From The new York Times, August 15, 2008, by CLIFFORD J. LEVY*:
MOSCOW — Russia issued a rebuke to President Bush on Thursday over the conflict in neighboring Georgia, refusing an immediate withdrawal of its troops there, affirming its support for two separatist enclaves and warning the United States to avoid doing anything that would encourage its Georgian ally to reignite hostilities.
In response, in the most pointed language yet from a Bush administration official, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates declared that Russia’s actions now required a full reassessment of administration efforts to create “an ongoing and long-term strategic dialogue with Russia.”
At a Pentagon briefing, Mr. Gates said, “Russia’s behavior over the past week has called into question the entire premise of that dialogue and has profound implications for our security relationship going forward, both bilaterally and with NATO. If Russia does not step back from its aggressive posture and actions in Georgia, the U.S.-Russian relationship could be adversely affected for years to come.”
Still, he ruled out the use of American military force in connection with the conflict. “I don’t see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation,” Mr. Gates said. “Clear enough?”
On the ground in Georgia, both sides appeared to take tentative steps to back away from further fighting and adhere to the framework of a cease-fire brokered on Wednesday. But by the end of the day, Russian troops continued to hold their positions, and conditions were largely unchanged.
A day after Mr. Bush demanded that Russia pull its forces from Georgia and sent humanitarian aid there, it was clear that tensions between the two powers were not subsiding.
Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, held a televised meeting with the leaders of the two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and pledged that Russia would provide whatever they needed to secede lawfully from Georgia.
Follow This Link to see a map of the conflict.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said separately in a radio interview that Georgia “can forget about” its territorial integrity because the Georgian government under President Mikheil Saakashvili had committed so many atrocities that the two breakaway regions could never live under Georgian rule.
Russian defense officials raised questions about the nature of the humanitarian aid that the United States military has begun airlifting to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. And the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Washington should avoid steps that might prompt new fighting and “lead to the repetition of a tragic scenario.”
For their part, American and Georgian officials reiterated that Russia was the aggressor. Mr. Saakashvili, a fluent English speaker who was educated in the United States, has made a string of appearances in recent days on American television networks intended to rally support for his country.
The Russian military action in Georgia, which erupted a week ago, underscored the Kremlin’s determination to maintain influence over other former Soviet republics and ward off expansion of NATO, which Georgia wants to join. The conflict has caused perhaps the greatest strain in relations between the United States and Russia since Vladimir V. Putin took power here in 2000 and began seeking to revive Russia’s standing.
Mr. Gates suggested that Russia’s goal was not really peacekeeping and the protection of pro-Russian inhabitants of South Ossetia. Rather, he said, it was to send a message to Georgia and other former Soviet states that they should think twice before “daring to try to integrate with the West.”
The Russian reaction came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice headed to the region to work for a settlement and to show support for Mr. Saakashvili, a close friend of the United States.
She was sent by Mr. Bush, who declared Wednesday that if Russia did not abide by the cease-fire, it would risk its place in “the diplomatic, political, economic and security structures of the 21st century.”
....In Georgia on Thursday, Russian forces briefly allowed Georgian police to return to the city of Gori as Russian troops appeared to prepare to pull out. But joint patrols were canceled three hours later and the city returned to full Russian control.
Gori was the focus of international protest after Russia shelled it and occupied it on Wednesday. The attempt at joint patrols on Thursday at first suggested the conflict had ebbed. The city is just 40 miles from Tbilisi, and rumors had circulated on Wednesday of a possible advance on the city....
*Reporting was contributed by Ellen Barry from Moscow; C.J. Chivers from Gori, Georgia; Michael Schwirtz from Poti, Georgia; and David Stout from Washington.
Showing posts with label Georgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Georgia. Show all posts
Friday, August 15, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks
From The New York Times, August 13, 2008, by JOHN MARKOFF:
Weeks before bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace...
...Other Internet experts in the United States said the attacks against Georgia’s Internet infrastructure began as early as July 20, with coordinated barrages of millions of requests — known as distributed denial of service, or D.D.O.S., attacks — that overloaded and effectively shut down Georgian servers.
...Exactly who was behind the cyberattack is not known. The Georgian government blamed Russia for the attacks, but the Russian government said it was not involved. ...
In Georgia, media, communications and transportation companies were also attacked, according to security researchers. Shadowserver saw the attack against Georgia spread to computers throughout the government after Russian troops entered the Georgian province of South Ossetia. The National Bank of Georgia’s Web site was defaced at one point. Images of 20th-century dictators as well as an image of Georgia’s president, Mr. Saakashvili, were placed on the site.....
...In addition to D.D.O.S. attacks that crippled Georgia’s limited Internet infrastructure, researchers said there was evidence of redirection of Internet traffic through Russian telecommunications firms beginning last weekend. The attacks continued on Tuesday, controlled by software programs that were located in hosting centers controlled by a Russian telecommunications firms. A Russian-language Web site, stopgeorgia.ru, also continued to operate and offer software for download used for D.D.O.S. attacks.
Over the weekend a number of American computer security researchers tracking malicious programs known as botnets, which were blasting streams of useless data at Georgian computers, said they saw clear evidence of a shadowy St. Petersburg-based criminal gang known as the Russian Business Network, or R.B.N.
“The attackers are using the same tools and the same attack commands that have been used by the R.B.N. and in some cases the attacks are being launched from computers they are known to control,” said Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence for SecureWorks, a computer security firm based in Atlanta.
He noted that in the run-up to the start of the war over the weekend, computer researchers had watched as botnets were “staged” in preparation for the attack, and then activated shortly before Russian air strikes began on Saturday.
The evidence on R.B.N. and whether it is controlled by, or coordinating with the Russian government remains unclear. The group has been linked to online criminal activities including child pornography, malware, identity theft, phishing and spam. ...
Weeks before bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace...
...Other Internet experts in the United States said the attacks against Georgia’s Internet infrastructure began as early as July 20, with coordinated barrages of millions of requests — known as distributed denial of service, or D.D.O.S., attacks — that overloaded and effectively shut down Georgian servers.
An image from the Web site of the Georgian Parliament after it had been defaced.
... the Web site of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, had been rendered inoperable for 24 hours by multiple D.D.O.S. attacks. ...
...As it turns out, the July attack may have been a dress rehearsal for an all-out cyberwar once the shooting started between Georgia and Russia....
...Bill Woodcock, the research director of the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit organization that tracks Internet traffic...said cyberattacks are so inexpensive and easy to mount, with few fingerprints, they will almost certainly remain a feature of modern warfare.
...Exactly who was behind the cyberattack is not known. The Georgian government blamed Russia for the attacks, but the Russian government said it was not involved. ...
In Georgia, media, communications and transportation companies were also attacked, according to security researchers. Shadowserver saw the attack against Georgia spread to computers throughout the government after Russian troops entered the Georgian province of South Ossetia. The National Bank of Georgia’s Web site was defaced at one point. Images of 20th-century dictators as well as an image of Georgia’s president, Mr. Saakashvili, were placed on the site.....
...In addition to D.D.O.S. attacks that crippled Georgia’s limited Internet infrastructure, researchers said there was evidence of redirection of Internet traffic through Russian telecommunications firms beginning last weekend. The attacks continued on Tuesday, controlled by software programs that were located in hosting centers controlled by a Russian telecommunications firms. A Russian-language Web site, stopgeorgia.ru, also continued to operate and offer software for download used for D.D.O.S. attacks.
Over the weekend a number of American computer security researchers tracking malicious programs known as botnets, which were blasting streams of useless data at Georgian computers, said they saw clear evidence of a shadowy St. Petersburg-based criminal gang known as the Russian Business Network, or R.B.N.
“The attackers are using the same tools and the same attack commands that have been used by the R.B.N. and in some cases the attacks are being launched from computers they are known to control,” said Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence for SecureWorks, a computer security firm based in Atlanta.
He noted that in the run-up to the start of the war over the weekend, computer researchers had watched as botnets were “staged” in preparation for the attack, and then activated shortly before Russian air strikes began on Saturday.
The evidence on R.B.N. and whether it is controlled by, or coordinating with the Russian government remains unclear. The group has been linked to online criminal activities including child pornography, malware, identity theft, phishing and spam. ...
... A Russian government spokesman said that it was possible that individuals in Russia or elsewhere had taken it upon themselves to start the attacks. “I cannot exclude this possibility,” Yevgeniy Khorishko, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington, said. ...
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Russia Presses Into Georgia
From The New York Times, August 12, 2008, by MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ, ANNE BARNARD and ANDREW E. KRAMER*:
SENAKI, Georgia — Russian armored vehicles rolled 25 miles into western Georgia and took up positions at a military base here early Monday after issuing an ultimatum to Georgia to disarm its troops, along the boundary with the separatist territory of Abkhazia.
The Russian military advances represented the first time Russian forces invaded Georgia proper in the four-day-old conflict, which has unnerved the West and resurrected some Cold War anxieties. Georgian officials said Russian troops had moved into several other cities in western Georgia, holding out the prospect that fighting could escalate on a second front.
President Bush, in his sharpest comments about the conflict thus far, said Russia’s offensive was “unacceptable in the 21st century” and had “substantially damaged Russia’s standing in the world,” as well as harmed relations between Washington and Moscow....“The Russian government must respect Georgia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” he said. But he did not suggest what the United States would do if Russia kept up its campaign in Georgia.
...There were numerous but unconfirmed reports that Russian forces had occupied a major town just south of South Ossetia, Gori, which sits astride the country’s main east-west road and is home to a major military installation. Russia denied its troops were there.
In Senaki, south of the Abhaz border, two Russian tanks were parked inside the gate of a refurbished military base that until two days ago had been a Georgian military outpost. Russian soldiers who identified themselves as peacekeepers said that they now controlled the downtown base, located well outside the United Nations-designated zone in which Russian peacekeepers are allowed to operate tanks and heavy guns. An armored personnel carrier patrolled the village.
Residents said the Georgian military had fled without shooting. But bombs pounded the area, and residents said soldiers had told them they would not hurt civilians but would “annihilate” anyone in a uniform. By the end of the day, both the Russian and Georgian sides said the Russians had left Senaki, news agencies reported.
...President Mikheil Saakashvili addressed the nation, saying Russian troops had reached the main east-west road. “The situation in Georgia is very difficult because Russia is doing everything possible to occupy the country,” Mr. Saakashvili told the Georgian Security Council.
...Twice during the day, Mr. Saakashvili fled a location for safety.
...Residents were also fleeing the port city of Poti...
...Russian officials say Georgia provoked the assault on its troops by attacking South Ossetia, causing heavy civilian casualties. The Kremlin said its actions since then were intended to strike at Georgian military forces that had fired on its peacekeeping troops in South Ossetia and it did not intend a broader offensive deeper into Georgia.
However, Georgian officials said that over the weekend Russia had expanded its attacks on Georgia, moving tanks and troops through South Ossetia and advancing toward Gori. That maneuver, the Russian bombing of Tbilisi, and then the occupation of a Georgian military base in Senaki seemed to suggest that Russia’s aims in the conflict after four days of fighting had gone beyond securing South Ossetia and Abkhazia to weakening the armed forces of Georgia, a former Soviet republic and an ally of the United States whose Western leanings have long irritated the Kremlin.
...The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has been trying to arrange a cease-fire and Mr. Saakashvili said Georgia had signed one....
...On Monday, an Abkhaz official said that Abkhaz forces, backed by Russian paratroopers, would kill Georgian troops if they did not leave Kodori Gorge, the only part of the territory where Georgia has military forces. ...
...The fighting raised tensions between Russia and its former cold-war foes to their highest level in decades. President Bush has promoted Georgia as a bastion of democracy, helped strengthen its military and urged that NATO grant the country to membership. Georgia serves as a major conduit for oil flowing from Russia and Central Asia to the West.
But Russia, emboldened by windfall profits from oil exports, is showing a resolve to reassert its dominance ...The military action, which has involved air, naval and missile attacks, is the largest engagement by Russian forces outside its borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Strong diplomatic warnings from Mr. Bush and European leaders have been ignored, underscoring the limits of Western influence over Russia at a time when the rest of Europe depends heavily on Russian natural gas and the United States needs Moscow’s cooperation if it hopes to curtail what it believes is a nuclear weapons threat from Iran.
Vice President Dick Cheney, in a telephone conversation with the Georgian president on Monday, said “that Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community...”
*Michael Schwirtz reported from Senaki, Georgia, Andrew E. Kramer from Gori, Georgia; and Anne Barnard from Moscow. Reporting was contributed by David Stout and Helene Cooper from Washington; Nicholas Kulish from Tbilisi, Georgia; and Joseph Sywenkiy from Gori, Georgia.
SENAKI, Georgia — Russian armored vehicles rolled 25 miles into western Georgia and took up positions at a military base here early Monday after issuing an ultimatum to Georgia to disarm its troops, along the boundary with the separatist territory of Abkhazia.
The Russian military advances represented the first time Russian forces invaded Georgia proper in the four-day-old conflict, which has unnerved the West and resurrected some Cold War anxieties. Georgian officials said Russian troops had moved into several other cities in western Georgia, holding out the prospect that fighting could escalate on a second front.
President Bush, in his sharpest comments about the conflict thus far, said Russia’s offensive was “unacceptable in the 21st century” and had “substantially damaged Russia’s standing in the world,” as well as harmed relations between Washington and Moscow....“The Russian government must respect Georgia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” he said. But he did not suggest what the United States would do if Russia kept up its campaign in Georgia.
...There were numerous but unconfirmed reports that Russian forces had occupied a major town just south of South Ossetia, Gori, which sits astride the country’s main east-west road and is home to a major military installation. Russia denied its troops were there.
In Senaki, south of the Abhaz border, two Russian tanks were parked inside the gate of a refurbished military base that until two days ago had been a Georgian military outpost. Russian soldiers who identified themselves as peacekeepers said that they now controlled the downtown base, located well outside the United Nations-designated zone in which Russian peacekeepers are allowed to operate tanks and heavy guns. An armored personnel carrier patrolled the village.
Residents said the Georgian military had fled without shooting. But bombs pounded the area, and residents said soldiers had told them they would not hurt civilians but would “annihilate” anyone in a uniform. By the end of the day, both the Russian and Georgian sides said the Russians had left Senaki, news agencies reported.
...President Mikheil Saakashvili addressed the nation, saying Russian troops had reached the main east-west road. “The situation in Georgia is very difficult because Russia is doing everything possible to occupy the country,” Mr. Saakashvili told the Georgian Security Council.
...Twice during the day, Mr. Saakashvili fled a location for safety.
...Residents were also fleeing the port city of Poti...
...Russian officials say Georgia provoked the assault on its troops by attacking South Ossetia, causing heavy civilian casualties. The Kremlin said its actions since then were intended to strike at Georgian military forces that had fired on its peacekeeping troops in South Ossetia and it did not intend a broader offensive deeper into Georgia.
However, Georgian officials said that over the weekend Russia had expanded its attacks on Georgia, moving tanks and troops through South Ossetia and advancing toward Gori. That maneuver, the Russian bombing of Tbilisi, and then the occupation of a Georgian military base in Senaki seemed to suggest that Russia’s aims in the conflict after four days of fighting had gone beyond securing South Ossetia and Abkhazia to weakening the armed forces of Georgia, a former Soviet republic and an ally of the United States whose Western leanings have long irritated the Kremlin.
...The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has been trying to arrange a cease-fire and Mr. Saakashvili said Georgia had signed one....
...On Monday, an Abkhaz official said that Abkhaz forces, backed by Russian paratroopers, would kill Georgian troops if they did not leave Kodori Gorge, the only part of the territory where Georgia has military forces. ...
...The fighting raised tensions between Russia and its former cold-war foes to their highest level in decades. President Bush has promoted Georgia as a bastion of democracy, helped strengthen its military and urged that NATO grant the country to membership. Georgia serves as a major conduit for oil flowing from Russia and Central Asia to the West.
But Russia, emboldened by windfall profits from oil exports, is showing a resolve to reassert its dominance ...The military action, which has involved air, naval and missile attacks, is the largest engagement by Russian forces outside its borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Strong diplomatic warnings from Mr. Bush and European leaders have been ignored, underscoring the limits of Western influence over Russia at a time when the rest of Europe depends heavily on Russian natural gas and the United States needs Moscow’s cooperation if it hopes to curtail what it believes is a nuclear weapons threat from Iran.
Vice President Dick Cheney, in a telephone conversation with the Georgian president on Monday, said “that Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community...”
*Michael Schwirtz reported from Senaki, Georgia, Andrew E. Kramer from Gori, Georgia; and Anne Barnard from Moscow. Reporting was contributed by David Stout and Helene Cooper from Washington; Nicholas Kulish from Tbilisi, Georgia; and Joseph Sywenkiy from Gori, Georgia.
Will Russia Get Away With It?
If you read nothing else this week, read this important analysis from The New York Times, August 11, 2008, by WILLIAM KRISTOL, Op-Ed Columnist (Posted in full, with my own emphasis added - SL):
In August 1924, the small nation of Georgia, occupied by Soviet Russia since 1921, rose up against Soviet rule. On Sept. 16, 1924, The Times of London reported on an appeal by the president of the Georgian Republic to the League of Nations. While “sympathetic reference to his country’s efforts was made” in the Assembly, the Times said, “it is realized that the League is incapable of rendering material aid, and that the moral influence which may be a powerful force with civilized countries is unlikely to make any impression upon Soviet Russia.”
“Unlikely” was an understatement. Georgians did not enjoy freedom again until 1991. Today, the Vladimir Putins and Hu Jintaos and Mahmoud Ahmadinejads of the world — to say nothing of their junior counterparts in places like Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma and North Korea — are no more likely than were Soviet leaders in 1924 to be swayed by “moral influence.”
Dictators aren’t moved by the claims of justice unarmed; aggressors aren’t intimidated by diplomacy absent the credible threat of force; fanatics aren’t deterred by the disapproval of men of moderation or refinement.
... 2008 has been, in one respect, an auspicious year for freedom and democracy. In Iraq, we and our Iraqi allies are on the verge of a strategic victory over the jihadists in what they have called the central front of their struggle. This joint victory has the potential to weaken the jihadist impulse throughout the Middle East.
On the other hand, the ability of Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas to get away with murder (literally), and above all the ability of Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions effectively unchecked, are setbacks for hopes of peace and progress.
And there is no evidence that China’s hosting of the Olympics has led to moderation of its authoritarianism. Meanwhile, Russia has sent troops and tanks across an international border, and now seems to be widening its war against Georgia more than its original — and in any case illegitimate — casus belli would justify.
Will the United States put real pressure on Russia to stop? In a news analysis on Sunday, the New York Times reporter Helene Cooper accurately captured what I gather is the prevailing view in our State Department: “While America considers Georgia its strongest ally in the bloc of former Soviet countries, Washington needs Russia too much on big issues like Iran to risk it all to defend Georgia.”
But Georgia, a nation of about 4.6 million, has had the third-largest military presence — about 2,000 troops — fighting along with U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq. For this reason alone, we owe Georgia a serious effort to defend its sovereignty. Surely we cannot simply stand by as an autocratic aggressor gobbles up part of — and perhaps destabilizes all of — a friendly democratic nation that we were sponsoring for NATO membership a few months ago.
For that matter, consider the implications of our turning away from Georgia for other aspiring pro-Western governments in the neighborhood, like Ukraine’s. Shouldn’t we therefore now insist that normal relations with Russia are impossible as long as the aggression continues, strongly reiterate our commitment to the territorial integrity of Georgia and Ukraine, and offer emergency military aid to Georgia?
Incidentally, has Russia really been helping much on Iran? It has gone along with — while delaying — three United Nations Security Council resolutions that have imposed mild sanctions on Iran. But it has also supplied material for Iran’s nuclear program, and is now selling Iran antiaircraft systems to protect military and nuclear installations.
It’s striking that dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes — whatever their differences — seem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies.
When the “civilized world” expostulated with Russia about Georgia in 1924, the Soviet regime was still weak. In Germany, Hitler was in jail. Only 16 years later, Britain stood virtually alone against a Nazi-Soviet axis.
Is it not true today, as it was in the 1920s and ’30s, that delay and irresolution on the part of the democracies simply invite future threats and graver dangers?
In August 1924, the small nation of Georgia, occupied by Soviet Russia since 1921, rose up against Soviet rule. On Sept. 16, 1924, The Times of London reported on an appeal by the president of the Georgian Republic to the League of Nations. While “sympathetic reference to his country’s efforts was made” in the Assembly, the Times said, “it is realized that the League is incapable of rendering material aid, and that the moral influence which may be a powerful force with civilized countries is unlikely to make any impression upon Soviet Russia.”
“Unlikely” was an understatement. Georgians did not enjoy freedom again until 1991. Today, the Vladimir Putins and Hu Jintaos and Mahmoud Ahmadinejads of the world — to say nothing of their junior counterparts in places like Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma and North Korea — are no more likely than were Soviet leaders in 1924 to be swayed by “moral influence.”
Dictators aren’t moved by the claims of justice unarmed; aggressors aren’t intimidated by diplomacy absent the credible threat of force; fanatics aren’t deterred by the disapproval of men of moderation or refinement.
... 2008 has been, in one respect, an auspicious year for freedom and democracy. In Iraq, we and our Iraqi allies are on the verge of a strategic victory over the jihadists in what they have called the central front of their struggle. This joint victory has the potential to weaken the jihadist impulse throughout the Middle East.
On the other hand, the ability of Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas to get away with murder (literally), and above all the ability of Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions effectively unchecked, are setbacks for hopes of peace and progress.
And there is no evidence that China’s hosting of the Olympics has led to moderation of its authoritarianism. Meanwhile, Russia has sent troops and tanks across an international border, and now seems to be widening its war against Georgia more than its original — and in any case illegitimate — casus belli would justify.
Will the United States put real pressure on Russia to stop? In a news analysis on Sunday, the New York Times reporter Helene Cooper accurately captured what I gather is the prevailing view in our State Department: “While America considers Georgia its strongest ally in the bloc of former Soviet countries, Washington needs Russia too much on big issues like Iran to risk it all to defend Georgia.”
But Georgia, a nation of about 4.6 million, has had the third-largest military presence — about 2,000 troops — fighting along with U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq. For this reason alone, we owe Georgia a serious effort to defend its sovereignty. Surely we cannot simply stand by as an autocratic aggressor gobbles up part of — and perhaps destabilizes all of — a friendly democratic nation that we were sponsoring for NATO membership a few months ago.
For that matter, consider the implications of our turning away from Georgia for other aspiring pro-Western governments in the neighborhood, like Ukraine’s. Shouldn’t we therefore now insist that normal relations with Russia are impossible as long as the aggression continues, strongly reiterate our commitment to the territorial integrity of Georgia and Ukraine, and offer emergency military aid to Georgia?
Incidentally, has Russia really been helping much on Iran? It has gone along with — while delaying — three United Nations Security Council resolutions that have imposed mild sanctions on Iran. But it has also supplied material for Iran’s nuclear program, and is now selling Iran antiaircraft systems to protect military and nuclear installations.
It’s striking that dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes — whatever their differences — seem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies.
- So Russia helps Iran.
- Iran and North Korea help Syria.
- Russia and China block Security Council sanctions against Zimbabwe.
- China props up the regimes in Burma and North Korea.
When the “civilized world” expostulated with Russia about Georgia in 1924, the Soviet regime was still weak. In Germany, Hitler was in jail. Only 16 years later, Britain stood virtually alone against a Nazi-Soviet axis.
Is it not true today, as it was in the 1920s and ’30s, that delay and irresolution on the part of the democracies simply invite future threats and graver dangers?
Sunday, August 10, 2008
War in Georgia
The following excerpts from three articles in this weekend's New York Times is a crash course on the war on the Black Sea.
Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, declared that Georgia was in a state of war, ordering government offices to work around the clock, and said that Russia was planning a full-scale invasion of his country.
Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, eclipsing the authority of President Dmitri A. Medvedev, left the Olympics in China and arrived Saturday evening in Vladikavkaz, a city in southern Russia just over the border that is a military staging area. State-controlled news broadcasts showed Mr. Putin meeting generals, suggesting that he was in charge of the operations on Georgian soil.
...Russian armored vehicles continued to stream into South Ossetia, and Russian officials said that 1,500 civilians had been killed in South Ossetia and that 12 Russian soldiers had died. A Georgian government spokesman said that 60 civilians had been killed in airstrikes on the city of Gori. Each side’s figures were impossible to confirm independently.
Attending the Olympic Games in Beijing, President Bush directly called on Russia on Saturday to stop bombing Georgian territory, expressing strong support for Georgia in a direct challenge to Russia’s leaders. “Georgia is a sovereign nation, and its territorial integrity must be respected,” Mr. Bush said in a hastily arranged appearance at his hotel in Beijing. “We have urged an immediate halt to the violence and a stand-down by all troops. We call for the end of the Russian bombings.”
...The fighting, and the Kremlin’s confidence in the face of Western outcry, had wide international implications, as both Russian and Georgian officials placed it squarely in the context of renewed cold war-style tensions and an East-West struggle for influence on Russia’s borders. The East and West were stuck in diplomatic impasse, even as reports from both sides of heavy civilian casualties indicated that the humanitarian toll was climbing.
...Alexander Lomaya, secretary of Georgia’s National Security Council, said ...conflict arose because Russia sought to “thwart its neighbors’ movement toward Western society and Western values....Russia has clearly decided to redraw the borders of the Eastern Europe map of the post-cold war situation....If the world is not able to stop Russia here, then Russian tanks and Russian paratroopers can appear in every European capital.”
In the early 1990s, he said, Russia began cultivating separatist movements along the outer limits of its territory — in Moldova, Georgia and the Baltic states — in an attempt to consolidate its sphere of influence. Russia has funneled military and financial support to large ethnic-Russian populations in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia....
Georgians...have good reason to fear the ambitions, and the wrath, of a rejuvenated Russia seeking to regain lost power. Indeed, a renascent and increasingly bellicose Russia is an ominous spectacle for the West too. While China preaches, and largely practices, the doctrine of “peaceful rise,” avoiding confrontation abroad in order to focus on development at home, Russia acts increasingly like an expansionist 19th-century power, pressing at its borders. Most strikingly, Russia has bluntly deployed its vast oil and gas resources to punish refractory neighbors like Ukraine, and reward compliant ones like Armenia....
SUBMISSION AND REBELLION
...Modern Georgian history is a record of submission to superior Russian power. Threatened by the expanding Persian empire, in 1783 the Georgians formally accepted the protection of Russia; this polite fiction ended when Russia annexed Georgia in 1801. The chaos of the Russian Revolution finally gave Georgia a chance to restore its sovereignty a century later. ...
The infant country spent the next decade stagnating under the Soviet-style rule of Eduard Shevardnadze, the former foreign minister to Mikhail Gorbachev.
RUSSIA RESURGENT
It was, of course, at this very moment that another ambitious young figure was reshaping Russia’s politics, economy and self-image. The combination of Vladimir Putin’s reforms and the dizzying rise in the price of oil and gas have rapidly restored Russia to the status of world power. And Mr. Putin has harnessed that power in the service of aggressive nationalism.
...Mr. Putin has established a “petrostate,” in which oil and gas are strategically deployed as punishments, rewards and threats. ...Mr. Putin has gone [to great lengths] to retain control over the delivery of natural gas from Central Asia to the West. A proposed alternative pipeline would skirt Russia and run through Georgia, as an oil pipeline now does. ...If Georgia collapses in turmoil...investors will not put up the money for a bypass pipeline. And so....Mr. Putin has done his best to destabilize the Saakashvili regime.
But economic considerations alone scarcely account for what appears to be an obsession with Georgia. The “color revolutions” that swept across Ukraine, the Balkans and the Caucasus in the first years of the new century plainly unnerved Mr. Putin, who has denounced America’s policy of “democracy promotion” and stifled foreign organizations seeking to promote human rights in Russia. Georgia, with its open embrace of the West, thus represents a threat to the legitimacy of Russia’s authoritarian model. And this challenge is immensely compounded by Georgia’s fervent aspiration to join NATO, one of Russia’s red lines.
Still, they seem to mean it. Both Mr. Putin and his successor as president, Dmitri Medvedev, have reserved their starkest rhetoric for this subject. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has threatened that Georgia’s ambition to join NATO “will lead to renewed bloodshed,” adding, as if that weren’t enough, “we will do anything not to allow Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO.”
ECHOES OF TRAGEDY
This new round of bellicosity struck Georgians as frighteningly familiar. Alexander Rondeli, the director of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, recited to me a thought he attributed to the diplomat-scholar George F. Kennan: “Russia can have at its borders only enemies or vassals.” Here, for him, was further proof, as if it were needed, that imperialist expansion and brute subjugation are coded in Russia’s DNA.
...People of all political persuasion now seem to get it about Russia. ...Robert Kagan, the neoconservative foreign policy expert who is advising John McCain, writes of Mr. Putin and his coterie: “Their grand ambition is to undo the post-cold war settlement and to re-establish Russia as a dominant power in Eurasia.” Michael McFaul, a Russia expert at Stanford who is advising Barack Obama, also views Russia as a premodern, sphere-of-influence power. He attributes Russia’s hostility to further NATO expansion less to geostrategic calculations than to what he says is Mr. Putin’s cold war mentality. The essential Russian calculus, he says, is, “Anything we can do to weaken the U.S. is good for Russia.” ...
...Russia threatens Georgia, but Georgia threatens Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia looks like a crocodile to Georgia, but Georgia looks to Russia like the cats’ paw of the West. One party has all the hard power it could want, the other all the soft. And now, while the world was looking elsewhere, the frozen conflict between them has thawed and cracked.....
Mr. Bush did use tough language, demanding that Russia stop bombing. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded that Russia “respect Georgia’s territorial integrity.”
What did Mr. Putin do? First, he repudiated President Nicolas Sarkozy of France ...when [he]tried to dissuade Russia from its military operation. ...
Then, Mr. Putin flew from Beijing to a region that borders South Ossetia, arriving after an announcement that Georgia was pulling its troops out of the capital of the breakaway region. ...the Russian message was clear: This is our sphere of influence; others stay out.
“What the Russians just did is, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, they have taken a decisive military action and imposed a military reality,” said George Friedman, chief executive of Stratfor, a geopolitical analysis and intelligence company. “They’ve done it unilaterally, and all of the countries that have been looking to the West to intimidate the Russians are now forced into a position to consider what just happened.”
And Bush administration officials acknowledged that the outside world, and the United States in particular, had little leverage over Russian actions. “There is no possibility of drawing NATO or the international community into this,” said a senior State Department official in a conference call with reporters.
.... one Security Council diplomat said it remained uncertain whether much could be done.
“Strategically, the Russians have been sending signals that they really wanted to flex their muscles, and they’re upset about Kosovo,” the diplomat said. He was alluding to Russia’s anger at the West for recognizing Kosovo’s independence from Serbia.
...For the Bush administration, the choice now becomes whether backing Georgia — which, more than any other former Soviet republic has allied with the United States — on the South Ossetia issue is worth alienating Russia at a time when getting Russia’s help to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions is at the top of the United States’ foreign policy agenda.
... there is a growing feeling among some officials in the Bush administration that perhaps the United States cannot have it all, and may have to choose its priorities, particularly when it comes to Russia.
The Bush administration’s strong support for Georgia — including the training of Georgia’s military and arms support — came, in part, as a reward for its support of the United States in Iraq. The United States has held Georgia up as a beacon of democracy in the former Soviet Union; it was supposed to be an example to other former Soviet republics of the benefits of tilting to the West...
...Russia’s emerging aggressiveness is now also timed with America’s preoccupation with Iraq and Afghanistan, and the looming confrontation with Iran. These counterbalancing considerations mean that Moscow is in the driver’s seat, administration officials acknowledged.
“We’ve placed ourselves in a position that globally we don’t have the wherewithal to do anything,” Mr. Friedman of Stratfor said....
GORI, Georgia — The conflict between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia moved toward all-out war on Saturday as Russia prepared to land ground troops on Georgia’s coast and broadened its bombing campaign both within Georgia and in the disputed territory of Abkhazia.
The fighting that began when Georgian forces tried to retake the capital of South Ossetia, a pro-Russian region that won de facto autonomy from Georgia in the early 1990s, appeared to be developing into the worst clashes between Russia and a foreign military since the 1980s war in Afghanistan.
Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, declared that Georgia was in a state of war, ordering government offices to work around the clock, and said that Russia was planning a full-scale invasion of his country.
Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, eclipsing the authority of President Dmitri A. Medvedev, left the Olympics in China and arrived Saturday evening in Vladikavkaz, a city in southern Russia just over the border that is a military staging area. State-controlled news broadcasts showed Mr. Putin meeting generals, suggesting that he was in charge of the operations on Georgian soil.
...Russian armored vehicles continued to stream into South Ossetia, and Russian officials said that 1,500 civilians had been killed in South Ossetia and that 12 Russian soldiers had died. A Georgian government spokesman said that 60 civilians had been killed in airstrikes on the city of Gori. Each side’s figures were impossible to confirm independently.
Attending the Olympic Games in Beijing, President Bush directly called on Russia on Saturday to stop bombing Georgian territory, expressing strong support for Georgia in a direct challenge to Russia’s leaders. “Georgia is a sovereign nation, and its territorial integrity must be respected,” Mr. Bush said in a hastily arranged appearance at his hotel in Beijing. “We have urged an immediate halt to the violence and a stand-down by all troops. We call for the end of the Russian bombings.”
...The fighting, and the Kremlin’s confidence in the face of Western outcry, had wide international implications, as both Russian and Georgian officials placed it squarely in the context of renewed cold war-style tensions and an East-West struggle for influence on Russia’s borders. The East and West were stuck in diplomatic impasse, even as reports from both sides of heavy civilian casualties indicated that the humanitarian toll was climbing.
...Alexander Lomaya, secretary of Georgia’s National Security Council, said ...conflict arose because Russia sought to “thwart its neighbors’ movement toward Western society and Western values....Russia has clearly decided to redraw the borders of the Eastern Europe map of the post-cold war situation....If the world is not able to stop Russia here, then Russian tanks and Russian paratroopers can appear in every European capital.”
In the early 1990s, he said, Russia began cultivating separatist movements along the outer limits of its territory — in Moldova, Georgia and the Baltic states — in an attempt to consolidate its sphere of influence. Russia has funneled military and financial support to large ethnic-Russian populations in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia....
Background from The New York Times, August 9, 2008, by JAMES TRAUB:
...For years, the Russians have claimed that Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has been preparing to retake the disputed regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and have warned that they would use force to block such a bid. Mr. Saakashvili, for his part, describes today’s Russia as a belligerent power ruthlessly pressing at its borders, implacably hostile to democratic neighbors like Georgia and Ukraine. He has thrown in his lot with the West, and has campaigned ardently for membership in NATO.....
...while Russia has a massive advantage in firepower, Georgia, an open, free-market, more-or-less-democratic nation that sees itself as a distant outpost of Europe, enjoys a decisive rhetorical and political edge. In recent conversations there, President Saakashvili compared Georgia to Czechoslovakia in 1938, trusting the West to save it from a ravenous neighbor. “If Georgia fails,” he said to me darkly two months ago, “it will send a message to everyone that this path doesn’t work.”
During a 10-day visit to Georgia in June, I heard the 1938 analogy again and again, as well as another to 1921, when Bolshevik troops crushed Georgia’s thrilling, and brief, first experiment with liberal rule.
Georgians...have good reason to fear the ambitions, and the wrath, of a rejuvenated Russia seeking to regain lost power. Indeed, a renascent and increasingly bellicose Russia is an ominous spectacle for the West too. While China preaches, and largely practices, the doctrine of “peaceful rise,” avoiding confrontation abroad in order to focus on development at home, Russia acts increasingly like an expansionist 19th-century power, pressing at its borders. Most strikingly, Russia has bluntly deployed its vast oil and gas resources to punish refractory neighbors like Ukraine, and reward compliant ones like Armenia....
SUBMISSION AND REBELLION
...Modern Georgian history is a record of submission to superior Russian power. Threatened by the expanding Persian empire, in 1783 the Georgians formally accepted the protection of Russia; this polite fiction ended when Russia annexed Georgia in 1801. The chaos of the Russian Revolution finally gave Georgia a chance to restore its sovereignty a century later. ...
... Stalin, though himself Georgian, kept the republic subdued through brutal purges. The head of the Georgian Communist party was Lavrenti Beria, a cold-blooded killer who would become the master architect of Stalin’s terror. The Georgians, though helpless, never accepted their Soviet identity, and preserved their language, culture, religious practice and sense of national identity, as they had under the czars. And when, at last, the Soviet empire collapsed as the czarist one had, Georgia immediately broke away and declared its independence, in 1991.
The infant country spent the next decade stagnating under the Soviet-style rule of Eduard Shevardnadze, the former foreign minister to Mikhail Gorbachev.
But in 2003, Mr. Shevardnadze was peacefully overthrown in what came to be known as the Rose Revolution. Mr. Saakashvili was elected the following year. Since then, Georgia has become a poster child for Westernization. The growth rate has reached 12 percent. The countryside remains impoverished, but ...Tbilisi is a charming city, its ancient Orthodox churches restored to life, the lanes of the old city lined with cafes and art galleries. Mr. Saakashvili has also made Georgia one of the world’s most — or few — pro-American countries. ....
RUSSIA RESURGENT
It was, of course, at this very moment that another ambitious young figure was reshaping Russia’s politics, economy and self-image. The combination of Vladimir Putin’s reforms and the dizzying rise in the price of oil and gas have rapidly restored Russia to the status of world power. And Mr. Putin has harnessed that power in the service of aggressive nationalism.
...Mr. Putin has established a “petrostate,” in which oil and gas are strategically deployed as punishments, rewards and threats. ...Mr. Putin has gone [to great lengths] to retain control over the delivery of natural gas from Central Asia to the West. A proposed alternative pipeline would skirt Russia and run through Georgia, as an oil pipeline now does. ...If Georgia collapses in turmoil...investors will not put up the money for a bypass pipeline. And so....Mr. Putin has done his best to destabilize the Saakashvili regime.
But economic considerations alone scarcely account for what appears to be an obsession with Georgia. The “color revolutions” that swept across Ukraine, the Balkans and the Caucasus in the first years of the new century plainly unnerved Mr. Putin, who has denounced America’s policy of “democracy promotion” and stifled foreign organizations seeking to promote human rights in Russia. Georgia, with its open embrace of the West, thus represents a threat to the legitimacy of Russia’s authoritarian model. And this challenge is immensely compounded by Georgia’s fervent aspiration to join NATO, one of Russia’s red lines.
Russian officials frequently recall that President Bill Clinton promised Boris Yeltsin that NATO would not expand beyond Eastern Europe. Of course NATO is no longer an anti-Soviet alliance, and the fact that Russia views NATO’s eastward expansion as a threat to its security is a vivid sign of the deep-rooted cold war mentality of Mr. Putin and his circle.
Still, they seem to mean it. Both Mr. Putin and his successor as president, Dmitri Medvedev, have reserved their starkest rhetoric for this subject. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has threatened that Georgia’s ambition to join NATO “will lead to renewed bloodshed,” adding, as if that weren’t enough, “we will do anything not to allow Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO.”
After Mr. Saakashvili, then 37, became president, Mr. Putin made no attempt to court him, and Mr. Saakashvili, made a point of showing the regional hegemon no deference. The open struggle began in late 2005 and early 2006, when Russia imposed an embargo on Georgia’s agricultural products, then on wine and mineral water — virtually Georgia’s entire export market. After Georgia very publicly and dramatically expelled Russian diplomats accused of espionage, Mr. Putin cut off all land, sea, air and rail links to Georgia, as well as postal service. And then, for good measure, he cut off natural gas supplies in the dead of winter.
ECHOES OF TRAGEDY
This new round of bellicosity struck Georgians as frighteningly familiar. Alexander Rondeli, the director of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, recited to me a thought he attributed to the diplomat-scholar George F. Kennan: “Russia can have at its borders only enemies or vassals.” Here, for him, was further proof, as if it were needed, that imperialist expansion and brute subjugation are coded in Russia’s DNA.
The Georgian elite came to view Russia as an unappeasable power imbued with the paranoia of the K.G.B., from which Mr. Putin and his closest associates rose, and fueled by the national sense of humiliation over Russia’s helplessness in the 1990s. “You should understand,” Mr. Saakashvili said, mocking the Europeans who urge forbearance on him, “that the crocodile is hungry. Well, from the point of view of someone who wants to keep his own leg, that’s hard to accept.” ...
THE WEST GETS SCARED
There is real alarm in the West about the deteriorating situation in the Caucasus. Diplomats from Washington and the major European capitals, as well as from the United Nations, the European Union and NATO, have been crisscrossing the region trying to bring the parties together.
There is real alarm in the West about the deteriorating situation in the Caucasus. Diplomats from Washington and the major European capitals, as well as from the United Nations, the European Union and NATO, have been crisscrossing the region trying to bring the parties together.
....What is striking, though, is the growing consensus about Russian behavior. The United Nations, the European Union and NATO have all sided with Georgia in the disputes over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Mr. Saakashvili was deeply disappointed when NATO declined in early April to put Georgia and Ukraine on the path to membership, but he says that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel ... “gets it” about Russia — “because she knows Russia from her own experience.”
...People of all political persuasion now seem to get it about Russia. ...Robert Kagan, the neoconservative foreign policy expert who is advising John McCain, writes of Mr. Putin and his coterie: “Their grand ambition is to undo the post-cold war settlement and to re-establish Russia as a dominant power in Eurasia.” Michael McFaul, a Russia expert at Stanford who is advising Barack Obama, also views Russia as a premodern, sphere-of-influence power. He attributes Russia’s hostility to further NATO expansion less to geostrategic calculations than to what he says is Mr. Putin’s cold war mentality. The essential Russian calculus, he says, is, “Anything we can do to weaken the U.S. is good for Russia.” ...
HOPING FOR PATIENCE
Administration officials have regularly cautioned Mr. Saakashvili to be patient on Abkhazia and South Ossetia, even as they have given private and public reassurances about NATO membership.
Administration officials have regularly cautioned Mr. Saakashvili to be patient on Abkhazia and South Ossetia, even as they have given private and public reassurances about NATO membership.
It would, in fact, be surprising if Georgia had consciously provoked a war in South Ossetia, since Mr. Saakashvili understands that doing so would almost certainly put an end to the NATO bid; indeed, Russia may well calculate that NATO will continue to exclude Georgia so long as the country is embroiled in hostilities along its border.
...Russia threatens Georgia, but Georgia threatens Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia looks like a crocodile to Georgia, but Georgia looks to Russia like the cats’ paw of the West. One party has all the hard power it could want, the other all the soft. And now, while the world was looking elsewhere, the frozen conflict between them has thawed and cracked.....
From a New York Times Analysis, August 9, 2008, by HELENE COOPER:
... While America considers Georgia its strongest ally in the bloc of former Soviet countries, Washington needs Russia too much on big issues like Iran to risk it all to defend Georgia.
And State Department officials made it clear on Saturday that there was no chance the United States would intervene militarily.
Mr. Bush did use tough language, demanding that Russia stop bombing. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded that Russia “respect Georgia’s territorial integrity.”
What did Mr. Putin do? First, he repudiated President Nicolas Sarkozy of France ...when [he]tried to dissuade Russia from its military operation. ...
Then, Mr. Putin flew from Beijing to a region that borders South Ossetia, arriving after an announcement that Georgia was pulling its troops out of the capital of the breakaway region. ...the Russian message was clear: This is our sphere of influence; others stay out.
“What the Russians just did is, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, they have taken a decisive military action and imposed a military reality,” said George Friedman, chief executive of Stratfor, a geopolitical analysis and intelligence company. “They’ve done it unilaterally, and all of the countries that have been looking to the West to intimidate the Russians are now forced into a position to consider what just happened.”
And Bush administration officials acknowledged that the outside world, and the United States in particular, had little leverage over Russian actions. “There is no possibility of drawing NATO or the international community into this,” said a senior State Department official in a conference call with reporters.
.... one Security Council diplomat said it remained uncertain whether much could be done.
“Strategically, the Russians have been sending signals that they really wanted to flex their muscles, and they’re upset about Kosovo,” the diplomat said. He was alluding to Russia’s anger at the West for recognizing Kosovo’s independence from Serbia.
...For the Bush administration, the choice now becomes whether backing Georgia — which, more than any other former Soviet republic has allied with the United States — on the South Ossetia issue is worth alienating Russia at a time when getting Russia’s help to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions is at the top of the United States’ foreign policy agenda.
... there is a growing feeling among some officials in the Bush administration that perhaps the United States cannot have it all, and may have to choose its priorities, particularly when it comes to Russia.
The Bush administration’s strong support for Georgia — including the training of Georgia’s military and arms support — came, in part, as a reward for its support of the United States in Iraq. The United States has held Georgia up as a beacon of democracy in the former Soviet Union; it was supposed to be an example to other former Soviet republics of the benefits of tilting to the West...
...Russia’s emerging aggressiveness is now also timed with America’s preoccupation with Iraq and Afghanistan, and the looming confrontation with Iran. These counterbalancing considerations mean that Moscow is in the driver’s seat, administration officials acknowledged.
“We’ve placed ourselves in a position that globally we don’t have the wherewithal to do anything,” Mr. Friedman of Stratfor said....
Friday, July 11, 2008
Rice warns Iran: US will defend Israel
From AFP, 10/7/08:
TBILISI [Georgia] (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iran on Thursday that Washington had beefed up its security presence in the Gulf and would not hesitate to defend Israel and other allies in the region.
"We will defend American interests and the interests of our allies," Rice said, answering a question on an Iranian threat to "set fire" to Israel. "We take very strongly our obligation to defend our allies and we intend to do that," she said at a news conference in Tbilisi. "In the Gulf area, the United States has enhanced its security capacity, its security presence and we are working closely with all our allies... to make (sure) they are capable of defending themselves," she said.
The comments by the United States' top diplomat came after Iran again ratcheted up its rhetoric against the West and test-fired a series of missiles on Wednesday and Thursday. One of the missiles tested has the range to reach Israel and US bases in the Gulf. Rice did not specify the steps the United States had taken to boost its security presence in the Gulf, but said its plans focused on Washington's "determination to prevent Iran from threatening our interests or the interests of our friends and allies.
"I don't think the Iranians are too confused either about the capabilities and power of the United States," Rice said on a brief visit to the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
...Rice meanwhile also alluded to US plans for a missile defence system in eastern Europe intended in part to reduce the Iranian threat. She had previously signed an agreement in Prague by which the Czech Republic would host part of the proposed missile shield. Rice said the system would "make it more difficult for Iran to threaten, be bellicose and say terrible things."
Ex-Soviet Georgia is a close ally of the United States and is located north of Iran in the Caucasus mountains. Rice was here to affirm US support for the pro-Western course of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
TBILISI [Georgia] (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iran on Thursday that Washington had beefed up its security presence in the Gulf and would not hesitate to defend Israel and other allies in the region.
"We will defend American interests and the interests of our allies," Rice said, answering a question on an Iranian threat to "set fire" to Israel. "We take very strongly our obligation to defend our allies and we intend to do that," she said at a news conference in Tbilisi. "In the Gulf area, the United States has enhanced its security capacity, its security presence and we are working closely with all our allies... to make (sure) they are capable of defending themselves," she said.
The comments by the United States' top diplomat came after Iran again ratcheted up its rhetoric against the West and test-fired a series of missiles on Wednesday and Thursday. One of the missiles tested has the range to reach Israel and US bases in the Gulf. Rice did not specify the steps the United States had taken to boost its security presence in the Gulf, but said its plans focused on Washington's "determination to prevent Iran from threatening our interests or the interests of our friends and allies.
"I don't think the Iranians are too confused either about the capabilities and power of the United States," Rice said on a brief visit to the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
...Rice meanwhile also alluded to US plans for a missile defence system in eastern Europe intended in part to reduce the Iranian threat. She had previously signed an agreement in Prague by which the Czech Republic would host part of the proposed missile shield. Rice said the system would "make it more difficult for Iran to threaten, be bellicose and say terrible things."
Ex-Soviet Georgia is a close ally of the United States and is located north of Iran in the Caucasus mountains. Rice was here to affirm US support for the pro-Western course of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
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