Washington Tries to De-Link Georgia and Russia

The United States is “not throwing Georgians under the bus” in the name of cooperation with Russia, White House Russian and Eurasian affairs adviser Michael McFaul assured a June 10 audience at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC.

The Obama administration's Russia strategy is all about decoupling areas where the White House and the Kremlin can cooperate, such as nuclear disarmament and Afghanistan, from unrelated areas, said McFaul. “We are deliberately not pushing for the end of the occupation of Georgia to resubmit” to Congress a nuclear treaty with Russia, he said.

But this “does not mean that we are ignoring Georgia” and not working to secure the withdrawal of Russian troops from the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, he claimed. “We are doing these things in parallel, but we are not linking them.”