Don't Poke the Bear

I've been trying to find some relatively concise background information amid all the gaseous emissions about the Russia/Georgia confrontation, and I came across this New York Times article. The Russians didn't seem to have been planning this particular action.

“It doesn’t look like this was premeditated, with a massive staging of equipment,” one senior American official said. “Until the night before the fighting, Russia seemed to be playing a constructive role.”

However....there had been signs for years that Georgia and Russia had methodically, if quietly, prepared for conflict.......They included the Kremlin’s military successes in Chechnya, which gave Russia the latitude and sense of internal security it needed to free up troops to cross its borders, and the exuberant support of the United States for President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, a figure loathed by the Kremlin on both personal and political terms.

An article from last November makes that last statement slightly amusing.

Mr. Saakashvili has begun to draw comparisons to a leader who has chosen a different path to lift his nation: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Georgia’s neighbor, former overlord and, these days, frequent adversary.

So it seems Mr. Saakashvili got an inflated ego, helped along by the Bush administraion.

The risks were intensified by the fact that the United States did not merely encourage Georgia’s young democracy, it helped militarize the weak Georgian state.

Not that we didn't warn him, as one official said.....

Mr. Saakashvili had acted rashly, he said, and had given Russia the grounds to invade. The invasion, he said, was chilling, disproportionate and brutal, and it was grounds for a strong censure. But the immediate question was how far Russia would go in putting Georgia back into what it sees as Georgia’s place.

“We always told them, ‘Don’t do this because the Russians do not have limited aims.’ ”