As the democratic revolution in Georgia is being extinguished, it is eerie to review Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s interview in Tbilisi
, Georgialast month:
QUESTION: Thank you for this interview because it’s very important for our audience. And we start with first question. Recently, Russia has numbers of (inaudible). And what would you advise Government of Georgia how this current conflict should be resolved to find a long-term solution that will allow our IDPs to return to their homes in peace?
SECRETARY RICE: Yes. Well, first, the United States stands strongly for the territorial integrity of Georgia. We believe that this is a frozen conflict that can be resolved peacefully. There are several elements. There really needs to be a de-escalation. There needs to be a sense that there is a peace process going forward. We have been in favor of the Germans and other friends of Georgia of direct talks between Abkhazia and Georgians. I think that would be very important.
It would be very useful to have a plan for the economic development of the region. But really, the — some of the steps that Russia has taken we have spoken out about and said that they are not helpful and conducive to an atmosphere of resolving this in a peaceful manner. All sides need to look to the future of an Abkhazia that is prosperous and an Abkhazia where there is enough political room to maneuver so that all interests can be accommodated.
For those familiar with the Secretary Rice’s single-minded project of the past two years – skipping the first two phases of the Roadmap to negotiate an immediate final status agreement with the Mayor of Ramallah, while rockets on Sderot fell daily and massive new weaponry was imported into Gaza (which was not helpful or conducive to an atmosphere of resolving this in a peaceful manner) – the language is depressingly familiar: standing strongly, peace process, direct talks, all sides need to . . . blah, blah, blah.
At the risk of adding another degree to Joe Klein’s fever, consider this paragraph from Volume I of Winston Churchill’s history of World War II, in his chapter on Czechoslovakia:
[The events] follow[ed] inexorably from Hitler’s resolve to reunite all Germans in a Greater Reich and to expand eastwards, and his conviction that the men at the head of France and Britain would not fight owing to their love of peace and failure to rearm. The usual technique was employed against Czechoslovakia. The grievances, which were not unreal, of the Sudeten Germans were magnified and exploited. The public case was opened against Czechoslovakia by Hitler in his speech to the Reichstag on February 20, 1938. “Over ten million Germans,” he said, “live in two of the States adjoining our frontier.” It was the duty of German to protect those fellow-Germans and secure to them “general freedom, personal, political, and ideological.”
The role of Nazi Germany in the current Georgia story is played, however, not by Russia but by Iran — which has heard its nuclear weapons program repeatedly deemed “unacceptable” by the U.S. in the past, and will now watch with interest what consequences flow from President Bush’s decision yesterday to term Russia’s invasion of a neighboring state and threatening a democratic government “unacceptable.”
John Bolton used to say that what President Bush meant by “unacceptable” was that it was unacceptable, but more recently Bolton has said he no longer knows. We all – especially Iran – are about to find out what, if any, meaning it has.
