The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia
By Jim Washburn
In Fritz Leiber’s 1964 sci-fi story “The Black Gondolier,” Earth’s oil is sentient and had directed human progress for millions of years, nudging us into civilization, scientific discovery, and war so we’d finally develop rockets, because oil wanted to visit oil on other planets.
If so, we must be a big disappointment, since we’re not zipping around the galaxy yet and oil scarcely gets to go to Catalina. It took the Cold War’s space race to put us on the Moon. Nothing since has generated such thrust. You’d think our conflicts in the oil-basted Middle East would have spurred a space fatwa – “We’ll show the infidels! We’ll land on a crescent moon!”
So maybe oil figures it’s time to get back to Plan A and revive the Cold War, or at least oilmen do. There are issues aplenty behind the conflict in Georgia, but to the powers fueling it, it’s a war of competing pipelines. Russia, with its post-menopausal longing for its superpower influence, would very much prefer that its pipelines carrying Caspian Sea oil to the European market were the only pipelines.
The West (You don’t mind if I call oil giant BP “the West,” do you? We’re all in this together!) opened its own pipeline through Georgia two years ago, ending Russia’s monopoly. The West has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Georgia’s military defense largely to protect the pipeline. (You don’t mind if I call your wallet “the West,” do you? I’m sure BP is really grateful.)
We have other reasons for supporting Georgia, the nice one being that it’s a fledgling democracy; another reason being that neocons enjoy making Russia nervous with armies and “missile shields” at its borders; still a third being that the military aid is payoff for Georgia joining the Coalition of the Cajoled, having sent a dollop of troops to our oil war in Iraq to foster the illusion of international support (Tonga stands with you!) in exchange for aid, thanks again to your poor, bedraggled wallet.
At this writing, tensions between the U.S. and Russia are the highest they’ve been since before the Soviet Union fell. President Bush, who previously drowned in the luscious depths of Vladimir Putin’s eyes, now decries his bullying ways. BP has shut its Georgia pipeline for fear it might be bombed in the conflict.
How did this come to pass? Well, ever since Georgia separated from the Soviet Union, two chunks have wanted to separate from Georgia, and have acted as autonomous regions the whole while. Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili this month decided to send in the troops and weapons you paid for, who killed a bunch of people and blew things up, giving Russia an excuse to send in its own troops to show Georgians how the pros do killing and blowing up. Like Ike and Tina, Russians never do anything nice and easy, and their assault has been disproportionate and horrific. It should be noted, though, that the people of the breakaway regions are hailing the Russians as saviors.
Saakashvili almost certainly didn’t make his incursion decision in a vacuum, not when it was guaranteed to provoke Russia; not when he’s bragged of having more face time with Bush than any other small country’s leader; and not when John McCain’s top foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, was until early this year a paid lobbyist of the Georgian government and spent three-and-a-half years lobbying McCain on its behalf. Even while Scheunemann is on leave of absence from his firm, it continues to roll in Georgian bucks.
So, assuming Saakashvili made his move with a nod from the U.S., how on earth did our administration so deeply misread what the Russian response would be?
One school says it’s just Bush getting everything wrong again, that his crush on Putin blinded him to his brutal side, while redeployment of our spy satellites to cover Iraq and Iran has left us literally blind to Russian troop movements.
But Bob Scheer and others have suggested this might be another October Surprise, designed to scare people into voting for flinty vet McCain instead of the unproven Obama. In exchange for risking Russia’s ire, Saakashvili would be guaranteed the continued beneficence of Washington’s neocons, with one of them at McCain’s right ear. And a new Cold War could be enough of a scare at home that people might not spend the final months of Bush’s presidency reflecting on what a colossal fuckup he’s been.
Then there’s this: Maybe sentient oilmen like it just fine when Bush screws up, because they get even richer than if things went according to plan. Maybe that’s the real plan. They get to make plenty of money if oil is flowing through Georgia. But if it isn’t, the price shoots up yet again, and they get to make even more money selling less product.
So it has been these last seven years: If the coup against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez had worked; if Iraq had been a cakewalk and its oilfields the frosting; if the rest of the Middle East had obediently fallen in line, then oil companies stood to make lots of money. Instead, those plans blew up like a clown’s cigar, and the companies are making the biggest profits in world history. Like California’s rigged energy “crisis” eight years ago, any crimp in the supply chain is an excuse to ratchet up the price.
Meanwhile, the squeeze and fear of gas going even higher lets the oil companies demand more concessions than the billions in handouts Bush has given them. Ignore all the leases the public’s granted them that they haven’t drilled yet: If they don’t get unchecked offshore and Alaskan drilling rights, you’ll pay at the pump, and they’ll blame the Democrats, who only wish you’d inflate your tires.
Poor Obama. Conservative commentators chastised him for not coming off his one-week vacation to address the Georgia situation, though, of course, if he did, they’d attack him for hubris: “Who does he think he is, the president?”
Where was our actual president? On Vacation. In Crawford. If it seems he’s always vacationing when there’s a crisis, it might be because Mr. I Won’t Rest Until bin Laden Is Brought to Justice has spent some 915 days of his presidency on vacation, careening past even Reagan when it comes to sleeping at the wheel.
Just as well, since McCain’s out there making the same embarrassing statements on Georgia that Bush is, embarrassing because scolding “In the 21st century nations don’t invade other nations” is like telling your kid “Daddy doesn’t drink” while a hooker’s pouring Cuervo into a funnel in your mouth. The last time I checked in with the 21st century, a nation had invaded another nation, was still occupying it, and could for another 100 years in the sanguine opinion of some guy named McCain.
Published: 08/20/2008
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