Good fodder for the 9/26 FP debate: Response to Georgia is more Obama's than McCain's

[BeyondGeography]

Caution Over Confrontation

In the month since the Russian invasion of Georgia, the Bush administration has crafted a policy that should please some liberal critics and upset conservative hard-liners -- a low-key approach that tries to help the Georgians recover without backing Russia further into a corner.

The Georgia strategy is premised on working jointly with European allies and on avoiding the sort of unilateral U.S. military threats that would scare them off. It is also tempered by the administration's earlier mistakes in dealing with mercurial Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, which set the stage for his unwise Aug. 7 attack on South Ossetia that provoked the punishing Russian reaction.

It's a policy, in short, that distills some of the foreign policy lessons learned at the shank end of the Bush presidency. And its contours, interestingly enough, arguably are closer to the thrust of Barack Obama's initial, cautious reaction to the Georgia crisis than to the more confrontational approach of John McCain.

...The signal Bush is said to be sending Saakashvili is: "We're with you. We take your survival and interests seriously. But be smart. Don't give Russia a pretext." This go-slow message is in part a reflection of the administration's frustration that Saakashvili ignored repeated advice over the past two years not to provoke Russia over the disputed regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

...So this is what it has come to for the Bush administration in what may be its last foreign policy crisis: No saber-rattling; no calls to expel Russia from the Group of 8, à la McCain. Instead, a patient effort to work with Europe, in partnership with French diplomats, for heaven's sake! And a policy premised on the idea that global capital markets are a better constraint than U.S. bluff and bluster.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/08/AR2008090802294.html