Making
Putin Pay
The Russian strongman wants regime change in Georgia. We can make some changes,
too.

By Charles Krauthammer, National Review Online

The real objective is the Finlandization of Georgia through
the removal of President Mikheil Saakashvili and his replacement by a Russian
puppet.

Which explains Putin stopping the Russian army (for now) short of Tbilisi. What everyone
overlooks in the cease-fire terms is that all future steps — troop withdrawals,
territorial arrangements, peacekeeping forces — will have to be negotiated
between Russia and Georgia. But Russia says it
will not talk to Saakashvili. Thus regime change becomes the first requirement
for any movement on any front. This will be Putin’s refrain in the coming days.
He is counting on Europe to pressure
Saakashvili to resign and/or flee to “give peace a chance.”

The Finlandization of Georgia would give Russia
control of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which is the only significant
European-bound route for Caspian Sea oil and gas that does not go through Russia.
Pipelines are the economic lifelines of such former Soviet republics as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan that live off energy
exports. Moscow
would become master of the Caspian basin.

Subduing Georgia
has an additional effect. It warns Russia’s former Baltic and East
European satellites what happens if you get too close to the West. It is the
first step to re-establishing Russian hegemony in the region.

What is to be done? Let’s be real. There’s nothing to be done militarily. What
we can do is alter Putin’s cost-benefit calculations.

We are not without resources. There are a range of measures to be deployed if Russia does not live up to its cease-fire
commitments:

1. Suspend the NATO-Russia Council established in 2002 to help bring Russia closer
to the West. Make clear that dissolution will follow suspension. The council gives
Russia
a seat at the NATO table. Message: Invading neighboring democracies forfeits
the seat.

2. Bar Russian entry to the World Trade Organization.

3. Dissolve the G-8. Putin’s dictatorial presence long made it a farce but no
one wanted to upset the bear by expelling it. No need to. The seven democracies
simply withdraw. Then immediately announce the reconstitution of the original
G-7.

4. Announce a U.S.-European boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi. To do otherwise
would be obscene. Sochi is 15 miles from
Abkhazia, the other Georgian province just invaded by Russia. The
Games will become a riveting contest between the Russian, Belarusian and
Jamaican bobsled teams.

All of these steps (except dissolution of the G-8, which
should be irreversible) would be subject to reconsideration depending upon
Russian action — most importantly and minimally, its withdrawal of troops from Georgia proper to South
Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The most crucial and unconditional measure, however, is this: Reaffirm support
for the Saakashvili government and declare that its removal by the Russians
would lead to recognition of a government-in-exile. This would instantly be
understood as providing us the legal basis for supplying and supporting a
Georgian resistance to any Russian-installed regime.

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.

President Bush needs to make up for his mini-Katrina moment when he lingered in
Beijing yukking it up with our beach volleyball
team while Putin flew to North Ossetia to
direct the invasion of a neighboring country. Bush is dispatching Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice to France and Georgia. Not a moment too soon. Her task
must be to present these sanctions, get European agreement on as many as possible
and begin imposing them, calibrated to Russian behavior. And most important of
all, to prevent any Euro-wobbliness on the survival of Georgia’s
democratically elected government.

We have cards. We should play them. Much is at stake. 

— Charles
Krauthammer is a nationally
syndicated columnist.

© 2008, The Washington Post Writers Group