Almost as predictable as President Obama’s groveling apology for America’s greatness before the UN is the EU’s ‘independent’ report that Georgia is to blame for Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion of its sovereign territory in August 2008.
Even by the EU’s sky-high standards of shamelessness, this “blame the victim” mentality is shocking. With a budget of over $2 million and initiated by the EU’s chief Russian apologist Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini came to the most politically-convenient conclusion Brussels could have hoped for: Tbilisi – and specifically its President Bush-backed leader Mikheil Saakashvili – started the whole thing. Sure, Russia made things worse but blame must be laid at Tbilisi’s door.
Following President Obama’s shameful surrender to Moscow in abandoning the Third Site missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, Moscow must think Christmas has come early. Among other things, since President Obama’s election in November Moscow has:
1. Threatened NATO members with offensive missile deployments;
2. Cut off energy supplies to Ukraine;
3. Had its spies caught operating at NATO headquarters; and
4. Taken military control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia’s borders which it unilaterally recognized in violation of an EU negotiated ceasefire.
However, Brussels and Washington have reacted with a big, warm embrace for Moscow and a chilly brush-off for Tbilisi; while Russia enjoys the seemingly unending fruits of Obama’s ‘reset’ tree, Tbilisi continues to languish in the cold.
In an open letter this week, former Czech President Vaclav Havel and other European leaders petitioned the West to remember the appeasement culture of 1938-9 that led to one of the darkest periods in modern history. It states: “a big power will always find or engineer a pretext to invade a neighbour whose independence it resents.” The letter went on to state bluntly: “Twenty years after the emancipation of half of the continent, a new wall is being built in Europe – this time across the sovereign territory of Georgia.”
