Great coverage on this blog. I fully agree with the author that "what matters now is who is affixing what meaning to who’s actions," which obviously includes us readers of the blog. Information is not meaning, but neither are two separable. So for additional sources of info, I wish to recommend the unusual suspects like Libération or Deutsche-Welle. There one may find useful facts such as that save for Ukraine, no other CIS country officially supported Georgia, that Georgians from Adzharia are mostly staying out of the conflict or, most notably, that the EU is not acting in unison on the conflict. This kind of information is yet to be contextualized in most English-language media.
Peter,
you really don't have a clue as to what reality is do you?
After all, you write with serious intent, and not tongue in cheek stock US Propaganda sentences like:
"a model of democracy and liberalism in the Caucuses, and potential NATO member."
"Importantly, Russia’s ability to escalate with relative impunity "
'The greatest element of Bush’s policy was its promotion of democracy. The multi-colored revolutions, including the Rose in Georgia, were seen, in part, as a successful demonstration effect of Bush’s democratization agenda."
"Putin’s increasingly authoritarian Russia was able to spank Georgia’s Rose Revolution, "
It is readily apparent that you don't have a clue what the Foundation for the Promotion of Democracy does, what kind of animal Saakashvili is, what inside joke Georgian NATO membership is and what escalation is. Ask a Panamanian, a Grenadian, an Iraqi.
In the 2008 Georgia-South Ossetian War, the Good Guys won, and the only really shocking thing about Russias actions, was their restraint, their precision and their military disipline, something the Russians have never shown before.
The US building Georgia up for a big fall, (Exercise Immediate Reaction, 200
was no surprise to anyone who hase lived outside the States. The US screws over its allies all the time.
The fact that when push came to shove the US bailed was no big surprise.
The fact that NATO bailed is no big surprise, after all, half the origional members of NATO were going to quit if Georgia was actually offered membership. They would have had to come up with some new acronym.
There was never any doubt that the US could never compete with Russia for influence in Central Asia and the Caucases. Just like Russia or China can never hope to compete with US influence in Mexico or central and south America, the US has been losing whatever footholds it had in Central Asia left and right. Russia had simply called the US' bluff with this war. The US was never prepared to offer any substantial aid to Georgia and simply tied itself to the idiotic military adventures of their leader. As for democracy promotion in the region, I believe it has always been a policy aimed at expanding American influence. Lets not forget that the Rose revolution was closely coordinated from the US embassy and both the Orange and Rose revolutions were funded in large part from groups like the NED.
I also feel that the unipolar moment is not something that has objectively existed in the fist place. The US never had complete freedom of action nor was there ever anything approaching system-wide unipolarity. If anything, the idea of the unipolar moment seems to be just another facet of the triumphalist, end of history discourse arising after the cold war. Clearly the objective situation has not conformed to this view as this recent war showed.
Clueless from the get-go.
Here's a clue for you: the region you are cluelessly bloviating about is the Caucasus.
Jimbo put you straight on most of the rest of it. There's no mystery here. America doesn't have any fucking credibility! You spunked that away in Iraq. Russia has just demonstrated that it doesn't care who your allies are, that's all. We already knew that you were a paper tiger.
Now, about Taiwan...
So, you aren't disagreeing with me. My point remains that this is an "emperor has no clothes" moment for the current international order. Though many have been pointing out the "reality" of a lack of US influence in key regions like the Caucasus, such a "reality" only matters when the US bluff is called.
Now that Russia has pointed out what you might have considered obvious, it becomes fodder for future international politics.
Like Taiwan. Or Moldova. and so on.
And, yes, sorry for the typing mistake, that's my fault for relying on my Word spell check and not proof-reading more closely.
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