Now that the Russo-Georgian War is coming to an end, hopefully the Georgian authorities will review the steps that led to the confrontation, and its military set-backs.
No doubt Russia should be blamed for wanting to dismember Georgia and perhaps even topple its president. The U.S should consider how its forthright support led the Tblisi government down a dead-end road. The German and French governments need to reflect on how their veto of Georgia’s NATO membership at the Bucharest Summit in April encouraged Mikheil Saakashvili to take unilateral military action, believing nobody else would help him recover territory belonging to Georgia. And the EU as a whole needs to consider how its inaction – and head-in-the-sand policy – made a bad situation worse.
But above all, the Georgian government needs to look at its own strategic and military miscalculations. Once the ceasefire takes effect, I hope that Georgia will show itself to be a true democracy with citizens demanding that an investigation be conducted into the war much like the Agranat Commission investigated the Israeli government’s actions during the Yom Kippur War. It’s what a real democracy does.
