The Dangers of Secret Diplomacy

by Jacob Davies

The cables tell a tale of America being taken for a ride by Georgia's President Saakashvili in 2008:

A 2008 batch of American cables from another country once in the cold war’s grip — Georgia — showed a much different sort of access. In Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, American officials had all but constant contact and an open door to President Mikheil Saakashvili and his young and militarily inexperienced advisers, who hoped the United States would help Georgia shake off its Soviet past and stand up to Russia’s regional influence...

The cables show that for several years, as Georgia entered an escalating contest with the Kremlin for the future of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two breakaway enclaves out of Georgian control that received Russian support, Washington relied heavily on the Saakashvili government’s accounts of its own behavior. In neighboring countries, American diplomats often maintained their professional distance, and privately detailed their misgivings of their host governments. In Georgia, diplomats appeared to set aside skepticism and embrace Georgian versions of important and disputed events...

By 2008, as the region slipped toward war, sources outside the Georgian government were played down or not included in important cables. Official Georgian versions of events were passed to Washington largely unchallenged.

“Deputy Minister of Defense Batu Kutelia told Ambassador at mid-day August 7 that Georgian military troops are on higher alert, but will not be deploying,” one cable noted, as Georgian heavy military equipment was en route to the conflict zone.

Still the embassy misread the signs, telling Washington that while there were “numerous reports that the Georgians are moving military equipment and forces,” the embassy’s “initial impressions” were that the Georgians “were in a heightened state of alertness to show their resolve.”

In fact, Georgia would launch a heavy artillery-and-rocket attack on Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, at 11:35 p.m. on Aug. 7, ending a cease-fire it had declared less than five hours before...

A confidential cable the next morning noted that Georgia’s Foreign Ministry had briefed the diplomatic corps, claiming that “Georgia now controlled most of South Ossetia, including the capital.” The cable further relayed that “Saakashvili has said that Georgia had no intention of getting into this fight, but was provoked by the South Ossetians and had to respond to protect Georgian citizens and territory.”

Rather than emphasize the uncertainties, it added, “All the evidence available to the country team supports Saakashvili’s statement that this fight was not Georgia’s original intention.” Then it continued: “Only when the South Ossetians opened up with artillery on Georgian villages” did the offensive begin.

None of that was true. There were a lot of people, mostly on the right, arguing for more vigorous support of Georgia up and including direct attacks by the US on Russian forces there. Georgia may have been counting on such support; may even have felt they were promised it with the same wink-and-a-nod communications that have been used by the US to give the green light to other countries.

Major wars have started over such misunderstandings, miscommunications, and small-scale conflicts in the past. Overrating the value of private, personal-level communications and intelligence against public sources and impersonal data-collection has often contributed. To the extent that Wikileaks demonstrates that what is private and secret is often mistaken, it is doing a valuable service in this instance.

Comments

[kent]

What astonishes me is that every Serious pundit made the rounds right after the leak was announced to insist that there was nothing to see here. Of course, none of them had read any of the cables before making the pronouncement.

Thanks for the update; I would have missed thi sone. Looking forward to more new information as it comes out.

[sapient]

Wait, didn't we already know this? This isn't a problem of secrecy. It's a problem of whether to trust self-interested parties.

[Jacob Davies]

We knew some of it, but not the specifics of how the US came to be so misled about what was happening early in the conflict. Which is to say, that it happened because the US ambassador was totally suckered by the Georgians.

I'd like more information on what, exactly, the US ambassador might have said, but I don't think it's outrageous to speculate that his excessively sympathetic attitude prior to the conflict contributed to confidence on the part of the Georgians that they could get away with it or even get the US involved on their side. The US has made secret promises that turned out badly before. It's not a hypothetical problem.

[Arachna]

Thanks for posting this.

[Randinho]

And of course we all remember the very serious John McCain . . .