In Georgia clash, a lesson on U.S. need for Russia

The image of President George W. Bush smiling and chatting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia from the stands of the Beijing Olympics even as Russian aircraft were shelling Georgia outlines the reality of America's Russia policy. While America considers Georgia its strongest ally in the bloc of former Soviet countries, Washington needs Russia too much on big issues like Iran to risk it all to defend Georgia.

And State Department officials made it clear on Saturday that there was no chance the United States would intervene militarily.

Bush did use tough language, demanding that Russia stop bombing. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded that Russia "respect Georgia's territorial integrity."

What did Putin do? First, he repudiated President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in Beijing, refusing to budge when Sarkozy tried to dissuade Russia from its military operation. "It was a very, very tough meeting," a senior Western official said afterward. "Putin was saying, 'We are going to make them pay. We are going to make justice.' "

Then, Putin flew from Beijing to a region that borders South Ossetia, arriving after an announcement that Georgia was pulling its troops out of the capital of the breakaway region. He appeared ostensibly to coordinate assistance to refugees who had fled South Ossetia into neighboring Russia, but the Russian message was clear: This is our sphere of influence; others stay out.

"What the Russians just did is, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, they have taken a decisive military action and imposed a military reality," said George Friedman, chief executive of Stratfor, a geopolitical analysis and intelligence company. "They've done it unilaterally, and all of the countries that have been looking to the West to intimidate the Russians are now forced into a position to consider what just happened."

And Bush administration officials acknowledged that the outside world, and the United States in particular, had little leverage over Russian actions.

"There is no possibility of drawing NATO or the international community into this," said a senior State Department official in a conference call with reporters. "There is none. There is not a danger of a regional conflict in our mind."

The unfolding conflict in Georgia set off a flurry of diplomacy. Rice and other officials at the State Department and the Pentagon have been on the telephone with Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and other Russian counterparts, as well as with officials in Georgia, urging both sides to return to peace talks.

The European Union — and Germany, in particular, with its strong ties to Russia — called on both sides to stand down and scheduled meetings to press their concerns. At the United Nations, members of the Security Council met informally to discuss a possible response, but one Security Council diplomat said it remained uncertain whether, with Russia and China both holding veto power on the Council, much could be done.

"Strategically, the Russians have been sending signals that they really wanted to flex their muscles, and they're upset about Kosovo," the diplomat said. He was alluding to Russia's anger at the West for recognizing Kosovo's independence from Serbia earlier this year.

Indeed, the decision by the United States and Europe to recognize Kosovo may well have paved the way for Russia's lightning-fast decision to send troops to back the separatists in South Ossetia. During one meeting on Kosovo in Brussels this year, Lavrov, the foreign minister, warned Rice and European diplomats that if they recognized Kosovo, they would be setting a precedent for South Ossetia and other breakaway provinces. As easily as the West could encourage a former Russian satellite toward independence and away from Russia's sphere of influence, the Russians warned, so too, could Moscow encourage pro-Russian breakaway regions like South Ossetia to follow suit.

For the Bush administration, the choice now becomes whether backing Georgia — which, more than any other former Soviet republic has allied with the United States — on the South Ossetia issue is worth alienating Russia at a time when getting Russia's help to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions is at the top of the United States' foreign policy agenda.
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