for record

Saakashvili's storming of Georgia's parliament, which forced the resignation of autocratic President Eduard Shevardnadze and led to a new election, caught U.S. officials off guard.

U.S. Ally Proves Volatile
Amid Dispute With Russia

Georgian President Says West
Ignored Pleas for SupportBy MARC CHAMPION in Tbilisi, Georgia, and JAY SOLOMON and MARY JACOBY in Washington
August 30, 2008; Page A6
 

Russia's claim that the U.S. orchestrated the conflict in Georgia has sharpened the dispute between the two superpowers. But despite close links between the U.S. and Georgia, their relationship in recent years has been marked more by frustration than coordination.

Associated PressGeorgia's 'rose revolution' in 2003 put U.S. diplomats off guard. Here protesters carry a portrait of then-opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili, who rode the protests to the presidency and ousted a leader the U.S. had long supported, Eduard Shevardnadze.

According to interviews with current and former U.S. officials, as well as with Georgian officials in Tbilisi, the U.S. for years has found the relationship with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili difficult to manage.

From Mr. Saakashvili's ascent to power in the 2003 "rose revolution" to his assault this month on Tskhinvali, capital of separatist South Ossetia, his risky moves have often caught Washington unprepared and left it exposed diplomatically, U.S. officials say.

American frustrations have been matched by those in Tbilisi. At a crucial moment earlier this year, a lame-duck administration in Washington was unable to deliver European support to kick-start Georgia's membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Georgian president says he gave repeated warnings to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others that Russia would attack unless the West signaled strong support, including through NATO. These warnings, he says, went unheeded.

ONLINE TODAY
 Read a transcript of a Wall Street Journal interview with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili1, conducted between midnight and 1 a.m., Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008.

Regardless of who was at fault, the end result was what the U.S. and Georgia both feared. Georgia's territory is being carved up, U.S. influence in the region has been dented, NATO expansion is harder to achieve, and Europe's dependence on Russian energy has been highlighted. Russia, which smashed the Georgian military and still occupies chunks of its territory, has re-emerged as the region's dominant power.

"I don't blame them," said Mr. Saakashvili, referring to the initial lack of response from Western leaders, during a recent interview at his half-constructed presidential residence in Tbilisi. They didn't respond to Georgia's pleas because they didn't believe him about Russia's intent to invade, Mr. Saakashvili says. "Everything happens a first time. You cannot predict it until you see it."

On Thursday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. of arming Georgia in preparation for war and of deliberately starting the conflict to help the U.S. presidential campaign of one of the two candidates, presumably Republican Senator John McCain. The former Russian president said the resulting "hurrah-patriotism" would "unify the nation around certain political forces."

Yet the gap in Georgian and Western expectations remains. This week, Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two separatist regions of Georgia that are at the center of the conflict. Mr. Saakashvili wants the West to levy financial sanctions but the European Union is considering only diplomatic penalties ahead of an emergency meeting Monday. Moscow is a bigger trade partner for the EU than China, but trades less with the U.S.

Mr. Saakashvili's U.S. ties trace back to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, after which the young Georgian joined a human-rights nonprofit. He won a U.S. State Department fellowship and studied at Columbia University Law School in New York. He started making contacts across Washington with people, including Sen. McCain, who had a strong interest in the ex-Soviet Union and wanted to see NATO expand.

The Columbia diploma hangs on Mr. Saakashvili's office wall today. Next to it are biographies of Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, Stalin and Ataturk -- a role model -- as well as books on war and one called "How to Run an Airport."

While in office, Mr. Saakashvili has proved a radical on the economy, introducing market-oriented changes that won him high praise from institutions such as the World Bank. But he has proved just as radical in his determination to shake off centuries of Russian influence by joining NATO, and to retrieve Georgia's breakaway territories.

When Mr. Saakashvili rose to power at the head of Georgia's so-called rose revolution following a disputed election, Moscow saw it as a U.S.-inspired coup. Some U.S. officials were also concerned. Washington's then-Ambassador Richard Miles tried to restrain Mr. Saakashvili, worried he might destabilize the country, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Saakashvili's storming of Georgia's parliament, which forced the resignation of autocratic President Eduard Shevardnadze and led to a new election, caught U.S. officials off guard. At the time, support for Mr. Shevardnadze was official U.S. policy, and key American diplomats thought they could still work with him.

"It was like the U.S. was slamming the brakes all the time," says Scott Horton, who hired Mr. Saakashvili to his first law job in New York and kept in regular contact with him. "The U.S. was always trying to calm him down."

Mr. Saakashvili didn't rely on the State Department to secure support in Washington, and worked hard to create alternative channels of communication. He hired Randy Scheunemann, now Sen. McCain's top foreign-policy adviser, as a lobbyist. The U.S. Agency for International Development paid for Daniel Kunin, a former National Democratic Institute official, to work as a full-time adviser to the Georgian president. Mr. Kunin has become an indispensable aide, staying on after his agency contract expired earlier this year.

Buoyed by the euphoria of the rose revolution, Mr. Saakashvili forced a showdown early in 2004 with Aslan Abashidze, the Moscow-backed ruler of Ajara, a breakaway province in southwestern Georgia. Visiting Tbilisi that March, Carlos Pascual, who headed the State Department's financial-assistance team for Georgia, says not only the U.S. but also Georgia's prime minister, Zurab Zhvania, was surprised by Mr. Saakashvili's rapid push.

"You'd think you'd bring all hands on deck for this one," Mr. Pascual says. Mr. Abashidze eventually fled to Moscow. Though bloodless, many worried at the time that the confrontation would spark a war.

Mr. Pascual and other U.S. officials say Mr. Saakashvili's Ajara move may have emboldened him to take further risks. In June 2004, he carried out a military operation in South Ossetia that seemed designed to trigger a similar internal collapse. The attempt failed, hardening attitudes inside South Ossetia, according to Western diplomats present at the time.

Washington's biggest shock came in November 2007, when Mr. Saakashvili cracked down on opposition protesters using tear gas and rubber bullets. He shut down opposition TV stations. This shattered Mr. Saakashvili's credibility as a champion of democracy.

Matthew J. Bryza, a longstanding friend of Mr. Saakashvili and the State Department's point man for Georgia, was sent to deliver what he describes as a "tough" message: Mr. Saakashvili had to get the TV stations back on the air and restore democratic institutions, or lose U.S. support.

Asked about these tensions, Mr. Saakashvili says: "What we saw was a foreign-led destabilization, and what [Washington] clearly saw was us overreacting to internal opposition. I think the truth was somewhere in the middle."

At the time, the Bush administration was driving through independence for Kosovo, a breakaway Serbian province. That infuriated Russia, a close ally of Serbia. Later Moscow would cite the Kosovo precedent in pushing the claims of separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

In early April, Georgian officials were desperate to start talks about joining NATO and hoped a meeting in Bucharest would send a clear signal of Western commitment to Georgia and deter any moves by Moscow. Mr. Bush strongly backed the Georgian bid, but in his final year lacked the clout to persuade some European NATO members, led by Germany, who worried about Mr. Saakashvili's reliability and Russian opposition to the move.

In July, at a late-night session of a regional security conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, the Georgian president expressed hope the U.S. would provide sophisticated weapons, including Stinger air-defense missiles. One American participant says he told Mr. Saakashvili: "This is never going to happen."

Mr. Saakashvili and other Georgian officials say they understood the U.S. wouldn't go to war with Russia for Georgia. But the government remains deeply disappointed over how little the U.S. and European Union did before the crisis.

"It looked like the West didn't want to get involved," says Mr. Saakashvili.




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