Washington Post article

Holbrooke on Georgia - Washington Post

Mon Nov 27, 2006 4:44 am (PST)
David and Goliath Putin Tries to Depose a Neighbor
By Richard HolbrookeMonday, November 27, 2006; Page A19

TBILISI, Georgia -- While the United States is otherwise
preoccupied, this small former Soviet republic has become the
stage for a blatant effort at regime change, Russian-style.
Vladimir Putin is going all out to undermine and get rid of
Georgia's young, pro-American, pro-democracy president, Mikheil
Saakashvili. Putin is assuming that the United States,
overwhelmed by Iraq and needing Moscow's support on North Korea
and Iran, will not make Georgia a "red-line" issue and that the
European Union, fearful of endangering energy supplies from
Russia, will similarly play it down.

Much is at stake: Putin's long-term strategic goal is to create a
sphere of Russian dominance and hegemony in the vast area the
Soviet Union and the czars once ruled. If he succeeds in bringing
down the most independent and pro-Western leader in the former
Soviet space outside the Baltics, he will have gone a long way
toward his goal. Also at stake: President Bush's "freedom
agenda," stability in the Caucasus and the European Union's
attitude toward a small European country on the edge of the
world's most volatile region.


Putin's methods are brutal. He has expelled at least 1,700
Georgians since October, cracked down on Georgian-owned
businesses, made repeated statements about preserving the Russian
market for real Russians and demonized Georgians as a criminal
class. He has doubled natural gas prices two years running and
cut off all direct rail, air, road, sea and postal links between
the two countries. Russia has also waged an aggressive
international disinformation campaign to raise doubts about
Saakashvili -- I have heard astonishing, wholly undocumented
charges about his alleged corruption and his "hot-headed" style
in Berlin, Brussels and even Washington. In Tbilisi today, you
can hear an ugly word for this that rises out of the depths of
19th-century Russian history: pogrom.

In fact, the 38-year-old Saakashvili represents almost everything
the United States and the European Union should support. He led
the peaceful 2003 Rose Revolution that overthrew the corrupt
regime of Eduard Shevardnadze. He then opened the country to
Western investment, presided over a dramatic turnaround in a
once-hopeless economy, and instituted massive reforms of the
police and civil service. While these efforts have not been
perfect -- Freedom House and other nongovernmental organizations
have expressed concern about an overly cozy relationship between
the government and the main media, for example -- Georgia has
climbed further up the World Bank's latest annual reform survey
than any other country.

In 2004 Saakashvili peacefully seized control of Ajaria, one of
the three areas that, with Moscow's encouragement, refused to
accept Georgian rule after the crackup of the Soviet Union in
1991. Ajaria, which lies on the Black Sea, has since become a
booming tourist center. Now Saakashvili has his eye on regaining
two remaining "frozen conflict" areas in Georgia, South Ossetia
and Abkhazia, where impoverished breakaway regimes, heavily
backed by Moscow and Russian troops, claim to be independent
countries.

Despite international resolutions that affirm the territorial
integrity of Georgia, it will be difficult for Saakashvili to
regain Abkhazia and South Ossetia, especially without strong
Western support. Putin would be happy to fight for them again if
necessary and to overthrow Saakashvili if possible.

This is not just a strategic issue. It is also deeply personal:
Saakashvili as David and Putin as Goliath. Their face-to-face
meetings have been electric with anger. When President Bush
brought Georgia up with Putin on the margins of the Asian-Pacific
summit in Hanoi last weekend, Putin went into a rant, as he does
every time the subject arises. His tirades may be designed to
discourage further discussion, but for the most part it is,
according to people who have heard Putin, real, irrational anger.

Bush's visit to Tbilisi last year was a triumph; today the main
road from the airport into the city is proudly named President
George W. Bush Street. Bush and Saakashvili genuinely like each
other, and there is hardly a country left in the world where Bush
is still so popular. Saakashvili's best American friends are Sen.
John McCain, who has made support of democracy in the former
Soviet Union a major theme, and George Soros, who helped pay
salaries for the bankrupt Georgian civil service system in 2004.
This cannot please Putin.

But why the relatively muted international response to Putin's
outrageous behavior? The main reason is Washington's weakened
state as a result of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea.
This is Putin's moment, especially with oil prices high. For the
first time since the end of the Cold War, Washington needs Moscow
more than Moscow needs Washington. During the 1990s President
Bill Clinton used America's undisputed primacy to enlarge NATO
(Saakashvili wants membership, of course) and conduct successful
military actions in Bosnia and Kosovo over Russian objections.
Today, by contrast, Russia has threatened to veto a U.N. Security
Council resolution that would give Kosovo independence and has
spuriously linked Kosovo's status to that of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia.

The European Union and the United States must make the continued
freedom and independence of Georgia a test case of the Western
relationship with Russia. Putin must learn that we will not
sacrifice the interests of a small country that has put its faith
in Western values for the sake of energy supplies or U.N. votes.
If Bush's freedom rhetoric has any meaning, let him prove it in
Georgia, not just with polite calls for mutual restraint, but
with real pressure on Moscow and the assembling of a united front
with the European Union to make clear to Putin that he must cease
his attempts to destabilize Georgia and overthrow Saakashvili. In
the age of Iraq we must show that our nation can continue to have
influence elsewhere in the world and that we will not abandon our
friends or our values.

Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, writes a monthly column for The Post.