How much is the west, and specifically the US, to blame for the war between Russian and Georgia?
Quite a lot, according to some commentators, who happen to be American. Steve Clemons at Washington Note sees a "high quotient of American culpability".
He argues that when Kosovo declared independence earlier this year, the price of Russian cooperation on other global issues rose considerably and that chances of a clash over Georgia's breakaway border provinces increased dramatically.
By pushing Kosovo the way the US did and aggravating nationalist sensitivities, Russia could in reaction be rationally expected to further integrate and cultivate South Ossetia and Abkhazia under de facto Russian control and pull these provinces that border Russia away from the state of Georgia ...
At the time, there was word from senior level sources that Russia had asked the US to stretch an independence process for Kosovo over a longer stretch of time - and tie to it some process of independence for the two autonomous Georgia provinces. In exchange, Russia would not veto the creation of a new state of Kosovo at the security council. The US rejected Russia's secret entreaties and instead rushed recognition of Kosovo and said damn the consequences.
However, it could be argued that Russia and Georgia were heading for a clash over South Ossetia, with or without Kosovo independence, as the issue has been simmering for years.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president turned prime minister, in his public statements seemed to put more importance on Georgia's ambitions to join Nato. At its summit in Bucharest this year, Nato agreed that Georgia would become a member of the western military alliance, which would not have gone down well with the Kremlin.
What is not in dispute is that Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, overplayed his hand or walked into a Russian trap, but that is almost besides the point. James Sherr, an analyst at the Chatham House thinktank, argues that what the episode shows is Russia's determination to protect its owns interests whatever it takes. He writes in the Sunday Telegraph.
... Russia has (in Putin's words) "earned a right to be self-interested" and that in its own "zone", it will defend these interests irrespective of what others think about them. For Russia, the broader implications are also becoming straightforward. To its political establishment, to the heads of Gazprom and Rosneft, to its armed forces and security services and to their advisors and "ideologists", the key point is that the era of western dominance is over.
On Politico, Ben Smith looks at how Barack Obama and John McCain, the two US presidential hopefuls have reacted to the crisis. He notes that Obama took a very mainstream position, calling for negotiations, but that McCain took a much more confrontational stance towards Russia. Smith concludes that McCain's position "put him more closely in line with the moral clarity and American exceptionalism projected by President Bush's first term". Of course now in the last days of his presidency, Bush has become much more pragmatic. The "axis of evil" rhetoric has been jettisoned and the US is talking to both North Korea and Iran.
