It’s hard to understand how navy “patriot” can be so wrong on Georgia and what the US supplied it. Perhaps he was being duped by the Putin press even then and believed the US really was training and equipping the Georgians in a big way. This much is true, though, the Georgians fought bravely with our troops in Afghanistan and actually owned their own battle space.
I think media outlets, not just the Russian ones, provide a fair amount of news without context. For instance, Vicky Nuland talked about $5b in US aid to Ukraine over 20 years. In fact, US aid to Russia has exceeded that amount.
$5b delivered over 20 years is a few hundred million dollars a year. A fair of amount of aid was handed over to the Russians to help them modernize their nuclear arsenal:
Over the years, Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration has provided billions of dollars in monetary, in-kind and technical assistance to Russia.In 2012, aid to Russia was over $400m, compared to over $200m for Ukraine:
| Country | U.S. Total Economic and Military Assistance FY 2012, $US millions | Economic Assistance FY 2012, $US millions | Military Assistance FY 2012, $US millions | US Economic and Military Assistance per Capita, $US |
| Afghanistan | 12,885.50 | 3,325.50 | 9,559.90 | 423.59 |
| Israel | 3,100.10 | 25.10 | 3,075.00 | 408.40 |
| Iraq | 1,940.10 | 783.50 | 1,156.60 | 62.32 |
| Egypt | 1,404.00 | 102.60 | 1,301.40 | 16.78 |
| Pakistan | 1,214.90 | 1,137.70 | 77.20 | 6.38 |
| Jordan | 1,135.30 | 831.60 | 303.70 | 174.42 |
| Ethiopia | 870.10 | 864.60 | 5.40 | 9.54 |
| Kenya | 749.20 | 745.60 | 3.60 | 17.42 |
| Colombia | 644.30 | 543.90 | 100.40 | 14.24 |
| Haiti | 510.40 | 510.20 | 0.20 | 52.07 |
| West Bank/Gaza | 457.40 | 457.40 | 105.57 | |
| South Sudan | 444.30 | 395.50 | 48.80 | 41.81 |
| Russia | 440.90 | 339.00 | 101.90 | 3.09 |
| Somalia | 419.60 | 274.90 | 144.70 | 41.61 |
| Tanzania | 402.00 | 399.20 | 2.80 | 8.57 |
| Congo (Kinshasa) | 388.40 | 370.50 | 18.00 | 5.28 |
| Uganda | 352.40 | 349.40 | 3.00 | 10.48 |
| Nigeria | 335.90 | 330.90 | 4.90 | 1.97 |
| Sudan | 298.10 | 298.10 | 0.00 | 8.72 |
| South Africa | 274.70 | 272.60 | 2.20 | 5.63 |
| Mozambique | 274.00 | 273.50 | 0.50 | 11.65 |
| Ukraine | 273.30 | 207.20 | 66.10 | 6.09 |
| Yemen | 258.50 | 237.40 | 21.10 | 10.44 |
| Bangladesh | 256.80 | 246.50 | 10.30 | 1.59 |
| Liberia | 247.10 | 233.80 | 13.30 | 63.56 |
I expect something similar happened with respect to US aid to Georgia. The fact is that a few hundred million in US aid a year, mainly in the form of civilian infrastructure spending and perhaps military advisers, buys very little. The US is notorious for deliberately holding back the provision of offensive/defensive military equipment to less trusted allies for fear that they will misuse that equipment by waging offensive war. The Korean War was mainly touched off by the rivalry between North and South Korea, but the US refusal to provide fighter aircraft, tanks and artillery to South Korea created an opportunity for North Korea to drive all the way to Pusan, at the southern tip of the Korean peninsula, without much resistance, except by a scratch force of US occupation troops with little or no combat experience.
As regards the Georgian stint in Afghanistan, their experience was probably not very different from that of the Northern Alliance that helped drive the Taliban out of the major Afghan cities with the help of American air cover in the aftermath of 9/11. If GI's had been fighting in place of the Georgians using their equipment, they would probably have been similarly overwhelmed. Air support is a crucial element of conventional wars. At minimum, friendly air units must keep enemy airplanes from dominating the skies. In Georgia, the Russians ruled the skies from day one. Georgian ground units that popped up to hold the Russians back were sitting ducks, just as the Taliban were during the Northern Alliance's advance with American air support.