I totally disagree with the article’s last sentence. Georgia has been caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Their only choices are to either play dead and accept the always arrogant and hostile neighbor to their north’s efforts to “reunite them”, or pick their time and place to show the backbone similar to the one that America used to have. At least our government used to.
Russian spies and covert Special Forces have been inside S. Ossetia since the early 1990′s, bolstered by the Russian “peacekeeping” force. These forces have fomented all most all the trouble in this remote province of GEORGIA, insisting to the world that this tiny province simply wants to become part of Russia. It should also be remembered that Georgia is in a very strategic location and maintains the vitally important (and profitable) oil and its related infrastructure in the port cities on the Black Sea, and is a strong contender for the highly disputed American “missile defense system,” that Putin has been so upset by recently.
NATO recently turned down Georgia’s bid for NATO membership once the spineless NATO countries realized they would be bound by military treaty with the country. I fear that Georgia’s government has chosen this time and place to make their stand with the hope that those “freedom” loving governments around the world would step in to support them and hopefully stop Georgia from being completely destroyed. Sadly I don’t believe there is enough backbone from those governments’ political elite.