Bad Bets

As the crisis in Georgia enters its third day, one thing is clear: Mikhail Saakashvili bet big and lost.

The Georgian president bet that he could use military force to launch a quick action that would seize the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali and bring the rebellious region back under Georgia's control. He seems not to have expected the thousand or so Russian peacekeepers based in the region to actually take action to keep the peace in the face of a military raid, nor did Saakashvili think Russia would respond after 10 of those peacekeepers were killed in the early hours of the fighting.

That Saakashvili wouldn't think of these things is, frankly, pretty stupid. Russia has been flexing its military muscles for months now (resuming long-range patrols by their nuclear bombers and staging the largest naval exercise since the fall of the Soviet Union – sailing basically their entire Atlantic fleet - earlier this year). Plus Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev is an unknown quantity for the most part on the world stage; it isn't a stretch to think he would meet a challenge to Russia's military prestige forcefully.

Russia's response has been (if I may continue the gambling analogies) to go "all in": flooding troops into South Ossetia and striking at the Georgian city of Gori, which Georgian forces have been using as a staging area for their South Ossetia campaign. By responding with overwhelming force the Russians were able to quickly recapture Tskhinvali, pound the Georgian forces and drive them out of South Ossetia.

Saakashvili's second mistake was betting that the Western powers (his primary patron the United States, the European Union and NATO) would back his South Ossetia plan and stand up to Russia. They of course haven't, nor are they likely to, at least not as long as the conflict is confined to Georgia. Look at the situation in Darfur, which has been festering for years. The West will condemn the government of Sudan all day long, but no one wants to send in any troops to crackdown on the roving genocidal militias. Even in Afghanistan, NATO's front in their new primary mission of fighting the threat of global terrorism, few members have been willing to commit troops (then there's Germany, who is happy to send them so long as they are kept far, far away from the fighting). Washington and London may loathe the Putin/Medvedev government, but they're not about to go to war with it, especially not for a protégé who’s gone off half-cocked and started a war.

Sadly it will be Georgia that will pay the price for Saakashvili's bad bets. While offers of cease-fires are being discussed, the fighting continues with Georgia seeming to be getting the worst of it. Even once peace is restored it's awfully hard to imagine either South Ossetia or Abkhazia (Georgia's other erstwhile region) re-integrating themselves with the Georgian motherland. The country likely faces a period of instability once the inevitable finger pointing in the Georgian government begins, derailing any immediate hopes for membership in NATO or the EU. And, of course, there are the many civilians who have been killed, wounded or driven from their homes. They have lost the most of all.