Global Dialogue, vol.

11, (August 2009)

The Bear Trap:

Russia and the West after
the Crisis in Georgia
NICOLAI N. PETRO
Nicolai N. Petro is professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island, US.

n the night of 78 August 2008, the Georgian army launched a full-scale assault to restore
constitutional order to Georgias rebellious northern province of South Ossetia. After several days
of intense fighting, this assault was rebuffed by the intervention of Russian military forces. Nearly
a year has passed since these tragic events, yet there is still widespread disagreement over what happened,
why it happened, and what lessons ought to be derived from the conflict.
For President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, the Russian intervention was the pre-planned coldblooded murder of a small, free independent country by a ruthless big neighbor.1 It occurred because
Russia simply could not tolerate an independent Georgia. For President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia,
however, Georgias initial assault was a pre-planned act of genocide by Tbilisi against the people of South
Ossetia. Medvedevs foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has called Saakashvilis government a criminal
regime, and argued that Russia had an obligation under international law to uphold the principles of
human security and the responsibility to protect. The Western media, initially very supportive of
Saakashvili, have become much more sceptical, as evidence of Georgian aggression mounts.2
Still, the conflict has cast a long shadow over Russias relations with the West, and before those
relations can be reset, Augusts war must be given some historical context, and popular explanations of
why it erupted at that specific time must be examined.

Georgian Nationalism
While the crisis of last August is usually regarded as an international matter, a violation of state
sovereignty, it can perhaps be better understood as an ethnic conflict among groups with long-standing
grievances against one another. Specifically, it is fear of the resurgence of Georgian nationalism, which
Mikheil Saakashvili carefully nurtured and brought to the boil, that lies at the heart of the separatist
aspirations today of the Ossetians and Abkhaz.
The Ossetian people first joined the Russian Empire as an independent unit in the 1750s, but for
convenience their lands were joined to the governorship of Tiflis (Tbilisi) some forty years later. Never
entirely happy with this decision, in September 1990 South Ossetia declared its own autonomy within
Georgia. On 11 December 1990, however, the Georgian Supreme Soviet abolished South Ossetias
autonomy and, under the leadership of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who would later become Georgias first
elected president, launched early in 1991 a military assault to reassert Georgian control over the region.
Gamsakhurdias brief but turbulent presidency (May 1991January 1992) is best remembered for his
efforts to restore a Georgia for Georgians by scorning ethnic and religious minorities as ungrateful
guests in the Georgian home.3 Ossetians, whom he once referred to as Indo-European swine, drew his
particular wrath. Gamsakhurdia sought not merely to conquer South Ossetia, but to drive the Ossetians out
of the territory. Such openly subversive minorities, as Gamsakhurdia put it, should be chopped up, they
should be burned out with a red-hot iron from the Georgian nation . . . We will deal with all the traitors,
hold all of them to proper account, and drive [out] all the evil enemies and non-Georgians!4 As a result of
the ethnically driven military campaigns initiated by Gamsakhurdia, of some one hundred thousand
Ossetians living in Georgia proper, sixty thousand were displaced in fighting during the 1990s and fled

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1954836

Global Dialogue, vol. 11, (August 2009)

mostly to Russia, while twenty-five thousand Georgians were expelled from South Ossetia. Georgia failed
to gain control of the territory, much of which remained under the rule of the (unrecognised) government of
South Ossetia. When President George H.W. Bush warned of suicidal nationalism in his famous speech
in Kiev on 1 August 1991, he specifically had Gamsakhurdia in mind.
Gamsakhurdias policies and authoritarian style of governance generated internal Georgian opposition,
and he was overthrown in an armed coup in December 1991, eventually being replaced as Georgias ruler
by former Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, in March 1992. Gamsakhurdia died in unclear
circumstances on 31 December 1993 after attempting militarily to regain his presidencya campaign that
embroiled Georgia in civil war in 1993.
Despite their failure to subdue South Ossetia, Georgian leaders remain convinced that the territory
rightfully belongs to them, and that those living on it should call themselves Georgians, or leave. One of
Saakashvilis first acts as president in 2004 was ceremoniously to rehabilitate Gamsakhurdia, hailing him
as a great statesman and patriot. On 20 July 2004, he pledged that he was ready to renounce the Russianbrokered Dagomys Accords that ended the 19912 war between Georgia and South Ossetia if the Georgian
flag did not fly over the latters capital, Tskhinvali. The war of August 2008 can be seen as a logical
outcome of that pledge and the irredentist attitude it expresses.
That attitude is widespread among Georgians, including even Saakashvilis political opponents. Nino
Burjanadze, a woman who is a former speaker of parliament and is now widely regarded as Saakashvilis
most likely successor, has said: No one can discuss in Georgia giving up Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Its
like someone saying to you youll stay alive but Ill cut off your hands and legs and cut your eyes out.5
Such sentiments have been echoed even by the spiritual leader of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Patriarch
Ilya II: The very names South Ossetia and North Ossetia did not exist before. They were invented by
the communists . . . Georgia will never accept the loss of its historical lands, which are the same for us as
Orleans for the French, or Smolensk and Novgorod for Russia.6 Thus, it is with the broad backing of the
Georgian political elite that first Gamsakhurdia, and then Saakashvili, hoped to create a unified miniempire by force.

Why Invade Now?

Although President Saakashvili finally admitted, in his testimony in November 2008 to the committee
of inquiry set up by the Georgian parliament, that Georgia had indeed initiated the hostilities in August
(albeit unavoidably), debate still rages over why Georgia attacked when it did. There are essentially two
theories about this.
The first holds that Russian actions provoked a Georgian military reaction. According to this view,
popular with the Bush administration and neo-conservative circles in the United States, a revanchist Russia
was itching for an opportunity to punish Georgia for seeking to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO), for allying with Washington, and for providing an alternative oil-transit routethe BakuTbilisi
Ceyhan pipelinethat cuts out Russia. Moscow therefore took the side of the separatists in South Ossetia
and Abkhazia and prevented the Georgian government from extending its authority into those regions.
Backed into a corner, Tbilisi felt its only option was to tear up the 1990s cease-fire agreements and
reconquer the two territories militarily. While this argument resonates well with the theme of Russian
aggression familiar from the Cold War, its plausibility rests on a highly selective reading of the evidence.
First, in order to portray Moscow as the aggressor, Russian peacekeeping efforts must be portrayed as
insincere. For example, little attention is given to the provisions of the Dagomys Accords and of the
subsequent truce covering Abkhazia, even though they confer extensive rights on Russia to maintain the
peace, including the right to bar the entry into the conflict zones of military groups, to use force against
violators of the cease-fires, and to pursue them beyond the conflict zones. Rarely is it mentioned that these
are internationally sanctioned missions that, since 1992, have cost the lives of 117 Russian peacekeepers,
and that by the beginning of 1998, Russian peacekeeping forces representing the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS), had helped some 50,000 to 70,000 displaced ethnic Georgians to return to
Abkhazia.7
Second, in order to portray Georgia as a helpless and guiltless democracy violated by Russia, the actual
sequence of events is dismissed as irrelevant. Shortly after the fighting erupted, Richard Holbrooke, today
President Barack Obamas special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, wrote in a joint article:
Exactly what happened in South Ossetia last week is unclear. Nevertheless, he knew, without doubt,
that Russia was to blame.8 His sentiments were echoed by Robert Kagan, at the time an adviser to US

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1954836

Global Dialogue, vol. 11, (August 2009)

presidential candidate, Senator John McCain: The details of who did what to precipitate Russias war
against Georgia are not very important.9 If aggression is unimportant, then the incident can easily be spun
as a Russian trap, and voil, Georgian aggression becomes Russian aggression.
Third, for Georgia to be a victim, Russias actual unpreparedness for war is ignored. Thus, Saakashvili
claimed that Russia invaded with eighty thousand servicemen and mercenaries and three thousand
armoured vehicles, an invasion force one hundred times more powerful than the Georgian army. Internal
NATO documents, however, paint a very different picture, saying that at the moment hostilities erupted the
Georgians had some ten thousand men in the field and the Russians only eight thousand. Most damningly,
however, US defence officials apparently confirmed that there was no obvious build-up of Russian forces
along the border.10
Fourth, for allegations of Russian aggression to be at all plausible, Moscows appeals for a non-use-offorce agreement, and repeated calls for an internationally mandated cease-fire, both to the United Nations
Security Council and to the RussiaNATO Council, must be filtered out. So must other steps by Moscow
that would seem to contradict any premeditated attack plan, such as calling on the United States to help
defuse the situation in the days leading up to the Georgian assault, inviting Georgias deputy foreign
minister to Moscow for a meeting later that week, agreeing in the very week of the attack to an
international peace conference in Berlin for 15 August, and finally, Putins seeking out George Bush in
Beijing to inform him that Georgia had launched a military strike, and asking for help to reach the Georgian
leadership, which had cut off contact with Moscow.
The second theory purporting to explain Tbilisis actions is that the timing was opportune for a
premeditated attack by Georgia. According to this view, popular in Moscow, Saakashvili, frustrated by his
inability to make progress in negotiations with the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, having seen
his bid for NATO membership delayed, and facing the possibility of a less sympathetic political leadership
in Washington after January 2009, decided on a quick solution while the worlds attention was diverted by
the Beijing Olympics. The evidence for this theory can be broken down chronologically into evidence of
Georgian premeditation in the years before 1 August 2008, and then during the first week of August 2008,
as Tbilisi prepared to launch the attack of 7 August.

A. Before 1 August 2008

Upon becoming president in 2004, Saakashvili closed the Ergneti market in South Ossetiaa hub for
trade in contraband goods that was the regions major source of livelihood. In May of that year, he sent
troops into the buffer zone with South Ossetia, and in August tried to seize it, but failed. A new cease-fire
protocol supposed to lead to a comprehensive peace plan was signed by his prime minister, Zurab Zhvania,
in November 2004, but after Zhvanias suspicious death in February 2005, Saakashvili denounced the
protocol and other peace agreements and expanded Georgias military budget thirty times, from 1.2 per
cent of the countrys GDP to nearly 11 per cent. (US defence spending, by contrast, was just over 4 per
cent.)11 The number of men under arms increases by 46 per cent after 2005.
Several senior Georgian officials, until recently close to Saakashvili, have described plans for an
invasion as having been drawn up well before August and aimed at conquering both South Ossetia and
Abkhazia. Irakli Okruashvili, who served as defence minister under Saakashvili from 2004 to 2006, but
now lives in exile in France, reports that he and the president worked out military plans in 2005 to invade
the two territories.12 Another former close political ally, Erosi Kitsmarishvili, Georgias ambassador to
Russia until he was dismissed in September 2008, confirms that Saakashvili intended the army to strike
first against South Ossetia and then within 2436 hours attack Abkhazia, thus explaining the split in
Georgian forces between central and western Georgia.13
In the spring 2007, Saakashvili set up a parallel pro-Georgian government in South Ossetia. He also
repeatedly rejected calls for an agreement on the non-use of force over Abkhazia, most recently in meetings
with Germanys foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in July 2008.14
Lastly, at the beginning of July 2008, Georgia shut off the main water supplies to Tskhinvali, allowing
only a sporadic supply to reach the South Ossetian capital up to the outbreak of hostilities in August.

B. The First Week of August 2008

After completing joint exercises with one thousand US troops at the end of July, Georgian forces did
not return to their barracks as usual. Instead, the artillery brigade that would begin firing on Tskhinvali on 7
August was relocated to Gori, which would be the main staging ground for Georgian military operations.

Global Dialogue, vol. 11, (August 2009)

Hackers shut down South Ossetian news sites early on 5 August, two days before the Georgian
assault. As soon as hostilities were launched, Georgia shut down access to all Russian-domain websites, the
only source of alternative information available to most Georgians.
In the very week of the attack, as its forces and artillery moved into position, Tbilisi repeatedly stated
that it had no plans to attack and that there were no Georgian troop movements. Internal reports of the
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) concluded that Saakashvili lied 100 percent
to all of us, the Europeans and the Americans.15
NATO sources briefed by the Georgian general staff in September 2008 noted in particular that the
Georgian government never appealed to the United Nations or the OSCE through regular diplomatic
channels, and took five days to appeal for NATO assistance. Instead, it focused its primary efforts on
spinning the US media.16
Writing in the Nation, Mark Ames describes one telling incident in this media campaignan investor
call set up between fifty leading Western investment bank managers and Georgias prime minister, Lado
Gurgenidze, just after the attack began. A New York hedge-fund manager told Ames:
Lado is a former banker himself, so he knew that by framing the conflict for the most influential bankers
and analysts in New York, that these power bankers would then write up reports and go on CNBC and
argue Lado Gurgenidzes talking points. It was brilliant, and now youre starting to see the American
media shift its coverage from calling it Georgia invading Ossetian territory, to the new spin, that its
Russian imperial aggression against tiny little Georgia.

Such a large conference call with so many busy people suggests significant planning, These things
arent set up on an hours notice, the hedge-fund manager observed.17

Saakashvilis Miscalculations
A question that continues to puzzle many observers, however, is why a small country like Georgia
would think it could succeed in attacking the much larger Russia. However, as Georgias deputy defence
minister, Batu Kutelia, explained in a revealing interview with the Financial Times, Tbilisi had no
contingency plans for a Russian military response. The Georgian army expected to be dealing only with the
South Ossetian militia, which it heavily outgunned and outnumbered.18
Most importantly, though, Saakashvili appears to have interpreted the frequent pronouncements of
Western sympathy and support for his regime as a green light to go ahead and solve his problems by force.
According to the testimony of US State Department officials, the United States was in regular discussions
with the Georgian leadership in the early days of August 2008, during which the latter repeatedly asked
how Washington would respond if Tbilisi used military force against South Ossetia. Astonishingly, none of
these discussions raised a red flag about Georgias intentions. Apparently, no one in the US government
saw any connection between these persistent questions and the extraordinary pace of Georgias military
build-up. Not surprisingly, as one US official later told the New York Times, The Georgians figured it was
better to ask forgiveness later, but not ask for permission first.19
But while the State Department waffled, a clear go-ahead was apparently the message from VicePresident Dick Cheneys office. David L Phillips, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told the Los
Angeles Times that Saakashvilis buddies in the White House and the Office of the Vice President kept
egging him on.20 Nixon Center president Dmitri Simes agrees that the message from the vice-presidents
office, as well as from foreign-policy advisers like Richard Holbrooke, was that it was Saakashvilis
opposition to the Russians that mattered most to them.21 The more he could aggravate Moscow, the more
the United States would support him. Coincidentally or otherwise, one of Cheneys senior advisers, Joseph
R. Wood, was in Tbilisi just days before the Georgians launched their attack.
Saakashvili might very well have concluded that, with world leaders attending the Beijing Olympics, it
would be days before an effective response to a Georgian military operation in South Ossetia would be
organised. A blitzkrieg that quickly replaced the political leadership in Tskhinvali would thus ultimately be
welcomed by the West. As his former defence minister, Irakli Okruashvili, summarised the strategy,
Saakashvilis offensive only aimed at taking Tskhinvali, because he thought the U.S. would block a
Russian reaction through diplomatic channels.22 Had this blitzkrieg succeeded, he might well have been
right. The cease-fire resolution introduced by Russia six hours before it sent its own troops into the conflict,
and which the United States and Britain opposed because Georgia did not yet control the situation on the

Global Dialogue, vol. 11, (August 2009)

ground, would have been supported. Had Russia then subsequently sought to reverse Georgian gains, it
would have been universally condemned.

After Georgia: Reset or Overload?

The Western publics reaction to Georgias attack has become a watershed in how Russians view the
West. Russian pundits and politicians across the political spectrum saw the events of early August 2008 as
a humanitarian crisis unleashed by naked Georgian aggression, and were outraged by the Wests reflex
blaming of Moscow for supposedly starting the hostilities, and its indifference to the sufferings of the
people of South Ossetia.
As influential foreign-policy analyst Fyodor Lukyanov put it,
Russia has been genuinely shocked by this foreign reaction and by the one-sided support that Georgian
President Mikheil Saakasvili [sic] has received from the West, despite violating every conceivable
humanitarian norm of civilized conduct. Moscow sees this as more than just a double standard, but as
unabashed cynicism . . . Russia is now inclined not only to reject completely a path determined by
Western values, but actually to deny that such values even exist.23

Vyacheslav Nikonov, an analyst with close ties to the Kremlin, commented: not only have we been denied
condolences and supportbut the West has responded with a firm promise to rearm the aggressor . . . what
would Washington have thought of us if Russia had responded to 9/11 by endeavouring to rearm Al
Qaeda?24 Moral outrage at the West has been so complete that even long-time regime opponents, such as
Yabloko party chairman Sergei Mitrokhin, human-rights activist Lev Ponomaryov, and jailed oligarch
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, voiced their support for Medvedevs actions.
At the World Policy Forum at Evian, France, in October 2008, Medvedev reiterated that transparency
and equality in international relations must become the basis for stability in global financial and security
matters and, for the first time, laid out his vision of the principles that ought to undergird a new panEuropean security treaty: conformity with the UN Charter; inadmissibility of the threat or use of force;
truly equal security guarantees, based on respect for the security needs of others; the impermissibility of
claims by any nation or group of nations to exclusive prerogatives for maintaining peace and stability; and
the establishment of a common framework for what constitutes reasonable military development. Shortly
afterwards, however, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also issued the following warning to the West:
To us, the CIS space is not a chessboard for playing geopolitical games. It is a common civilizational
area for all the people living here, one that keeps our historic and spiritual legacy alive. Our geography
and economic interdependence give tangible competitive advantages to all of the Commonwealth
countries . . . The response of some Western countries to the South Ossetia crisis . . . vividly illustrates a
deficit of morality. Those incapable of siding with truth and justice simply cannot, no matter how hard
they try, represent the whole of European civilization.25

The new Obama administration certainly seems to be rethinking some of the assumptions previous US
administrations had about Russia. But will these efforts reset (perezagruzka) relations or, as was
embarrassingly miswritten on the button that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented to Lavrov in
Geneva on 6 March 2009, overload (peregruzka) them?
Perhaps the greatest obstacle lies in acknowledging Russias desire for what Lavrov calls a truly
universal system of collective security in the Euro-Atlantic area, where the same rules of the game would
apply to all.26 For Russia, such a treaty should stipulate that no single state or international organisation
would have the exclusive job of maintaining regional stabilityincluding Russia. Such a treaty would
clearly impose constraints on NATOs freedom of action that Washington might well find unacceptable.
More broadly, Lavrov says that a new world order is needed that is perceived as fair everywhere and by
everyone. This can be accomplished through the collective leadership of the key countries, led by the
United States, but as a respectful leader, first among equals, not the head of the unipolar world.27
What will Russia do if it does not get what it wants? According to Lavrov, it will have no choice but to
move aside:
Under no circumstances will we let ourselves be drawn into confrontation. We will simply move aside,
take up the position of a detached observer and continue to cooperate in a multilateral format if our

Global Dialogue, vol. 11, (August 2009)

bilateral relations with this or that country reach the freezing point. Something like this is now taking
place in our relations with Britain.28

Conducting affairs on the basis of strict reciprocity is not Russias preferred course, says Lavrov, but if
our marriages are to be made in heaven, sooner or later we will have to unite in the face of common
challenges and threats on the sinful soil of our national interests.29
Of course, the question ultimately is whether there is any desire in the United States to be married to
Russia. Heretofore, Washington has seemed quite content with a relationship of one-night stands,
provided they are arranged at its convenience and with no strings attached. Perhaps the time has finally
come for a sign of greater commitment, for the following reasons:
1. The West needs Russia more than it needs the West. A wealthy nation now, Russia is able to leverage
financial interests in ways that directly affect Western concerns, such as lending a NATO member
Icelandemergency funds to stabilise its banking system when other NATO members could not or would
not do so. As Germanys former chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, bluntly puts it, Russia has an Asian
alternative, but Europe does not.30
2. Russia is vital to Europes energy security. Even if every pipeline is built, and every new oil well is
drilled, the Western demand for Russian energy resources would still increase, not decrease.
3. Russia is vital to the war on terror. Recent US disagreements with Pakistan and China have proven
once again that Russia is the one country always able and willing to provide reliable supply routes into
Afghanistan, a country that is increasingly vital to Americas strategy in Central Asia.
4. Russia is also vital to dealing with the effects of global warming, and to negotiating fair access to
Arctic resources. Moreover, by the end of the twenty-first century, Russias supply of fresh water is likely
to become another crucial strategic resource. Consequently, it is not hard to understand why Russia
championed the issues of global energy conservation at the 2006 G8 summit in St Petersburg.
5. Russia is popular around the globe. Contrary to the Bush administrations claims that Russia was
becoming more isolated after the conflict in Georgia, the truth is that standing up to the United States only
helps Russias international image. Together with Brazil, China and India, Russia is generating growing
support for a multipolar international system that seeks to put an end to US unilateralism. The crisis in
Georgia has only accelerated this trend. As Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of Public Policy at the National
University of Singapore, noted shortly after the Georgian war:
It is . . . critical for the west to learn the right lessons from Georgia. It needs to think strategically about
the limited options it has. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, western thinkers assumed the west
would never need to make geopolitical compromises. It could dictate terms. Now it must recognise
reality. The combined western population in North America, the European Union and Australasia is
700m, about 10 per cent of the worlds population. The remaining 90 per cent have gone from being
objects of world history to subjects. The Financial Times headline of August 18 2008 proclaimed: West
in united front over Georgia. It should have read: Rest of the world faults west on Georgia. Why? A
lack of strategic thinking.31

This lack of strategic thinking stems from the fact that so many Western analysts are still mired in
stereotypes that prevent them from working together with Russia, even to secure common goals. Few
people remember that Russia, as well as the United States, backed Saakashvilis assumption of power, and
that Vladimir Putin even helped the Georgian leader peacefully resolve the conflict in the separatist
province of Ajaria in 2004. Had the West persisted in co-operating with Moscow, rather than challenging it,
Abkhazia and South Ossetia would most likely still be part of Georgia today.
The lesson here is that policy differences with this or that Russian government can and should be
managed pragmatically. To the extent that the Obama administration now appreciates this, there is indeed
hope that US relations with Russia can be set on a new path.

1. Matea Gold, Tracy Wilkinson and Megan Stack, Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili Seems to
Take Over TV News, Los Angeles Times, 20 August 2008.

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2. See, for example, Jon Swain, Georgia Fired First Shot, Say UK Monitors, Sunday Times (London),
9 November 2008, and C. J. Chivers and Ellen Barry, Georgia Claims on Russia War Called into
Question, New York Times, 7 November 2008.
3. See Robert English, Georgia: The Ignored History, New York Review of Books, 6 November 2008.
4. Ibid.
5. Nick Coleman, As Saakashvili Fights on, Georgias Iron Lady Waits in Wings, Agence France
Presse, 24 September 2008.
6. Francois dAlancon, Ilia II: There Will Be No Peace in Georgia without Justice (in French), La
Croix (Paris), 19 September 2008.
7. United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, US Committee for Refugees World Refugee
Survey 2000Georgia, 1 June 2000 [http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6a8d1f.html].
8. Richard Holbrooke and Ronald D Asmus, Black Sea Watershed, Washington Post, 11 August
2008.
9. Robert Kagan, Putin Makes His Move, Washington Post, 11 August 2008.
10. Nikolas Busse, Invasion? Provocation? NATO Seeks Answers (in German), Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 September 2008.
11. Dmitry Litovkin, Russian Paper Itemises NATO Military Aid to Georgia, Izvestia (Moscow), 8
August 2008.
12. Brian Rohan, Saakashvili Planned S. Ossetia Invasion: Ex-Minister, Reuters, 14 September
2008.
13. See Jonathan Littell, Travel Notebook from Georgia (in French), Le Monde (Paris), 4 October
2008.
14. Deborah Cole, Georgia Pokes Holes in German Peace Plan, Agence France Press, 17 July 2008.
15. Ralf Beste, Uwe Klussmann, and Gabor Steingart, Russia and the West: The Cold Peace, Spiegel
Online, 1 September 2008 [http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,575581,00.html].
16. Busse, Invasion? Provocation?
17. Mark Ames, Getting Georgias War On, Nation, 8 August 2008.
18. Jan Cienski, Tbilisi Admits It Miscalculated Russian Reaction, Financial Times (London), 22
August 2008.
19. Helen Cooper and Thom Shanker, After Mixed US Messages, a War Erupted in Georgia, New
York Times, 13 August 2008.
20. See Gareth Porter, Georgia War Rooted in US Self-Deceit on NATO, Inter Press Service, 23
August 2008.
21. Andrei Shitov, The USA Does Not Wish to Appear the Loser (in Russian), Rossiiskaya Gazeta
(Moscow), 18 August 2008.
22. Rohan, Saakashvili Planned S. Ossetia Invasion .

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23. Fedor Lukyanov, Seven Theses Prompted by the RussiaGeorgia Conflict, Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, 26 August 2008.
24. Vyacheslav Nikonov, The War in the Caucasus: What Is the West Refusing to Understand?,
Izvestia (Moscow), 3 September 2008.
25. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Transcript of Speech by Russian Minister of
Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov at MGIMO [University] on the Occasion of the New Academic Year,
Moscow, 1 September 2008.
26. Ibid.
27. Sergei Lavrov, interview by Charlie Rose, A Discussion of USRussian Relations with the Russian
Foreign Minister, The Charlie Rose Show, Public Broadcasting Service, 25 September 2008.
28. Sergei Lavrov, Face to Face with America: Between Non-Confrontation and Convergence, Profil
(Moscow), no. 38, October 2008.
29. Sergei Lavrov, A Roadmap to Cooperation, Russia beyond the Headlines (Moscow), 28 May
2008.
30. Spiegel Interview with Gerhard Schroeder: Serious Mistakes by the West , Spiegel Online, 18
August 2008 [http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,572686,00.html].
31. Kishore Mahbubani, The West Is Strategically Wrong on Georgia, Financial Times (London), 20
August 2008.