The Bear Is Back on The Prowl
By Vivienne Walt
When Russian jets pounded Madonna Gavasheli's village of Knolevi on Aug. 9, she took her two children, ages 8 and 4, into the basement and spent the night cowering in fear. At dawn they joined a column of thousands of people streaming out of South Ossetia and the surrounding regions for Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. There the family staggered into an abandoned kindergarten. Back in Knolevi, Gavasheli's husband had vanished, along with their brand-new brick house. "There were many, many bombs," she says. "I do not even know how I got here."
She's not the only one. The short but brutal war with Russia has left Georgia's military battered and its countryside scorched by bombs and tank fire. The fighting, which officially ended Aug. 12, when Moscow agreed to a cease-fire, left at least 1,000 dead and forced tens of thousands of Georgians and ethnic Russians living in and around South Ossetia to flee their homes. Beyond the human carnage, the conflict demonstrated just how far a resurgent Russia will go to advance its interests. Nearly 20 years ago, when the Soviet Union collapsed, many in the West thought a weakened Russia would be a friendly one and would pose no threat to its former satellites. Instead, awash with profits from natural resources, Russia has become a new economic power. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who continues to run Russia through his handpicked successor as President, Dmitri Medvedev, invested heavily to transform Russia's Soviet-era military into a more modern fighting machine. The invasion of Georgia demonstrates that Moscow is ready to reassert its primacy in its neighborhood and stand up to Washington.
The U.S. response was initially cautious. President George W. Bush spoke with Putin at the Olympics in Beijing and released a statement urging Russia and Georgia to pull back their troops. After the cease-fire, amid reports that the Russian military had not stood down, Bush heightened the rhetoric, expressing "solidarity with the Georgian people." He dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Tbilisi and ordered the U.S. military to begin air and sea delivery of humanitarian supplies--raising the prospect of U.S. forces becoming entangled in the conflict. Bush hinted at stronger punishment for Moscow, including isolation from international organizations.
For the first time in nearly two decades, Russia became an issue in a U.S. presidential campaign. Barack Obama and John McCain both called Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to express support and received phone briefings from Rice. The McCain campaign heaped scorn on Obama's call for restraint from Russia and Georgia and renewed the Republican Senator's demand that Russia be evicted from the G-8 club of leading industrial nations. At a town-hall meeting on Aug. 12, McCain said he had called Saakashvili to tell him, "Today we are all Georgians." The campaign insisted McCain's position was not influenced by the part ownership by his top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, of a lobbying firm employed by the Georgian government.
U.S. presidential politics seems far removed from the mountains and farmlands of South Ossetia, a tiny autonomous enclave in northern Georgia. Since 1992, Russian troops have helped keep the peace in the area as well as in Georgia's other breakaway territory of Abkhazia For weeks before the war, Russian planes circled the skies above Georgia, provoking Tbilisi to threaten to shoot them down. Last month, Russia began annual military exercises close to South Ossetia's northern border while Georgia moved its own troops up from the south in a mutual "game of chicken," says Charles Kupchan, an Obama adviser and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. On Aug. 7, Saakashvili, citing Russian military encroachment, ordered tanks into the territory's capital, Tskhinvali. Russian forces invaded soon afterward.
But a conflict had been brewing for years. Russian officials have long believed that their views are ignored by Washington, and they felt humiliated last February when Kosovo declared itself independent from Russian ally Serbia, winning recognition from Bush and most European leaders. "Russia warned that there would be repercussions for Kosovo, and here they are," says Magdalena Frichova, a former Caucasus project director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. In April, when NATO leaders agreed to consider Ukraine and Georgia as members, Russia saw it as a direct threat.
U.S. officials had worried about renewed conflict in the Caucasus for months. And according to a senior official at the U.S. State Department, Washington had grown alarmed by Saakashvili's belief that he could take on the Russian military. Hours before Georgian tanks entered South Ossetia, this official says he called the Georgian Foreign Minister, warning her that Russia was drawing Georgia into a trap. "The Russians are looking for an excuse to kill Georgians," he recalls saying.
Once the fighting began, the result was a foregone conclusion. Three days after Georgia's tanks had rolled into Tskhinvali, its forces retreated like wounded animals. To compound the injury, Russia then launched punitive attacks on Georgian towns and military bases far from the borders. Reeling from overwhelming Russian force, many Georgians were angry that the U.S. had not done more to protect them. Georgia is ostensibly a key Washington ally. The main airport road in Tbilisi is named George W. Bush Street, and 2,000 Georgian soldiers made up the third biggest coalition force in Iraq. (They were flown home last week on U.S. military transport.) Bush has hosted Saakashvili at the White House and hailed him as a beacon of democracy. "Saakashvili got too close to the U.S., and the U.S. got too close to Saakashvili," says Kupchan. That lulled Georgia into believing the U.S. would rush to its aid. Now there is a sense of betrayal. "Americans are just promises," says Gogi Edisherashvili, a refugee in Tbilisi. "The blood of our children is the responsibility of Bush and Saakashvili."
What can the U.S. do now? The most urgent need is humanitarian relief. American and European officials must also scramble to come up with a workable peace deal. But Russia is in no mood to give up its advantage. Having humiliated Georgia militarily, Moscow will probably push harder for independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The West remains deeply divided over how to tackle Moscow's increasing assertiveness. Despite Bush's veiled threat to isolate Moscow internationally, many European leaders do not want to enrage Russia, which provides Europe with more than a third of its energy supplies. The bear is out of hibernation. Its neighbors can no longer sleep easily.
With reporting by Massimo Calabresi/Washington, Yasha Levine/Moscow, Andrew Purvis/Tbilisi, John Wendle/Vladikavkaz, Russia, Yuri Zarakhovich/Jacksonville, Fla.