Many believe Putin's endgame is the overthrow of Saakashvili in a counter-revolution of the kind the Russians believe was engineered in the West to bring him to power. If that is Putin's goal, there seems little more that the United States could do to prevent it than Russia could do to prevent Bill Clinton's ouster of the Haitian junta or Bush 41's ouster of Manuel Noriega.
What this Tiblisi-Moscow confrontation does reveal, however, is, first, the limits of U.S. power; second, the folly of U.S. meddling in Russia's "near abroad"; third, the insanity of any decision to bring Georgia into NATO.
Were Georgia in NATO today, this crisis would have escalated into a confrontation between Washington and Moscow. For under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, an attack against one member is to be treated as an attack against all. Thus, a collision of Russian forces in South Ossetia with Georgian forces could bring America and Russia to the brink of war.
Russian leaders contend that Saakashvili has been building up his military to invade and recapture the breakaway regions, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has implied that Saakashvili ignited the crisis after visits to Washington and NATO headquarters.
No hard evidence has surfaced to substantiate this charge. But if Saakashvili was put up to creating this crisis by anyone in the United States, it was an act of colossal stupidity. What do we do now?
There seems little we can do if Putin is determined to bring down Saakashvili. Russia is flush with oil and gas revenue and $250 billion in cash reserves; Moscow is moving closer to China; and Putin is far more popular in his country than Bush and Blair are in theirs.
Bush bought into the notion that U.S. vital interests required supporting ex-Russian republics against Moscow, which was absurd. Our vital interest was always in maintaining strong U.S.-Russian ties, which have been ravaged by the meddling of neoconservatives mired in Russophobia.
As for who rules Ukraine or Georgia, for two centuries that was never a vital interest of ours. Thus there is no reason to extend NATO war guarantees to Ukraine, the Caucasus or Central Asia.
The destiny of that region will be determined by the dominant powers that reside there: Russia, China, Turkey, Iran. Not by us.