What the eff?

In September, the United States pledged $1 billion in aid to Georgia to help the country recover from its August war with Russia. The money was intended to “help Georgia sustain itself,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. With several Georgian towns badly damaged by Russian bombing and 20,000 refugees from South Ossetia still unable to return home, there were seemingly many worthy causes for all that cash. So why was $176 million of the aid money earmarked for loans to businesses—including $30 million to a real estate developer for a luxury hotel: the 127,000-square-meter Park Hyatt in downtown Tbilisi, an area that was not at all damaged in the war? The 183-room, five-star hotel will include 70 luxury condominiums, a fine-dining restaurant, conference facilities, and a health spa with juice bar.

The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the U.S. government agency facilitating the loan, is also financing a $40 million office building across the street from the Georgian Parliament building and a $10 million renovation of a historic building into a convention center. The loans, OPIC President Robert Mosbacher told Eurasianet, were “a clear, unequivocal signal about the confidence we [the U.S. government] have in the future of this country.”

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s ill-advised military operation in South Ossetia might have been a disaster for many of his people, but thanks to Uncle Sam, it seems to have turned out just fine for Tbilisi’s real estate developers.

Basically, the lesson is, if you are looking for a loan from the U.S. government, you might want to launch an attack on a nearby city and hope the Russians respond. Perhaps then the Feds will front you some cash for your juice bar.

Remember that $1 billion aid package we promised Saakashvili after that little flare up in the Caucasus this past summer? The U.S. Government has just transferred the first $250 million to pay for the following:

The $250 million grant will fund Georgia’s budget expenditures to cover state pensions, state compensation and state academic stipends ($163.3 million), health care costs for people living below the poverty line ($26.1 million), allowances to individuals displaced by the conflict in Abkhazia ($6.1 million), financial support to schools through a voucher system on a per-student basis ($24.2 million), and compensation and salaries for government employees of all ministries excluding the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior ($30.3 million).

Meanwhile, back in America, local and state governments are laying off employees due to a lack of funds, students are dropping out of college because they can’t get a loan to pay their tuition, and 78 year olds are looking for jobs so they can make their rent and pay for their prescriptions. But please, U.S. Government, continue to send our tax dollars to Tbilisi.

Since then, the United States has announced a $1 billion package of aid for Georgia. We should remember that military assistance would be a waste, for Georgia’s Army will never be strong enough to deter Russia. In contrast, trade and investment give Georgia international economic weight and probably help discourage a Russian invasion.

Note to Mr. Obama: It would be a nightmare to have our troops tethered through NATO to Misha. In any case, Georgia doesn’t obviously qualify for NATO membership since it doesn’t control its full territory, while the talk about NATO pushes all the wrong Russian nationalist buttons.

Ah, what’s another billion in aid? Let’s be sure to replace all their destroyed military equipment as well.

Via the NYTimes. I love his description of Georgia:

How would you describe Georgia in general? It’s spontaneous, it’s open-minded, it’s a little bit chaotic. It’s about wine and beautiful landscapes. It’s about good food.

What kind of good food? Like khinkali. It’s a big dumpling — with juice inside and meat.

It sounds fattening. Well, it should be a little bit fattening. President Bush loved it. Every time I call, he says, “I’m still on my bike, trying to lose the eight pounds I gained in Tbilisi.”

Only eight pounds? Bush got off easy! He probably didn’t order three types of khachapuri with every meal…

Damn, I really want to go back to Georgia.

Several days ago the NYTimes published this article on the decline of press freedom under Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. If you’ve been following Saakashvili since his ascension to the Georgian presidency, then there is really nothing in this article that you haven’t already heard. Still, it’s a good overview of the Saakashvili administration’s treatment of the “opposition media” (and activists as well):

Sozar Subari, Georgia’s ombudsman for human rights, an independent watchdog appointed by Parliament, accused the government of stifling press freedom by ensuring that sympathetic managers were installed as directors at national broadcasters.

“That Georgia is on the road to democracy and has a free press is the main myth created by Georgia that the West has believed in,” Mr. Subari said. “We have some of the best freedom-of-expression laws in the world, but in practice, the government is so afraid of criticism that it has felt compelled to raid media offices and to intimidate journalists and bash their equipment.”

Nino Zuriashvili, a Georgian investigative journalist who said she broadcast on the Internet to bypass censorship, said that under Mr. Saakashvili, nearly a dozen broadcasting outlets had been winnowed to a handful, and several political talk shows had been shut down. “The paradox is that there was more media freedom before the Rose Revolution,” she said.

Of course, when the Russian government does such things, we scream about Putin’s authoritarianism, but Misha is our shining beacon of freedom out there in the Caucasus, so let’s give him a pass on this one and send him a billion dollars, eh?

I’m sure there is a perfectly good explanation as to why the Georgian police destroyed all this broadcasting equipment.

Friedman’s latest:

On Wednesday, The New York Times on the Web flashed a headline that caught my eye: “U.S. to Unveil $1 Billion Aid Package to Repair Georgia.” Wow, I thought. That’s great: $1 billion to fix Georgia’s roads and schools. But as I read on, I quickly realized that I had the wrong Georgia.

We’re going to spend $1 billion to fix the Georgia between Russia and Turkey, not the one between South Carolina and Florida.

Sorry, but the thought of us spending $1 billion to repair a country whose president, though a democrat, recklessly provoked a war with a brutish Russia, which was itching to bash its neighbor, makes no sense to me. Yes, we should diplomatically squeeze Russia until it withdraws its troops; no one should be invading neighbors.

But where are our priorities? How many wars can we fight at once without finishing even one? Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Georgia. Which is the priority? Americans are struggling to meet their mortgages, and we’re sending $1 billion to a country whose president behaved irresponsibly, just to poke Vladimir Putin in the eye. Couldn’t we poke Putin with $100 million? And shouldn’t we be fostering a dialogue with Georgia and with Putin? Otherwise, where is this going? A new cold war? Over what?

Seriously. I love Georgia (the country) and all, but dude, there’s nothing in the U.S. that could have used this influx of cash? I guess New Orleans is all restored by now?

Over the past week, Georgian officials have made several claims that the Russians were bombing an area through which the BTC and South Caucasus Pipelines run. An article in today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal seems to confirm these claims:

A neat row of large craters in a field in southern Georgia strongly suggests that Russia dropped bombs near oil and gas pipelines bringing fuel to the West.

Georgian officials say Russian warplanes dropped bombs in an early Saturday raid close to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which pumps some 850,000 barrels of crude a day — or 1% of total global oil demand — from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean. The bombs narrowly missed the line, but one exploded just 10 feet away from it.

If the Georgian claims are correct, it isn’t clear whether Russia intended to score a direct hit or merely give the West a scare about the security of its energy supply.

Zurab Janjgava, general director of Georgian Oil & Gas Corp., said he believes Russia wanted to blow up the pipeline. “These were pinpointed attacks,” he said in an interview.

Russia has categorically denied attempting to bomb pipelines on Georgian soil. Georgian officials were unable to furnish definitive proof the craters were caused by Russian bombs.

But the physical evidence of a recent air attack, witnessed by a reporter, is compelling.

The line of craters left by the alleged Russian attacks runs through the middle of a hilly, mostly uninhabited plain some 15 miles south of Tbilisi, near the town of Rustavi. The area lacks military or even human targets. The only sign of civilization is a small farm surrounded by haystacks and grazing herds of cows and sheep. The 45 craters — each some 60 feet across — scar the hillside like footprints left by a giant.

Close by lies the BTC pipeline, operated by British oil company BP PLC and buried at a depth of nearly six feet. It is identified only by small markers spaced out at one-kilometer (0.62-mile) intervals along the pipeline’s route.

Mr. Janjgava said another raid Tuesday appeared to have been aimed at a second pipeline, known as Baku-Supsa, which brings Azerbaijan oil from the Caspian Sea to a terminal in Georgia’s Black Sea town of Supsa.

The craters are concentrated in an area close to where BTC and the Baku-Supsa line intersect, near BTC’s 15-mile marker. There were no other reported Russian attacks for many miles around.

The raids suggest Russia wasn’t only aiming to humiliate its neighbor militarily but also to damage its reputation as an energy corridor.

The outbreak of hostilities in Georgia and vulnerability of the energy infrastructure there certainly does not bode well for any future projects such as the Nabucco and Trans-Caspian gas pipelines.

Seriously, I cannot believe he gets paid to write this stuff:

President Bush could cash in on his close personal relationship with Putin by sending him a copy of the highly entertaining (and highly fictionalized) film “Charlie Wilson’s War” to remind Vlad of our capacity to make Russia bleed. Putin would need no reminders of the Georgians’ capacity and long history of doing likewise to invaders.

Right. And while Bush and Putin are conducting their own personal Netflix relationship, maybe Putin can send Bush a copy of Russia’s greatest hits from the Chechen wars, including footage of Russian forces leveling Grozny.

Some of the back and forth between the Obama and McCain campaigns is listed here, and Robert Amsterdam has a great editorial on the subject:

It is a great pity that while thousands die in Georgia, so many Americans can only see the issue for how it can help put their horse ahead. Having McCain and Obama fighting about this is pushing many parties into the margins, and does not contribute whatsoever to the preparation of an intelligent and effective response.

South Ossetian Autonomous Region

April 16, 2008, 05:45
Welcome to Tbilisi, gentlemen – I hope you got some shuteye on the flight from Bragg, because now that we’re here we’ve got a lot of work to do.

Here’s the situation: We’ve been deployed at the request of the Georgian government to help them deal with rebels on their Russian border. Our area of operations will be the South Ossetian Autonomous region – 1500 square miles of small villages and rugged backcountry. The Ossetians have been skirmishing with the Georgian army for years, but lately the attacks have escalated to the verge of all-out war. Washington thinks that the Russians have engineered the current flare-up as an excuse to step in and annex the whole region. Our job is to cut the legs out from under the revolution before that can happen.

Did anyone else play Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon? It’s one of my favorite games for Playstation2. The plot involves a group of hardcore Russian nationalists who seize power in Moscow with the intent of reviving the Soviet Union. You lead a U.S. Special Forces squad through several missions in Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and eventually Russia, where, in true Tom Clancy style, you gun down Russian fighters in Red Square.

Unfortunately for Saakashvili, though, there won’t be any Ghosts in Georgia, no matter how much he pleads for assistance from the United States.