James Traub On The Russia-Georgia Conflict

DATE August 13, 2008 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: James Traub discusses the history and relationship
between Russia, Georgia
DAVE DAVIES, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily
News, filling in for Terry Gross.

There were reports of continued fighting in Georgia today, despite a
cease-fire negotiated Monday between Russia and Georgia, the Caucasian nation
Russian troops entered five days ago. Under the terms of the agreement,
Russia was to confine its troops to the two breakaway regions that had sought
independence from Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The incursion into
Georgia caused alarm among Western leaders fearful of an expansionist Russia.
Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has compared the Russian action to the
Nazi incursion into Czechoslovakia before World War II.

For some insight into the roots of the Georgian crisis and its international
implications, we turn to journalist James Traub. He's a contributing writer
for The New York Times Magazine. He's traveled to Georgia and has written
widely on international affairs. His forthcoming book is called "The Freedom
Agenda." Traub's piece on the Georgian conflict in Sunday's New York Times
Week in Review section is called "Taunting the Bear."

Well, James Traub, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Let's talk about some of the
international context for this dispute; and a lot of people are saying that
this represents Russia returning to an expansionist power, like Czarist
Russia. Apart from this crisis, what is the evidence that you're seeing
Russia become more aggressive internationally?

Mr. JAMES TRAUB: Well, you know, unlike in its oddest period when military
force was the sole, really almost the sole means of expansion, nowadays, there
are other tools that countries have. And so I think what people who make that
argument--and I would certainly be one of them-- would say or would look at is
the use of Russia's oil and gas wealth. And especially in terms of natural
gas. Because oil, no matter how much oil you have, the people who are buying
it from you can always turn someplace else. But that's not true with natural
gas, which comes in a pipeline and can only be delivered by pipeline. So what
Russia has done with recalcitrant neighbors, like Ukraine, is either cut off
the supply of natural gas or go from having a subsidized price to a market
price, which often means quite a precipitant increase. What's it's done with
friendly neighbors like Armenia is keep that price very low.

And this gets to quite a brutal point. I mean, in the case of Georgia, Russia
simply cut off the supply in 2005 to let these people freeze in the dark. So
there's been a lot of that. What's new in this situation with Georgia is the
reversion to a much more old-fashioned, almost archaic in our world, form of
territorial aggression. I mean, you know, big industrialized countries don't
invade their neighbors.

DAVIES: What might be motivating Russia in this current period to be more
aggressive?

Mr. TRAUB: Well, I think there's so many different things. One is clearly
the humiliations of the 1990s produced an intensely nationalistic psychology,
which Putin himself played on. That is the sense that Russia was reduced from
its great historic role of being a regional or even a global power, to being
quite a kind of almost Third World country. And now suddenly the coincidence
of Putin replacing Yeltsin, and then of the price of oil and natural gas
rising, meant that a combination of the young, dynamic, nationalistic figure
came along with a new surge in wealth. And so certainly there is that general
sense.

Now there's also clearly a defensive sense. The Russians feel encircled, and
it's very hard to understand because nothing looks very encircling from the
point of view of those of us on the outside; but Russia feels that the Bush
administration has, from their point of view, is the aggressor in this battle.
And if you ask them, they would say, `Well, look at the way they're trying to
push NATO up to our frontiers. In the 1990s, President Clinton promised
President Yeltsin that NATO would not expand beyond the Eastern European
countries that it took in. And now it has. It took the Baltic countries in
and now it's seeking to take in the Caucasus countries, which are very far
from Russia. And...

DAVIES: So just to be clear on that point...

Mr. TRAUB: Yes.

DAVIES: We're talking about a Western military alliance that now includes
former Warsaw Pact nations, like Poland and Czechoslovakia and those small
nations on the Baltic, right? Which...

Mr. TRAUB: Yeah, yeah. And so for Russia, which has a historic sphere of
influence sense about both the Baltic nations and the Caucasus nations, they
are, as far as they're concerned, the West is now trying to burrow into their
neighborhood. And as many times as you say, `But NATO is no longer an
anti-Russian alliance. We're doing things like fighting in Afghanistan, which
is just as good for you as it is for us.' That's not how the Russians see it.
They see it in much more classic, old-fashioned terms.

DAVIES: You know, a naive question about NATO, you know, when the communist
state fell and we no longer had this titanic contention of competing
ideologies and economic systems, why not either dissolve NATO or expand it to
even include a new democratic Russia? Was that ever considered?

Mr. TRAUB: Well, certainly the idea was that a new democratic Russia would
be incorporated into the security architecture of the West. I don't know that
anybody ever contemplated including Russia in NATO, but certainly we now see
that the G7 group of industrialized countries is often incorporated as the G8,
which includes Russia. So there was the hope in the 1990s that Russia over
time would become part of the bloc of democratic, free market countries.

The reforms of the '90s in Russia never took. In many ways, they made the
country much worse off than it had been before and probably humiliated people
into the bargain. And so we see a reaction domestically inside Russia, where
an authoritarian government has actually proved to be extremely popular, and
the kind of nationalist rhetoric and nationalist tactics that Putin uses have
also been extremely popular. This thing is playing very, very well in Russia,
or so one hears. And it would be surprising if that were not so. And it's
going to be very difficult for the West to argue to Russia that, `You've done
a terrible, unspeakable thing. You violated sovereignty. This is
unacceptable.' I mean, that, in effect, is the position the West is going to
have to take, but it certainly won't be persuasive with the Russian people or
with the Russian government.

DAVIES: You know, another view of Russian behavior is that what it has been
seeking in recent years--and Henry Kissinger, I believe, has said this--that
what Russia has really sought is a reliable international strategic partner,
and it would have been perfectly happy for that to be the United States.
What's your view of that notion?

Mr. TRAUB: Well, Henry Kissinger, so far as I know, is the only person who
holds that view. He did express that, and it seems an oddly throwback kind of
view; that is to say it's a detente view. And it's very odd for me to be
situating myself on the right of Henry Kissinger. You know, in odd ways for
somebody of my generation who grew up in the 1960s and '70s to be talking
about Russia the way I am is very, very strange and unsettling because I grew
up at a time when people were criticizing them, the Cold War mentality, and
saying, `Oh, come on. Russia's really not that bad. It's just a rational
state rationally seeking its self-interest.' But, you know, when I talk to
Russia scholars in the United States and elsewhere, they all say things like,
`You know, I know I'm not supposed to use psychological interpretations but
rather, you know, geo-strategic ones.' But you can't talk about Russia without
resorting to a sense of national psychology. This deep sense of humiliation
they suffered before, and this tremendous surge of nationalism that they feel
now, and Russia is very much Putin's Russia.

And Putin is not, as in the Soviet times, a kind of status quo seeking
apparatchik bureaucrat. He has a really bellicose sense, and a very zero sum
sense of policy. You have to lose for him to win. And when you listen to the
way Putin talks, there is a harshness and aggression to it. There is a blunt,
in your face, almost bullying quality that you would never hear from any head
of state, and I include the very bellicose and tough spoken George Bush in
that, in the world we live in today. It's quite overt that this is a country
which is bent on restoring its sense of damaged pride.

DAVIES: Is there an example of that blunt, in your face style that comes to
mind?

Mr. TRAUB: Yeah. I mean, the one that I kept hearing about when I was in
Georgia was back in April, the fear then was that there would be a war, not in
South Ossetia, but in Abkhazia, the other of the two breakaway provinces. And
at the time, the UN, EU, NATO, the major capitals, all basically backed
Saakashvili and seemed to be a growing tension with Russia. And so when
things got to a fevered pitch, Saakashvili initiated a call to Putin, and
Saakashvili said to him, `Everybody is on our side, the West is on our side.'
And Putin said, I don't think I can say this, unfortunately, on your radio
station, so I'll have to use a polite...(unintelligible). He said, `You can
take those statements and you know where you can put them,' I suppose is what
I have to say.

DAVIES: But said in the most crude and direct way.

Mr. TRAUB: I think gutter language is the appropriate way of referring to
that.

DAVIES: Right.

Mr. TRAUB: And Saakashvili, whose, you know, himself kind of a tough guy and
a little bit reckless too was, I think, was shocked, and he suddenly thought,
`Oh my God, this guy, you know, will stop at nothing.' And is personably
enraged into the bargain.

DAVIES: Before we consider the particular situation in Georgia, people often
talk about countries like Russia having legitimate security interests in
regions nearby where there are conflicts. Is it fair to say that Russia has a
legitimate security interest in Georgia?

Mr. TRAUB: Well, you know, this is an interesting and complicated question
because by traditional modes of thinking about diplomacy, yes. I mean, after
all, what was the Monroe Doctrine that the United States lived by for
generations but the notion that we had a legitimate security interest? And by
the way, an exclusive security interest in our region. Russia wants to assert
a similar sense, but I think the question has to be asked is, is that in fact
legitimate? Do we live in a world in which we say that regional powers have
the right to kind of hegemonic control over their neighborhood? Do we have
that right over Mexico? Well, of course we don't. And you can't help but
compare Russia's attitude towards its neighbors to China's attitude towards
its neighbors. Yes, China's neighbors like Japan and South Korea are nervous
about China's ambitions, and yet China goes to great lengths to have peaceable
relationships with its neighbors, because China's goal is to produce a
generally peaceable international environment within which it can carry out
its domestic projects of growth.

Russia has turbulent relationships with its neighbors and almost seems to seek
those turbulent relationships. So it's very hard to say to Georgia or to
Ukraine or to Azerbaijan to any of the other neighbors, `Well, you know,
Russia has a legitimate interest' in what? In what? In keeping you subdued?
In preventing you from joining the West? I'm not sure that qualifies as a
legitimate interest.

DAVIES: Well, I guess the argument might be if you join NATO, then we could
have, you know, American or British missiles, you know, pointed down our
throats.

Mr. TRAUB: Yeah. I think here we come to what seems to be like a genuinely
legitimate interest. And I do think that of all these things that Russia has
said it opposes, the American anti-missile system is the one that is the
hardest to justify from the Western point of view. It does strike me as a
needless provocation. There is no question that it feels to Russia like it is
a raid against Russia. Now the Bush administration has gone to great lengths
to say, `You can work with us on these installations. We want to make sure
you know that they are not pointed at you but at Iran.' Nevertheless, you
know, Russia has clearly taken this ill and I can understand why. So, yeah, I
think in that case especially, you know, there's reason for Russia to be
upset. Though they've gone about it in their usual way, which is they appear
to have cut off the supply of natural gas to the Czech Republic as punishment
for the Czech Republic agreeing to accept those anti-missile systems based
there.

DAVIES: We're speaking with James Traub. He is a contributing writer for the
New York Times Magazine and his new book is "The Freedom Agenda." We'll talk
more about the situation in Georgia after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: If you're just joining us, our guest is James Traub. He is a
contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. He has a new book called
"The Freedom Agenda." He's written widely about the situation in Georgia and
Russia.

So let's talk a little bit about the peculiar relationship between Russia and
Georgia, which is, for folks who don't study the world atlas so frequently, in
the Caucasus, that band of mountainous land between, I guess the Black and the
Caspian Seas, right?

Mr. TRAUB: That's right.

DAVIES: Tell us what Georgians think about Russia, first of all.

Mr. TRAUB: Well, again for me as someone who grew up towards the end of the
Cold War, it's really startling to go to a place like Georgia and hear people
talk about Russia, because they loathe the Russians, they fear the Russians.
They have behind them generations of tortured relationships with Russia. And
this is something I think you find throughout the region, this very
complicated and largely painful relationship with Russia. So if you look at
Georgian history, Georgia's a very, very ancient country. It goes back to the
time of the Greek empire and even before. But from 1800 or so, Georgia was
absorbed into Russia, into Czarist Russia. Not happily, by the way. And so
that lasted for over 100 years, and then when the Soviet Union forms, Georgia
has a very brief interval. For three years, Georgia had something like a
liberal social democratic, cosmopolitan, from what I can tell quite impressive
republic.

DAVIES: Right after World War I, right?

Mr. TRAUB: Right after World War I in the chaos of the immediate
post-revolutionary period. Then this came to a brutal end in 1921 when the
Bolshevik government of the Soviet Union came in and subjugate the country,
and the government had to flee. So from that time forward, Georgia was once
again, as it had been before, incorporated into Russia, now the Soviet Union.
But the Georgians never lost their sense that we are a separate people. The
Georgian language is nothing like the Russian language. So they have a deep
sense of--Georgian Eastern Orthodox rites are different from Russian Eastern
Orthodox rites and so on. So they have this sense of being a separate people.

At the same time, they're deep, deep ties, as you can imagine, to Russia, of
which it has been a part for two centuries.

DAVIES: So what do the Russians think about Georgia.

Mr. TRAUB: The Russians have, I guess a kind of love/hate relationship with
Georgia. For all those long decades of Soviet rule, Georgia was Russia's
Italy. It was a warm place, literally a warm place. It was a place where you
would go to the beach, to the Black Sea. It was the place famous for its
feasts, for its dancing, for its singing, for a sense of joyousness. Also for
gangsters. I mean, it really was a lot like Italy that way. And so as much
as the Soviet Union felt like a dead, frozen place, there was always the
reassurance that in the Russian soul and in the Soviet Union, there was this
place that was very different, and if you were a member of the elite, you
would have your dasha there, you would have your house by the seaside, and you
would live a different life, and you would taste all those joys that were
forbidden to the Soviet people. And so when Georgia declared it independence
from Russia, that is to say when the Soviet Union broke up, the same thing
repeated itself as happened when the...(unintelligible)...empire broke up,
Georgia said, once again, we don't want to be part of this collective. We
declare our independence. That was a terrible blow to the Soviet Union,
worse, I think, or so people tell me, than say when the Baltic states, Latvia,
Estonia, Lithuania, when they broke away because they did not feel like they
were part of Russia's soul, as Georgia and also Ukraine did. So these were
terrible blows to the national psyche.

DAVIES: It's interesting that in some respects you describe sort of Russians
looking at Georgia with some affection, and yet in a recent piece, you made
reference to people talking about a poll in which Georgia was viewed by
Russians as their number one enemy.

Mr. TRAUB: Yes, because Georgia has chosen to repudiate Mother Russia. And
so one of the things that is just striking about Russia in terms of psyche is
this idea that Georgia is an evil enemy, almost because its like an
intransigent child or a prodigal child or something. How can Georgia be
rejecting us?

Now let us add something into the mix, which is Georgia too has its
aggressive, ambitious, eager, dynamic and rather confrontational president in
Mikheil Saakashvili. And so while other states along Russia's border, like
Azerbaijan, for example, have sought a relatively independent course and have
tried to ally themselves more with the West, they have also been suitable
deferential, not necessarily out of respect, but out of a proper of fear. Now
that's not Georgia. Georgia is quite happy to stick its thumb in Russia's
eye, and Saakashvili is quite happy to stick his thumb in Russia's eye. A
person who Saakashvili well told me that he had made a very clever pun out of
the name of Vladimir Putin, who you know is quite short, Saakashvili being
quite tall, and he called him Lily Putin, for Lilliputian, the little people
in Swift. Now Saakashvili denies ever having said that, and I don't know
whether he did or not, but the point is that is the way he treats Putin. And
Putin is a person for whom personal pride is a matter of great importance and
national pride, too. And so another aspect of the Russian anger at Georgia is
not simply Georgia's independence, but Georgia's rather reckless assertions of
its independence.

DAVIES: And that brings us to the flashpoint of this current conflict, and
that is these two, as they're described, breakaway regions, South Ossetia and
Abkhazia, these two regions that are historically part of Georgia but which
have asserted their independence. Explain their relationship with the
Georgian nation.

Mr. TRAUB: OK, this gets complicated, and I'll try to do it in short form.
When Georgia declared its independence from Russia in 1991, it used the
boundaries that had been created by the Soviet Union. Now those included
other ethnicities besides Georgians, including the Ossetians in this province
called South Ossetia, and the Abkhaz, in a province called Abkhazia. Well,
those people tended to view Georgians the way Georgians viewed Russians, as
this big neighboring bully. And they said, just as Georgia said we don't want
to be part of Russia, they said, `We don't want to be part of Georgia.' And so
this then precipitated wars, civil wars in both areas, quite bloody with well
substantiated claims of atrocities on both sides in each case. And so first
in South Ossetia in 1991 and two, and then in Abkhazia in 1992 through 1994,
you had these brutal battles, which ultimately came to an end having been
officiated by Russia and were resolved, or rather at least put in place
through the presence of Russian peacekeeping forces, though technically the
peacekeeping forces came from something called the Commonwealth of Independent
States, which is a thing that Boris Yeltsin created out of the post-Soviet
world. But effectively it meant Russian peacekeepers were standing in between
the Georgians on one side and either the Ossetians or the Abkhazs on the
other.

DAVIES: James Traub is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine.
He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Dave Davies and this is
FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies filling in for Terry Gross. Back
with journalist James Traub. We're talking about the crisis in Georgia.
Though a cease-fire has been negotiated, there have been continued reports of
fighting and of Russian troop movements outside the breakaway regions of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia, where they were to be confined.

James Traub is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. Before
the break, we were talking about the relationship the breakaway provinces have
with Russia and Georgia.

To clarify one thing, the Russians obviously play a role here because they're
a powerful neighbor. But are these citizens of South Ossetia and Abkhazia
ethnically Russian or culturally more tied to Russia?

Mr. TRAUB: They are culturally more tied to Russia. But if you ask what is
their most like, I mean, I can speak more easily about Abkhazia because I
spent time there. I did not spend time in South Ossetia on this trip, so I'm
not comfortable talking about how they feel.

The Abkhaz are, if anything, frightened to death of the Russian embrace. That
is they fear that they will be incorporated into Russia and will become one of
those defunct ethnic groups like the Uzbeks, of which one hears very little
today because they don't exist anymore. They were Russified. The Abkhaz
don't want to be Georgianized. They don't want to be incorporated into
Georgia, but they also don't want to be incorporated into Russia. They
fear--they are in fact an independent ethnic group.

You have to bear in mind that the Caucasus, being laced by mountains and all
sorts of geographical barriers, is the kind of region where you have myriad
separate relatively independent language groups and culture groups. And both
the Ossetians and the Abkhaz count as that, very small, by the way. The
Abkhaz, maybe they're a hundred thousand people who are of Abkhazian
background who are today in the region of Abkhazia. Most of the others were
deported by the czars in the 19th century or by Stalin's Soviet Union later
on. So it's a little country, but they feel like, `We are a separate people.
We want to have our own state.' And when I say to them, `Yeah, but how do you
feel about having Russia as your so called protector?' They say, `No, no. We
have to choose between two evils. We're afraid of Russian, but we're also
afraid of Georgia. And right now Russia is going to protect us from Georgia.
So we'll deal with that one now and we'll worry later about the consequences.'

DAVIES: So when Russia intervenes militarily, I mean, before the current
crisis, when they have sent troops to these two regions that seek autonomy
from Georgia, can you say with authority whether they're acting to protect
citizens who look like them, feel like them, want them, or are they cynically
intervening as a way of gaining an advantage against Georgia?

Mr. TRAUB: Well, two different questions. The Abkhaz and the Ossetians, as
I said, are happy to have the protection of Russia because if they didn't they
would have been reabsorbed into Georgia in a minute. They could never defend
themselves. At the same time, on Russia's part, it's a cynical act. That is
Russia is doing this in the name of preserving the well-being and also the
autonomy of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Look at Russia's behavior in Chechnya. This is not a country which shows much
sensitivity towards the desires, the aspirations for autonomy of ethnically
distinct peoples. Nobody whom I met in Abkhazia believes that the Russians
actually care about Abkhaz independence. They assume that the Russians are
using them in their game against the West and in their game against Georgia.
And as I say, they very much worry about the end game of that game. So no, no
one is more clear minded about the cynicism of Russian motives than the Abkhaz
are. They just feel like it's the best possibility in a very bad situation.

DAVIES: Your piece in this Sunday's New York Times bore the headline
"Taunting the Bear," suggesting that the government of Georgia and its
president, Saakashvili, was provoking the Russian government and that that is
in part what led to this current crisis. What did the Georgians do that
provoked the Russians?

Mr. TRAUB: Well, I think there has been, since Saakashvili became president
in 2003, there's been a very, very different atmosphere between Georgia and
Russia. And so Saakashvili very openly courts the West, very openly
criticizes Russia, has spoken openly of his desire to regain these provinces
which have been effectively autonomous since the early '90s. And so one of
the provinces called Ajara, which is a province to the west, he was able to
regain without any military conflict in 2004. He then made a quite open
effort to do the same thing with South Ossetia. He sent interior ministry
troops in during the summer of 2004, saying he wanted the quell banditry.
This was understood to be, in fact, an attempt to subjugate the government of
this defacto republic, and the troops were quite humiliatingly beaten back by
Ossetian irregulars. There then followed a period of a year or two when he
actually tried to negotiate solutions, but I would say half-heartedly. And
then, in 2006, sent troops into an area which is in Abkhazia called the Kodori
Gorge, again saying that he had to stop banditry, which by the way was quite
rampant. But this again was seen as Saakashvili saying, `I am willing to use
military force to change the situation on the ground.'

We then fast forward to 2008, when hostilities began to rise again in March of
2008, because here we get rather complicated. But when the West recognized
Kosovo, Russia was outraged, Russia is an ally of Serbia, and decided to take
it out of the West's hide in the form of growing confrontation with Georgia,
which it sees, not incorrectly, as the darling of the West. And so as Putin
started to ratchet up the tension in Abkhazia, Saakashvili appeared to have
made preparations for battle in Abkhazia. There were troop movements. There
were fuel dumps being readied and so on. And so both the Abkhaz and the
Russians saw this as a sign that Saakashvili was all too willing to use
military force in order to satisfy the promises he had made to the Georgian
people of regaining these territories. And indeed that appears to be what
happened in South Ossetia.

DAVIES: You and I have talked about Vladimir Putin and others have. He is,
of course, not the president of Russia anymore. It's actually Dmitry
Medvedev. What's his role in this?

Mr. TRAUB: You know, that's been a mystery as indeed the relationship
between the two is something of a mystery. Medvedev appears to have had no
meaningful role in this. It was Putin who left the Olympics in Beijing and
flew to Vladikavkaz, a town just--in North Ossetia, and basically, quite
publicly, openly commanded the troops, which of course is the role of the
president, not the prime minister. Only on about day three was Medvedev able
to make a public statement in which he essentially echoed the same line that
Putin had already taken. So so far as one can tell from the outside, this has
shown quite transparently what people already thought, which is the power lies
with Putin and Medvedev is essentially a figurehead. I'm sure that they'll
put Medvedev forward in future to allow him to play the role that he is
supposed to play. But the fact is the shots are being called by Putin.

DAVIES: We're speaking with James Traub. He has written about the current
crisis between Georgia and Russia in the New York Times. We'll talk more
after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: If you're just joining us, our guest is James Traub. He's a
contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. His new book is called
"The Freedom Agenda."

So President Bush issued a strong condemnation and warnings to the Russians
about their behavior. Did that have any effect?

Mr. TRAUB: Well, the thing we don't know is exactly what Putin intended when
he sent those troops across the borders from South Ossetia and into Georgia
proper. And I should also say from Abkhazia as well. Troops came pouring in
and have gone into Georgia proper. Did he intend to actually try to take the
capital, and was he then given pause by the Western reaction? It's possible.
I very much doubt it. I assume that Putin's goal all the time was to make the
Georgians live in fear of what Russia could do if it wanted to and thereby to
gain compliance with Russian wishes. Probably also his hope was to humiliate
Saakashvili, whom he obviously loathes, and ultimately lead to Saakashvili
being deposed. He achieved all those goals. He perhaps also hoped to say to
the West, `Don't let this country enter NATO. We will not permit it. This
country is ours. It is not yours.' He may have succeeded in that. We don't
know.

So my guess is that the statements by Bush and others had no effect at all on
Russian calculations. I think that from the very beginning Putin was going to
do what he wanted to do and achieve what he wanted to achieve. And then the
question would always be, and it will be as of now: How will the West react
to this, what I would characterize, as a naked act of aggression?

DAVIES: And to what extent is the West's leverage in this situation
compromised by, A, Russia's enormous profits from oil and national gas, and
the United States military extension, preoccupation in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Mr. TRAUB: Yeah, you know, it's very easy for the West to denounce military
activities by rogue regimes and to punish them. This is Russia. This is not
some small country. This is a huge powerful growing country with which both
the United States and all major European countries have ongoing commercial,
military, intelligence and so forth relationships. And so what do you do?
How do you balance the need to say, `This cannot stand, this is not how we
behave in the 21st century,' with the need to transact all the kind of
business one transacts with Russia?

So from the point of view of the United States, the big question is Iran. We
are trying to keep the security council together on tightening the screws on
Iran through sanctions. That means we need Russia and we need China. So
Washington is afraid of losing Russia on that, and that may stay its hand when
it comes to issues like do we punish Russia by keeping it out of the G7? Do
we try to keep it out of the World Trade Organization? And do we tell
Georgia, yes, it can get into NATO? From the point of view of Europe, the
considerations have less to do with Iran and more to do with very important
commercial relationships. Germany gets 40 percent of its natural gas from
Russia. Germany has seen what Russia has done to refractory countries. It
tells them you can freeze in the dark.

Now, Russia cares a lot about its dependability as a supplier to major
countries, that is it's willing to jerk around the little countries; but it
knows that economically it depends on the big countries like Germany, France,
Italy and so forth, feeling that they can rely on Russia. Russia would be
unhappy to have to use that weapon. But Germany could well think, `Well, if
we get Russia angry enough, we no longer trust what they'll do.' Maybe they
will use that weapon. So yes, everybody has something to worry about when it
comes to taking measures against Russia.

DAVIES: As we speak, events are fluid in Georgia and there are conflicting
reports about what's actually happening on the ground. But we do know that a
cease-fire of sorts was negotiated with the French leader Nicolas Sarkozy.
What are its terms and what do they tell us about how this is played out?

Mr. TRAUB: Well, the cease-fire says that both sides will withdraw to the
status quo ante as of Thursday, meaning that there would be Russian
peacekeepers, Russian troops on the South Ossetian side of that border, and on
the Abkhaz side of the Abkhaz border. There are no Georgian troops that are
now in Abkhaz or Ossetian territory. They're gone. So that's not really the
issue. The issue really is, will the Russians withdraw to that line? So far
they haven't. So far there's no signs of withdrawal at all, and indeed there
are continuing reports of ongoing hostilities.

But then the question, OK, let's say the Russians agree and they do indeed
stop fighting. They don't seek to take Tbilisi, and gradually the troops
withdraw from Gori and Pote and these other cities in Georgia proper.

DAVIES: By that--Tbilisi is the capital of Georgia, you're saying that you're
talking about the Russians withdrawing from areas of Georgia beyond these two
breakaway provinces, right?

Mr. TRAUB: Well, in other words, right now, right now you have Russian
troops inside Georgia proper. They have not sought, so far as we know, to
march on Tbilisi. But they are present in a series of cities that are within
20 or 30 miles of the borders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. So the
cease-fire requires them to leave and to go back to the other side of those
cease-fire lines.

DAVIES: To stay in the breakaway republics.

Mr. TRAUB: Right, exactly. Because that's where they were previously as
peacekeepers. And they formally are claiming that all these military
operations are in their role as peacekeepers, though God knows this is not a
form of peacekeeping anybody has witnessed before.

And so then the question is, `OK, now what?' Saakashvili will not acknowledge
the rights of independence of either of these breakaway republics. He's
always campaigned that he's the guy who's going to get them back. Well,
that's finished. That's finished. You can talk about it all you want. At
this point those two breakaway areas are neither going to come under Georgian
control nor are they going to be truly autonomous. They have been effectively
absorbed into Russia, whatever their formal status is. And so then the
question ongoing is, will there be some way of creating a formal status for
these two places which Russia can live with, Georgia can live with, and the
breakaway republics themselves can live with? That's going to be a long-term
question. We can't worry about that too much right now. Right now the big
concern is get those Russian troops out of Georgia and then at least begin
negotiating in a more--in a less threatening environment.

DAVIES: So just to be clear, apart from the question of whether Russian
troops stay in or advance in Georgia itself, the cease-fire essentially says
the Russians get to stay in these two breakaway provinces and the Georgian
troops have to get out.

Mr. TRAUB: Well, yes.

DAVIES: I mean, is that a humiliating defeat for Georgia?

Mr. TRAUB: Oh, utterly, utterly. I mean, for Saakashvili it's a calamity.
It's a catastrophe. I mean, though the actual origins of this war are still a
little bit murky, it is clear that Saakashvili decided last Thursday night
that he would no longer accept what had become a simmering low level war in
South Ossetia, and that he would attack the capital, shelling, sending in
troops and so forth, which in retrospect was a really stupid thing to have
done; and which, at least according to my information, Washington had been
telling him regularly don't do it. He sent the troops in and now the troops
have been, were crushed and were humiliatingly forced to return to Tbilisi.

So now in terms of domestic politics, Saakashvili at this very moment seems to
be enjoying a wave of nationalist support. But it won't last long. And the
sense of humiliation the Georgian people will have will make them turn on him.
So I think he's now in a very, very dangerous place politically.

DAVIES: I'd like to get your take on what the presidential candidates, John
McCain and Barack Obama, have said about this crisis.

Mr. TRAUB: You know, I think the statements have been pretty similar. And I
was very struck when, I--in the course of reporting this article that I wrote,
that the chief advisers to McCain and Obama has surprisingly similar views of
Russia and of Georgia. Now, Georgia is the one country, or one of the few
countries, that would vote McCain if they had a choice to vote. It's McCain
territory. McCain has been there. He and Saakashvili have a real love fest.
McCain is a deep believer in democracy promotion. Georgia is a great example
of American democracy promotion. And so he's come out quite strenuously in
support of Georgia and criticism of Russia. McCain takes a more anti-Russian
view than Obama does. And he has for quite a while, maybe in part because one
of his chief advisers, Robert Kagan, well known foreign policy theorist, takes
similar views himself.

Obama, of course, naturally has a more accommodating view of intransigent
countries. But the statement that he put out in the aftermath quite
unambiguously blamed Russia for violating Georgia's territorial integrity. I
suspect Saakashvili himself feared that if Obama won he would no longer have
the kind of support he had before, which may in part explain why he was
willing to do this thing now. Whether or not that's selling Obama short, I
don't know. What I can say is that I know the people who give him advice on
this issue and they seem to have a strongly pro-Georgian point of view.

DAVIES: You know, one criticism of McCain that I've heard, I guess, from
liberal Democrats is that if we had adopted his view, that Georgia should have
joined NATO, that the United States might have been compelled to respond
militarily to the Russian incursion. Is that a fair criticism?

Mr. TRAUB: Well, yeah. And I think that Russia knows this very well. And
so it's been in Russia's interest to keep Georgia embroiled in battle because
that prevents, that makes the argument that Georgia should not be permitted to
join NATO. So that's a real concern. Technically, yes. I mean, if Georgia
had been a member of NATO you could have imagined a kind of 1914 scenario in
which a series of events in a remote place trip a series of automatic
alliances which lead to war. And so that's a very serious concern.

At the same time, can we permit Russia to dictate the question of who gets to
join NATO? And I think the answer to that has to be, no, we can't. To be
pragmatic, by the way, what in fact would happen is not Georgia and Ukraine
would become members of NATO. They would be put on a track to join NATO over
time. And there are a series of stages in that track before they became full
fledged members of NATO. And so that's what's being contemplated now. The
next meeting of the NATO ministers will be in December when they'll decide if
anybody new should be put on that track, and anybody new means Georgia and
Ukraine. And it is a really grave question as to whether or not these
hostilities will prevent Georgia from being able to join NATO, or the
opposite, will persuade NATO members that Georgia has a right to the
protective umbrella of NATO.

DAVIES: Well, James Traub, thanks so much for sharing your views with us.

Mr. TRAUB: Thank you.

DAVIES: James Traub is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine
and author of the forthcoming book "The Freedom Agenda."

Coming up, rock critic Ken Tucker reviews "Real Animal," the new album from
Alejandro Escovedo.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Ken Tucker reviews "Real Animal," the new ablum from
Alejandro Escovedo
DAVE DAVIES, host:

Alejandro Escovedo has been performing for more than three decades in a
variety of styles. Punk rock in the `70s, country and glam rock in the '80s,
and as a singer-songwriter in recent years. Rock critic Ken Tucker says
Escovedo's new album "Real Animal" is the artist's summing up of his own
career thus far.

(Soundbite of "Always a Friend")

Mr. ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO: (Singing) Wasn't I always a friend to you?
Wasn't I always a friend to you?
Do you wanna be my friend?
Uh, oh
Do you wanna be my friend?
Uh, oh
Every once in a while, honey let your love show
Every once in a while, honey let yourself go
Nobody gets hurt, no
Uh, oh
Nobody gets hurt

We came here as two, we laid down as one
I don't care if I'm not your only one
What I see in you, you see in me
But if I do you wrong, smoke my smoke, drink my wine
Bury my snakeskin boots somewhere I'll never find
Still be your lover baby

(End of soundbite)

Mr. KEN TUCKER: That's Alejandro Escovedo professing his allegiance to
someone he's fond of, including his audience, in a song that deserves to be
one of the big hits of the summer. Escovedo is one of the phantom presences
in modern rock music, moving through the walls of various genres, inhabiting
them with spooky intensity and then drifting on.

In the '70s, going with the angry lark that was punk rock, he did the San
Francisco version of it in a band called The Nuns. They never achieved even
punk rock-size success, but they did end up opening for the Sex Pistols in
1978, a ghost footnote in history. He summons up this era in a very clever
self parody, a song that works better than any that The Nuns themselves ever
recorded.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. ESCOVEDO: (Singing) We don't want your approval
It's 1978
We know we're not in tune
We know we'll never be great
We made it this far
A little piece of fame
Up on the bandstand
Nobody knows no shame
Luie, Luie

(End of soundbite)

Mr. TUCKER: "We know we're not in tune, we know we'll never be great," he
sings there with a perfect mock sneer. Pretty soon the '80s rolled around and
Escovedo started making countrified rock 'n' roll in the band Rank & File with
the brother team of Chip and Tony Kinman. So he wrote a song about them here
called, sensibly enough, "Chip N' Tony."

(Soundbite of "Chip N' Tony")

Mr. ESCOVEDO: (Singing) All I ever wanted was a four piece band
Yeah, we're coming off strong just like an accident

Mr. ESCOVEDO and Unidentified Singers: (Singing) Are you standing up?
Are you laying down?
Are you throwing up or just sleeping around?
Chip and Tony said it was against the law
Come on

(End of soundbite)

Mr. TUCKER: The sound of this album is remarkable eclectic as befits a
career as peripatetic and questing as Escovedo's, who's moved from San
Francisco to LA to Manhattan to Austin, Texas. And I may not even have that
map entirely accurate given the way he's jumped around. It was produced by
Tony Visconti, who produced some of the best albums by David Bowie and T.Rex.
Escovedo has impeccable taste in collaborators.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. ESCOVEDO: (Singing) Nobody loves unbroken
Nobody loves unscarred
Nobody here is talking
That's just the way things are

(End of soundbite)

Mr. TUCKER: There's a strain of elegiac emotion coursing through this album
as Escovedo sings about friends who have died and his own fragile health. A
few years ago he almost died from complications of hepatitis C. He's
reportedly in good health these days, though, and has come through three
decades of music making with a bracing distrust of misty-eyed nostalgia or
weepy gratitude.

One song here bears the title "Sensitive Boys." He is one himself, but he's
the kind that hard boils his sensitivity to achieve both terse poetry and some
generously open hearted rock 'n' roll.

DAVIES: Ken Tucker is editor at large at Entertainment Weekly. He reviewed
"Real Animal" by Alejandro Escovedo.

(Soundbite of "Sensitive Boys")

Mr. ESCOVEDO: (Singing) Sensitive boys
Sensitive clothes
Sensitive boys

(End of soundbite)

(Credits)

DAVIES: For Terry Gross, I'm Dave Davies.

(Soundbite of "Sensitive Boys")

Mr. ESCOVEDO: (Singing) Big dreamy eyes
Long French sleeves
Shivering in the cold light of the New York City breeze
Sensitive boys

(End of soundbite)
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