President Bush’s decision to have the US military head up a humanitarian mission to Georgia is about more than bringing much-needed aid and relief to the Georgian people. The thinking appears to be that using US planes and ships to deliver aid will serve as a way of pressuring Russia not to close down Georgian airspace and try and blocks its access to the sea.
In an interview with The New York Times, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said that Bush’s announcement marked a “turning point”:
With Russian forces occupying Gori—a Georgian town outside of South Ossetia which is only 40 miles from the capital, Tbilisi—and US forces now heading for the region, it is clear that this crisis is moving into a new phase.“What I expected specifically from America was to secure our airport and to secure our seaports,” he said, in a telephone interview minutes after Mr. Bush spoke. “The main thing now is that the Georgian Tbilisi airport will be permanently under control.”
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