Shevardnadze: 'I would not have marched in'

JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images

Last Thursday, Georgia's former president Eduard Shevardnadze told Reuters that "now is not the time" to criticize Mikheil Saakashvili's handling of the South Ossetia war. I guess this week that time has come.

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Shevardnadze not only criticizes the man who overthrew him in 2003 for bungling the war, he all but blames him for starting it:

Many people blame the Georgian president. They are wrong in part, but there is also an element to truth to it. He can't be accused of having acted illegally. It was legal to move our forces into [the South Ossetian capital] Tskhinvali. But it would have been better not to. When he did decide to go in he should have blocked the Roki Tunnel which the Russians came through. The failure to do so was a tactical mistake. He apparently didn't think things through to the end. He evidently had not expected the Russians to take control of Gori, Poti and Senaki, or perhaps come as far as Tbilisi. If I had been in his shoes, I certainly would not have marched in.

Shevardnadze also attacks Germany and France for blocking Georgia's NATO membership back in April, which he says encouraged Russia to take more aggressive action. But interestingly, he also believes Saakashvili made a mistake in pulling Georgia out of the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States.

Judging from the interview, Shevardnadze seems to believe that it should have been possible to move Georgia toward greater cooperation with the U.S. and Europe while simultaneously improving relations with Russia and peacefully resolving the seperatist conflicts. While Saakashvili certainly deserves much of the criticism that has come his way in recent weeks, it's hard to imagine that any Georgian leader -- and certainly not Shevardnadze -- could have pulled all that off.