This is Mikheil Saakashvili’s masseuse, posing with the president:

She’s a real piece of work, this woman, if she exists. Quoth the shoulder-rubber:

The Pres is so fucking sweet, he makes the body guards take me everywhere and show me shit. Too bad I realized I can use Bable Fish translator on my Crackberry a bit too late, I wanted to tell them I (1) HATE driving anywhere in a car (2) Hate churches and religion all together (3) If we can’t walk there, I don’t wanna go. But alas, we drove like an hour to the country side to see this OLD church, it is from the 1st century. OMFG. I was wearing my flaming RED pants, so eyebrows were raised when I was in the churches we saw. Pffffft!

Perhaps this is a Russian plot to further damage the president. Or it’s just plain crazy. Either way, go forth and enjoy.

UPDATE: Here’s Russia Today, the English-language propaganda channel, on the story. The tone makes it sound like a setup:

UPDATE 2: Turns out Dr. Dot is a masseuse to all sorts of stars. Perhaps this is all legit?

Then again, as my colleague just suggested, it’s probably best not to infer too much from official Russian announcements, especially when dealing with the Caucasus. Best to keep an open, skeptical mind.

UPDATE: For more broad regional context of Russia’s machinations and what they might mean for us, check out Alan Dowd’s analysis of the predicament NATO finds itself in in Afghanistan over on the main page.

Over at Doublethink Online, Doug Robertson’s taken two Russian works, Lermontov’s A Hero Of Our Time, and the Soviet-era film Kidnapping Caucasian Style, and in his inimitable style has shown the complicated yet ultimately dismissive attitude Russians have for the roguish people that live to their south.

A snippet from the section on Lermontov to whet your appetite:

To their immediate credit, the Ossetes are always presented as eager to be taken into service: the traveler seemingly can hardly mark two versts in succession without a crowd of them descending upon him like so many would-be window-squeegee-ers upon a twenty-first century inner-city motorist. But no sooner have they been hired than they transform themselves into veritable living engines of inertia, apportioning the work at hand as diffusively as possible and retarding its progress by means of what one cannot help terming a strategy of deliberate counterproductivity: “There was nothing else for it,” writes the narrator, “so I hired six bullocks and a few Ossetes. One of them heaved my portmanteau on to his shoulders and the others helped the bullocks along, doing little more than just shouting.” Immediately thereafter he catches sight of a Russian army officer (the aforementioned Maxim Maximych) who, to his astonishment, is making equally speedy progress with heavier luggage, fewer bullocks, and no Ossetian help whatsoever. The officer’s explanation for the discrepancy, for all of its telegraphic syntax, is as transparent to interpretation as it is unsparing: “Fearful rogues, these Asiatics [!] are. Do you really think they’re doing any good with all that shouting? God alone knows what it’s all about! But the oxen understand them. You hitch up twenty bullocks if you like, but they won’t budge an inch when they shout at them in that language of theirs. Dreadful scoundrels they are! But what can you do to them? They like to fleece travelers…”.

Read the whole thing. It’s worth your time.

Overall, McCain’s foreign policy vision was disquieting. His linking of Iran solely to Israel’s existence was pure demagoguery, his Iraq “victory” talk was nothing more than a drawn out soundbyte which betrayed serious delusions about Iraq’s future, and his defense of our pro-Musharraf Pakistan policy was at best unconvincing in the face of Obama’s cheap and disingenuous criticisms.

What surprised me most, however, was McCain’s incoherence on Georgia, an argument in which I thought he had the tactical (if not wholly practical) advantage over Obama. Obama’s reaction to the Georgia crisis as it was unfolding came off as McCain-lite—a muddled and uncertain saber-rattle. All McCain had to do last night was be forceful and single-minded to have Obama look out of his depth. Yet McCain bungled it:

I don’t believe we’re going to go back to the Cold War. I am sure that that will not happen. But I do believe that we need to bolster our friends and allies. And that wasn’t just about a problem between Georgia and Russia. It had everything to do with energy. There’s a pipeline that runs from the Caspian through Georgia through Turkey. And, of course, we know that the Russians control other sources of energy into Europe, which they have used from time to time. It’s not accidental that the presidents of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine flew to Georgia, flew to Tbilisi, where I have spent significant amount of time with a great young president, Misha Saakashvili. And they showed solidarity with them, but, also, they are very concerned about the Russian threats to regain their status of the old Russian to regain their status of the old Russian empire. Now, I think the Russians ought to understand that we will support — we, the United States — will support the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine in the natural process, inclusion into NATO.

At pains to show how much he knew, McCain was scattershot and unconvincing. Which is it, Senator? Is it that we must stand by fledgling democracies no matter what, as the neoconservatives demand? Is it a wholly energy-centered (and quite frankly insane) gambit which demands we try to snake a pipeline from the Caspian between a hostile Iran and an increasingly hostile Russia at the expense of both powers? Or is it that Russia is acting on old Imperial impulses and must be stopped for some reason?

It’s a shame that McCain didn’t turn to friends like Chuck Hagel and Tony Cordesman, and went to unqualified ideologues like Randy Scheunemann instead. He certainly had the opportunity to be the foreign policy “adult” this election.

In case you’ve missed it, I’ve been somewhat busy:

• The Wall Street Journal Europe published a piece on Serbian domestic politics and the significance of the arrest of Radovan Karadžić.

• I’ve posted a piece on “the Georgia Crisis: 14 Days In” over at Doublethink.

More to come, I hope.

If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like seconds before you’re destroyed by an air-to-air missile, check out today’s New York Times. The article summarizes a recent UN report which authoritatively declares that the plane photographed above firing at a Georgian spy drone was Russian, thus calling into questions Russia’s self-asserted neutrality in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. The UN report goes on to chastise the Russians for shooting down the drone while at the same time upbraiding the Georgians for stoking tensions by flying drones over Abkhazia in the first place.

This throws into sharp relief the near-absurd role the UN creates for itself in these kinds of conflicts. There are many UN staffers who think that an important part of the UN’s mandate is war-prevention, and who view a report such as the one described as the proper stance for the UN to take. “Both of you warring factions are culpable,” the thinking goes, “so please separate and let us guarantee the peace between you until you regain your senses and come to a peaceful settlement.” Unfortunately, such a position does anything but guarantee peace. One only need to consider the Georgian perspective in order to see why that is the case.

Georgians, like the much-aggrieved Serbs viz-a-vis Kosovo, don’t see Abkhazia’s independence as at all legitimate, and absent Russian military presence in the region would re-conquer the territory and put down the rebel leadership with traditionally excessive Caucasian violence. There is little reason to think Saakashvili would seek compromise with the rebels if Russia was not backing them to the hilt—indeed, one can easily see Georgia acting swiftly to retake what it feels is rightly its own territory as soon as the Russian military is removed from the region.

This is not to say that Russia’s role in the conflict has been at all honorable or praiseworthy, or that it is acting on anything more than selfish geo-strategic impulses. But it is important for UN types to recognize that the negotiated settlement they envision themselves able to broker can only come about if Abkhazia’s current territorial integrity is guaranteed by force of arms. Since the UN is not going to want to field a force which could very well get in a shooting war with the Georgian army, they ought to be working on ways to resolve the conflict with Russia constructively engaged on behalf of the Abkhaz. Any other strategy is folly and is more likely to lead to war rather than peace.

Kosovo’s independence will inevitably have repercussions for the Georgian separatist regions and Nagorno- Karabakh and Trans Dnestr. For the west to say Kosovo is a unique case is empty, given the obvious parallels.

To resolve these issues and restore elementary consistency to its own position, the west does not need to recognise Abkhaz and South Ossetian independence - something for which Moscow is in any case not asking, given the obvious lessons for some of Russia’s own restive minorities.

Russia’s backing of Serbia’s claims to Kosovo doesn’t have anything to do with them feeling that the rules of the international system are being applied arbitrarily—Russians couldn’t care less about fairness or the international system. They are establishing spheres of influence in Serbia through the purchase of a majority stake in the Serbian oil monopoly (Naftna Industrija Srbije - NIS). There are also plans afoot for gas pipelines to Serbia which could end up serving most of Central Europe, thereby pre-empting the Western-backed Nabucco Pipeline project.

This is pure power politics, and should not be mistaken for anything else. It’s about regional influence and energy dependency. Restoring “elementary consistency” to our positions doesn’t matter one whit. Richard Holbrooke had the right idea back in November of last year—Russia needs to be confronted on this.