SAAKASHVILI: Well, first of all, I met both of them. I mean, Joe Biden is a longtime friend, amazingly smart guy, who gets very good perspective on Georgia's situation. I met Sarah Palin. She was wonderful. She was absolutely delightful. CAVUTO: Did you have or get a sense of any of those doubts that some of your colleagues at the U.N. have? SAAKASHVILI: Look, I don't know who was — I mean, I — first of all, I have huge, you know, trust in America's people judgment. That's why America is so attractive for us, that this is elections. You know, people have wise judgment. And, in the end, they will decide. And, so, I can hardly comment on individual candidates, at least beside the things what I have said. But it's very important to remember that, when Ronald Reagan was coming in, everybody was saying: "Who the hell is that guy? He doesn't know anything about politics."

The Georgia strategy is premised on working jointly with European allies and on avoiding the sort of unilateral U.S. military threats that would scare them off. It is also tempered by the administration's earlier mistakes in dealing with mercurial Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, which set the stage for his unwise Aug. 7 attack on South Ossetia that provoked the punishing Russian reaction. It's a policy, in short, that distills some of the foreign policy lessons learned at the shank end of the Bush presidency. And its contours, interestingly enough, arguably are closer to the thrust of Barack Obama's initial, cautious reaction to the Georgia crisis than to the more confrontational approach of John McCain.

The administration wants to keep Putin from driving Russia off a cliff. They view his successor, President Dmitry Medvedev, as a man who understands that Russia's future is as a 21st-century power. They want to avoid a strategy that unintentionally undermines Medvedev and bolsters the Putin camp.

The construction of the BTC pipeline was a strategic victory for the Clinton administration, which was able to overcome initial oil company skepticism and Russian opposition. By actively helping to secure the supply of energy from the Caspian region via its preferred routes, the U.S. became a player in this previously forgotten part of the world. "All strategic contracts in Georgia, especially the contract for the Caspian pipeline, are a matter of survival for the Georgian state," Mikheil Saakashvili, who soon became Georgia's president, said in 2003, at the height of that country's Rose Revolution. But the American courtship of Georgia -- and its earlier courtship of Azerbaijan -- was a development that did not go unnoticed in Russia.

"The Russians and the Venezuelans can engage in whatever cooperation that they would like. But it's curious, I'm not sure what Venezuela needs or gains by a visit by the Russian fleet," said [White House] spokesman Gordon Johndroe. "You would think that President Chavez would concentrate more on the problems that the people of Venezuela are having rather than inviting the fleet in for a port call," he said, adding that he could not confirm the invitation.

Among the reformists close to Kozyrev there was a certainty that the conquest of the world had been too costly and counterproductive an enterprise. And another key idea had blossomed: the West should not be fought but embraced, imitated and invited to invest. Russia should compete within the rules of the game of market capitalism. Those diplomats understood that Russia did not have to become anybody else's counterweight, or play into a bipolarity that could only bring the nation conflict and poverty. After all, Russia was the largest nation in the West, the third Rome (the second had been Constantinople) and it made no sense to adopt an attitude of hostility toward a world that was as much theirs as it was France's or England's. All this is apropos Russia's attitude in the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia. It is very probable that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili acted rashly when he attacked South Ossetia in an effort to reconquer that territory, but it seems evident that Moscow had been waiting for an opportunity to strike. The attack on Georgia began on Aug. 8. On July 20, 19 days earlier, the Russians already knew Saakashvili's plans and had unleashed a cyberwar intended to dismantle the communications of their ill-tempered neighbor via the Internet. It was a magnificent moment to teach a lesson to the Georgians and the rest of the world, most especially the United States, who were sponsoring Georgia's admission to NATO.

Re “Russia’s War of Ambition” (editorial, Aug. 12): While militarily a success, Russia’s incursion into Georgia to reassert its sphere of influence in the “near abroad” is political folly. The Russian-Georgian conflict has likely pushed Georgia out of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine, whose leaders have traveled to Georgia to express solidarity with President Mikheil Saakashvili, will distance themselves further from a domineering, oil-resurgent Russia. Russian military might has won the day in Georgia, but as a means of extending its influence in the region, political pressure and persuasion would have been far more effective. Lawrence P. Markowitz Oberlin, Ohio, Aug. 12, 2008