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Friedman and Ignatius on Georgia
August 20, 2008
Valuable columns by Tom Friedman and David Ignatius. Friedman concentrates on the error of Nato expansion, and the consequent humiliation of Russia, which has now come back to bite us.
[S]ince we had finally brought down Soviet communism and seen the birth of democracy in Russia the most important thing to do was to help Russian democracy take root and integrate Russia into Europe. Wasn’t that why we fought the cold war — to give young Russians the same chance at freedom and integration with the West as young Czechs, Georgians and Poles? Wasn’t consolidating a democratic Russia more important than bringing the Czech Navy into NATO?…
No, said the Clinton foreign policy team, we’re going to cram NATO expansion down the Russians’ throats, because Moscow is weak and, by the way, they’ll get used to it. Message to Russians: We expect you to behave like Western democrats, but we’re going to treat you like you’re still the Soviet Union. The cold war is over for you, but not for us.
I don’t think we fought the cold war to give young Russians freedom, actually, but put that aside.
The risks of humiliating Russia after the Wall came down were perhaps given too little weight. The dilemma was certainly understood by advocates of Nato enlargement, and there were attempts at outreach through various forms of partnership between Russia and and the alliance, though perhaps this seemed like adding insult to injury. But bear two other points in mind. One, Nato was not enlarged all the way, out of concern for Russia’s reaction: Ukraine and Georgia have been sort of promised membership, but with no timetable. Two, the question was, what were we to say to Poland, Hungary, and then-Czechoslovakia, desperate for release from Russo-Soviet imperium and for the protection of the West? Remember also that the success of their post-socialist transition to market economics was very much in doubt. This was a finely balanced argument.
The real mistake, to my mind, was in taking too long to admit the Eastern Europeans to the European Union–and that in turn owed everything to the fact (a grave mistake in its own right) that the EU had deepened its political integration too fast and too far. A shallower economic union, rather than a United States of Europe in progress, would have been able to embrace Poland and the others more eagerly. As it was, the only fast-acting institutional support for the East European reformers was Nato, a military alliance explicitly created to confront the Soviet Union, and implicitly still aimed at Russia. Friedman accuses the Clinton and Bush foreign-policy teams of “rank short-sightedness” in all this. He makes a good point, but the error was not as clear-cut as he says.
Ignatius focuses on John McCain’s penchant for the “zinger”:
McCain likes zingers. We’ve all seen that mischievous look — just before he shot a quip or sarcastic one-liner at GOP rivals such as former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. It’s one of his appealing qualities, but in this case it worries me. Zingers don’t make good foreign policy. They embolden friends and provoke adversaries — and in the Georgia crisis, that has proved to be a deadly combination…
So what encouraged Saakashvili to make his reckless gamble? Partly it was the ambivalent policy of the Bush administration, which told the Georgian leader one month that “We always fight for our friends” (as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in July in Tbilisi about Georgia’s bid to join NATO) and the next month cautioned restraint. And partly it was cheerleading from the pro-Georgia lobby, in which McCain has been one of the loudest voices…
There’s a moral problem with all the pro-Georgia cheerleading, which has gotten lost in the op-ed blasts against Putin’s neo-imperialism. A recurring phenomenon of the early Cold War was that America encouraged oppressed peoples to rise up and fight for freedom — and then, when things got rough, abandoned them to their fate. The CIA did that egregiously in the early 1950s, broadcasting to the Soviet republics and the nations of Eastern Europe that America would back their liberation from Soviet tyranny. After the brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, responsible U.S. leaders learned to be more cautious, and more honest about the limits of American power.
Now, after the Georgia war, McCain should learn that lesson: American leaders shouldn’t make threats the country can’t deliver or promises it isn’t prepared to keep. The rhetoric of confrontation may make us feel good, but other people end up getting killed.
I think Ignatius is absolutely right about this. The empty threat is a very bad way to conduct foreign policy. Now, recognizing this gets you only so far. It does not tell you whether Nato enlargement–in effect, a threat backed up with tanks–was a good idea. Does Georgia ever join? What about Ukraine? Should Poland have been brought in? Should Nato have been shut down altogether after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Those hard questions don’t go away. But in the meantime, as Ignatius says, the diplomatic zinger is best avoided.
Wasn’t it George H.W. Bush who encouraged opponents of Saddam Hussein (were they the “Marsh Arabs”? - my memory is hazy) to rise up against him after the first Gulf war and then stood by while they were all slaughtered?
Also, why is it so important to get the whole world into NATO? Does “democracy” always have to mean signing on to join America’s military empire?
Posted by: algasema | August 20th, 2008 at 7:02 pm | Report this commentI think NATO continues to serve a valuable purpose, though I have grave doubts about the merits of any early admittance of Ukraine or Georgia.
I recomend Mikhail Gorbachev’s opinion piece in today’s New York Times. I agree with him that Mikheil Saakashvili acted recklessly and at least as tacitly encouraged by American supporters.
I shared Thomas Friedman’s concerns about the Clinton administration’s expansion of NATO, but thought the primary emphasis needed to be on a very subtle handling of Russian sensitivies. With Georgia, the astoundingly foolish ridicule of Russia and its leaders, that is put forward by Saakashvili, truly is alarming.
Posted by: James Canning | August 20th, 2008 at 11:21 pm | Report this commentClive, I think Georgia is manipulating the West. Georgia has no business being in NATO, and we never should have raised the prospect of bringing it in. Georgia isn’t a democracy. It’s “a loose patchwork of fiefdoms under an alleged government that bears more resemblance to an organised crime syndicate. Which is pretty much the story of Georgia since the twelfth century.” South Ossetians and Abkhazians evidently look to Russia for protection and don’t want to be part of Georgia. They shouldn’t be part of Georgia. South Ossetia and Abkhazia are in Geogia only because Stalin drew the Georgian Republic’s borders.
Georgia is certainly no more democratic than Russia. Look at how Saakashvili ran his last election. As Saakashvili apparently started the war with a major attack on the capital of breakaway province South Ossetia, killing acceped Russian peacekeepers in the process, it’s a mystery to me why the West is supporting Georgia, and its Stalin-drawn borders in all this.
Stalin must be laughing from his grave.
Posted by: Tory Torrison | August 21st, 2008 at 12:08 am | Report this comment“There’s a moral problem with all the pro-Georgia cheerleading, which has gotten lost in the op-ed blasts against Putin’s neo-imperialism. A recurring phenomenon of the early Cold War was that America encouraged oppressed peoples to rise up and fight for freedom — and then, when things got rough, abandoned them to their fate.”
– David Ignatius
A moral problem with pro-Georgia chearleading that Ignatius apparently didn’t notice is that South Ossetians and Abkhazians are, with respect to the state of Georgia, the ones who are oppressed. Read the history of their relations with Georgia. In recent years, they literally fought for their freedom against Georgia. If it is moral concerns that concern the West, ought we not to be concerned with how these small ethnic groups have been treated by the state of Georgia? Look at the violence toward them.
Clive, the West is not in a position to solve all of the world’s struggles. Ought we not simply to have remained neutral in the struggle between Georgians, South Ossetians, Abkhazians and Russians? In this struggle, the Georgians did not put themselves on a higher moral plane than the Russians.
Posted by: Tory Torrison | August 21st, 2008 at 1:02 am | Report this commentClive,
you write: “The real mistake, to my mind, was in taking too long to admit the Eastern Europeans to the European Union–and that in turn owed everything to the fact (a grave mistake in its own right) that the EU had deepened its political integration too fast and too far.”
Let’s take aside the question whether deeper political union is a mistake or not. Does that mean that Central European countries had not been allowed into Nato that early if they had been already members of EU? Blaming EU for all this seems quite strange to me - though not totally surprising.
Posted by: Dirk Schumacher | August 21st, 2008 at 8:37 am | Report this commentEntry to the EU is a bit of a red herring. In the 90s the newly independent east european states wanted real security guarantees against a Russia that was embroiled in a murderous war against the Chechens and seemed likely to revert to the Communists in the 1996 election. Only NATO could (apparently) provide that. Although now, with Germany et al looking to secure their winter fuel supplies, if I were Latvian I’d be looking very nervously east.
Posted by: Lawrence Gough | August 21st, 2008 at 9:45 am | Report this commentThe Bush administration made another big mistake in Georgia! The attempt to expand the US interests with the use of power may be good for the application in Texas, but will never deliver any positive results in other countries. It is clear that the aggression by the military forces in Georgia was another well planned, but badly executed operation by the Bush administration, which was conducted with the only purpose to shift the attention to the Georgia from the failed US military operation in Iraq. I personally think that US President George W. Bush has take full responsibility for the thousands of killed innocent people in Georgia and Iraq and be taken to the Justice by the international war tribunal in the Netherlands.
Posted by: Viktor O. Ledenyov | August 21st, 2008 at 9:58 am | Report this commentIndeed, stimulating articles and comments by Clive Cook.
I agree very much that the empty threat [or promise] is a very bad way to conduct foreign policy, as demonstrated by the behaviour of the Georgian leader Saakashvili and his Western mentors.
Should Georgia and the Ukraine be allowed to enter NATO? Only if certain conditions are fulfilled. They must be willing to co-ordinate their foreign policy and action with other NATO members, they must renounce the use of force for offensive purposes, including efforts to regain territories. Also, and this concerns especially the Ukraine, there must be a national consensus in favour. NATO membership should not be decided by a slim parliamentary majority against the will of a strong opposition. Moreover, to stay in NATO, they must remain democracies. Let’s not have another episode like that of the Greek colonels.
Friedman exaggerates his argument about the victimisation of Russia. One could even argue that the West has been too lenient in its criticism of Russia’s human rights violations. Russia already enjoys considerable institutional links with the West, but has often not co-operated constructively: in the OSCE (refusal to let in election monitors), in the Council of Europe (countless complaints against it at the Court of Human Rights, whose strengthening it has opposed), in the G8 (reneging on understaning on Zimbabwe), with NATO (no prior consultation on its actions in Georgia).
Sure, the US has been pointlessly provocative at times. Also the missile shield probably has less to do with protection against rogue states, than with throwing money at the US military-industrial complex, and now giving Poland a guarantee of a US military presence in the face of a more aggressive Russia.
Clive Crook is, in my opinion, wrong in saying that the real mistake was in taking too long to admit the Eastern Europeans to the European Union–and that in turn owed everything to the fact (a grave mistake in its own right) that the EU had deepened its political integration too fast and too far. In his opinion that made NATO the only fast-acting institutional support for the East European reformers.
The fact is that Eastern European countries supported further EU integration at the time, and still do, except for the present governments of the Czech Republic and Poland. There were other institutional alternatives: they could have joined EFTA or the EEA, or both. Further European integration, symbolised by the creation of the Euro, was a way to reassure smaller countries in Europe that a reunified Germany would be firmly anchored into an integrated Europe. Remember, after 1989, one of the main concerns was the role a united Germany would play. In fact, Ms Thatcher hated the idea as much as she hated European integration. A position that many other European countries saw as contradictory.
Posted by: Edward S | August 21st, 2008 at 11:45 am | Report this commentClearly, the Georgian president thought he could crush the separatist movement in South Ossetia using military equipment and exploiting the training provided by the US and Israel. Given the extremely close relationsip of the Georgian defence minister to the Israeli military and intelligence services, one must ask whether the grossly foolish surprise attack by Georgia was encouraged by Israel (and thus the US, although a number of American diplomats tried to keep Mikheil Saakashvili in check).
Posted by: James Canning | August 21st, 2008 at 5:58 pm | Report this commentClive Crook asks: “Does Georgia ever join? What about Ukraine?”
Well, consider current Western relations with Russia. Suppose we let Ukraine into NATO and Ukraine subsequently elects a President and Parliament that lean toward Russia? That is quite possible given Ukraine’s demographics.
What then? Would Ukraine be tossed out of NATO? Or would NATO, designed to oppose Russia, exist with a pro-Russian country in its midst?
Posted by: Tory Torrison | August 22nd, 2008 at 4:15 am | Report this commentIt’s interesting that we are all focusing on Russia, and not so much on Georgia, the cause of all of this. The Americans basically put the Georgian President in place with their funding of the Rose Revolution. And what did the Georgians get out of it? More corruption, and now war.
Is this what American backing brings?
Posted by: Michelle | August 22nd, 2008 at 12:16 pm | Report this commentThat is a very deep and highly needed analysis. My view is that it always worked in a manner described as “action produces counter-action”.
One of the key reasons we now have inteligence service people so influent in the Russian politics is that liberal and pro-Western ideas started to lose public support. After rather cold acceptance of Russia in the democratic world party, after early negative social consequences of economic liberalisation (that is something wrongly blamed on the West), after Belgrade and Iraq. And the rose/orange revolutions in the neighborhood were kind of the turning point for the Russian democracy since they obviously had a strong anti-Russian taste and also scared authorities that US could reproduce it in Russia.
Unfortunately every Russia hostile step, be it or not excused by necessity of “strengthening liberty and democratic values”, hits liberal ideas in Russian politics harder and harder.
Many people in this country had some hopes associated with liberal and business friendly rethoric of Medvedev, but it is now obvious that Georgia disaster will change the emerging “liberals vs. hardliners” balance.
In turn, any rising of hardliners in Russia gives a rise to hardliners in the US. Look what happened to McCain support ratings after Georgia standout especially fueled by “one side of the story” media coverage of the issue. So this is a very dangerous spiral tendency that needs somehow to be reversed.
Russia obviously will not become a Western model democracy until it faces rather hostile and indifferent foreign environment. And just imagine dividends for Europe if it eventually becomes a one.
Posted by: Andrei, Russia | August 22nd, 2008 at 1:03 pm | Report this commentDear all,
First of all regarding the last comment about growing corruption in georgia it’s wrong. corruption has never been so low after 2003. I myself returned back to georgia in 2005 and i was amazed how police and people behaved in georgia. i was used to 1999 corrupted public and police. second about stalin pushing abkhazia and ossetia in georgia. wrong! look at the geography and you’ll see if it could have been the other ways. as well as look at our history before russians arrival in georgia. did we have any probles with abkhazians or ossetians? NO!russian always wanted to have a port in black sea sofrom their on they tried to put a black sheep between us an abkhazians. Ossetian? they were techniaclly created problem!!! and for saakashvili! well let me put this way. IT IS GEORGIAN PEOPLE’S DESIRE TO LEAVE IN DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM!!! We are not after saakashvili or anybody else we are after who will give us a bettter life ! democracy, freedom of speech and not to be n communism era like russian are leaving right now! that is our choice and not the choice of russians and americans for us!!! we are one of the most literete nations in the world! and during the soviet time we were the richest once in the USSR. but we were also the first once to denounce the USSR. WHY? because we want democracy. and we will always strive for it!
Posted by: Beka Toria | August 22nd, 2008 at 1:09 pm | Report this commentHere we come back to the question of what is democracy. It should be at least a parliament with strong opposition and balanced independent media.
Posted by: Andrei, Russia | August 22nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm | Report this comment“The rhetoric of confrontation may make us feel good, but other people end up getting killed.”
More correctly the rhetoric is “red meat” thrown to those in the USA who think the USA should “act tough” in its foreign policy, particularly with regard to Russia. The rhetoric is stupid and the thinking behind the rhetoric is stupid - no other word for them. The consequence is inevitably the death, injury and so on of many innocents, as Mr. Ignatius notes.
“It is clear that the aggression by the military forces in Georgia was another well planned, but badly executed operation by the Bush administration, which was conducted with the only purpose to shift the attention to the Georgia from the failed US military operation in Iraq.”
This may well be true, although I would not say it is clear at this point unfortunately, at least based on any published reports I am aware of.
I suspect that the Bush Administration was fully aware of Georgian government military intentions, if not actively involved in some way. The only people who know for sure are Georgian and USA Administration personnel, Georgian military and USA military involved in Georgia.
I think that journalists should be actively seeking out USA military or quasi-military personnel who have been involved Georgia to question them on what happened and who was involved. Some would know and some I am sure would be willing to talk.
“President George W. Bush … be taken to the Justice by the international war tribunal in the Netherlands.”
I personally think that President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and at least Secretaries Rice and Rumsfeld should be indicted by the tribunal in The Hague. The consequences of their actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and perhaps in Georgia (excepting ex-Secretary Rumsfeld), if there were USA involvement in the Georgian attack or its planning, certainly are on a par, if not greater than, the consequences of any actions by those indicted and tried so far in the tribunal.
What I think will interesting is whether President Bush will attempt at the end of his term to issue a blanket pardon that covers himself along with other Administration members in an attempt to forestall eventual indictment.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | August 22nd, 2008 at 4:55 pm | Report this commentAs Edward S observes, the ABM system for Poland and the Czech Republic has more to do with throwing money at the military-industrial complex in the US (Boeing, in this instance) than it does with seeking protection from Iran. Part of the game is to demonize the Iranian regime by frightening the ignorant typical American voter with fear of nuclear attack from Tehran! Total rubbish.
In today’s FT there is a good report from Tbilisi
Posted by: James Canning | August 22nd, 2008 at 6:29 pm | Report this commentmaking it clear that the foolish surprise attack in South Ossetia was a decision taken in the mistaken belief Russia would not retaliate strongly for the murder of its soldiers in that rebellious province. What role did Dick Cheney’s crowd play in creating this disaster?
“I personally think that President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and at least Secretaries Rice and Rumsfeld should be indicted by the tribunal in The Hague” or in a more rational world, be given the Nobel Peace Prize for patiently bringing a rather Peaceful Democracy to one of worlds most erratic and violent states-Iraq, and brokering, along with Pres. Sarkozy, a rather quick peace in Georgia.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | August 22nd, 2008 at 6:55 pm | Report this comment“Part of the game is to demonize the Iranian regime by frightening the ignorant typical American voter with fear of nuclear attack from Tehran! Total rubbish.”
Demonizing Iran incessantly has not given the McCain campaign any boost in the polls, so now the switch by the Bush Administration to demonizing Russia, the source of untold trillions of tax-payer funds over the years of the Cold War to USA military contractors and the military itself and a ready tool to pull out when right-wing Republican Presidential candidates have no positive history or positive policy initiatives to campaign on.
Republican election always stands on two pillars: appeals to racism, particularly among USA Southerners, and the phony edifice of enhancing “national security”. In reality the “national security” policy is shameless imperialism in all its counterproductive ugliness. It serves to sell vastly more military hardware to the USA government however and give the USA military vast funds to waste.
JBP: Secretary Kissinger was granted the Nobel Prize for Peace, so I guess why not another to a comparable progenitor of death to the innocent and impoverished and destruction of their homeland.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | August 22nd, 2008 at 8:22 pm | Report this commentIronically, George W. Bush’s 2000 election campaign called for a lower profile for the US in world affairs. Brent Scowcroft thinks Dick Cheney went off the rails when the World Trade Center was destroyed, etc., but it is clear that Cheney always has favored an imperial presidency. The vastly inflated “defence” budget has very little to do with national security, and a great deal to do with expanded presidential power and a sustained gravy train for armaments manufacturers, and their lobbyists and lawyers, and for retired generals and admirals, etc.
The question remains, whether Cheney’s crowd helped to set up the Georgian fight with Russia.
Posted by: James Canning | August 22nd, 2008 at 10:38 pm | Report this commentWM,
What nonsense about racism, as the Democrats were avowedly racist for 100 years in the South (and much of the North, only quieter), and currently pursue vile segregationist policy in education and housing, despite the best efforts of Republican to open up schools and housing to all races (via the market of all things!), the Democrats prefer segregation, as they have for their 140 year near-monopoly on being the party of segregation.
Every messed up big city along with the sizable (Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore) has suffered under a Democratic monopoly for 40 years +, along with the sizable number of black people in those cities. The fouled up cities have been run by Democrats for generations, in a direct assault against the inhabitants of these cities.
**
Can someone explain how removing 500+ tons of nuclear material from Iraq did not improve national security? How removing one of the most erratic and violent dictators in the Mid East did not improve national security?
If getting nuclear material out of the hands of psychopaths is imperialism, then please lets have more imperialism.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | August 23rd, 2008 at 2:49 am | Report this commentSince Saddam Hussein had destroyed his nuclear weapons development program in 1991, and not restarted it, the 500 tons of yellowcake uranium sitting around in rusting barrels posed no threat to anyone. Saddam was successfully being controlled or contained with the measures in place for years, before the astoundingly foolish decision to invade was taken.
Posted by: James Canning | August 23rd, 2008 at 9:19 pm | Report this comment