From Green Light to Yellow

"Bush administration officials have been adamant in asserting that they warned the government in Tbilisi not to let Moscow provoke it into a fight -- and that they were surprised when their advice went unheeded. Right up until the hours before Georgia launched its attack late last week in South Ossetia, Washington's top envoy for the region, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, and other administration officials were warning the Georgians not to allow the conflict to escalate.

"But . . . the accumulation of years of mixed messages may have made the American warnings fall on deaf ears.

"The United States took a series of steps that emboldened Georgia: sending advisers to build up the Georgian military, including an exercise last month with more than 1,000 American troops; pressing hard to bring Georgia into the NATO orbit; championing Georgia's fledgling democracy along Russia's southern border; and loudly proclaiming its support for Georgia's territorial integrity in the battle with Russia over Georgia's separatist enclaves. . . .

"In recent years, the United States has also taken a series of steps that have alienated Russia -- including recognizing an independent Kosovo and going ahead with efforts to construct a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. By last Thursday, when the years of simmering conflict exploded into war, Russia had a point to prove to the world, even some administration officials acknowledge, while Georgia may have been under the mistaken impression that in a one-on-one fight with Russia, Georgia would have more concrete American support."

Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel write in the Los Angeles Times: "A senior U.S. official involved in Russia policymaking vehemently denied that the administration had sent mixed messages, arguing that although Saakashvili had long received strong support from the most senior American officials, Georgians were warned not to engage Russia militarily.

"'We have consistently, and on Thursday also, urged the Georgians not to move their forces in. We were unambiguous about it,' said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity when discussing private talks with the Georgians. 'Saakashvili had always told us he could not stand by while Georgian villages were being shelled, and we always knew this was a point of pressure. We always told him that he should not give in to the kind of provocations we knew the Russians were capable of.'

"But [David L. Phillips, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council] said he believed that even if the State Department was warning the Russians, the Georgians heard a different message."

And where, oh where, might those mixed signals be coming from?

"'I think the State Department was assiduous in urging restraint, and Saakashvili's buddies in the White House and Office of the Vice President kept egging him on,' Phillips said."

Indeed, Barnes and Spiegel write: "[T]here are increasing signs that administration hard-liners are using the crisis to reassert their view that Moscow should be isolated.

"Vice President Dick Cheney's declaration Saturday that 'Russian aggression must not go unanswered' was seen by some experts as the first salvo of what could be a new battle over administration policy.

"Some conservatives believe the administration has not been tough enough with Russia. Frederick W. Kagan, a neoconservative scholar who has advised the Bush administration, praised Cheney's comment and faulted President Bush for failing to outline to the Russians the consequences of pressing their assault."