U.S. Watched as a Squabble Turned Into a Showdown

By HELENE COOPER, C.J. CHIVERS and CLIFFORD J. LEVY

 

Five months ago, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, long a darling of this city's diplomatic dinner party circuit, came to town to push for America to muscle his tiny country of four million into NATO.

On Capitol Hill, at the State Department and at the Pentagon, Mr. Saakashvili, brash and hyperkinetic, urged the West not to appease Russia by rejecting his country's NATO ambitions.

At the White House, President Bush bantered with the Georgian president about his prowess as a dancer. Laura Bush, the first lady, took Mr. Saakashvili's wife to lunch. Mr. Bush promised him to push hard for Georgia's acceptance into NATO. After the meeting, Mr. Saakashvili pronounced his visit "one of the most successful visits during my presidency," and said he did not know of any other leader of a small country with the access to the administration that he had.

Three weeks later, Mr. Bush went to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, at the invitation of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. There, he received a message from the Russian: the push to offer Ukraine and Georgia NATO membership was crossing Russia's "red lines," according to an administration official close to the talks.

Afterward, Mr. Bush said of Mr. Putin, "He's been very truthful and to me, that's the only way you can find common ground." It was one of many moments when the United States seemed to have missed — or gambled it could manage — the depth of Russia's anger and the resolve of the Georgian president to provoke the Russians.

The story of how a 16-year, low-grade conflict over who should rule two small, mountainous regions in the Caucasus erupted into the most serious post-cold-war showdown between the United States and Russia is one of miscalculation, missed signals and overreaching, according to interviews with diplomats and senior officials in the United States, the European Union, Russia and Georgia. In many cases, the officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/18/washington/18diplo.html?hp

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