Word: georgias
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...while many questions remain unanswered about why Georgia embarked on such a suicidal war, the American role in particular seems in danger of being exaggerated. No evidence has yet been uncovered, by Putin or anyone else, that the U.S. or its advisers triggered the conflict...
...Rose Revolution that ousted his predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, received funding from the U.S. government. Since Saakashvili took office in 2004, his government has continued to receive strong U.S. funding, and the Georgian military was rebuilt with the help of U.S. defense aid and training from American military advisers. (Georgia also sent 2,000 men to fight alongside the U.S. in Iraq.) Several U.S. citizens, including Daniel Kunin, the son of former Vermont governor Madeleine Kunin, have worked as senior aides to Saakashvili's administration. Randy Scheunemann, a senior adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain, was a lobbyist for Georgia...
...Statements from President George W. Bush and others may have emboldened Saakashvili to expect U.S. assistance that in the end wasn't forthcoming, but that's a far cry from an active role in launching military action. The truth is that both Russia and Georgia had plenty of reasons of their own to start a war. Putin, who resents Saakashvili for his brazen defiance of Moscow and close ties to the West, had ample grounds to try to invade Georgia and oust him. Saakashvili, for his part, had staked his presidency on "reintegrating" Georgia's two breakaway territories into Georgia...
...Georgia's claim that Russia started the war is not completely convincing either. In an interview with TIME, Saakashvili said he ordered his troops to attack the South Ossetian city of Tskhinvali only after Russia launched its invasion into Georgian territory; his professed aim was to slow Russia's advance by 48 hours in order to give the international community time to act. But on the night of Aug. 7, and for three to four days afterward, Georgian officials did not say that Russia had launched its invasion first but only that their forces were responding to stepped-up attacks...
...forces could stamp out the South Ossetian defense force in one swift strike without provoking a Russian response; indeed, a mistaken belief that Western allies could intervene diplomatically to restrain Russia might have encouraged him in that calculation. For its part, Russia could well have sought to provoke Georgia into such a response (by urging the South Ossetians to step up attacks on Georgian positions) in order to provide them with a pretext to invade...