Bush team bungled big time on Georgia fiasco

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 (UPI) -- The scale of the Bush administration's failures in Georgia is now becoming clear: The issue was not just a routine bungle; it was a fiasco of monumental proportions.

First, the State Department at least was not oblivious to the rising tensions between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia; it could, in fact, hardly have missed them, since the Moscow newspapers have been full of almost nothing else since the beginning of this year. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Daniel Fried, her point man on Georgian affairs, both had solemnly warned Russia repeatedly to lay off Georgia. They just never imagined the Russians would ignore them and go ahead anyway.

Second, why didn't America's orbiting spy satellites, the most comprehensive space surveillance system ever created, give adequate warning of the massive Russian military buildup that prefigured the invasion of Georgia last Friday?

The answer is, those space surveillance systems already had their hands full providing a stream of real-time intelligence in Afghanistan, where the U.S. Army is currently winning, and in Iraq, where it is not. Pakistan and the status of its army and nuclear weapons systems is the third great U.S. surveillance priority at the moment. There simply aren't enough surveillance satellites, cameras and ground operators to keep Georgia and the Caucasus under close watch, too.

Besides, no one thought the Russians would dare to invade, so the priority was low or next to non-existent. Maybe the space surveillance analysts should have been reading the Moscow newspapers, too.

Third, the Georgian army did not stand and fight: It fell apart. It had the advantage of several immensely strong bottleneck defense positions, such as the Roki Tunnel and the Kodori Gorge, where it could have made a stand. It could have fought hard in the town of Gori, as Palestinian forces fiercely contested the Israeli army in Jenin on the West Bank in 2002. It did none of those things: Its remnants simply fled back to Tbilisi in panic.

By contrast, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite Army of God in southern Lebanon, stood its ground and fought bravely and all too effectively against a bungled, indecisively commanded and chronically undermanned Israeli frontal assault in July 2006.

The Georgians may prove better at guerrilla warfare against the Russians: They have, after all, the mountains, the forests and the bandit traditions they love to sing about in their ballads. But in terms of maintaining effective military opposition that could slow the Russians up for a few days -- a crucial factor in this kind of mini-war -- they were worse than useless.

Fourth, as a result of the Georgian collapse, a lot of U.S. material that has been delivered to Georgia to make it militarily credible has fallen into Russian hands already. This will probably prove to be a boon for Russian tactical weapons experts eager to lay their hands on U.S. military material. The Russians, after all, have been reverse-engineering U.S. weapons systems ever since they used the Boeing B-29 Superfortresses that fell into their hands during World War II to create their first intercontinental strategic nuclear bomber, the Tupolev Tu-4 -- NATO designation Bull.

The Georgian complaint that the West abandoned it is passing the buck. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was openly boasting, before the conflict began, about how he was going to give the South Ossetians, whom Russia has backed to the hilt for more than a decade and a half since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a bloody nose. Then his own military fell apart so rapidly, there was no time for the European nations, the United States and NATO to take any real action on Georgia's behalf anyway.

Besides, at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, in March, the European nations made clear they were not prepared to extend the NATO guarantees of joint security and protection under Article 5 of the 1949 Washington Treaty to Georgia anyway. That left only the United States. But President Bush's decision to stay in Beijing to watch the Olympic Games for a full four days, as the Russian invasion of Georgia unfolded, clearly revealed how much -- or, rather, how little -- he was prepared to do once the T-72 Main Battle Tanks started rolling.

Russia has achieved all its aims in spades: It has guaranteed Georgia will stay out of NATO. It has wrecked Saakashvili's credibility as a leader of Georgia. The panicked and disgusted Georgian people will soon be replacing him anyway, even if the Russians did not raise a finger, although one expects they will do a lot more than that.

Russia also has achieved its key strategic goal of preventing the West from gaining control of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline transporting oil from the Caspian Basin, believed to be potentially the second-largest reservoir after the Persian Gulf region.

The invasion also has dealt a historic and potentially mortal blow to the unilateral system of mutual security that the Clinton and Bush administrations have been pushing ahead energetically to create throughout Central and Eastern Europe over the past 16 years while ignoring Russia's every objection to what they were doing.

Georgia may not have been a NATO member, but, of all the former Soviet republics, it was clearly the most favored and protected by the Bush administration, except for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which are already in NATO. Expect an emboldened Russia to turn on them next and against Ukraine, too.

These facts explain why Russia suggested the cease-fire. You don't have to be Einstein to see that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin already had achieved everything he wanted.

Will the West act effectively to sanction Russia in retaliation for the Georgia invasion? That appears very unlikely. Italy, Germany and France certainly will not want to kick Russia out of the Group of Eight major industrialized nations, as Russia provides the main natural gas supplies to Western Europe. Japan won't either, because it doesn't want to risk Russia's wrath.

Bush is now, more than ever, a lame duck who has just been humiliated by Putin and the Russian army in Georgia, and he is desperately hoping global oil prices will continue to drop. But Russia is the second-largest oil exporter in the world and the largest exporter of oil and gas combined. Russia is therefore in a far stronger position to hammer the United States with economic retaliation for U.S.-imposed economic sanctions than the other way around.

The great U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt recommended talking softly and carrying a big stick in the world of international relations. For seven and a half years, Bush has been talking loudly and carrying a stick whose military and economic clout has been shrinking by the year. Now he is paying the price.