And On The Fourth Day, Biden Totally Steps In It

Vice-President Joe Biden had been doing a fairly good job during his visit to Ukraine and Georgia this week of supporting both countries without upsetting US efforts at resetting relations with their touchy neighbor, Russia. That is until his speech today to Georgia's Parliament and a visit to Georgians displaced by last summer's conflict with Russia.

Biden told the refugees that Russia "used a pretext to invade your country" and had "isolated itself more" because of the conflict. I'm sure that went over well with the Georgians, but it's not really a good description of last August's events unless you call the Georgian military's attacking the South Ossetian city of Tskhinvali in the middle of the night a 'pretext', then sure, Russia used a pretext to invade Georgia.

The reality of the situation is that no one has clean hands over last summer's conflict. For months before the conflict, both the Russian and Georgian sides were trying to provoke each other - an expression of the deep personal dislike between the leaders of the two countries: Russia's Vladimir Putin and Georgia's Mikhail Saakashvili. The European Union has been sitting on a report that puts most of the blame for last year's conflict squarely on the Georgian side, saying it was sparked by Georgia's attack on South Ossetia (an idiotic attempt of bringing the breakaway region back under Georgia's control after 15 years). And as for Biden's other claim - that Russia is "isolated" - he might want to check with the EU, NATO and his boss, Barack Obama - all of whom are working to rebuild relations now with Moscow after a lull following the conflict. So much for pretext and isolation…

Biden went on to tell the Georgian Parliament, to a standing ovation, "we will not recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states and we urge the world not to recognize them." So far South Ossetia and Abkhazia have been recognized as independent states only by Russia (and Nicaragua). But while we are urging the world not to recognize Georgia's breakaway regions, we do want them to consider Serbia's breakaway region, Kosovo, as its own country. I’ve yet to hear a good explanation from the US government as to why the difference. The main reason seems to be that Georgia is an ally of ours while were not too crazy about Serbia.

As you'd expect, Biden's comments have already angered Russia (according to the BBC this evening), I am sure there will be more fallout there in the coming days. Biden did tell Georgian authorities that getting South Ossetia and Abkhazia back by force was not an option, and that Georgia needed to do more to "deepen" their democracy. President Saakashvili pledged (again) to institute democratic reforms, but he's promised reforms a number of times in the past without actually doing anything to make them a reality.

And there's my problem. I think that the United States should support the peaceful, democratic development of both Georgia and Ukraine and support the Georgians and Ukrainians, but we should do nothing to encourage or support the utterly dysfunctional governments of either state. Neither Georgia nor Ukraine is ever going to move forward until they get rid of their current, petty leaders.