McCain, Obama and Putin

Obama would have plenty of advisors who would assist him in situations like this as he accumulates more experience. The fact is that his heart is in the right place when it comes to these kinds of international issues. McCain is a violent man who sees nothing but military and war. He is seriously deranged when it comes to responding aggressively to any conflict. McCain would not bring peace or solutions, he would pursue conflicts rather than smooth them over and he would grow more wars like weeds. I have no doubt Obama can and would be a harda** when other options have at least been given a good try! God save us from a McCain presidency. Honestly we cannot continue being the bully in the schoolyard forever and I don't know if I'll be able to do anything but sigh and nod as we're taken down.

Unfortunately for McCain there isn't a credible threat for the US to use at this point. Thank you George Bush. Right now diplomacy is the only option we have and frankly probably the best option, I don't think we have a dog in this fight. The entire Neoconservative platform seems to be to go to war with everyone; so why bother listening to them, they're stupid.

Chris

"Bottom line is that Putin's government is a nasty piece of work, and has been (unsubtly) trying to reassert control over nations which are liberalizing and have generally been pro-US. Nobody is suggesting that US troops get involved, but it's plainly obvious whom we should be supporting."

Cool...and when the Russians cut off the pipeline that runs through the western portion of Georgia, and curtail their own pipelines carrying natural gas from that region (which they have done in the past in response to lesser "situations"), what do we do then? And when they threaten to shut off the pipelines that run west into Europe, what do we do?

Face it, we have few cards to play in this situation other than public posturing. Russia holds the trump cards. Kicking Russia out of the G8 isn't going to happen. There will be no groundswell for any kind of military option, and even if there were we are in no position to assist in it.

In short, we are impotent. Bob Dole was in a better situation than we are...he had Viagra. We have nothing to back up any kind of hubris that Steve or John McCain might display.

I don't know whether Putin's a dictator or not, but it's worth observing that Hitler was very popular with the German people for a long time. And there ARE some similarities--Hitler swept away an unpopular, unstable Republic and presided over an economic expansion. People were willing to hand over freedom in return for stability, prosperity, and national dignity. Sound familiar? I don't think McCain is all that stupidly aggressive, and I doubt whether Obama's really all that weak in the knees (though it does worry me that he's willing to shift positions to stay popular): the comforting thing is that whichever one becomes president is NOT going to have Rumsfeld and Cheney around.

how much of a dictator can you be when you are widely popular among your people?

Oh brother. This is the reductio ad absurdum of the populist mindset.

"Oh, this isn't a case of Good vs. Evil," says Rod as he wrings his hands and urges all and sundry to "pray for peace". Well, putting aside for the moment that on one side you have democratically-elected leader of a functioning liberal democracy seeking to to quell secessionist elements within his own internationally-recognized sovereign borders as mere Realpolitik because he is pro-American, if you can't characterize the other side as "evil" when he has engineered apartment complex bombings like Reichstag fires, had opposition journalists pushed out of tenth story windows, and served up polonium-laced tea to exiled dissidents, than what pray tell is the use of the term?

Oh wait, I forgot: Putin hasn't diddled a campaign aide and given her a bastard. (That we know of. We know he spends a lot of time on the private estates and yachts of his good buddy Silvio Berlusconi, whose priapic habits make John Edwards look like a monk.)

It seems both sides have done much blameworthy. And I certainly don't think we should go to war with Russia.

However I guess I am "neocon" enough I kind of do prefer democracies to unfree societies. I kind of don't mind being tougher on non-democracies. I kind of don't see revanchism, even to regain former Tsarist regions, as acceptable or just. (I mean does this mean they can get the "Grand Duchy of Finland" back and it'd be none of our business?) I don't even see the Tsars as morally equal to the US.

Much of the ideas here are pretty strongly predicated on the idea the US is a big monster that Russia should be afraid of. I don't agree with that.

I kind of don't see revanchism, even to regain former Tsarist regions, as acceptable or just.

I haven't seen "revanchism" here at all. The Russians haven't made any noise about reannexing Georgia, or any other former Soviet Republic.

"The thing I'm interested in here is trying to understand what's going on in a broader strategic and historical context, without succumbing to the usual Western liberal democratic line." RD

TR: Yeah we wouldn't want to do that now would we?

"How is it that NATO goes to war to defend Kosovo's secession, but Russia is not permitted to go to war to defend South Ossetia and Abkhazia's secession?" RD

TR: Because NATO is an international body that presumably deliberated first. If any individual nation can start intervening when any attack occurs than there'd be international chaos. This is a misgiving I had about Iraq even when I supported it.

If Russia was concerned about violence toward ethnic minorities in Georgia the least they could have done is taken the time pull together a coalition of allies together before acting. Acting prematurely is unnerving and even potentially suspicious.

You should be relieved that George W. Bush is on hand to respond to this crisis, with his bold yet sensible approach to things.

Har.

"DonF, please tell me where in my comment I displayed "hubris". I didn't say we had good options; we don't. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't care which side wins."

The grasp for the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is a bit of a stretch. One wonders which side we would support if the Arab nations decide, once again, to initiate an oil boycott.

Russia is not an angel, on that we can agree. However, Russia controls substantial natural gas and oil deposits, and it can use those resources to pressure opponents. The decision of who to support in this conflict may be clear to you, but my point is that we are effectively impotent in trying to exert any pressure here. Russia needs our goodwill much less than we need theirs.

I couldn't put things better than Maximos did.

A) We have no vital interests at stake here

B) Russia holds most of the cards. We have precious little negotiating room, but I am sure there are rooms full of sleep deprived overly caffeinated diplomats trying to leverage what they can out of the situation. I sure hope they come up with something. Despite my Realpolitik, I really don't like seeing civilians rocketed to death, and really don't like the fact that we led Georgia's military on, accepted their help in Iraq, and now can do little more than ship them home to deal with the consequences.

Simon: I don't see how any of this has anything to do with Orthodoxy, either. The Russians, Geogrians, most Ossetes, and a large number of Abkhazians are all Orthodox. It's not an Orthodox country vs. a non-Orthodox. It's pure geopolitics. I don't even see where Orthodoxy is getting pulled into it, unless it's in Man from K Streets silly post.

The only post I can find where Larison uses that language is here:
www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/08/08/for-our-orthodox-brethren/

Note that he's expressing sympathy for ALL parties in the conflict.

Really, K street, your posts on this topic have been nothing but ad hominem and insinuation, showing the utter intellectual bankruptcy of your position.

your posts on this topic have been nothing but ad hominem and insinuation

I just find it ironic that paleocons in general, when commenting on foreign affairs, usually employing noting but "ad hominem and insinuation" against their opponents, invariably by accusations of "dual loyalties" and conflict of interest in sympathies for a different set of co-religionists and/or co-ethnics.

How fun that the shoe will start to be on the other foot as the gang in Moscow asserts itself in additional unsavory ways in future years.

Bacevich. Hm. That's a Slavic name, isn't it?

I believe in the right of self-determination. The area that Georgia is trying to retake has long expressed its overwhelmingly desire to be independent of George, and it appears that they want to be united in some sense with Russia.

Regardless of whether Putin is typically a good guy or a bad guy, in this situation he appears to be on the right side, and McCain is on the wrong side ... again. As a conservative member of the religious right, I find it hard to understand how someone like McCain could on the one hand support the democratic breakup of the USSR in the 1990s and then at the present time oppose the democratic separation of South Ossetia from Georgia.

The longer this campaign goes on, the more reason I find for not liking McCain. His views on global warming, cap-and-trade, immigration, enemy-combatant interrogation, drilling in ANWAR, and his frequent hostility toward Evangelicals. This is the first election I won't vote for a president. A vote for McCain is a vote for the destruction of the Republican party, which would then lead to a destruction of the United States. A vote for B.O. is a vote for the destruction of the United States. Perhaps what we need is for individual states to follow the lead of South Ossetia. Who knows, maybe we could get Putin to help us!

I believe in the right of self-determination. The area that Georgia is trying to retake has long expressed its overwhelmingly desire to be independent of George, and it appears that they want to be united in some sense with Russia.

I emphatically do NOT believe in the right of self-determination, a Wilsonian notion that has caused the world a heap of trouble for the past 9 decades. Self-determination only raises the question of what is a legitimate region that gets to do the determining.

In the former USSR, the whole situation is further complicated by the demographic games played by the former totalitarian rulers. The Baltic States, for example, are absolutely justified in their wariness of the ethnic Russian presence in their territory. Conversely, Russia has a legitimate claim to the Crimea, which arbitrarily assigned to Ukraine on a Soviet whim.

But while the desire of ethnic Russians in South Ossetia to join the Motherland merits no sympathy, neither does the desire of ethnic Albanians to tear Kosovo from Serbia, to which that province legitimately belongs.

And note that America's arse-backwards policy on Kosovo has been the product of a thorough bipartisan consensus, more often than not the hallmark of a big policy mistake. Now see the same misguided principle we foolishly fought for in Kosovo applied with similarly unjust results in Georgia. What goes around comes around.

Does every single ethnicity require its own country? Are we leaving the idea of nation states and going back to little feudal pre-states composed of only one tribe?

Chris

It's 1938 again. Sudetenland, Hitler, Neville Chamberlain ...

Where is Churchill?

Re: Winston Churchill @ 11:44 PM

Best. Post. EVER.

I admit I didn't know much about this until a week ago, but it appears we've been encouraging Georgia. Which is textbook stupid. (Hey, other countries: Unless we sign a damn treaty with you, stop assuming we'll help you do what we've asked you to do, especially if we communicate this in private and the average American doesn't appear to know about it. We obviously won't actually help, and it makes us all look like idiots.)

And, as people point out, it's hard to see a single difference between how Russia is acting now and how we acted in Kosovo, except for the fact that Russia clearly has a lot more legitimate interest in what happens directly on its border than we had over in Kosovo.

And for people worried that Russia is going to engulf Ossetia, if Kosovo had had the option of joining the US, do you think they would have hesitated a second? I suspect not. I know various people still think the cold war is going on and we should fight the expansion of Russia, but Russia appears to be treating North Ossetia just fine. (Chechnya, OTOH...) Moving to Russia instead of Georgia isn't going to kill them.

Of course, getting in the middle of a war between Russia and Georgia could.

Chris Mills
Does every single ethnicity require its own country? Are we leaving the idea of nation states and going back to little feudal pre-states composed of only one tribe?

Well, drawing lines totally randomly on a map and calling it a 'country', which is what we've been doing for 150 years, does not appear to be working very well.

Perhaps we should go back to that, and then go forward, letting tribes 'clump together' voluntarily in a more logical manner that doesn't put half the tribe in one country and half in the other.