Originally published: Aug. 11, 2008

If it hasn’t already been made abundantly clear to you which side of the Russian-Georgian conflict the American media is supposed to be on, the Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili entitled “The War in Georgia is a War for the West“. I’ll summarize the article for you: “I underestimated how much Russia would overreact to my country’s attempts to forcibly reclaim South Ossetia with poorly trained troops. And I thought you guys in the West would have my back. I’ll frame it using words like ‘independence’ and ‘freedom’ that you all like so much. Now send help. Seriously.”

If you spent the weekend watching creepily tiny gymnasts vault over things, here’s a little Caucasus chaos recap. South Ossetia and Abkhazia are regions within Georgia that declared themselves independent over a decade ago (but, under an offer by Russia, over half the residents of South Ossetia are officially citizens of that country). The U.N. doesn’t consider them independent regions but that’s how they (and Russia, who also happens to own North Ossetia) see themselves. Last Tuesday, Georgia- who was under a ceasefire agreement- forcibly entered South Ossetia after claiming separatists there had bombed Georgia. Peacekeeping officials from Russia were in South Ossetia at the time of the attack. Russia did not take this well. Their reaction led to Russian troops being moved into South Ossetia and Abkhazia (reasonable under the circumstances) but also to air attacks in other regions of Georgia (there’s the rub). And all hell broke loose from there. Lives lost, damages done and no real end in sight.

Even before Saakashvili helpfully spelled it out with a WSJ headline, it was fairly obvious that he had expectations about the West rushing to his aid. Those expectations aren’t completely unfounded. The U.S. helped get him into his position during the Rose Revolution. Georgia helped us out in Iraq, donating the third largest amount of troops. We “repaid” them by giving those troops supplies and training. George W. Bush favors Georgia joining N.A.T.O. and Georgia favors Georgia being in the E.U.- going as far as to fly the flags of that organization (of which they’re not a member) on their governmental buildings.

Saakashvili has had two clear goals since he took the reigns: 1) to make Georgia a player on the global stage and 2) to take back South Ossetia and Abkhazia (which would show his power, give Georgia “their” land back and throw a nice middle finger at Russia in the meantime). But he miscalculated how much help would come from the West and entered his country into a battle that it is incredibly unlikely to win. Russia’s army is bigger, stronger and better equipped and it has the people living in the regions being attacked on their side. Even if Georgia somehow- miraculously- got Russia out of the equation, the residents of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are not going to allow their regions to be peacefully reabsorbed into the country that attacked them.

It doesn’t really matter at this point who is right and who is wrong. Georgia needs to get out of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia needs to stop bombing random areas of Georgia. The West (the U.S. especially) has its fingerprints on this situation a little too much to just let it play out. But the best thing that the officials traveling to the region to attempt a ceasefire negotiation can do is stick to that goal and encourage both countries to go back to their sides and stay there. The U.S. really only has the capability to carry on one war it shouldn’t be involved in at a time and the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts already have that seat.