Favog e-mailed yesterday to say that the prospect of John McCain in the driver's seat of US foreign policy is making his pro-life Catholic self look hard again at Obama. I am inclined to agree ... but now both McCain AND Obama are talking about doubling up US efforts to get Georgia into NATO! Excerpt:
Perhaps the most controversial of proposals by both McCain and Obama were calls for NATO to consider putting Georgia on a faster track for alliance membership, which gives any signatory the promise of protection by all NATO nations in case of attack. Such a move in the case of Georgia would, in theory, have meant NATO military action against Russia."NATO's decision to withhold a Membership Action Plan for Georgia might have been viewed as a green light by Russia for its attacks on Georgia, and I urge the NATO allies to revisit the decision," McCain said.
Obama appeared to agree, saying, "I have consistently called for deepening relations between Georgia and trans-Atlantic institutions, including a Membership Action Plan for NATO, and we must continue to press for that deeper relationship."
Unbelievable. Both these guys are talking dangerous trash. Who's going to call them on it? I know McCain really believes this stuff, and I suspect Obama knows better, but he's terrified of appearing weak. McCain today has been preening as Jingo-in-Chief, telling an audience that he informed the Georgian president that "we are all Georgians now."
How patronizing and insulting. Maybe next he'll propose that we all put yellow ribbon magnetic stickers on our cars to stand up for Plucky Little Georgia, or somesuch empty gesture.
UPDATE: Somebody had to say it, so it may as well have been Spengler: PUTIN '08: NOW MORE THAN EVER!. Says the sage:
Working from a position of weakness, Russia's president is the closest the modern world comes to the insidious strategic genius of a Cardinal Richelieu. That is the sort of strategic thinking America needs.
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"The Islamic front could be resolved fairly quickly by letting the Air Force plow Iran under..." More heroism of the word from another keyboard warrior. I hate to break it to you, but the world is not a Tom Clancy novel. You're pretty damn cavalier about threatening the rest of the world, Carey J. so I have to ask you why you're wasting time on this forum instead of buying that ticket and heading off to Georgia yourself. Put your own ass on the line, and maybe then you might have some credibility when you suggest plowing millions of human beings under in pursuit of some neocon wet dream. You remind me of the bad guy in "The Bourne Ultimatum". Remember? "It ends when we win." I'm fifty four years old, Carey J., and I've heard people like you spout this macho crap all my life. Hell, I used to be one of them. Sorry, but I don't buy it any more. There are real people, mothers and fathers and kids with big dreams living in that country you want to plow under. And it's not you, champ, that would fly the missions and take the heat. No, somebody else gets to do that, as brave keyboard warriors whoop and holler for Iran's or Russia's or North Korea's or whoever else's blood. "It ends when we win." Don't you get it? WE NEVER WIN. We just keep fighting endless wars. Two of my sons have honorably worn the uniform of their country, and I'll be damned if I sit still and let smoke-blowers like you dispatch their heroic brothers in arms off to yet another profit opportunity for multinational corporations and photo opportunity for politicians, disguised, yet again, as a twilight struggle for democracy. You want democracy? Work for it at home.
Actually, Scott, I do get that there will always be evil rulers, at least until God's Judgment Day. But the cause of human freedom made a huge leap forward when the Soviet Empire broke up, and I am loathe to condemn the peoples of Georgia, Ukraine, etc., to Russian rule. Nobody deserves to be ruled by the likes of Putin & Co.
BTW, if you will accept it, I would like to offer my gratitude for your sons' service. I would give anything I own or hope to own to serve alongside them, but I'm old enough that the Army wouldn't have me even if I'd fight for free.
FWIW, I believe our military has done some real good in the Middle East. The Saddam-era economic sanctions were blamed for hundreds of thousands of child deaths. Removing him from power stopped that. Violence in Iraq has declined enough that the Iraqis are making progress towards reconciliation. And if they haven't moved as quickly as we'd like, we ought to remember that our own first cut at a constitution didn't last ten years. And that our second cut needed ten amendments before the states would ratify it, and a civil war to abolish slavery. It would be another 35 years before women got the right to vote, and 45 years more before African-Americans' voting rights were enforced.
As for the Iranian people, they have had 30 years to do something about the mullahs. They have done nothing. Not a failed coup attempt or even an assassination. I can only conclude that they are content to be ruled by lunatics who deny the first holocaust while plotting a second; who brazenly pursue a nuclear weapons development program, and are the world's most overt sponsor of terrorist groups. I wish I could work up some sympathy for them, but I can't.
"As someone who lives in Prague, what would you like to see the US and Europe do here?"
I wish I knew some simple and easily applicable answer for that one... I'm not urging you to go to war at Geogia's behalf. What I was pointing at is the foolishness of the idea, that the war in Caucasus is of no importance and no consequence for the U.S. And to applaud enthusiastically Putin's ruthlessness and smarts as Spengler does in that article you approvingly link to is - again - rahter foolish (not speaking about trivial simplifactions and factual errors to be founf in Spengler's text). You oppose the war in Iraq on moral grounds while seeing a reason to extol "strategic genius" of a man, who - in Spengler's words -"understands how to exercise power. Unlike Iraq, the restive Muslim province of Chechnya now nestles comfortably in Putin's palm, albeit with about half the people it had a decade ago. Russian troops killed between 35,000 and 100,000 civilians in the first Chechen war of 1994-96, and half a million were driven from their homes, totaling about half the population. But that is not what pacified Chechnya. Putin bribed and bullied Chechen clans to do Russia's dirty work for it, showing himself a master at the game of divide-and-conquer". Quite puzzling to say the least.
There's no doubt the USA and Europe were outplayed by Putin in Georgia and there's not much to do about it. The result will probably be: ascertaining Russias postinon as a de facto ruler of most of former Soviet territory, encouraging the more delusional parts of Russian political and military leadership, diminishing the West's credibility within the region. Nothing to be enthusiastic about and probably quite consequential to. To quote Spengler once more" The world is full of undead tribes with delusions of grandeur, and soon-to-be-extinct peoples who rather would go out with a bang than a whimper". What if(add emphasis) Russia becomes one of them? I don't see it happening tomorrow, maybe it won't happen at all. I see the combination of ruthlessness, good grasp of realpolitik, deep insecurity, bordering with paranoia, resentment and aggresive nationalism, whichstarts defining contemporary Russia as quite troubling.
I also find misplaced the relief stemming from Georgia not being a NATO member and therefore not necessary to be defended. I'm not that good in writing what if scenarios but still: where does the certainty that the current war would occur regardless to Georgia being member or not come from? Wouldn't the NATO membership enable the West to: 1) Tame Saakashvili a bit and 2) deter the russian "peacekeeping forces"? I do not say that I'm sure about it, I just see that possibility.
But the cause of human freedom made a huge leap forward when the Soviet Empire broke up, and I am loathe to condemn the peoples of Georgia, Ukraine, etc., to Russian rule.
Just because we don't issue them reckless war guarantees that we cannot back up, doesn't mean they're consigned to Russian rule.
Derek,
"Militarily, what you're talking about happening is just not going to happen. (...) It's. Just. Not. Going. To. Happen."
I thought, that writing sentences sentences like "I don't expect to meet Russian tanks on my way to work anytime soon" or "With that kind of advantage and means - financial and political - it brings you really dont have to move tank division back and forth to reach your aims." I made sufficiently clear, that I do not fear Russian army rolling into Europe in foreseeable future. Obviously I was wrong. So leťs do it again: I do not fear Russian army rolling into Europe in foreseeable future. Right?
Rod: I tried to react to your post, but the comment evidently vanished somewhere in the bowels of Beliefnet. When I recuperate from that loss, I will try to react again.
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