Surrender or else, Russia tells Georgia

I am sure that Saakashvili has had much time to rue his rash decision to use military force against South Ossetia, but he now seems to be balking at the terms which Russia is seeking to impose on him as the price of peace.

"We do not yet have a peace deal, we have a provisional cessation of hostilities; but this is significant progress," Sarkozy said after talks with Medvedev in Moscow and before taking the terms to Tbilisi. This morning Sarkozy predicted Saakashvili would accept Russian terms on the broader settlement.

And the price, and the way that the deal is being delivered to him, is harsh.

Medvedev branded Saakashvili a "lunatic" as he outlined tough terms to the French leader, in effect demanding Georgian capitulation to vastly superior Russian forces.

"The difference between lunatics and other people is that when they smell blood it is very difficult to stop them," Medvedev said. "So you have to use surgery."

The key demands are that the Georgian leader pledges, in an agreement that is signed and legally binding, to abjure all use of force to resolve Georgia's territorial disputes with the two breakaway pro-Russian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia; and that Georgian forces withdraw entirely from South Ossetia and are no longer part of the joint "peacekeeping" contingent there with Russian and local Ossetian forces.

Medvedev also insisted the populations of the two regions had to be allowed to vote on whether they wanted to join Russia, prefiguring a possible annexation that would enfeeble Georgia and leave Saakashvili looking crushed. If he balked at the terms, said Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister: "We will be forced to take other measures to prevent any repetition of the situation that emerged because of the outrageous Georgian aggression."

Despite the fact that it was the Georgians who used military force against the South Ossetians, the US State Department yesterday spoke of "plain and simple blatant aggression on the part of Russia". It has been astonishing to watch how the US media have spent the last week energetically reporting that black was, in fact, white.

The Georgians have traditionally been part of the peacekeeping force in South Ossetia, but the Russian peace terms state that this is to come to an end, which is blatantly humiliating for Saakashvili. Rather than to insist on regime change the Russians appear to have decided simply to cut off his balls in public.

"They shot their brother Russian peacekeepers, then they finished them off with bayonets, so we are not going to see them there any more," said Dmitri Rogozin, ambassador to Nato in Brussels. Medvedev spoke by phone with the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana and told him "there are a few things that need to be discussed to get a full ceasefire," said a European official.

"The Russians are saying that they will never again accept Georgians in any form in South Ossetia. They see them as a trojan horse that started the attacks last week."

While Nato leaders in Brussels stressed that South Ossetia and Abkhazia were part of Georgia, Medvedev encouraged the secession of the two breakaway regions.

"Ossetians and Abkhaz must respond to that question taking their history into account, including what happened in the past few days," he said.

Nato is now finding itself in a bit of a bind here as it is continuing to insist on Georgia's "territorial integrity". But this is where the Kosovo decision will - as Putin predicted - hit them on the head.

What is the principle which allows for Kosovo's independence but forbids South Ossetia and Abkhazia to say what they would like their future to be?

So that is to be Saakashvili's punishment. He must move his troops out of South Ossetia and allow both potential breakaway regions to vote on whether or not to leave him.

It's about as humiliating as it gets and, although Georgians were in the streets supporting him, one gets the feeling from the comments printed that they realise that the man has utterly ballsed this one up.

"Why are people waving flags? It's not as if we won," Lasha Darkveldze, 23, said as supporters thronged the centre of Tbilisi and marched on its freedom square. "Saakashvili should now resign."

"We hope he is going to disappear from Georgia," Bacha Janashia, 24, a student, said. "I wonder why he did it. He has only 10,000 soldiers and he takes on Russia."

And as Saakashvili licks his wounds, one would hope that George Bush is also licking his. He played a game of poker with Russia and his bluff was called. The west was not prepared to start WWIII for Georgia.

McCain is proving himself unfit for the presidency by insisting that Nato now accept Georgia as a member.

McCain seized on the conflict again today during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania, remarking that Nato's decision to delay Georgian membership in the alliance this year "might have been viewed as a green light by Russia for its attacks".

"I urge Nato allies to revisit the decision."

In gambling terms that's called doubling down. We have already shown that we are not prepared to start WWIII for Georgia, and making Georgia a member of Nato won't change that fact, it will simply damage Nato.

There's no point in arguing that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, and then inviting into the organisation a country which we have already shown we do not believe the principle applies to.

McCain is indulging in the worst kind of posturing here. And if he thinks Russia are stupid enough to be fooled by that kind of gesture politics, then he's simply a fool.

They gambled and they lost. Badly. This is not the time to double down because the other side are well aware of what cards they hold.

UPDATE:

Justin Raimondo points out the gnarled way the Bush administration manage to maintain their "Poor little Georgia" Script:

According to Washington, the Russians invaded "Georgia"; Saakashvili's invasion of South Ossetia doesn't qualify as aggression, since how can you invade your own country? South Ossetia and Abkhazia are part of Georgia, you see. Just like a small mammal is part of the anaconda that swallowed it whole.

UPDATE II:

Yikes! The people who supported the glorious war in Iraq have discovered the UN Charter:

Whatever mistakes Tbilisi has made, they cannot justify Russia's actions. Moscow has invaded a neighbor, an illegal act of aggression that violates the U.N. Charter and fundamental principles of cooperation and security in Europe.

Do they now arrest themselves and make their way to the Hague?

UPDATE III:

Of course, it transpires that Bush was warned by other Nato members not to go down the route he was proposing and which McCain still proposes as policy:

President Bush threw the NATO summit meeting here off-script on Wednesday by lobbying hard to extend membership to Ukraine and Georgia, but he failed to rally support for the move among key allies.

Mr. Bush’s position — that Ukraine and Georgia should be welcomed into a Membership Action Plan, or MAP, that prepares nations for NATO membership — directly contradicted German and French government positions stated earlier this week.

Mr. Bush failed to win over a consensus of NATO members in a debate at a dinner of NATO leaders, a senior German official said Wednesday night, with at least seven countries lined up against him.

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Tags: Putin, Saakashvili, Georgia, Russia, South Ossetia, Nato, McCain, Obama