Here is a fascinating Der Spiegel interview with Gerhard Schröder, the former German Chancellor, about the Russia-Georgia crisis. As an employee of Gazprom, Schröder is hardly a neutral voice on matters Russian (as the abrupt end of the interview demonstrates). But his off-hand dismissals of neocon rhetoric about the Caucasus are delightful.

It’s worth reading the whole piece, but here are a few highlights.

On McCain:

SPIEGEL: The Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, followed up by saying: “Today we’re all Georgians.”

Schröder: I am not.

And…

SPIEGEL: And Washington will refrain from punishing the Kremlin leadership and forcing Russia out of organizations like the G-8?

Schröder: This narrow view, which McCain, for example, holds, will not prevail — that’s what I hope and expect.

On Robert Kagan:

SPIEGEL: Robert Kagan, an idol of the neoconservatives and still the Republicans’ leading foreign policy thinker, has defined the day of Russia’s invasion of Georgia as the beginning of renewed territorial conflicts between the major powers and “as a turning point no less significant than Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell.”

Schröder: I read that, but it too means nothing to me. Kagan, after all, was one of the men who strongly advised intervening in Iraq. The consequences were not pleasant, neither for America nor Europe. Perhaps one should simply not listen to his advice.

Hear, hear!