David and I spoke about Georgia the night it went down...I pay attention cuz I gots people back there, and some sheep.
The Caucus (area between the Black and Caspian Seas generally covered by the Caucasian Mountain range) is the Balkans of Asia...consists of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan). The ONLY force that could keep these bordered republics and the many groups of people who live within them under rational control over the past couple of thousand years were outside empires of overwhelming force...the Persians, Macedonians, Byzantines, Mongols, Tsarist Russia and, of course, the Soviets. Since the breakup of the USSR...there have been battles between religions, cultures and flocks of sheep. Armenia and Azerbaijan have locked horns over areas trying to break away from the latter with the support of the former. Georgia has its own breakaway regions due to entrenched populations. It's Yugoslavia all over again.
The Russians have another interest...the Georgians are becoming the transit land mass gateway for
oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea and Central Asian fields to the Black Sea for export to the West. This undercuts the Russian attempt at having a monopoly over the transportation of these two fuels to the European landmass and using it as an economic weapon a few steps beyond what the OPEC folks did back in the 70s...they already slowed the flow a couple of times, the latest being to the Ukraine to bring it in line on some political issues a couple of years ago.
Then again, the Georgian goverment has some unclean hands as well...pushing for a bit of ethnic cleansing by pushing out Russians and Russia supporters who live in its two northern enclaves which have been trying to break away...and swooped in during the Olympics when they thought nobody was watching.
Our interest? Of course we're there to protect democracy, but we've been forging good relations with Azerbaijan and the Central Asian "Sisters" so that we can get our hands on their
oil and gas as a hedge against OPEC (consisting of Middle Easterns and other folks of inconsistent temperment such as Chavez) and future Russian control (Russia has untapped
oil and gas reserves under the tundra way beyond Saudi Arabia's). Georgia is a nice little Christian Orthodox nation with a coastline on a sea controlled by our good buddies the Turks.
Now, Turkey has entered the fray as our local champion. Their president just visited Armenia to watch their historic soccer match (basturd Turks won...our goalie was a sheep). This is the first time a Turkish leader has ever stepped foot in Armenia since the genocide, a rather significant historical event if there ever was one. Why? Because Turkey is trying to forge ahead as a regional power and bring together an alliance of non-Arab Caucus countries...two Muslim (Turkey and Azerbaijan) and two Orthodox Christian (Georgia and Armenia). If you understood the politics of the region, you'd realize that less than two years ago such a thing happening would be as likely as the leaders of Israel and Iran swapping spit, but hey...the uni-brow peoples of the earth do strange things. The Turks need to do something culturally PC in order to gain full acceptance into the European Union...France asspecially is pushing the Armenian Genocide thing pretty damn hard. Our own Congress has to ponder the issue every session with both Democratic and Republican administrations warning how important Turkey is to our national interests in the area. Cheney just visited Azerbaijan...wants to make damn sure they'll ship it north through Georgia rather than south through Iran. The Kurds (essentially Asian Okies) reside in every one of these countries, so they constitute another factor to be considered.
So yes, it's easy to see Russia as the big bad bear as usual and they are to a huge extent, but don't assume Georgia isn't a little regional PITA starting sh!t because they fugure their pipelines buy them good tidings from the West.
Armenia...we gots rocks and sheep and we're smack in the middle of all of this as usual.
Poland? They're all busy changing lightbulbs.