NOT OUR FAULT?

Posted at 7:16 a.m. ET

Wait, wait, wait.  What's going on here?  Do I see correctly?  Someone writing for the Washington Post isn't blaming the United States, and BUSH, for the Russian invasion of Georgia?

Does this qualify as heresy?  Do we put on masks and parade this guy in front of a TV camera, and, you know...

But there it is.  Fred Hiatt pretty much demolishes the refrain of the usual suspects, who argue that the Georgia crisis is all our fault, and that if only we showed the proper level of love and affection for Russia, these little mishaps wouldn't happen:

As Russian forces loot and occupy a neighboring state, conscripting Georgian civilians at gunpoint to sweep their city streets, it's not uncommon, in Moscow or in Washington, to find America at fault.

Ain't it the truth?

This narrative of American provocation cites a long list of grievances, but the principal and original sin is NATO expansion...

...But was this really something that was done to, or even against, Russia? The vision behind NATO expansion under both President Bill Clinton and President Bush was a Europe whole and free. The carrot of NATO membership was dangled, first of all, to ease the dangers of transition. Applicant countries had to promise civilian control of their militaries, fair treatment of ethnic minorities and respect for international borders. Given the terrible things that might have accompanied the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact and Czechoslovakia -- Yugoslavia on a far greater scale -- the policy was amazingly successful.

Am I seeing things?  A policy of President Bush was successful?  Is this redemption, or what?

But Vladimir Putin, who came to power in 2000, had a different vision of Russia's place in the world. Russia "has tended to feel absolutely secure only when everybody else, particularly those around its borders, feels absolutely insecure," Russia hand Strobe Talbott noted last week, and Putin fell squarely in that tradition. At home, he quashed political opposition and independent media. He brought Russia's mineral riches back under state control and then began using them -- oil and natural gas in particular -- to enforce obeisance abroad.

And so...

So NATO expansion is an affront only to the kind of Russia that the West would find unacceptable in any case. But, even if America has not sought to encircle or strangle Russia, should it not have been more sensitive to Russia's wounded pride? Might Russia have evolved more democratically if Washington had been more deferential?

You can hear the liberals coming out of the environmentally safe woodwork to answer.

Maybe so, but there's not much evidence to support such a theory. The West spent a good part of the past 17 years worrying about Russia's dignity -- expanding the Group of Seven industrial nations to the G-8, for example -- and it's not clear such therapy had any effect.

Finally...

What does all this mean for the next president? By all means he should cooperate with Russia when possible, and he should remain open to the idea that Russia might one day join NATO and other international arrangements on terms of mutual respect.

But if the hope is that greater understanding of and deference to Russia's imperial ambitions would tame those ambitions, the historical analogies are not encouraging.

I'm so glad someone finally said that, after all the leftist whining of the past few weeks.  We cannot be responsible for every action every foreign nation takes.  And the "blame America" or "blame Bush" syndromes are becoming big bores.

The blame for the invasion of Georgia falls on the shoulders of Russian leaders.  I wish more journalists would have the clarity of thought to realize that, and truly become the eyes and ears of their readers, not megaphones for discredited college-classroom theories.

August 18, 2008.