Toby Blunt
Mikhail Saakashvili might be the darling of the west, George Bush’s beacon of democracy in the darkness of the Caucasus, but he is not subtle. Which is a shame, because the current game requires a degree of caution, a smidgen of wisdom, and above all, the experience to understand the peculiar fragility of the moment.
Much of the English-language media rushed to explain the recent violence in the Caucasus in terms of big, nasty Russia threatening small democratic Georgia.
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The enemy, this time, is the Beeb. Known worldwide for its fairness, its accuracy, its high standards of journalism; known at home for its current willingness to follow the government's lead on any significant story, its post-Hutton flaccidity, and for its paternalistic tone of voice.
Its intellectual conservatism can be ascribed to its status as one of Britain's leading institutions, after the city banks and the FCO. To a large extent it is staffed by people who will never see any…
