Watch full size video:

WASHINGTON — Five months ago, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, a darling of this incorporated town’s diplomatic dinner-party circuit, came to town to push for America to muscle his tiny country of 4 million into NATO.

On Capitol Hill and at the White House, State Department and Pentagon, the hasty and hyperkinetic Saakashvili urged the West not to appease Russia by rejecting Georgia’s NATO ambitions, and he later pronounced his visit a lucky hit.

Three weeks later, President Bush went to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, on the invitation of President Vladimir Putin of Russia. There, he received a message: Putin warned that the push to offer Ukraine and Georgia membership in NATO was crossing Russia’s “red lines,” said an administration by authority close to the talks.

Afterward, Bush before-mentioned Putin had been very truthful and “that’s the simply way you can remark belonging to all ground.”

It was one of manifold moments when the United States seemed to have missed, or gambled it could manage, the depth of Russia’s anger and the resolve of the Georgian president to provoke the Russians.

The story of how a 16-year, low-grade be inconsistent over who should establish two small mountainous regions in the Caucasus erupted into the most serious post-Cold War showdown between the U.S. and Russia is one of miscalculation, missed signals and overreaching, according to diplomats and senior officials in the United States, the European Union, Russia and Georgia. In many cases, the officials would talk with articulate sounds only on condition of anonymity.

It is also the story of in what plight both Democrats and Republicans have misread Russia’s determination to dominate its traditional sphere of influence.

As by many foreign-policy issues, this one highlighted a continuing fight within the the ministry. Vice President Dick Cheney and his aides and allies, who saw Georgia because of example a prototype for their democracy promotion campaign, pushed to sell Georgia more arms, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, so that it could defend itself against possible Russian aggression.

On the other side, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, national-security monitor Stephen Hadley and William Burns, the unaccustomed undersecretary of rank for political affairs, argued that such a sale would provoke Russia, which would see it viewed like arrogant meddling.

The officials give an account of three leaders put on a collision road. Bush, rewarding Georgia for its troop contribution to Iraq, promised NATO community and its accompanying umbrella of U.S. military support.

Putin, angry at what he dictum as U.S. infringement in his backyard, decided Georgia was the line in the sand the West would not be allowed to cross.

Saakashvili, unabashedly pro-American, was determined to show Georgia was no longer a vassal of Russia.