildly alarming - rather than cause for mirth or gloating.  In any event, those with any self-awareness will have discovered soon enough that McCain's chest-thumping and the Palin's "We should march into Russia" nonsense were emanations of a deeply disturbed campaign, and mind, and nothing more - and would have fessed up.  Those who did not, and who persisted, and who persist (like Cal) to argue that there was merit in the ill-considered adventurism, evidently have not the self-awareness to understand their own, and McCain's, error.  Pointless to mock.

Never thought I'd see such a post on TNR. Maybe you should tell the TNR editorial board Katherine. Can someone also tell Teplukhin?

What should she tell them Iggy?

I'm not a fan of conspiracy theory as a genre either, Icarus. But where do we go with this? The Russians announced this week that they are deploying new missiles in Kaliningrad, which is about fifty miles from my apartment as the crow flies. Iran is on hold until Obama gets his footing, which could take a while, and I fear Crimea is next on the hit list.

I'll be spending the next month in Louisiana, considering.

In their endorsement, TNR pointed out Obama's response to Georgia as "concerning" or some neo-con crap to that affect Robert. (Is it affect or effect?)

Since then a mountain of evidence has indicated that Georgia did indeed shot first and at  (Russian) civilians for that matter. Exactly what the response from Russia was supposed to be in those circumstances, I don't know.

Obama's response was only "concerning" to idiots, Iggy, which I'm afraid does not at times exempt the august councils of TNR.

Russia's prime motivation for smacking down Georgia was to demonstrate for Ukraine, the Baltics, and etc. that American guarantees are empty talk. The more strident the rhetoric of American leaders, as exemplified by McCain's hair-on-fire shennanigans, the more stark the contrast with our inability to take meaningful action.

dwleake, you asked an excellent question.

But what I want to know is when Georgians could see Russia from their front porches? I thought only Alaskans could see Russia from their front porches. And when did the Russians occupy part of the Peach Tree state? I can't believe Dubya "John Wayne" Bush stood for that.

Please enlighten me. I'm a product of Wasilla public schools.  Ha, ha.

Robert English's article on Georgian nationalism in the recent New York Review of Books should be required reading.

I never understood why Russia's actions were so horrible when it was George that invaded a breakaway region (i.e. it was to Georgia what Georgia is to Russia). What am I missing here?

Make that Georgia not George.

Back when the "we are all Georgians" bullshit sentiment was the rage, I remember asking if the roles were reversed with Russia, wouldn't we do as they did. I also noted that perhaps, since the main lobbyist for Georgia is a top McCain aide,  there could have been pre-attack knowledge in, and wink and a nod from,  the McCain camp. At the time, I was shouted down and roundly derided as a mud-footed naive peasant by the sages of geopolitik.

I'm still waiting for their comments on this thread.

The English article in the NYRB is indeed useful. But what shouldn't be lost is the fact that "South Ossetia" never existed nor does it exist now as a real state. There are about 17,000 "Ossetes" in the population of around 70,000, about half of whom are now refugees in (surprise!) Georgia rather than North Ossetia/Russia. The "nationalists" are largely Red Army/KGB opportunists led by Russian Army officers--not retired, ex-Army, but uniformed, still serving Russian Army and intelligence officers.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, many clever people who had military formations under their command realized that this was their main chance, and the results have been similar from Yugoslavia to Turkmenistan. Abkazia, another Georgian breakaway, is a great case in point. It claimed "independence" because it was the site of many beach-front hotels and casinos, and represented a choice prize for the opportunists. Ethic/religious issues have been largely ginned up as a smokescreen in all these places.

Is there an Independent South Ossetia and Abkhasia in return for NATO membership for the rest of Georgia deal to be struck?  That would also put the pressure back on Russia as surely North Ossetia would demand similar political freedoms to their Ossetian brothers over the border...