From West Point to the Caucasus: 'Georgia On My Mind'

[leftchick]

http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan08162008.html

By CONN HALLINAN

One of the major causes of the recent war in Georgia has nothing to do with the historic tensions that make the Caucasus such a flashpoint between east and west. Certainly the long-stranding ethnic enmity between Ossetians and Georgians played a role, as did the almost visceral dislike between Moscow and Tbilisi. But the origins of the short, brutal war go back six years to a June afternoon at West Point.

Speaking to the cadets at the military academy, President George W. Bush laid out a blueprint for U.S foreign policy, a strategy lifted from a neocon think tank, the Project for a New American Century. In essence, the West Point Doctrine made it clear that Washington would not permit the development of a “peer competitor,” and that, if necessary, the U.S. would use military force to insure that it maintained the monopoly on world power it had inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The 21st Century was to be an American century.


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I think we have underestimated the anger in Moscow over the increasing NATO involvement in Russia’s backyard,” says Christopher Langton of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

This is the context in which the recent fighting took place. While the western media has largely portrayed the war as the mighty Russian bear beating up on tiny Georgia, Moscow sees Tbilisi’s attack on South Ossetia as yet another move aimed at surrounding it with hostile powers.

U.S. non-governmental organizations, some, like the National Endowment for Democracy, close to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, played a key role in helping to bring Georgia’s current president Mikhail Saakashvilli to power. For all the Bush Administration touts him as a “democrat,” the Georgian president has exiled his political enemies, closed down opposition newspapers, and turned his police on peaceful demonstrators.