the model is kosovo: u.s. goads saakashvili to attack russia

[click image of cold boiling water]

Seems Dubai has a scoop about an American text message igniting Saakashvili's attack on Russia.

Tbilisi // The text message arrived early on the morning of Aug 6, sent to a senior adviser of Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, from a US government official who had just read an intelligence intercept collected by the US National Security Agency.

“The model is Kosovo,” the SMS began, according to the official, and then briefly described an alleged Russian plan for dealing with the increasing tensions between Georgian troops and armed separatists in the breakaway republic of South Ossetia backed by the Russian military.

The Russians, according to the text, planned to force a confrontation inside South Ossetia to justify a widespread invasion that would remove both South Ossetia and another pro-Russian enclave, Abkhazia, from Georgian rule under the pretext of protecting the pro-Russian populations from Georgian ethnic cleansing.

South Ossetia was loaded with strife already, so much so that the Russians had brought in a UN-backed peacekeeping force to protect the people from Georgian snipers and various skirmishes. Had I been in charge and making this commitment of troops, I would have made sure there was plenty of backup nearby. You don't leave a small force in hostile territory without help at the ready. So, what might be viewed as a threatening buildup of forces is as easily explained this way.

Had we decided, say, to put a peacekeeping force inside Montreal to help protect it from Canadian forces wishing to subdue its secession, would we not have moved troops to our borders with Canada to be at the ready to back up our peacekeepers? I rather think so. So, even if Putin and Medvedev liked the idea of intimidating Saakashvili into a stupid move, it appears as though it took some encouragement from us to push him into it.

He got this text message on the 6th; He called a ceasefire on the 7th; [No, no, you bonehead, if you let them move in troops, you've lost South Ossetia for good!]; and then he invaded with troops first thing on the morning of the 8th, killing Russian peacekeepers first and foremost, thereby insuring Russia did not merely protect South Ossetia's independence, but actually would move against Georgia proper in retaliation and to incapacitate its forces from further attacks. Damn bold move for a guy who had no hope of prevailing against those he attacked. Why would he do that? Too many energy drinks?

Is there any possibility Saakashvili, multilingual and with a PhD from a Western university, would be stupid enough to attack Russians alone, with no backup? That is the equivalent of Castro deciding to invade Florida.

And why, you ask, would we goad Saakashvili into making such a suicidal move? We want the Cold War back, and we were losing in our bids for missile bases in the former Soviet-dominated states to provoke it. This was the way to get them. Except, now that we've riled the Kremlin with this ham-fisted tactic, forced them into the role of perceived villainy with our media, they are absolutely not disposed to take it lying down. Our cold war is close to boiling.