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Category: Georgia

  • Georgia on Our Mind

    Georgia on Our Mind

    by Morton Abramowitz

    09.16.2008

    Whether provoked or entrapped, President Saakashvili’s folly cost the United States $1 billion and counting. But that is only money. He has changed the world in ways neither he nor the West ever dreamed. If any compensation is found to tame Putin’s Russia, it will not likely be by the actions of Western governments, but by capital fleeing from Russia and the price of energy continuing its precipitous decline. The Bush administration is a spent force with little credibility. Only a new administration might pursue a policy that has coherence, purpose, and international support. A number of issues emanating from the Georgian conflict will face the next president, including energy policy in Central Asia and power politics in NATO.

    Following the conflict in the Caucuses, the energy equation of the region has radically changed. In Georgia, even if Saakashvili survives—that appears to be in doubt and will require huge Western help—he will face unremitting enmity from Moscow. Moscow was previously too weak to prevent the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline—the East-West energy corridor—to be built. But the notion that investors will put billions of dollars into a new pipeline for gas from Central Asia through the Caucasus before Georgia’s relations with Russia are restored defies the imagination.

    In any event, gas from Turkmenistan and other Central Asian countries is unlikely to be transmitted through Georgia on its way west. Georgia may be too bitter a lesson for these states. Pressure from Moscow makes it more likely that gas will continue to go through Russia onto the West or to Turkey.

    In addition to this shifting energy landscape, NATO has suffered a serious setback: Expansion of the alliance has reached a dangerous fork. Giving membership prospects to Georgia and Ukraine later this year is more likely to endanger, not strengthen them. The two countries would be under constant pressure from Russia, damaging or destroying Ukraine’s unity and Georgia’s stability. Besides, it is unlikely that consensus could be achieved on the membership issue. Turkey, for example, has few illusions about Putin’s Russia. But the Georgian war has cast doubt on Turkey’s full cooperation with the United States on Russian issues and NATO expansion. Turkey does not like Russia’s egregious intervention in the Caucasus, but is not particularly sympathetic to Shaakashvili’s Georgia either. Increasingly, the Turks are skeptical of American foreign policy management, and are not interested in getting into a hassle with Russia. Russia is Turkey’s leading trade partner and the supplier of the vast bulk of its imported energy (some $50 billion this year). The United States has expressed displeasure with Turkey’s choice of energy suppliers—Iran and Russia—but has yet to tell Ankara how they realistically propose to make up for them. Turkey can make money whether energy comes through Georgia or Russia. The Turks remain committed to NATO, but the Russian relationship is a matter of realism for Ankara—not an alliance matter—unless the Russians were to attack a NATO member. Most likely, Turkey, along with several others, will seek to postpone any potential membership offer to Georgia and Ukraine.

    Another international institution, the European Union, has also been impacted by the Georgian conflict. Although the EU is under attack in many quarters in the United States and Europe for its pusillanimous reaction to Russia’s brazen behavior in Georgia, it has the real ability to do something important for Ukraine and Georgia—namely beginning a serious process to admit these countries to the EU. One must be skeptical that the EU is actually prepared to do that. The EU also has the practical ability to do something about Russian behavior. Whether they will seriously try to or not remains to be seen. The Russians have skillfully created tensions between the “old” Europe and the “new” one.

    As for America, the Bush administration will continue to pay for Saakashvili’s battle with the Russians and give Georgia strong moral support. But with a financial system in disaster, the administration’s writ on controversial matters during their last months in office does not extend far.

    Although the next president will have many foreign-policy challenges, cleaning up after the Georgian war needs early attention. Most importantly, the United States and its allies must create an effective Russian policy. They have to sort out their relations with an angry and internationally disruptive Russia, while ensuring Russian cooperation on pressing issues, such as stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program and energy security. Slogans and fulminations won’t do the trick.

     

    Morton Abramowitz is a former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

  • ‘Good Basis’ for Solving Armenia Conflict: Azerbaijani President

    ‘Good Basis’ for Solving Armenia Conflict: Azerbaijani President

     

     

     

     

     

    AFP

    Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Tuesday said there was “a good basis” for resolving a long-running conflict with Armenia after talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev near Moscow.

    “It seems to us that there is now a good basis for a resolution of the conflict, which would fit with the interests of all states and would be based on the principles of international law,” Aliyev said.

    “If the conflict is resolved in the near future, I am sure that there will be new perspectives for regional cooperation,” Aliyev said.

    Aliyev also expressed his concern over the situation in the region following Russia’s war in Georgia, saying that conflict “should be resolved in a peaceful way, through dialogue, by finding common points and based on mutual respect.”

    Aliyev visited Medvedev at his residence near Moscow for talks on last month’s conflict in Georgia and on Azerbaijan’s conflict with its neighbour Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

    Armenia and Azerbaijan remain in a tense stand-off over the enclave, which ethnic Armenian forces seized in the early 1990s in a war that killed nearly 30,000 people and forced another million on both sides to flee their homes.

    A ceasefire was signed between the two former Soviet republics in 1994 but the dispute remains unresolved after more than a decade of negotiations, and shootings between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in the region are common.

  • Yerevan Hails Turkish Initiative for Caucasus

    Yerevan Hails Turkish Initiative for Caucasus

     

     

     

     

     

    By Karine Simonian

    Armenia welcomes the Turkish initiative aimed at establishing a stability and cooperation platform in the Caucasus, President Serzh Sarkisian told media as he visited the country’s northern Lori province late last week.

    “The Turks have said from the very outset that their initiative is not an alternative to any structure or format but is aimed at improving the atmosphere,” the Armenian leader stressed. “I consider it natural that we should welcome this initiative, we have no right to avoid any discussion, especially if it is aimed at strengthening our security.”

    The issue was reportedly discussed by the two countries’ leaders on September 6 as Turkish President Abdullah Gul made a historic trip to Armenia at the initiative of his Armenian counterpart.

    Official Ankara announced plans to create a Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Pact that would include the three South Caucasus countries plus two regional heavyweights, Turkey and Russia, following the brief but devastating war between Russia and Georgia over the latter’s breakaway province of South Ossetia in August.

    In a recent interview with RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani service, Gul emphasized that the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh is not just a bilateral issue between the two Caucasus republics, but also affects the whole region.

    “Peace and stability is in the interest of everyone and to have that we have to resolve problems. But to resolve the problems we have to have discussion and dialogue,” Gul said.

    President Sarkisian expressed his satisfaction that the Turkish head of state also communicated the impressions of his Yerevan trip to the leader of neighboring Azerbaijan, with which Armenia is at loggerheads over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave that declared itself independent from Baku after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    He further appreciated the offer of assistance that Gul said Turkey was ready to render in the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, if need be.

    “I was glad to accept that offer because only someone not normal would reject assistance,” Sarkisian said, emphasizing the difference between ‘assistance’ and ‘mediation’.

    Sarkisian also said that any step that can help the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in settling the Nagorno-Karabakh problem should be regarded as positive.

    Meanwhile, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian reiterated Yerevan’s position as he received a senior visiting U.S. diplomat on Saturday.

    During the meeting with U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza, Nalbandian said Armenia welcomes the steps aimed at building confidence and developing cooperation in the region, the Armenian Foreign Ministry reported.

    He also gave a positive evaluation to the Turkish president’s visit to Armenia, describing it as a good stimulus to starting a ‘serious dialogue’.

    Bryza, who is the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group along with representatives of Russia and France, met with the Armenian minister as part of his regional tour to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process as well as the recent developments in the region, including the war in Georgia and Armenian-Turkish relations.

    Before meeting with Bryza, Nalbandian paid a visit to the Georgian capital where he also presented the latest developments in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process and opportunities for normalizing relations between Armenia and Turkey.

    In Tbilisi Nalbandian was received by the country’s Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze and President Mikheil Saakashvili.

    The Foreign Ministry’s press office quoted Nalbandian as stressing during his meeting with President Saakashvili that Armenia is one of the countries most interested in stability, security and peace in the neighboring republic. He reportedly said that apart from the fact that about 70 percent of Armenia’s foreign trade is made through Georgia, “two peoples have bonds of centuries-old friendship.”

  • The Enemy of My Friend

    The Enemy of My Friend

    by Gayane Abrahamyan
    11 September 2008

    Isolated Armenia plays a careful diplomatic dance with Georgia and Russia. From EurasiaNet.

    YEREVAN | The Georgia-Russia war has placed Armenia in a bind. Officials in Yerevan are feeling pressure to take sides, either supporting their country’s strategic partner, Russia, or its neighbor, Georgia, through which 70 percent of Armenian exports flow.

    Economic issues have so far driven Yerevan’s response. But a factor looming in the background of any geopolitical discussion is Russia’s decision to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This has upped the stakes for Yerevan, as Armenian officials do not want to do anything that could impede the realization of their desires to see the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh break free from Azerbaijan.

    Currently, economics dictates that Armenia pay attention to its relations with Georgia. Under blockade by Turkey and Azerbaijan, Armenia’s only reliable outlet for exports and imports is through Georgia. The war, and its complicated aftermath, has thus inflicted a considerable amount of damage on the Armenian economy.

    Much of the harm can be traced to Russian efforts to close Georgia’s Black Sea ports, as well as a major railway. One of the consequences of this action was that some 107 train cars of wheat, 10 fuel containers, and 50 additional rail cars with miscellaneous goods were left in limbo, Gagik Martirosyan, an adviser to Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan, said in a statement. The unloading of ships with goods meant for Armenia reportedly resumed only on 1 September, according to the government.

    The delays are stoking concern about a possible wheat shortage in Yerevan. Repairs on the railway were due to be finished this week, according to the Georgian government. An alternative railway line can handle only much smaller loads, Martirosyan said.

    The owner of one flour processing company said on 6 September that Armenia would face a continuing shortage of flour if the railway is not reopened soon. “[P]eople buy 50 sacks of flour instead of the 10 or 20 they used to get before,” said Vanik Musoian, owner of the Mancho Group, which also imports wheat. “Many villagers try not to sell their wheat.” Some 2,500 tons of wheat imported by the Mancho Group remain in Batumi, while another 7,000 tons are still in Russia. The company is attempting to import wheat from Iran.

    Gasoline has been another problem. Until late August, many stations countrywide posted “No gas” notices. Although the government declared that gas reserves were sufficient to withstand a temporary shortfall, drivers who were forced to wait in long lines to buy fuel scoffed at the assurances.

    Gagik Torosian, the executive director of Yerevan’s Center for Economic Development and Research, believes that if the war had lasted longer, “Armenian citizens would once again have experienced the hardships of the ’90s, when people stood in line for both gas and bread.”

    While the importance of Armenia’s relationship with Georgia has been highlighted in recent weeks, there are powerful factors favoring Russia. Russian companies control Armenia’s telecommunications sectors, are responsible for management of its railway network, and have sizeable interests in its energy industry. Russia in 2007 accounted for just over 37 percent of Armenia’s foreign investment or $500 million, according to government figures.

    FRIENDS ON ALL FRONTS

    For many Armenians, the situation underscores a need to enhance Yerevan’s long-time policy of complementarity — trying to maintain good ties with both the United States and Russia. Diversity in foreign relations could provide a hedge against any given geopolitical development in the future becoming a major source of domestic distress. “We will develop and enlarge our bilateral strategic partnership with Russia in every way and plan to enhance and strengthen our partnership with the United States,” said President Serzh Sargsyan at a 3 September meeting with diplomats.

    For now, Armenia is striving to avoid a choice and remain on friendly terms with both Russia and Georgia.

    Russia seems willing to allow Armenia and other formerly Soviet states to remain neutral. On 3 September, for example Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev issued a statement saying that “Russia will not impose pressure on any country to recognize the sovereignty of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.”

    For one analyst, the true test of Russia’s partnership with Armenia will be whether Moscow stays true to its pledge concerning Abkhazia and South Ossetia. “Armenia is in Russia’s hands,” said Stepan Grigorian, chairman of the Analytical Center for Globalization and Regional Cooperation in Yerevan. “But if Russia considers us partners, then it will not impose pressure.”

    Other Armenian analysts and politicians believe that, sooner or later, the Kremlin will indeed expect Yerevan to provide political support for Moscow’s actions. If this happens, it will be the Karabakh issue that weighs most heavily in the minds of Yerevan policy-makers. Armenia can’t ignore Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and then expect diplomatic help in any effort to win potential recognition of Karabakh, analysts say. “The fates of these two countries are much like the one of” Nagorno-Karabakh, analyst Levon Melik-Shahnazarian said. “If we don’t say that now, we will lose the moral and the political right to blame any other country that does not recognize the independence of [Karabakh] because of its own interests.”

    Opposition parliamentarian Larisa Alaverdian, a member of the Heritage Party, is advocating a way to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia, while still potentially preventing a diplomatic falling out with Tbilisi: only the Armenian parliament should recognize the independence of Georgia’s separatist territories. “The risks are high that relations with Georgia may be damaged. That is the reason I suggest that only the National Assembly recognize them, which is just an expression of popular will and can’t have consequences for the executive branch,” Alaverdian said.

    In his 3 September comments, Sargsyan set recognition of Karabakh as the precondition for any recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. “Having the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenia can’t recognize another formation in the same situation until it recognizes the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic,” he said.

    Gayane Abrahamyan is a reporter for the ArmeniaNow.com weekly in Yerevan. A partner post from EurasiaNet.org.

  • NAVAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE SOUTH OSSETIAN CRISIS

    NAVAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE SOUTH OSSETIAN CRISIS

    By John C. K. Daly

    Wednesday, September 10, 2008

     

    Last month’s confrontation between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia had a maritime dimension that continues to expand. Russia deployed elements of its Black Sea fleet to Georgia’s coast during its military operations and subsequently sank several Georgian naval vessels in Poti. During the clash Russia dispatched 10 vessels from Sevastopol to the Georgian coast.

    Following the conflict, the United States determined to send humanitarian relief to Georgia but found its efforts constrained by the 1936 Montreux Convention. Now Moscow, clearly irritated by Washington’s intrusion into what it regards as its southern maritime frontier, has announced that it is deploying significant naval forces next month to the Caribbean for joint naval exercises with Venezuela. Kremlin spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told reporters, “Before the end of the year, as part of a long-distance expedition, we plan a visit to Venezuela by a Russian navy flotilla” (Izvestia, September 8).

    The Caribbean deployment is not insignificant, as it includes the guided missile cruiser Peter Velikii, the largest surface vessel constructed by the Russian Federation since the collapse of the USSR, along with the anti-submarine ship Admiral Chabanenko (El Universal, September 8). Venezuelan Rear Admiral Salbatore Cammarata Bastidas said, “This is of great importance because it is the first time it is being done [in the Americas].” For Caracas, next month’s deployment is a timely riposte to the American administration’s announcement earlier this year that it was reactivating its Fourth Fleet, last deployed in southern hemisphere waters during World War Two.

    In the aftermath of the South Ossetian confrontation, when the U.S. decided to dispatch humanitarian aid by sea to Georgia, it found its initial efforts constrained by the 1936 Montreux Convention, whose 29 articles limit the number of foreign warships that non-Black Sea powers can send through the Turkish Straits to no more than nine vessels with a total of 45,000 aggregate tons. Moreover, they could remain there for no longer than three weeks. The United States had initially considered dispatching the hospital ships USNS Comfort and the USNS Mercy, both converted oil tankers, but as each displaced 69,360 tons, they fell outside the Montreux convention limits. While Washington chafed under the restrictions, there was little it could do.

    Last month NATO dispatched four ships from its Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 to the Black Sea for an exercise scheduled last October. The flotilla included Spain’s SPS Almirante Don Juan de Borbon, Germany’s FGS Luebeck, Poland’s ORP General Kazimierz Pulaski, and the USS Taylor. On August 22 the USS McFaul guided-missile destroyer loaded with humanitarian aid passed the Bosporus headed for Georgia with supplies such as blankets, hygiene kits and baby food, to be followed two days later by the USCGC Dallas cutter passing the Dardanelles. The USS Mount Whitney was also dispatched into the Black Sea with humanitarian aid, which it offloaded in Poti (Stars and Stripes, September 2).

    Before the Montreux Convention was negotiated, both Turkey and Russia had suffered from foreign naval intervention through the Turkish Straits during and after World War One. The Gallipoli campaign was preceded by a joint Anglo-French maritime effort in March 1915 to force the Dardanelles, and the Royal Navy subsequently occupied Constantinople after the war and dispatched vessels into the Black Sea to assist anti-Bolshevik forces.

    The Montreux Convention was intended to replace the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which had demilitarized the Bosporus and Dardanelles. Given their recent experience, both the Soviet Union and the Turkish Republic were interested in limiting foreign warships in the Black Sea; and for Ankara, the Montreux Convention was the first international agreement that fully acknowledged its sovereignty and position as successor to the “sick man of Europe,” the Ottoman Empire. Britain, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Japan, Turkey, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia ratified the Montreux Convention, which formally recognized Turkish sovereignty over the Turkish Straits. Given that Britain at the time was the predominant naval power in the Mediterranean, the United States was so uninterested in the diplomatic conference that produced the convention that it did not even send an observer to the negotiations.

    The Russian media is now reporting that Washington is negotiating with Georgia and Turkey to establish a naval base at one of Georgia’s Black sea ports in Batumi or Poti, but Ankara is reportedly carefully assessing its position in order to avoid further political tension with Moscow (Gruziya Online, September 7). In a replay of a dispute earlier this year, Russia has temporarily blocked the shipment of Turkish produce into Russia, citing sanitary concerns; and the dispute, which has cost Turkey an estimated $500 million in lost trade, has triggered speculation in the Turkish media that Russia is trying to punish Turkey for allowing U.S. warships to transit the Bosporus (Hurriyet, September 8).

    For those with a sense of history, a factor behind the 1962 Cuban missile crisis was Washington’s deployment of Atlas IRBMs in Italy and Turkey, which, in the wake of the confrontation, Washington quietly agreed to remove, as the development of ballistic missile submarines, the final component of Washington’s nuclear triad, obviated the need for forward basing of nuclear missiles off Russia’s southern shore. Forty years later, Turkey, sea power, and the Caribbean as subplots in rising U.S.-Russian tensions seem as interconnected as ever.

  • ERMENI GOZU ILE : Georgia’s Adventurous President Saakashvili

    ERMENI GOZU ILE : Georgia’s Adventurous President Saakashvili

     

    By Appo Jabarian
    Executive Publisher/Managing Editor
    USA ARMENIAN LIFE Magazine
     
    appojabarian@gmail.com

     

    Much controversy was created with former Soviet Republic of Georgia’s surprise military attacks on Russian peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

     

    The ill-devised attack, authorized by Georgia‘s adventurous President Saakashvili, has effectively triggered an irreversible process that may cost him his career and Georgia‘s territorial integrity.

     

    The 8.8.08 attack broke centuries-old tradition of friendship and alliance with the Russian Uncle to the north, instigating a strong popular backlash in Russian public and governmental circles. Except for Pres. Saakashvili, no Georgian official has ever actively worked to weaken his country’s ties with Russia and actively sought to “integrate” it with the oil interests of the West.

     

    In turn, he earned the status of being a strong U.S. ally in the Caucasus. But the inexperienced Georgian grossly miscalculated the extent of the Russian response, on the one hand, and the lame-duck posture adopted by his neo-con masters in the West, on the other.

     

    On Aug 29, F. William Engdahl, the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press), and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (www.globalresearch.ca), and a contributing writer of Online Journal wrote: “An examination shows 41-year-old Mikheil Saakashvili to be a ruthless and corrupt totalitarian who is tied to not only the US NATO establishment, but also to the Israeli military and intelligence establishment. The famous ‘Rose Revolution of November 2003 that forced the aging Edouard Shevardnadze from power and swept the then 36-year-old US university graduate into power was run and financed by the US State Department, the Soros Foundations, and agencies tied to the Pentagon and US intelligence community.”

     

    On September 1, in an article titled “The ‘Stupidest Guy on the Planet’ Has Lots of Company,” John Taylor of www.antiwar.com, wrote: “Saakashvili acted with such remarkable stupidity and miscalculation that a 38-inch yardstick is needed to measure his foolishness against other famously bad decisions … Did Saakashvili really think the Russians would stand idly by and let him pound their forces in South Ossetia? That the U.S., Israel, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would come to his aid? Or that Georgia‘s army could hold off the Russians?”

     

    Unmasking the real face of certain NGO’s, Engdahl added: “But there is more. The NGOs were coordinated by the US Ambassador to Georgia, Richard Miles, who had just arrived in Tbilisi fresh from success in orchestrating the CIA-backed toppling of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, using the same NGOs. Miles, who is believed to be an undercover intelligence specialist, supervised the Saakashvili coup. It involved US billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Georgia Foundation, the Washington-based Freedom House whose chairman was former CIA chief James Woolsey, and generous financing from the US Congress-financed National Endowment for Democracy, an agency created by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to °do privately what the CIA used to do,° namely coups against regimes the US government finds unfriendly.”

     

    Further bringing Saakashvili’s real persona to light, Engdahl reported: “Since coming to power in 2004 with US aid, Saakashvili has led a policy of large-scale arrests, imprisonment, torture and deepened corruption. Saakashvili has presided over the creation of a de facto one-party state, with a dummy opposition occupying a tiny portion of seats in the parliament, and this public servant is building a Ceaucescu-style palace for himself on the outskirts of Tbilisi. According to the magazine, Civil Georgia (Mar. 22, 2004), until 2005, the salaries of Saakashvili and many of his ministers were reportedly paid by the NGO network of New York-based currency speculator Soros — along with the United Nations Development Program.”

     

    Taylor added: “On an official visit to Israel, Saakashvili proclaimed that the Georgians were ‘the Jews of our time’ and compared Russian President Putin’s anti-Georgian policies to the anti-Semitic decrees of the 18th-century Russian Empress Catherine the Great. He also asserted that his model when refounding the Georgian state was Israel‘s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. And Saakashvili did not hesitate to take his case directly to Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in New York: ‘We need to establish relations with the U.S. Jewish community because you understand better than many in this country the international repercussions with the rest of the world.… I want your help in having better relations with the United States….’”

     

    One wonders if the world Jewry can fathom Saakashvili’s adventurous politics as a “Jew of our time.” By masquerading as a “Jew” of the Caucasus, Saakashvili has certainly brought liabilities to the Jewish quest for healthy relations with Russia and other countries. That’s why the Israeli military specialists and advisers in Georgia “were reluctant to upset the Russians. They need President Putin’s support at the UN to get stronger anti-nuclear sanctions on Iran.”

     

    Engdahl ominously noted that “With Russia openly backing and training the indigenous military in South Ossetia and Abkhazia to maintain Russian presence in the region, especially since the US-backed pro-NATO Saakashvili regime took power in 2004, the Caucasus is rapidly coming to resemble Spain in the Civil War from 1936-1939, where the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and others poured money and weapons and volunteers into Spain in a devastating war that was a precursor to the Second World War.”

     

    By his misguided military move against Russia, Saakashvili has de facto triggered a counter-“Rose Revolution” process. The process which already yielded Russia‘s trashing of Georgia‘s army may soon bring reversal of fortunes both for him and his masters in Washington and elsewhere.

     

    As for Saakashvili’s Azeri counter-part Pres. Ilham Aliev of Azerbaijan, it is yet to be seen if the junior Aliev has learned from his colleague’s experience to tone down his belligerent rhetoric against Armenia.

     

    One hopes that Aliev’s advisors in Baku are hard at work to convince their boss not to join the club of the “Stupidest Guys” of the Caucasus. After all, like Georgia, Azerbaijan has much to worry about its shaky and unstable ethnic makeup. Nearly 60% of its inhabitants come from restive non-Azeri ethnic groups such Daghestanis, Alans, Lezgis and many others.