I’m glad you’ve brought that up. Because it, too, suggests that Russia invaded Georgia for the same reason: yank meddling and provocation:

Though Georgia is located in a region well within Russia’s historic sphere of influence and is more than 3,000 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, Bush nevertheless launched an ambitious campaign to bring Georgia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Russians, who had already seen previous U.S. assurances to Gorbachev that NATO would not extend eastward ignored, found the prospects of NATO expansion to the strategically important and volatile Caucasus region particularly provocative. This inflamed Russian nationalists and Russian military leaders and no doubt strengthened their resolve to maintain their military presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. …

Amid accusations of widespread corruption and not adequately addressing the country’s growing poverty, Saakashvili himself faced widespread protests in November 2007, to which he responded with severe repression, shutting down independent media, detaining opposition leaders, and sending his security forces to assault largely nonviolent demonstrators with tear gas, truncheons, rubber bullets, water cannons, and sonic equipment. Human Rights Watch criticized the government for using “excessive” force against protesters and the International Crisis Group warned of growing authoritarianism in the country. Despite this, Saakashvili continued to receive strong support from Washington and still appeared to have majority support within Georgia, winning a snap election in January by a solid majority which – despite some irregularities – was generally thought to be free and fair.

Now where have we seen that kind of thing before—I mean since?

Bush was also involved in provoking Russia in Ukraine, btw, before his eventual successor went ahead and pulled the same stunt again, knowing what the result was in Georgia:

In remarks likely to infuriate the Kremlin, Bush said Ukraine should be invited during this week’s Nato summit in Bucharest to join Nato’s membership action programme, a prelude to full membership.

He also said that there could be no deal with Moscow over the US administration’s contentious plans to locate elements of its controversial missile defence system in eastern Europe.…

Bush said after talks … in Kiev[:] “I strongly believe that Ukraine and Georgia should be given MAP [Membership Action Plans], and there are no tradeoffs - period.”…

Germany and France are leading opposition from within the EU to such a move, arguing that it would needlessly antagonise Russia and provoke a new crisis between Russia and the west. …

In central Kiev, several hundred protesters defied a court ban and shouted anti-Nato slogans in Independence Square, the focal point of the 2004 pro-western “orange revolution” protests, which swept Yushchenko to power. A few thousand protesters were massed in the square today ahead of Bush’s arrival. For many Ukrainians, joining Nato is not a priority. Only 30% of respondents in the former Soviet state support the move.

Who knows why Germany and France changed their tune by the time it came to Ukraine a few years later? We know why Ukrainians wanted the yanks to gtfo; they saw the writing on the wall and didn’t want to be sacrificed for US goals. Unfortunately, corrupt officials sold the people out.

Turns out it’s hard to point to a war that doesn’t have grubby US fingerprints all over it.