Georgia’s president paid a visit to the race track recently. He offered to resign if Russia returns South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Sure, that’s interesting, but the more important question is whether Saakashvili or Berdimuhamedov would win on the track.

So, who has your vote?

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For those who need video:

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I don’t want to spend too much time dissecting Mitt Romney’s war-path to the presidency — the one that’s tarred anything he’s touched, and dropped his unfavorability numbers to record lows — because A) I’d hate to alienate any secret Romneycons among my friends, and B) while I do have enough time, I’d rather spend it transcribing minor league interviews, or clipping my toenails, or practicing my Russian case-endings for the seventieth time today. That is to say, I’d like to avoid entering the GOP’s rabbit hole of un-reason, and continue on with my life.

But there are some things that are too good to pass up.

This week served one of those instances. After Obama’s nontroversial ‘hot mic’ comments — the one in which he’d proffer to Dmitri Medvedev more flexibility post-election — many opponents took it to mean that Obama was playing mere lip service to standing firm on missile defense. That he would waver like the milquetoast namby-pamby he actually was. That he was, once more, selling out America to its most fiendish foes.

To which I say: Welcome to realpolitik, the world of back-room pragmatism and diplomatic derring-do. Obama was no more selling out American defense than he was strapping his dog to the roof of his car. He was — a bit arrogantly, maybe, but also a bit earnestly — simply explaining his current negotiating footing to his political counterpart, moving beyond the half-baked photo-ops and into the world of reality. It may have been considered a Kinsley gaffe, but it was far from being as revelatory as, say, Sarkozy’s Netanyahu bash … though not nearly as hilarious as Biden’s BFD.

The subsequent affrontery, of course, is fallacious, more manufactured outrage at a political non-event. The man was simply explaining his pragmatic position, not selling state secrets. He was right, after all: One’s political capital bumps up considerably after a second-term election. (That is, so long as you don’t find a too-curvy intern, or plunk your country in two unwinnable wars.) As such, in terms of gay rights, civil liberties, or, yes, foreign policy, Obama will have greater leeway come Dec. 2012 than he shares right now. That’s simply the nature of the (small-r) republican beast.

Anyway, among the obstreperous responses came one in particular, the one which makes you shake your head like, well, like an Etch-a-Sketch. Romney, all blunderbuss and Bryl-cream, decided that Obama’s fraternizing with the Russkies is a step too far. Thus, he offered this nugget:

‘[Russia is] without question our number one geopolitical foe.’

He goes on to say that Russia “fight[s] every cause for the world’s worst actors,” citing recent pro-Syrian vetoes and Iranian support as evidence that the Kremlin is under-mining American efforts and underwriting America’s enemies at every turn. Romney tethers Putin and the Kremlin to Caracas, to Beijing, to Waziristan and Havana and Damascus, claiming that Moscow has opted for subterfuge at every turn. He believes that Moscow, more than Pyongyang, more than Islamabad, more than Tehran, is somehow — “without question” — our top political foe.

This rhetoric … this rhetoric’s revolting, really. I don’t say this from a personal standpoint — the Russians I know, here and abroad; the language and history I’ve learned; the lives I’ve led. Rather, I say this from a purely geopolitical stance. If Russia-is-the-new-evil catches as a bromide — if our neocons are somehow shifting from the Middle East outward, scoping the last vestiges of international independence — then that’s, at the least, worrying. And it could be so much more. As we’ve seen in the last decade, foreign policy constructed around such hyperbole can only lead to overreach and overspending — or doesn’t Romney remember Iraq? The misreading of the political tea-leaves, the fact that this claim found sympathetic ears in many an American corner, the reality that these Cold War hangers-on still exist: it’s dispiriting, crass, and revolting. It’s a shame.

And it is, of course, as imbecilic as you can find. (Or perhaps not, in this election.) In a brief parsing of Moscow’s foreign policy, you’ll find that Medvedev/Putin, while far from the Merkozy friends west of the Danube, aren’t exactly the Sauron and Saruman – the Brezhnev and Kosygin – of yore. Yes, Moscow and Beijing have vetoed the UN resolutions on Syria, and yes, Russia’s supplied Syria with 72% of its arms from 2007-11. But in comparison with the US-sanctioned crackdowns in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia — even forgoing mention of the Greater Israel occupation of Palestinian lands — and the continued occupation of Afghanistan, it’s not as if Russia’s gone out of its way to exhibit belligerency or protectionism. Yes, the base at Tartus and the arms deals are likely driving the intransigence, but even in recent days Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called for peaceable talks to resume between the two Syrian sides. Libya, and NATO’s purported overreach, still hang stale in the air, and while strong-men like Assad stand low on any sympathy ladder, there’s always something to be said about international border. Russia, at the least, recognizes this (perhaps antiquated) fact, and it’s fair justification for concern.*

*Abkhazia and South Ossetia notwithstanding, of course.

Likewise, Russia withholds support of an Iranian campaign due to the same argument found in Syria — protecting international boundary. However, one need only imagine the oil revenue Russia would reap should Israel/America begin a bombing campaign to understand why Moscow won’t have Iran’s back until the Persian cows come home. And that’s not even considering the bubbling rivalry between Russia and Iran over holdings in the Caspian, with both countries slowly beginning a naval race for strength. (Though there is Russian room for opposition to war: Fears exist of refugees racing through the Caucuses, and, should a pro-west Iran emerge, it could theoretically funnel Turkmenistan’s and Kazakhstan’s oil through, forgoing the Russian hegemon. Gamble either way, I suppose.) So while Russia currently opts for a peaceful, bring-talks-to-the-table path — which is, after all, what nearly 70% of Americans would prefer — they’re far from the Ayatollah’s largest backers. And for Romney to say they are somehow “fighting [Tehran’s] cause” is abjectly thick-skulled, and depressingly predictable.

That’s not to say the Kremlin is the chum the US has always we wanted. (“Uncle Joe” was, unfortunately, a propagandist misnomer.) The missile defense row is ongoing. The horrors of the Northern Caucuses haven’t abated; meddling in Central Asian affairs – look at Manas, look at the EAU – has prevented the US from landing any firm toe-holds; and the war with Georgia (even though, contra John McCain, these defenseless Georgians actually started the fighting) was a blight on both parties. Moscow runs war exercises with Venezuela, regularly bullies Ukrainian and Belorussian — and, by extent, the rest of Europe’s — interests, and, in Putin’s case, runs atrociously anti-American campaigns, the likes of which are regularly seen only in Tehran’s halls. And that’s not including the treatment of journalists, political opposition, or middle-class marchers plying nothing but democratic desires.

So, yeah, Moscow’s had a fair shake of anti-Washington sentiment. But to call them our No. 1 enemy? Has Romney’s pandering really fallen this far? Has he forgotten the nuclear disarmament deals recently struck? Has he forgotten the Russia’s willingness as mediator in North Africa? Is Chinese belligerence somehow lessened? Is the Iranian nuclear threat somehow forgotten? Has he not read a foreign policy piece since 1983?

Dmitri Medvedev — he of iPads and Twitter, as produced as Romney but viewed by nowhere near as despicably by his constituents — came out with the choicest, most delightful words in response:

Regarding ideological clichés, every time this or that side uses phrases like ‘enemy number one’, this always alarms me, this smells of Hollywood and certain times [of the past]. I would recommend all U.S. presidential candidates … do two things. First, when phrasing their position one needs to use one’s head, one’s good reason, which would not do harm to a presidential candidate. Also, [one needs to] look at his watch: we are in 2012, and not the mid-1970s.

Indeed, Romney seems to have read too many Jack Ryan tropes recently. His comment stands as another step in his rightward fall, and serves as more of the GOP’s foreign policy gaucherie, be it Newt’s scatterbrain or Santorum’s bomb-or-bust campaign. (Can you imagine how sane Ron Paul’s come to look through all of this?) It’s another foot in his mouth, another laugh-at-that-gaffe moment that’s enjoyed too many already. It hails the GOP’s obsession with Reagan, in an era the Gipper would have hardly recognized. It’s amazing, really. And it is, perhaps, one more reason why experts believe that America’s No. 1 enemy isn’t Russia, China, or even Iran — but, at the end of the day, itself.

Heritage scholar James Jay Carafano endorses the Georgia propaganda film “5 Days of War.”

The film ends with testimonies from Georgians who lost family members in the war. “After I met a lot of refugees,” Harlin said last night during a post-screening discussion of the movie at Washington’s Landmark Theater, “I felt I had to tell their story. That’s why we added the testimonials.”

The liberal blogosphere is already attacking Harlin’s film for being “anti-Russian.” Though mainstream Hollywood embraced “Hotel Rwanda,” a similar motion picture, it will likely turn its back on “5 Days of War.” The difference: the latter implicitly calls into question Mr. Obama’s decision to make nice with Moscow.

So, let’s ignore the questionable moral equivalence of a 5 day war that killed far fewer than a thousand people to a genocide that killed over a million people during four horrifying months of systemic murder. We can probably safely assume Renny Harlin did not interview any Ossetians or Abkhazians for his film’s recounting of horrors—nor did he consult the sections of the Human Rights Watch report which also accused the Georgians of committing war crimes and illegally shelling Tshkinvali before the start of the war (an action which killed several Russian troops and which was the casus belli for a Russian response).

In other words, Carafano is starting his review from a pretty fundamentally dishonest perspective (he could have mentioned that Renny Harlin’s film was actually sponsored by the government of Georgia, but that might get in the way of his narrative). But it doesn’t stop at the film. Carafano brings up the bombings in Georgia:

For example, recent allegations that the Russians engineered last year’s bombing outside the U.S. Embassy in Georgia (at the same time the White House was pushing for ratification of a U.S.-Russia arms control treaty) quickly produced a squad of predictable skeptics. Writing for The Atlantic, Joshua Foust (a fellow at the American Security Project) suggested the whole thing may have been a frame-job by the Georgians. “[T]hey have a vested interest in blaming everything on Russia,” he points out.

Here, however, is what Foust doesn’t explain. It looks like the Georgians had been trying to keep the whole story quiet—and work back channels in the U.S. to get the Russians to back off. The story was actually “outed” here in the U.S.

Yes, to a point. However, since Carafano is apparently aware of my analysis of reporting on the Georgian bombings (and not, let us assume, just filching links from another dishonest Weekly Standard freakout about it), then he might have thought to reference the additional reporting I highlighted that casts doubt on the CIA’s assignment of blame to the GRU, or that, contrary to his portrayal Georgia has been pushing this bombing story since December. In fact, since we’re going there, here is the letter the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been emailing reporters and embassies since June:

GEO IED fullc

So to claim the Georgian government wanted to keep this quiet is, once again, just dishonest. And the film meant to portray Russians as grizzled evil-doers and Georgians as helpless lambs is the worst sort of pedantic malarkey.

Then again, this is not much of a surprise. Much as the Right wants to complain that inexplicable Russian hostility is some artifact of President Obama’s uniquely complacent Russia policy, the relationship actually began suffering strain under President Bush—well before the 2008 war in Georgia. Despite that, the U.S.—Russian relationship remains much as it always has: periods of guarded cooperated punctuated by periods of tension.

Now, I have my own problems with Obama’s policy of “reset” with Russia. I think the President was too quick to dismiss President Bush’s very real accomplishments in securing Russian cooperation on a number of issues, and too reliant on the last year of his term to define what the relationship had become.

That being said, this is sadly part of a pattern. Every single election cycle since the end of the Cold War, the Right has spun up this huge push to portray Democrats as being “soft” on Russia. In the 1990s, the rightwing meme was that President Clinton was too weak on fighting Boris Yeltsin’s corruption. Despite strongly condemning Russia’s mass killings during the second Chechen War, he was nevertheless accused of “waffling” by critics. In 2004, John Kerry was derided as being weak on terrorism after the Beslan School massacre. And finally, from 2008 onward, President Obama has been derided for his weakness on Russia, starting with the war in Georgia and continuing to the current push back against his “reset” policy.

There’s no doubt the Left is much less confrontational toward Russia. There’s very little doubt that sometimes a little confrontation is good for a relationship defined as much by frustration as it is by accommodation. But the Right’s gleeful use of misleading rhetoric to gin up an adversary where one really doesn’t exist is worse than embarrassing: it is actively counterproductive to ever having a normal relationship with Russia. It’s time to stop.

Today marks the third anniversary of the Russo-Georgian War. Georgia has a famously fraught relationship with its two separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Since before its independence from the Soviet Union, Georgia had fought with the two, even sending a militia into Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, in 1989, which was later put down by Soviet troops.

Because those two provinces have reached out to Russia for help, there is a tendency in American politics to side with the Georgians because… well, Russia is kind of bad, you see, and Mikhail Saakashvili won a revolution against that nasty old Soviet holdover Eduard Shevardnadze, and he speaks English and likes democracy and stuff. Missing from the American narrative about Georgia’s territorial integrity is any acknowledgment that before Stalin Abkhazia actually was its own country, with its own culture, language, government, and traditions, or that South Ossetia also had its own language and distinct culture before 1921. Indeed, the same arguments American politicians use to justify the independence of Kosovo from Serbia should justify the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (that is, if you believe in the right of self-determination from a distant and hostile government), but for some reason it doesn’t.

In the meantime, under Saakashvili, the government of Georgia has adopted an expensive, high-profile information operations campaign against the U.S. public and the U.S. government. They have found a receptive audience in the American Right, where Senators go on junkets to Tblisi and declare Russia the new villain America must face down.

Since most Americans over the age of 30 were raised to more or less mistrust Russia, it can be easy to fall into the old trope of hating Russia and assuming anyone who resists them is automatically good. And the Russian-Georgian rivalry certainly lends itself to that mindset: at a superficial level, Russia invaded Georgia, killed a bunch of people and destroyed a bunch of buildings, then occupied Georgian territory. That this narrative of the war is simply wrong—Georgia’s claims that Russia started it are wrong, and have been investigated by independent commissions which have concluded that Georgia actually started a war it could not possibly finish because it felt America would side with it and attack Russia—hasn’t materially affected the fever-pitch of pro-Georgia anti-Russia screaming that’s taking place in Washington these days. Russia behaved unjustifiably when it entered Georgia proper and occupied cities. There is no excuse for it. But there is no excuse for Georgia’s indiscriminate shelling of Tskhinvali, either, especially because that shelling killed several Russian troops participating in a UN Peacekeeping operation.

Alas, the two sides remain at each others’ throats. Ultimately, America took Georgia’s side in its war with Russia, yet Americans act surprised when Russia treats American interests in Georgia as suspect and targets of harassment. Go figure.

So it was with great interest that I sat down with a copy of “5 Days of War,” an action movie directed by Die Hard 2′s Renny Harlin. It is about the 2008 war in Georgia, and stars Andy Garcia as President Saakashvili. Is it important that the film was co-produced by a member of the Georgian parliament, while the Georgian military provided the hardware? Actually yes.

This is a film that makes no pretense at neutrality, balance, or fairness. All of the Georgians are clean cut professional soldiers. All of the Russians are grizzly blood thirsty sociopaths who delight in butchering innocents. The opening scene, where journalists being attacked by two dozen Iraqi innocents are rescued by flawless Georgian marksmen-soldiers, sets the appropriate tone: Georgians are heroes of freedom, democracy, and truthful journalism.

Of course, when watching this we should probably ignore the Georgian government’s relentless harassment and imprisonment of the journalists who criticize Saakashvili’s government. And the news segment that presents Georgia’s plea for joining NATO (its few dozen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan), and Russia’s evil quest to rebuild the Soviet Union. Balance, this is not.

Of course, one could try to divorce a message movie from its message. But when the thrilling combat scenes are ignored, the story just isn’t there. The movie’s timeline of the start of the war is at direct odds with the OSCE and EU accounts of how the war began: Georgia is interested in diplomacy, in this movie and those horrible Russians are hiding behind civilians to launch attacks on innocent Georgian villages (the reality of South Ossetia, sadly, far more complex). There’s no mention of the Russian peacekeepers Georgia killed in South Ossetia before the official start of hostilities, which was an important milestone in Russia’s decision to move into the province.

There is some interesting rumination on how war journalists are both obsessed with and bored with war, but that’s not really a new thing, either. For example, the movie makes a big deal of how the media ignored the war, but that’s simply not true: the first day of the war was overshadowed by the start of the Olympics, but the war in Georgia dominated global news for most of August. The acting is decent—Val Kilmer’s nuanced cameraman is actually a pleasant surprise—but the story’s gross imbalance with the war distracts too much from what would have been the outlines of an engaging movie.

“5 Days of War” does have a great many things going for it: the Georgian countryside is famously beautiful, and Renny Harlin lingers over it like a long lost lover. Tblisi comes off as a cosmopolitan city composed of brilliant architecture. And the action scenes are really well done—perhaps a bit cartoonish, but that’s certainly not a bad thing in an action movie. It’s left as a subtext, but Andy Garcia’s Saakashvili has a slavic-esque drawl when he talks; yet his advisers all speak in flawless American English. It could simple be a trope of Hollywood. But it could also be a subtext: Saakashvili’s government employs scores of Americans, as advisers, trainers, and workers in its ministries (Saakashvili himself went to Columbia University and maintains a vast social network among New York City elites). It’s not clear if this is intentional or not.

So, if you can ignore the politics, and ignore that this is essentially Georgian propaganda, “5 Days of War” is an engaging take on the war, especially on the war’s third anniversary. But it not an accurate portrayal of what happened, nor is it an especially honest analysis of the issues that led up to it. Kept strictly as entertainment, it’s great. Just… ignore what it wants to say.

One administration official told The Washington Times there was “no consensus” on responsibility for the Tbilisi blast.

Really, that was the one line that leapt out at me in this piece. As Eli Lake reports, it is indeed significant that Secretary Clinton has raised the issue with her Russian counterparts two times since the September 22 bombing near the U.S. embassy in Tblisi.

But, despite the hemming and hawing from the officials who are leaking all this highly classified information to Eli (because “the U.S. reaction to the possible state-sponsored terrorism has been too weak,” as one official told him), the lack of consensus on the responsibility for the blast is really the key thing to remember. As I mention routinely, intelligence analysis is actually really hard, and it is especially difficult to avoid introducing biases that might imply a conclusion the evidence might not support.

In Eli’s report there is mention of a new report released to Congress today from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, but no sense of what is in that report—does it reach a different conclusion from the “highly classified” CIA report mentioned Wednesday? It is unclear from the reporting, but right now it appears to.

We don’t really know yet what is going on, and I congratulate Eli for including that line about how difficult it is to assemble consensus in the intelligence community about this sort of thing. But reading other reports about the bombing incident which also reference these classified reports, the case seems less clear-cut:

American intelligence officials have concluded in a classified report that a Russian intelligence officer may have been behind a string of bombings in the nation of Georgia last year, including an explosion near the United States Embassy, but that there is no evidence of a plot to attack American installations, an American official said Thursday.

“The assessment seems to be that the bombings have more to do with Russia’s relationship with Georgia than Russia’s relationship with the United States,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the intelligence assessment on the bombings is classified.

The official said the assessment implicating the Russian officer draws upon information from several intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including Georgian ones. The official cautioned that it was “not a rock-solid assessment” and reached no definite conclusion about whether the bombings were ordered by officials in Moscow. Its thrust, the official said, was that the bombing near the American Embassy likely “was an attempt to poke the Georgians in the eye, not the U.S.”

It is important to note that Yevgeny Borisov, the GRU agent in question, has been publicly identified by Georgia as a prime suspect since at least last December, and that there is an Interpol warrant out for his arrest. Borisov is probably at least involved in a string of bombings inside Georgia. What is still unclear is whether those bombings were ever targeted at the U.S. embassy.

However, in the midst of potentially explosive charges against Russia right at a crucial time in its bilateral relationship with the United States, it is interesting to read some pretty ridiculous pronouncements about Russian perfidy. One former H.W. Bush official, who now runs a think tank in Tblisi whose clients include the Georgian government, is quoted as saying, “Part of the reason they do these things is precisely because it is not clear to Westerners why they would do them.” Right.

Dmitry Rogozin recently described U.S. Senators John Kyl and Mark Kirk (both Republicans) of being “monsters of the Cold War.” He said that to a Russian TV station in relation to a meeting he had with them, which he seemed to feel was hostile and worrisome.

Of course, Russian diplomats are as good as American diplomats in using outrage and wounded pride to gain a rhetorical edge over their counterparts. Rogozin isn’t necessarily describing what happened accurately. But there sure seems to be a growing sense in the U.S. that Russia is no longer a state to be worked with but an enemy to be countered, and a confusing set of leaks of classified and apparently uncertain reporting is a part of that. It might be true. It might not. What is missing is evidence that Moscow is issuing orders to attack American target (a crucial component to pinning this on Russia). All we have evidence for right now is that a Russian might be responsible—not who gave him orders or what his intended target was.

Given the proliferation of rogue intelligence agents and spies in American pop culture, it’s hard to see why the prospect of a Russian agent run amok is so difficult to come by. But apart from a frankly paranoid assertion that Russia does things just to confuse us, and a contradictory set of stories about what apparently still-classified intelligence actually says about the Tblisi embassy blast, it still seems way too early to leap to any conclusions about what is going on here.

Secretary Clinton is sticking with this issue by not forgetting to mention it when she meets with her Russian counterparts. Because the intelligence on the nature of the blast seems to be uncertain, this is appropriate of her—a rogue agent is still a huge deal, and in either case the Russians need to be made aware of how the U.S.’s understanding of their involvement (or lack of it) is evolving. Secretary Clinton’s calm, and at least some officials’ discipline in urging caution of analysis because they just don’t know for certain yet, is commendable.

Hopefully we’ll get more documentary evidence of what really happened soon. Until then, we should keep in mind that not even the U.S. government is uncertain of what happened, so it’s premature to jump to too many conclusions.

Over at The Weekly Standard, Daniel Halper writes:

But this allegation, coming as it did from a U.S. ally, was immediately dismissed by those on the far right and far left in Washington (who oddly share a mutual affinity for Vladimir Putin’s thugocracy, or maybe just an affinity for the Obama administration’s great power politics which subordinates human rights and democracy to the national interest). Joshua Foust, writing at the Atlantic, accused the Georgian government of “intentionally misleading journalists,” because why would those nice Russians bomb a U.S. embassy? Daniel Larison, writing at the American Conservative, said that Lake just reports “whatever the Georgian government tells him,” and that his “story reads like one designed to stoke anti-Russian sentiment in the U.S.”

Since I am clearly part of the far right or far left (Halper doesn’t actually say which one I am), and am clearly in love with Putin’s thugocracy, and was skeptical of Eli’s reporting because I think Russia is nice and never does bad things ever to anyone else, I think this is an accurate summary of why I was skeptical of that original report. Read my post and see how accurate this is.

Now the bit about Eli’s followup piece about anonymous U.S. intelligence sources “confirming” that Russia “bombed the U.S. embassy” raises similar issues. As I said in the post under scrutiny, it could very well be a coordinated GRU plot to set off explosives across Georgia, one of which happened uncomfortable close to the embassy. Being skeptical of a Georgian official is not the same as being in love with Vladimir Putin, especially given the political battle in DC between Georgian and Russian interests. But unless major details about the bomb blast have changed, the embassy itself wasn’t bombed, but “a cemetery about 100 meters from the embassy” is what got damaged. That still isn’t good, and if a Russian is indeed responsible that’s pretty damned stupid of them.

But turning that into “RUSSIA BOMBS AMERICAN EMBASSY” is just irresponsible. As is treating this accusation like it’s brand new and never before seen, when Georgia has been pushing it since December. Or even pretending the CIA infallible and never wrong about anything, ever. Then, to take this eight-month old story and turn it into “OBAMA IS IGNORING ATTACKS ON AMERICAN SOIL” and “THE RESET IS A LIE,” which Halper asserts in his blog post, is just silly.

But don’t take my word for it, and most certainly don’t interpret my skepticism as possibly being unsure of what really happened but rather as being born of my love of terrorism and my hatred of freedom and embassies. According to Halper, I’ve lost interest in the issue. So I guess I should never mention this again.

Eli Lake dropped a bombshell in the Washington Time this morning:

A bomb blast near the U.S. Embassy in Tblisi, Georgia, in September was traced to a plot run by a Russian military intelligence officer, according to an investigation by the Georgian Interior Ministry.

Shota Utiashvili, the most senior official in charge of intelligence analysis for the ministry, said in an interview with The Washington Times that the recent spate of bombings and attempted bombings – including what he said was a blast targeting the U.S. Embassy – was the work of Russian GRU officer Maj. Yevgeny Borisov.

The case against Russia and Borisov, however, is not so clear-cut. One problem with the piece is that it only quotes Georgian officials alleging Borisov’s involvement—to put it kindly, they have a vested interest in blaming everything on Russia. In 2009, I wrote a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review about how Georgia and Russia were both ramping up efforts to portray each other as heartless tyrants oppressing people and starting wars.

What I found particularly interesting was how the pro-Georgia side was resorting to almost apocalyptic terms to describe Russia—led by Senator John McCain, the narrative is obsessed with Russia trying to “restore the old Russian empire,” as if large countries should not seek influence and power in their near-abroad. Perhaps uncoincidentally, McCain staffers like Randy Scheunemann have long-standing ties to powerful DC lobbying firms hired by the Georgian government.

Russia has had less luck, in general, getting its side of the 2008 war out to Western publics. The separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia hired in 2009 LA-based Saylor Company, founded by a former LA Times reporter, to advocate on their behalf. While Saylor tries to advocate that Abkhazia and South Ossetia need the Russian military to protect them “Georgian aggression,” their message hasn’t really seeped into the general discourse about Georgian-Russian relations. Neither province is widely recognized as independent and Georgia considers them rogue provinces with no legal independence. Russia has recognized both, however, and has opened embassies in Sukhumi and Tshkinvali.

Thus, Lake writes that Russia is “occupying” the two regions, even though the two regions have violently resisted rule from Tblisi and publicly sought Russian military support and diplomatic recognition. Lake includes a quote from the Russian embassy in DC fifteen paragraphs down, where they deny any official involvement—as if the embassy here would know about covert operations happening in Georgia.

I tried to search for information on this notorious terrorist Borisov (his picture is at the top of this post). I could only find Georgian sources on him. One claimed Borisov was identified by a convicted Georgian terrorist, Gogita Arkania, in a prison interview to Kommersant. I could not find that interview on Kommersant’s website using a few different spellings of his name, which doesn’t mean all that much but it does make me wonder: who, exactly, is pushing this guy as a terrorist?

There’s no way to prove any of this. And, at the end of the day, Borisov could very well be a terrorist. But the evidence Lake reports to charge Russia with bombing the U.S. embassy is terribly circumstantial and limited in sourcing: literally the people with the most to gain from blaming Russia for their own internal problems are pushing this out to journalists. When you combine that with the somewhat alarming tendency in American politics to refuse to admit that the cold war is over—McCain’s desperate quest to portray Russia as a threatening empire is only the most prominent example of this but there are others—it’s difficult to take these charges at face value. Georgia has been caught several times misleading journalists about Russia’s perfidy in the region. Do we have any reason to think this time they’re not?

Update: Something else about Lake’s piece really nags me. He describes the Obama administration as enforcing a de facto arms embargo on the Georgian government. I think he means that President Obama canceled the billion-dollar arms deal President Bush proposed immediately after the 2008 deal. That is hardly an embargo, and is indicative of the other misleading, frankly inflammatory language Lake used to construct the rest of his story.

Puzzling story in Time about the mild protests in Georgia over the last week:

An Uprising in the Caucasus, but No Arab Spring in Georgia

By Thursday afternoon, it was hard to recognize the voice of Nino Burjanadze, the Georgian opposition leader, who normally speaks as though she has a bullhorn built into her throat. The night before, she had led a street protest meant to overthrow President Mikheil Saakashvili, her former ally turned political nemesis. But riot police had moved in with tear gas and rubber bullets, beating scores of people and arresting hundreds, and the would-be revolution failed. Holed up in her office the next day, Burjanadze fielded calls and waited for the police to knock on the door. “There’s practically no one here,” she said in an exhausted whisper. “Everyone has already been arrested.”

Mind you, this “uprising” consisted of a few thousand protesters in the streets of Batumi and Tblisi over a few days—hardly earth-shattering, especially when compared with actual crisis events like the 2007 riots, or the two months of protests in 2009. I daresay Simon Schuster is massively inflating the importance of these protests. And what’s with the comparison to the Arab Spring? That’s stupid. Georgians are not Arabs, and to even weakly imply they’re related is stupid.

This Nino Burjanadze figure is fascinating, though. After Eduard Shevardnadze was ousted in the original Arab Spring Uprising Against Tyranny—in 2003 before everything on the planet was a reflection of Tahrir Square but was instead a “color” revolution—Mrs. Burjanadze briefly took over the Presidency (Shevardnadze was her mentor), then fell into line under Saakashvili once he won the followup election. Since the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, she’s become an increasingly vocal critic of Saakashvili’s regime, often siding with Moscow against Tblisi to critique her government.

Now that in and of itself is not a sign of anything beyond her position within Georgian politics and her seeming ideological fluidity in trying to remain important and influential. And siding with Russia can be controversial for a prominent Georgian figure, which might explain why Saakashvili has fallen back on his old habit of declaring everyone he dislikes as working for the KGB.

Mrs. Burjanadze was able to get, at the most, 5,000 or so people into the street. While that’s probably newsworthy, it’s hardly an uprising. In 2009 Georgians were protesting in such numbers and over such a period of time that I wondered if the international community was developing revolution fatigue. The most recent round of protests do not even hold a candle in the wind to the 2009 riots, or the 2003 movement that toppled Shevardnadze.

Imagine if, every time the Tea Party in the U.S. held a protest, foreign journalists referenced the Arab Spring and wondered if an “uprising” was being quashed by the time it fizzled out. Not only would there be a lot of laughter—imagine the faces of Tea Party activists being compared to Muslim Arabs!—everyone would, rightly, see such a portrayal as stupid. In 2002 and 2003, literally millions of people took the streets of Washington, DC and London to express their opposition to the pending war in Iraq and to demand the resignation of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. No one serious called those uprisings or wondered about the stability of the regimes (or the well being of the protest leaders).

Georgia, however, is different. There, a 2,000 person march—which probably can’t even be heard a block or two away, much less affect the government—represents an UPRISING JUST LIKE THE ARAB SPRING. Give me a break, Time, and please—quit insulting us with your terrible coverage.

About a month ago, I noted in the Columbia Journalism Review that Georgia had devoted a rather significant amount of resources toward pressing its case—in English!—as a hapless victim of Russian aggression. To a large degree, the EU report on the Russo-Georgian War of last August pokes holes in the myth of Georgian victimization, mostly by noting just how thoroughly provocative Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was beforehand (but still nevertheless condemning Russia’s conduct as illegal and extreme).

I would call that a sober assessment of what happened: Georgia behaving like a petulant teenager, and Russia behaving like an unaccountable bully. James Joyner, however, calls it “bizarre“:

If sovereignty means anything, it means that leaders of a state have license to take actions within the confines of their borders as they see fit, so long as they don’t create adverse spillover effects for their neighbors. Saakashvili’s actions against internal groups conducting illegal activities within the borders of his country, while unwise and perhaps even provocative, are simply no justification for an illegal invasion of its sovereign territory by another member of the United Nations. Period. End of story.

Similarly, the United States, Israel, Ukraine, and Georgia are all member states of the United Nations. Georgia was not under any sort of UN Security Council sanction nor was it or is it now a threat to its neighbors. Why, then, are the first three not allowed to sell or give arms to Georgia as they please? Georgia is a staunch ally in the war on al Qaeda and were even participants in helping secure Iraq until illegal violation of its own territory forced them to bring troops home. The United States is particular, then, had every reason in the world to augment Georgia’s military power and none not to. Indeed, if their military were weaker, there’s plenty of reason to believe Russian forces would be even further into “Georgia Proper” now, perhaps even going so far as to remove the duly elected president by force.

There are several things to disagree with here. Let’s start with the “adverse spillover effects”—Russian media certainly portrays the events especially inside North Ossetia and to a lesser degree in Abkhazia as having negative spillover effects in its own conflicts in the Caucasus. Plus, Georgia has not exercised effective sovereignty over either territory for well-night fifteen years under the auspices of the UN, which to me at least makes me wonder just what exactly we are to mean by invoking sovereignty over the two breakaway provinces.

Secondly, I gotta raise a big red flag over the whole “Georgia helps us with al Qaeda and Iraq” thing. Georgia deployed its troops in a very obvious quid-pro-quo for substantial American technical and military training assistance—that is why there was such an enormous U.S. presence in the country during Russia’s advance. In 2006, Nathan Hodge even interviewed Georgian soldiers who viewed their arrangement with the U.S. as being preparation work for forcibly retaking their wayward territories, which would be a violation of the UN-brokered cease-fire.

Then there’s that al Qaeda bit. Unless James knows of something else, most of the concern about “al Qaeda in Georgia” really amounts to 2002-era concern-trolling over the Pankisi Gorge (this article in Time is a good representation). The thing is, until 9/11 the big concern in Pankisi was actually Chechen fighters using the area as a safe haven for their war with the Russian Army—which takes us back to that whole sovereignty bit (namely, just how tacit, from either party, was the approval for such groups for so long?). In other words, the United States has been inserting itself—indirectly, but not very subtly—into both Georgia’s conflict with Russia, and with Russia’s own internal conflicts. Which doesn’t really leave the United States as a neutral partner to the conflict, hence the limitations on its arms sales.

Bringing it all back around, it’s a tough sell to call the Russo-Georgian War a clear cut open-and-closed example of one country violating another’s sovereignty. Russia has staffed a UN peacekeeping force in both of Georgia’s breakaway territories for years, and lest we forget—Georgia started shelling Tskhinvali, which necessitated a Russian response of some sort.

When discussing the conflict’s ultimate blame, however, Georgia cannot be singled out. Russia has undoubtedly behaved provocatively as well, whether issuing Russian passports to Ossetians and Abkhazians, or through its outrageous and unjustifiable lightning thrust into the country. Realizing both countries bear substantial blame for the conflict does not require apologizing or moral equivalency for either side, but rather realizing the situation is both legally and ethically kind of murky, and that, in fact, both countries can be in the wrong. I mean, that isn’t so hard, is it?