Is Russia exploiting Bush status as lame duck?

Timing is everything.

President Bush talked tough about Georgia today, demanding that Russia respect Georgia's territorial sovereignty, including the disputed regions of Ossetia and Abkhazia.

"There's no room for debate on this matter," Bush said after getting a briefing from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Earlier, in a taped radio address, Bush said that Russia "has put its aspirations" for integration into the West's diplomatic, political, economic and security institutions "at risk" with its drive into Georgia.

But Moscow has already made its territorial gains. And in the aftermath of the fighting, a growing number of commentators are suggesting that the Russians chose this moment to act because of a gap in U.S. politics between an old president and a new.

The center-left German newspaper Suddeutsche Zietung wrote this week:

The admonition of the outgoing American president won't have much impact in Moscow. Firstly, the Russian leadership doesn't see itself as morally accountable to the Iraq warrior Bush. Secondly it's waiting to see who will be moving into the White House: Republican hawk John McCain, who wants to throw Russia out of the G8 group of leading industrial nations, or the young Democrat Barack Obama, who has made more moderate noises.

Back in the U.S.A., the Intelligencer Journal in Lancaster, Pa., editorialized about the invasion after meeting with the state's Republican U.S. senator, Arlen Specter.

Russia attacked Georgia, it said, "at a time when the United States has a lame-duck president and neither party's presidential candidate has the power to do more than issue statements condemning Russia's actions." The paper quoted Specter as saying that Russia "has injected itself into the American presidential race."

And the Wall Street Journal noted that Russia may not be the only country waiting out the end of the Bush administration -- with serious consequences. In May, Hezbollah launched a military assault on Lebanon's democratically elected government. Pro-democracy movements in Myanmar and Zimbabwe have been crushed by government forces this year. And Iran makes regular threats against U.S. ally Israel.

From the Caucasus Mountains to the Middle East and South Asia, U.S. diplomats and strategists say historical U.S. adversaries, such as Moscow and Tehran, appear to be exploiting Washington's impending political transition, and the White House's fixation on Iraq, to pursue international actions that might otherwise spark a more robust response from Washington and its allies.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Images of a militiaman in South Ossetia holding pictures of dead relatives after a Russian attack this month. Credit: Dmitry Kostyukov / AFP/Getty Images

Comments

[jack]

Russia doesn't need to exploit anything. it's the neocon's MONUMENTAL stupidity and arrogance that lead to this. The emperor has nos clothes and it shows.

[James]

Excuse me, but actually Georgia attacked South Ossetia, a region in the Caucasus that wants to break away from Georgia.

Somehow that essential fact seems to be ignored in all of this. It seems that Georgia, buying into the empty rhetoric of the Bush Administration and the promises of McCain's campaign manager, got hung out to dry here.

[captbilly]

This situation is a direct result of the drain on our forces from the fighting in Iraq. There are so many lessons that anyone who studied the vietnam war should have learned, but since none of the people in Bush's administration ever fought in or paid attention to the Vietnam war (too busy partying and snorting coke I quess) they didn't learn anything. The Soviets invaded Checzoslovakia while we were busy in Vietnam, knowing that we were spread too thin to pose a serious threat. Now the Russians are doing the same in Georgia, again knowing that we do not have the resources to counter them.

When politicians like Obama say that staying in Iraq would be a mistake because it actually decreases our security around the world, they are refering to situations like Georgia. Or consider North Korea building an almost working nuclear weapon, and Iran attempting to do the same. Both countries realized three things as a result of the Iraq invasion; !. Bush was crazy enough to invade a country that didn't even pose a direct threat to the US, 2. The only way to ensure their own survival was to have nuclear weapons, 3. That for the duration of the occupation our military was spread far too thin to pose a realistic threat. Our continued occupation of Iraq is the greatest threat to US security that we have faced since the end of the cold war, and it was and is completely within our power to end it.

[Josey]

Is anyone paying any attention to the Naval armada the Bush administration has amassed in the Persian Gulf? With all the Olympic buzz in China, with the rest of America's attention split between the Russia-Georgia conflict and the Obama-McCain circus, has anyone noticed that the Bush administration has amassed a fleet surpassing the D-Day invasion fleet?

[Andre]

Russian troops, based in South Ossetia, are there under a 1994 UN Security Council resolution mandate to secure peace for a nation about 80 percent of whom have Russian citizenship.

Moscow, under its constitution, had an obligation to stand firm against any foreign threat to its citizens' security and the United States and NATO knew that Russia was rightfully abiding by its constitutional laws. That is why they would not engage in a new conflict with Russia unless they wished to start World War III, Steinberg noted.

Remember kosovo? Iraq?

Sorry for crawford

[Captain Zen]

Anybody heard of the fear Israel had for the anti aircraft weapons Russia will give Iran? Know about the SS-20 unstoppable anti ship missiles? The show of force with the fleet is maybe for target practice of the Iranian defense force. What will USA do when all the fleet has gone to the bottom of the Persian Gulf?
Nuke Iran? What a mess!