Georgia Shot First

New reports indicate that Georgia, far from an innocent victim of vile Russian aggression, in fact started the war that’s had such disastrous consequences for both countries back over the summer:

Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm. [...] President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia has characterized the attack as a precise and defensive act. But according to observations of the monitors, documented Aug. 7 and Aug. 8, Georgian artillery rounds and rockets were falling throughout the city at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between explosions, and within the first hour of the bombardment at least 48 rounds landed in a civilian area. The monitors have also said they were unable to verify that ethnic Georgian villages were under heavy bombardment that evening, calling to question one of Mr. Saakashvili’s main justifications for the attack. [...]

The observations by the monitors, including a Finnish major, a Belorussian airborne captain and a Polish civilian, have been the subject of two confidential briefings to diplomats in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, one in August and the other in October. Summaries were shared with The New York Times by people in attendance at both.

Now, none of this justifies later Russian bad acts when they pushed retaliation beyond anything justifiable. But it does help put the war in context and call into question the wisdom of trying to read Georgia-Russia territorial disputes as an ideology driven conflict between white hatted democrats and black hatted authoritarians. It remains the case that the correct position for the United States is to be supportive of Georgian independence and autonomy from Russia, but not to uncritically invest ourselves in the Georgian position over Abkhazia and/or South Ossetia and, in particular, to avoid giving Georgian assurances that it will read as an American commitment to defend them from Russian retaliation if Georgia provokes disputes.

And, of course, one hopes President-Elect Obama won’t be too eager to implement his nominal commitment to bringing Georgia into NATO.