MOSCOW — U.S. Vice President Joe Biden stood before the Georgian parliament, vowing support for a small, struggling, pro-Western country in its clashes with Moscow. Russian officials rejoined with threats and veiled accusations of American tampering.
On the surface, it looked very much like the status quo: Washington and Russia jousting for influence in the former Soviet space. But beneath the sweeping pledges of solidarity uttered by Biden in Georgia and Ukraine this week, there lurked anxiety that the Obama administration is pulling back from the unstinting support of the two governments by President George W. Bush.
Biden brought none of the blunt, anti-Kremlin rhetoric used by his predecessor, Dick Cheney, to stir Eastern European sentiments. And he abandoned the tone of shared grievance against Moscow that, until recently, inflected U.S. dealings with Georgia and Ukraine. Instead, Biden delivered a series of statements carefully crafted to reflect the idea that American alliances with Russia and its pro-Western neighbors should not be mutually exclusive.
He also urged Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to respond to criticism of heavy-handed rule with more transparency and democracy, and pointedly warned against the use of force to regain control of Georgia’s breakaway republics.
“We will stand with you,” Biden told lawmakers in the Georgian parliament. “I know there is some concern, and I understand it, that our efforts to reset relations with Russia will come at the expense of Georgia. Let me be clear: They have not, they will not and they cannot.”
Biden called for Russia to withdraw its troops from the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and urged other nations to refuse to join Moscow in recognizing the rebels as independent states.
