America in No-man's Land

Georgia asks for backup, and Russia accuses the Bush administration of supporting Saakashvili. The White House risks a foreign policy debacle. The presidential candidates Obama and McCain try, meanwhile, to clarify their positions on the conflict.

The war in Georgia began at the worst imaginable time: U.S. President George W. Bush was just urging American athletes to victory in Peking and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was still enjoying her summer vacation when Georgian Ambassador Vasil Sikharulidze begged the United States to, “prevent a great humanitarian disaster and the take-over of a sovereign state.”

In the days following escalation of the conflict, helplessness reigned.

Although President Bush called Russia’s reaction to the Georgian advances “disproportional” and “unacceptable,” his words had no apparent effect on either his own countrymen or the Russian government. Even the MSNBC network couldn’t refrain from noting that Bush obviously felt ill at ease commenting on the Caucasus conflict during an interview at the Olympic games.

Sharp criticism came only on Monday after the President returned from Peking: “Russia invaded a sovereign neighbor and threatened a democratically elected government. That’s unacceptable in the 21st century.” But even these words contained no mention of possible consequences.

Vice-President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, lived up to his reputation as a hawk. In a telephone call to Georgia President Michail Saakashvili he stressed the USA’s solidarity. “Russian aggression cannot be without consequences,” Cheney said, adding that a continuation of hostilities would have, “serious consequences for Russian relations with the United States and the international community.”

That caught the sharp-eared media’s attention and when asked for clarification, a White House spokesperson played down Cheney’s comment, saying only that the Russian advance simply couldn’t be allowed to stand. The media reacted to that angrily, the Baltimore Chronicle daily newspaper saying that the prospect of another war in today’s world apparently affected Cheney like “Viagra.”

In Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s opinion, however, the USA had already been actively involved for some time. The U.S. military had flown some 2,000 Georgian troops from Iraq to the South Ossetian border in the past few days. The presence of approximately 130 American military trainers in Georgia has also been a thorn in Russia’s side. After the United States and Great Britain, Georgia has the largest troop contingent in Iraq. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. assistance in returning Georgian troops home during any emergency had already been agreed upon earlier.

The White House is struggling with its balancing act between supporting a strategic partner and protecting American interests: on one side there’s the political impossibility of yet another American war, while on the other there’s the oil pipeline running from the Caspian Sea across Georgia to Turkey which was opened in 2006.

Robert Levgold, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, already fears a “foreign policy debacle.” Georgia is disappointed over insufficient support while Russia accuses the USA of supporting a “hot-headed” Georgian President.

Both presidential candidates are using the opportunity for dry runs. What MSNBC calls the “Georgia test” plays especially into John McCain’s hands. On Monday he held a lengthy discourse emphasizing anew his foreign policy credentials. McCain’s opinion is that the delay in accepting Georgia into NATO worked as a “green light” for Russia. His demands for the “unconditional withdrawal” of Russian forces from Georgian territory, the introduction of a NATO peacekeeping force and the exclusion of Russia from the G-8 group are seen favorably by some, and not just in the United States.

What Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal describes as, “an example of Senator McCain’s push to spread democracy in that part of the world as a very important advance of America’s interest,” prompts MSNBC to ask the surprising question of whether it’s possible that McCain might be, “more war-mongering than the current administration.” A long-time critic of Russia, McCain’s call for immediate economic and humanitarian support for Georgia shows he is more willing to become engaged in the conflict than is the White House.

The lobbying work of Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy advisor, is also suddenly back in the spotlight. Scheunemann worked on behalf of the Georgian government in the United States until March of this year. He branded criticisms from the Obama camp as “shameful” and “amazingly Kremlin-like,” something Obama supporters charged were subtle allusions to Obama’s supposed communistic tendencies.

The Democratic candidate reacted first with a brief appeal for “restraint” from both warring sides and later issued an in-depth call for an “immediate cease fire” while he vacationed in Hawaii. Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation, an unofficial advisor to the McCain campaign, labeled Obama’s response as “platitudinous” and said Obama reacted like, “a deer in the headlights.”