Obama and Saakashvili on the backdrop of US state interests

I carefully read Valery Kadzhaya's article "Obama - McCain - Saakshvili on the back of the bloody August events", and it provoked mixed feelings in me. The author's theory about the reason for the armed invasion of Tskhinvali by Georgian troops is quite original, but is highly flawed.

Let us remember that Nino Burjanadze, who was one of the triumvirate behind the Rose Revolution, and after the death of Zurab Zhvania - the second in this triumvirate, became Mikheil Saakashvili's right hand woman, but in April last year she unexpectedly resigned from her post as speaker. And only after Saakashvili's August escapade did Nino Anzorovna play her hand: it turns out that the reason for her resignation was disagreements on the Ossetian question. Whilst Saakashvili was bursting to storm into action, Burjanadze was categorically against a military solution to the problem. I reiterate that this happened in April, six months before the Republican Party Congress in the USA.

We have no objective confirmation that what Burjanadze confessed after the August events is true. But there is something else. For example, some two years earlier the former defence minister Irakli Okurashvili declared publicly that he would see in the 2007 New Year in Tskhinvali. Clearly he was not meaning a holiday gathering with his old friends in the city where he was born. Furthermore, a year after victory in the Rose Revolution the president sent troops to the border with South Ossetia, and only the then prime minister Zurab Zhvania managed to prevent bloodshed.

So I think that the "machinations" by the US Republican party are grossly exaggerated. It's probably the case that Saakashvili is a good tactician, but a poor strategist, and just simply overestimated his abilities. Moreover, the moral support of John McCain and Condoleezza Rice added to his hot-headedness. But it was only moral support. It wouldn't even have entered McCain or Rice's minds in their worst nightmare to enter into an open confrontation with Russia for the sake of some dubious gains (I mean, just how many votes would a US presidential candidate have won on a wave of pro-Georgian support?!..)

And so here is the main question: is Saakashvili's Americanism of no importance to Obama? And on the other hand, how can anyone say that Barack, either in his words or by some other means, supported Russia in its "annexation" of Abkhazia and South Ossetia? Quite the opposite: he was no less ardently critical of Russia's actions than was McCain. And the Charter on US Partnership with Georgia, signed two weeks before Obama's inauguration, could not have taken place entirely behind his back.

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