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Georgia (and Ukraine)
August 12, 2008
Joe Klein accuses Robert Kagan of warmongering.
When a column starts off like this:
“The details of who did what to precipitate Russia’s war against Georgia are not very important. Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama.
“The events of the past week will be remembered that way, too.”
..the author has got to be a neoconservative pushing for the next war. In this case, it’s Robert Kagan, girding for a new twilight struggle with the Sovi…uh, sorry: that was a couple of twilight struggles ago…Russia.
I don’t follow. Kagan’s main point is simply that Russia remains a dangerous and assertive rival to the West.
Historians will come to view Aug. 8, 2008, as a turning point no less significant than Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Russia’s attack on sovereign Georgian territory marked the official return of history, indeed to an almost 19th-century style of great-power competition, complete with virulent nationalisms, battles for resources, struggles over spheres of influence and territory, and even — though it shocks our 21st-century sensibilities — the use of military power to obtain geopolitical objectives. Yes, we will continue to have globalization, economic interdependence, the European Union and other efforts to build a more perfect international order. But these will compete with and at times be overwhelmed by the harsh realities of international life that have endured since time immemorial. The next president had better be ready.
If I wanted to criticise that view I think I’d say it was too much a statement of the obvious, rather than attacking it as insanely militant. As Klein himself acknowledges,
To be sure, Russia’s assault on Georgia is an outrage.
And yet, he continues
But it is important, yet again, to call out the endless neoconservative search for new enemies.
I cannot see that underlining the significance of an outrageous (in Klein’s own view) Russian assault on a US ally (Georgian soldiers serve in Iraq) constitutes a desperate search for new enemies. What a strange reaction to these events.
My colleagues Quentin Peel and Robert Kaplan both have excellent commentaries, Quentin underlying the miscalculations on the Georgian side, Bob echoing Kagan’s view that Russia is back as a grand adversary. Why is it so difficult to hold both of these ideas in one’s head at the same time?
One further thought. Asked about Georgia on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne said that a repaired alliance with Europe might make it easier for the next administration to contain Russia. I wish it were true but this is a classic instance of diverging interests among allies. Europe has no appetite to check Russia over Georgia. On an intelligent assessment of ends and means, what choice does it have? Europe has far more to lose than the US in resisting/antagonising Russia. Obama or McCain would make no difference.
The real question is this: can the US and Europe agree on whether and where to draw a line for Putin, and be willing to make it stick? Ukraine is the test, a much stronger ally than Georgia in its own right, and more defensible. Should it be admitted into Nato and the European Union? Like Georgia, it has been encouraged to seek membership of both–and indeed in April it was promised membership of Nato–but many Europeans, notably Germany, are cool on the idea, for fear of provoking Russia.
Now, most likely, they will be even cooler. One guesses that Putin’s assault on Georgia was partly intended to diminish Ukraine’s prospects of entering into a binding military and political alliance with the West. I would like to see that calculation fail, though I bet it succeeds: if Putin keeps this up, Europe will renege on its commitments to Ukraine. What would Joe Klein say? Would a promise to defend Ukraine then be warmongering–just more of the neocons’ endless search for enemies?
Update: Be sure also to read Chrystia Freeland’s column in today’s FT. (Chrystia is the managing editor of the FT in the US, and a former Moscow bureau chief.)
Like all overly rigid objects, authoritarian regimes conceal a tremendous fragility in their apparent strength – and their leaders know it. It is this realisation that has driven Mr Putin’s systematic destruction of all forms of civil society – an eminently pragmatic measure, although it has mystified some outside observers, who wonder why so popular a leader needs to be so heavy-handed. China’s chiefs have figured this out, too, hence their anxiety about everything from the Muslim Uighurs to the internet to the former Soviet Union’s “colour revolutions”.
Of course, another way to ensure popular support for your authoritarian regime is by playing up nationalist sentiment. We are more tolerant of our home-grown bullies if we think we need them to fight our enemies abroad – as even democratic America has demonstrated in recent years. Mr Putin has understood this all along, launching a brutal attack on Chechnya even before his coronation as president in 2000.
Russia’s expert taunting of the hotheads in Georgia, followed by immediate and massive retaliation the moment Tbilisi took the bait, is the latest evidence that, for the Kremlin, neo-imperialism is an essential bulwark of neo-authoritarianism. Bringing down the walls really did make the world safer. Now that so many leaders are building them back up again, figuring out how to contain the 21st century’s monied authoritarians is our most pressing foreign policy dilemma.
I think that the Bush approach to allow France to take the lead rather than the US is wise. It seems that if McCain were president he would have us embroiled in something that the Europeans can better handle.
This will be an ongoing problem. If McCain is elected the level of turmoil in Europe will escalate.
Posted by: Ron M | August 13th, 2008 at 2:01 am | Report this commentI agree about Chrystia Freeland’s column. It is a powerful indictment of both the authoritarian regimes in Russia and China and western complacency in trying to do business with them.
However, as Mikhail Gorbachev, who must know a thing or two about Russian imperial ambitions, writes in today’s Washington Post, Russia does have some legitimate “back yard” interests, just as the US has claimed to have in Latin America ever since the time of the Monroe doctrine.
The only problem is that back yards can have a way of expanding. America’s, evidently, extends to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Straight of Hormuz, Israel, Egypt, East Africa, South Asia, and eastward, to South Korea and Japan.
Where will Putin’s back yard end? At the Brandenberg gate?
Posted by: algasema | August 13th, 2008 at 2:44 am | Report this commentRussia is looking to its ‘gloried’ past as a guide to the way forward. When enriched, it squanders wealth on the military to the detriment of its citizens.
In 100 years, they have not learned anything.
When the prices of commodities decline and settle, what moron will rule Russia and attempt to rule its environs then?
The Russians are fine people, just the worst led in all of Europe and Asia.
Posted by: Gary Marshall | August 13th, 2008 at 4:13 am | Report this commentThe 5-day war in Georgia (a US protectorate) was imo a proxy war between the USA and Russia, and
as such it was probably imo a hit at the USA in return for the thousands of times greater damage and deaths that the Bush administration has been responsible for in Irak. Remember that the Russian representative at the UN specifically mentioned Irak, Afghanistan and Serbia in the heated exchanges in the Security Council between himself and the US representative this week.
If the Irak war was all about oil (which seems to be generally accepted now by the American people and the the rest of the world), then that
has been a disaster too - except for the US oil companies and security firms operating in Irak, for whom it is a bonanza.
But the majority of Americans are poorer these days, as gas has never been more expensive, and inflation is up (as a result of the weak USD) and so is the jobless rate.
Posted by: J.J. | August 13th, 2008 at 6:17 am | Report this commentOn the other hand, countries (which can hardly be counted as US-friendly) like Russia, Venezuela, Iran and others in the Middle East are raking in the cash and are major beneficiaries of the Bush administration’s failed foreign policy.
“The real question is this: can the US and Europe agree on whether and where to draw a line for Putin, and be willing to make it stick?”
The politics smack of yet another attempt to get a western posse together - but will the mostly UN supporting EU agree? Moreover should we all accept that an effective UN is impossible?
If we plump for a divided world, algasema’s comments above are very appropriate. Russia and the US are claiming many “back yard” interests.
Posted by: Slightly Optimistic | August 13th, 2008 at 9:04 am | Report this commentalgasema,
Why should the rest of the world care about Russia’s ‘back-yard interests’? Why is it at all legitimate for Russia to claim any sphere of influence? Do the people who live in these ’spheres’ have no say on the matter? Are they not entitled to freedom, democracy and full national sovereignty — or are they serfs owned by Russia?!
The argument that the America too has acted as if certain regions of the world are its natural patrimony is really no argument. So what if it did? Does this entitle Russia to do the same?
Do not be so entranced by Mr Gorbachev: his pension and comftorable living are paid for by the Russian leadership. It is well known that he long ago became an apologist for Putin: you should keep this in mind when you read what he writes.
J.J.,
What does Georgia have to do with Iraq? Iraq was not ‘lost’ to the Americans. Since long before the Gulf war Iraq had an independent foreign policy; Iraq was not part of Russia’s ‘back-yard’.
Posted by: RCS | August 13th, 2008 at 9:12 am | Report this commentJ.J., you obviously know more about the back ground of Russia’s back yard than I do, so I am writing the following tentatively and, I hope, with an open mind. First, as matter of principle, I agree that it would be nice if no country had any back yards. But, no doubt since the beginning of recorded history, countries that fancy themselves as great powers have had a tendency to regard nearby (or not so nearby) weaker countries as part of their back yards. To pick one of what must be hundreds of examples at random, there would be no mention in the Bible of a Babylonian exile without this kind of back yard thinking.
There are also times that worrying about what is going on in one’s back yard can be crucial to survival of a country and its people. If I can be forgiven for injecting a personal note, my first marriage took place during the height of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis (in the hometown of JBP, Barack Obama and the Chicago Machine) and not surprisingly, Canada suddenly seemed to be an ideal honeymoon destination, being located in a safe part of America’ back yard (with apologies to John Chuckman of Toronto, who undoubtedly knows that this is true).
The Olympics has also given us an opportunity to focus on how China views its back yard, particularly the Tibetan portion thereof, although the Chinese, of course, do not regard Tibet as back yard territory at all, but rather part of China, in the way that Tahiti is still part of France (I believe). And, has anyone noticed a rather curiously named country at the Olympics called “Chinese Taipei”?
Of course, China’s back yard extends a good deal further these days, as Omar al-Bashir and Robert Mugabe can well attest. This brings me to J.J.’s question as to whether the fact that the US has a number of back yards of its own (or perhaps just one, namely a planet visible from outer space with a distinctly blue color) has anything to do with Russia’s threat to deny freedom and self-determination to people in its own back yard.
Without an any way wishing to make excuses for Putin (since I am not Gorbachev), America’s imperial ambitions and bloody past and present activities aimed at trying to keep order in its own back yard (to the benefit of its military industrial complex, as J. J. points out) diminish its moral standing to speak out against Russia’s attempt to expand its dictatorship beyond its borders.
This is especially true in the light of America’s apparent pipeline interests in Georgia and attempt to militarize that country, as well as using a handful of Georgian troops (since repatriated to fight the Russians) to protect US oil interests in Iraq.
As Chrystia Freeland implies in her recent article, western democracies (even the ones without back yards to attend to) are compromising their right to speak out against dictatorship by doing business with Russia and China. What she did not mention, however, is that it is even harder for “free countries” to speak out against authoritarian governments if they are not fully free themselves. Georgia, for example, does not appear to be a textbook example of a functioning democracy and open society, at least not as far as its breakaway provinces are concerned. There is also another, larger “democratic” country in which freedom is in danger, namely the United States of America.
Anyone who doubts this need only look at what is going on in a place that happens to be located in the same country in America’s back yard that was in play during the missile crisis 46 years ago, namely Guantanano Bay.
Posted by: algasema | August 13th, 2008 at 10:48 am | Report this comment“Guantanamo Bay” (yet another “algasema” typo). Apologies.
Posted by: algasema | August 13th, 2008 at 10:52 am | Report this commentEmpires and backyard interests?
In the long-term sovereign wealth funds are likely to have the final say.
Posted by: Slightly Optimistic | August 13th, 2008 at 11:48 am | Report this commenthttp://www.clusterstock.com/2008/8/who-s-buying-up-america-meet-the-top-ten-sovereign-wealth-funds
While I agree that Joe Klein’s comments on the Russian/Georgian Affair are less than incisive, I do think, Clive Crook, you are abusing language in your criticism.
Georgia is not, in any traditional or meaningful sense of the word, an “ally” of America.
It is not a party to any formal alliance, although its government would like to be.
Sending a small contingent of troops to Iraq, as Georgia did, is evidence of nothing, except a wish to get something in return from the United States.
America was desperate in putting together its rag-tag “coalition of the willing,” pulling out all the stops in its financial and diplomatic brow-beating across the planet.
Never was there so much effort by so many to achieve so little.
The United States simply had to have some dignity-preserving stage props for its totally illegal and indefensible invasion.
But a thousand troops here or two thousand there, mostly in non-combat roles too, means only the countries involved were trying to get some loans forgiven or extended or to get into NATO or to receive some other benefit from Washington.
There was no spontaneous support for America’s illegality anywhere, outside Israel. Indeed, both public protests and United Nations’ activities embarrassed the U.S. claim to be working for the common good.
Klein does have the beginnings of a thread in his argument.
The U.S. - I believe owing to its powerful Puritan origins and influences – does tend to see the world in terms of “saved” and “damned,” or angels and devils.
It does seem to need an enemy out there somewhere to keep its vast armaments and military industry chewing up resources and to spur the kind of drum-beating, baton-twirling, unthinking patriotism that is part America’s civic religion.
At the turn of the 19th century, it was horrid old Spain. Later it was Japan. Then it was Communism. Recently, it was militant Islam. Now, hints again of Communism, vis-à-vis both Russia and China.
The anti-Russian excesses of rhetoric we see in the press today are just clap-trap, cheap propaganda really, full of unanalyzed assertions slightly disguised with lame banter.
Russia is doing what any other power would do in parallel circumstances, and the propagandists must know that.
That being the case, they are being dishonest. That not being the case, they know too little to be writing columns.
Georgia’s relationship with America and NATO is precisely parallel to Mexico’s trying to join the Warsaw Pact in 1979. Even the propagandists must know that Mexico City would have been overrun by America tanks within a week.
Russia has not overrun Georgia, it has limited its actions to a (former) area of the country where it has many citizens and interests, an area that already has sought its independence from the foolish governments we’ve seen in Georgia.
Those shouting about a re-born USSR contributes nothing to understanding and promotes only bad relations with Russia.
I think it fair to call that dumb.
And when it comes to abusive power in today’s world, America has no match, occupying two nations, threatening a third, and beginning to threaten a fourth (Pakistan). There’s nothing to be light and banter about when you’ve caused the deaths of a million people.
Posted by: JOHN CHUCKMAN, TORONTO | August 13th, 2008 at 3:39 pm | Report this commentBravo! John Chuckman of Toronto, another excellent comment.
Posted by: Ken Beard | August 13th, 2008 at 4:59 pm | Report this commentJOHN CHUCKMAN,
Maybe you too are acting as a dishonest propagandist when you assert Russia has limited its actions to an area where it has many citizens. These newly-found Russian ‘citizens’ only recently received their freely distributed passports, a cynical Russian tactic plainly intended as an excuse for Russian intervention in South Ossetia.
But the international system can ill afford such logic. Many countries have expatriate citizens living all over the world. What kind if free-for-all would ensue if every country was allowed to invade whichever territory where it had freely distributed its passports?
Posted by: RCS | August 13th, 2008 at 5:00 pm | Report this commentERRATA: ‘ploy’ not ‘tactic’
‘in which it had freely distributed…’ not ‘where’
Posted by: RCS | August 13th, 2008 at 5:04 pm | Report this commentRCS,
You simply do not know what you are talking about here, but as we know that isn’t terribly unusual.
The people of this region have voted in legitimate referendums twice for their freedom from Georgia.
There is widespread antipathy to a series of bone-headed Georgian governments, and there are genuine connections with Russia.
The direct cause of the Russian invasion was Georgia’s own invasion the region, something that was extremely foolish knowing all that went before.
The U.S. has encouraged the foolish government of Georgia, again and again, to behave provocatively towards Russia.
Indeed, the U.S. often follows this practice to hurt or abuse those it dislikes or resents.
And just as often, it leaves then dangling in the wind afterwards.
The most outstanding case of this - among many - was America’s getting the Kurds to rebel in the 1970s.
Once America, in the person of Kissinger, got what it wanted, it simply didn’t answer the phone anymore as the Kurde were slaughtered.
With the U.S. occupying two countries and threatening two others, responsible for a million unnecessary deaths, I don’t see how any balanced or reasonable person can view anyone at this time as a serious threat other than the U.S.
Posted by: JOHN CHUCKMAN, TORONTO | August 13th, 2008 at 5:20 pm | Report this commentJOHN CHUCKMAN,
What two countries is America occupying? I know of Iraq (with the consent of its elected government), and I know of a NATO force in Afghanistan.
The Russians, on the other hand, have PIECE-keeping missions in South Ossetia, Abhazia, ‘Transdniesteria’ (Moldova) and maybe in other places I have forgotten. Their mission: to keep the pieces of these countries the Russians have grabbed.
Posted by: RCS | August 13th, 2008 at 5:27 pm | Report this commentJohn Chuckman of Toronto
Don’t waste tme answering his posts. Be like me and ignore them. He is a provacateur as well as a Russophobe.
Posted by: Ken Beard UK | August 13th, 2008 at 8:17 pm | Report this commentThe fact is that S.McCain is behind in the polls, so now a “facilitated” argument between US Humanitarian Aid soldiers and the Russian soldiers can be the perfect excuse for a massive confrontation, and the media is already “suggesting ” that John “Bomb,bomb Iran” McCain is meaner, stronger, bullyer and tougher than “peace-loving” S.Obama…. so the voters, being driven into a fear and paranoia frenzy by the USA-Russia media-blitz confrontation , choose the safe and warmongering Presidential candidate ahead of the diplomatic one, it’s been done before and they will do it again , they are experts.
so we already know the neocon part, i wonder what the oil lobby part in all this is…
Posted by: blogger | August 13th, 2008 at 10:17 pm | Report this commentI concur with algasema that Mikhail Gorbachev had a very fine piece in the Washington Post Aug. 12th.
Robert Kagan’s short essay in the Washington Post, claiming that the details of what precipitated the Russian attack on Georgia “are not very important”, is well wide of the mark. The Russians were in the middle of negotiations with Georgia and the South Ossetians, when Georgia launched a surprise military assault.
Kagan in the same piece asserts that Russia “had no discernible interests” involved in the issue of whether it was appropriate for the West to force Serbia to allow the secession of Kosovo.
Posted by: James Canning | August 13th, 2008 at 11:20 pm | Report this commentThis is absurd, because Russia itself has a number of disaffected minorities in various districts or provinces.
I see Mr. Chuckman. So if certain regions of Russia express discontent with Moscow, the US can send out a number of passports and, some time later, launch a liberation drive?
If certain of the people of the Georgian nation do not wish to remain Georgians, they are free to leave. No doubt Russia has been doing everything it can to encourage, train, and arm locals hostile to Georgian rule. Direct interference in another nation’s foreign affairs is an old Soviet tactic.
Now if Georgia is divisible, then so is Russia.
And how do you think the new Russian leaders happy to repeat all the mistakes of the past would feel about foreign nations seeking to liberate their estranged regions?
Iraq was an entirely different matter. Hussein was not elected. He repeatedly threatened his neighbors and stationed troops on the borders ready to attack Kuwait a second time, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. He made every effort to devise and pose a nuclear threat.
Afghanistan was a nation overrun with militant foreign nationals enforcing an Islamic State by force and the heart of operations against the United States. That the US attacked it is no surprise.
I have never understood the Ontarian penchant for defending violent despots and murderous movements whilst deriding a democracy’s right to defend itself against overt threats to its existence.
Regards,
Posted by: Gary Marshall | August 14th, 2008 at 3:23 am | Report this commentGary Marshall
Well said, Mr Marshall. If the Kosovo precedent applies to South Osettia, as the Russians claim, then why not Chechnya?
Can the people who flattened Grozny now don the helmet of PEACEKEEPERS in South Osettia? Some peace that is, the silence of smouldering ashes.
Posted by: RCS | August 14th, 2008 at 7:34 am | Report this commentI wonder if anyone else sees a parallel to what is happening now in Georgia with what happened to Carthage at the end of the Punic wars?
Posted by: Ken Beard | August 15th, 2008 at 11:34 pm | Report this commentI posted a response to Mr. Chuckman’s remarks on August 14th. Shortly afterwards, the comment was removed. Would the person who removed it care to answer why it was deleted from the comments section?
Posted by: Gary Marshall | August 16th, 2008 at 3:39 am | Report this commentI see Mr. Chuckman. So if certain regions of Russia express discontent with Moscow, the US can send out a number of passports and, some time later, launch a liberation drive?
If certain of the people of the Georgian nation do not wish to remain Georgians, they are free to leave. No doubt Russia has been doing everything it can to encourage, train, and arm locals hostile to Georgian rule. Direct interference in another nation’s foreign affairs is an old Soviet tactic.
Now if Georgia is divisible, then so is Russia.
And how do you think the new Russian leaders happy to repeat all the mistakes of the past would feel about foreign nations seeking to liberate their estranged regions?
Iraq was an entirely different matter. Hussein was not elected. He repeatedly threatened his neighbors and stationed troops on the borders ready to attack Kuwait a second time, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. He made every effort to devise and pose a nuclear threat.
Afghanistan was a nation overrun with militant foreign nationals enforcing an Islamic State by force and the heart of operations against the United States. That the US attacked it is no surprise.
I have never understood why so many Ontarians hold a penchant for defending violent despots and murderous movements whilst deriding a democracy’s right to defend itself against overt threats to its existence.
Regards,
Posted by: Gary Marshall | August 16th, 2008 at 6:12 pm | Report this commentGary Marshall
blogger’s comment strikes me as somewhat extreme - and very likely accurate.
Posted by: algasema | August 17th, 2008 at 1:53 am | Report this commentHello, everybody, it is all about the Georgian pipeline; it is all about the Great Game for control of the huge Caspian oil resources. See, for example, Dan Rather’s August 15 article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
So why should any of us waste more time writing posts about self-determination for the poor, persecuted South Ossetians (and they have been) or those democratic, freedom-loving Georgians (and they are)? I, for one, do not intend to.
Posted by: algasema | August 17th, 2008 at 2:33 pm | Report this commentHi, algasema.
Read what I wrote about the Georgian pipeline here:
http://blogs.ft.com/rachmanblog/2008/05/war-over-georgia/#comment-11707
Posted by: RCS | August 17th, 2008 at 2:54 pm | Report this commentMr. Chuckman, as usual, could not be more accurate in his assessment. Robert Kagan is a paid apologist for the worst of right-wing USA governmental actions regardless where they are or what they are. This shameful, incessant propagandizing by the Bush Administration about the situation in Georgia (yes, a would-be protecturate of the USA) and Russia’s reaction to Georgia’s aggression - no doubt encouraged by the Bush Administration itself - is reprehensible. Equally reprehensible is the willingness of mainstream USA media to permit Secretary Rice to blather on with her calumny of the Russia government. George Bush is too dim to know better, Secretary Rice knows better or should know better than this. No question that a side benefit for the media onslaught is to bolster Senator McCain’s posturing ala George Bush in condemning Russia without the slightest clue what he is talking about. The Republican right-wing will continue to closet itself in the utter phoniness of “homeland security” and “national defense”, as it immediately and utterly falsely attaches that idiocy to the events in South Ossetia. In the meantime, people are dying there and those already poverty-stricken have lose the little they had - all for the false glorification of George Bush and John McCain. It is beyond sickening.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | August 18th, 2008 at 1:50 am | Report this commentHello Mr. Murray,
I did read your response.
Georgia is the aggressor in seeking to restore rule within its borders?
You repeat many times that the members of the US administration are quite ignorant of how this could possibly be. I must be as well.
Why don’t you go beyond the assertion and provide some sort of argument for such a strange position.
Regards,
Posted by: Gary Marshall | August 18th, 2008 at 2:44 am | Report this commentGary Marshall
The above two posts (Wendell Murray and Gary Marshall) are typical examples of blindness, in the one case to the evils of the new and dangerous fascism that has taken over in Putin’s expansionist Russia (Murray), and in the other, (Marshall) to America’s Neocon march in the same direction (though we have not yet caught up to the Russians and the Chinese, since there is still some freedom here, unless it disappears under a Republican President McChange).
There is an old saying. I believe from Southeast Asia, that when elephants fight, everything in their way is crushed. Many words of wisdom can be said (or posted) about Georgia and South Ossetia, but no one would argue that they are the elephants in this particular fight (or Great Game).
Posted by: algasema | August 18th, 2008 at 3:07 am | Report this commentHello Algasema,
Georgia is a sovereign nation. Its leaders were democratically elected. The government, long weary of Russian interference in its affairs during this last 25 years, and long weary of Russian control over the last 200, has decided to form alliances elsewhere. This is not a privilege, but a right granted to any nation.
Please do explain the legal clause or conditions that allow Russia to impose by force its will on a passive foreign democratic government working solely within its borders?
That this signal affray may embroil the United States and Russia in a military confrontation is doubtful. But even if it did, the source and blame for the conflict certainly rests with Russia’s incursive actions, present and former.
By the way, how would you feel were an petulant ex-wife meddling in your current romances?
Regards,
Posted by: Gary Marshall | August 18th, 2008 at 5:54 am | Report this commentGary Marshall
Normally I agree with algasema, but not on this issue. USA foreign policy in regard to Russia by the current Bush Administration has been one of unremitting aggression, bordering on recklessness, not least the movement of USA troops and weaponry into Eastern Europe from Western Europe. Troops and and weaponry belong in either place. The proposal to station missiles of any sort in the Czech Republic or Poland under the pretense of “protection” from Iranian missiles is utter nonsense. They would be directed at Russian from virtually its borders for no plausible good reason.
The USA has essentially reveled in the collapse of the Soviet Union with the consequence of an economic contraction of 50% or as high as 80% and the suffering for the average Russian or citizen of a former Soviet Republic and the social chaos that have resulted. The outcome has been the emergence of the “oligarchic” economy composed of a limited number of individuals with vast wealth and income, as well as political power. We in the USA at least somehow find it acceptable that the current oligarchs achieved their wealth through the theft of State assets whose value was due to the sacrifices of the hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens during the period of the Soviet regime. President and now PM Putin and his advisors - for whatever their faults - have made tremendous strides in reducing chaos and in strategizing to exploit the advantages of Russia’s natural resources, natural gas and oil in particular. Natural resources are the only card Russia holds - aside from its nuclear arsenal - to assert any type of power vis-a-vis the West, the USA in particular, so they have to play that card.
The current political demarcation of States in the area of the former Soviet Union suffers from the arbitrary divisions made by Stalin, along with the forced and encouraged movement of one geographic ethnicity into the territory of another ethnicity. Also the Soviet Union was a unified state: all were Soviet citizens despite ethnicity and locality. That all changed when the Soviet Union dissolved. Among the legacies the separation of North and South Ossetia. One part in Russia, the other in Georgia.
I do not know any of the details of how or why the USA has allied itself with the current Georgian government, but the USA government has paid private contractors to build military bases in Georgia whether “owned and controlled” by the USA or Georgia I do not know. USA military personnel are also resident in Georgia presumably to provide training and advice. The USA has proposed Georgia for membership in NATO, a proposal apparently opposed by European NATO members collectively.
President Bush when making his periodic nonsensical comments about the conflict there never fails to mention the “democratically elected” government of Georgia, as though any recent election in Georgia is just like elections of local officials in the localities where Americans live. The election of the current and prior Georgian Presidents likely approximates much more the recent re-election of Robert Mugabe than of local officials in the USA.
Much more could be written. In regard to evidence of USA governmental complicity in the Georgian governmental actions that precipitated the conflict, I suspect that the evidence will become available once the current Administration is out of office despite whatever attempts will be made to destroy it. Similar evidence of the lies of the current Administration in regard to the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been available since shortly after the invasion and is accumulating.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | August 18th, 2008 at 2:04 pm | Report this commentGary Marshall and Wendell Murray, your comments merely bear out my point that neither great power has clean hands in this nasty and dirty war (and what war is not)?
I should really say clean feet; hence my reference to the elephants. The saying I quoted above seems not to have come originally from Southeast Asia, as I thought, but from the Swahili people in East Africa. The original goes: “Wapiganapo tembo wawili ziumiazo nyasi.” “When two elephants fight it is the grass that gets hurt.”
No doubt the Southeast Asians have their own equivalent, not to mention the Georgians and South Ossetians (even without the elephants).
“algasema”, by the way, is a combination of my name “Algase” and “asema” - Swahili for “he says”. I am glad to see that my frequent typos may make it a candidate for the (English) dictionary one day.
Posted by: algasema | August 18th, 2008 at 2:38 pm | Report this commentThe average person inevitably suffers from war. The poorest and weakest people suffer the most. Violence of any sort, including war, should be discouraged, but rarely is. War certainly is not discouraged. Why not the Department of Peace in place of the erstwhile Department of War instead of the current Department of Defense - one more military euphemism - and the redirection of the vast current spending on production of weaponry and a standing military instead to peace-enhancing activities?
Yes, Russia and the USA militarily are elephants, but in this particular case it was the military fly, Georgia, that provoked the Russian elephant, somehow assuming that the other elephant, the USA, would join the fray.
It is simply not credible that President Shakashvili would launch a military campaign that was certain to provoke a military response from Russia with its vastly superior firepower and troops without something more than an assumption of USA backing. The USA reaction of flying Georgian troops from the Middle East back to Georgia signals some proactive complicity on the USA government’s part to the initial action.
I am sure much evidence regarding the specifics on this will come to light over time.
My point in regard to Mr. Crook’s posting is that individuals such as Mr. Kagan are in fact war-mongers and should be condemned as such, as should the current USA Administration which ultimately created the conditions under which something like this might happen. And then top members of the Administration, i.e. President Bush and Secretary Rice, launch a frenzy of media publicity to confuse the USA public through lies and misrepresentation of the facts while further provoking Russia. The ultimate responsibility for the death and destruction lie with the Georgian and USA Administrations, not with Russia’s.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | August 18th, 2008 at 5:39 pm | Report this commentHello Mr. Murray,
You are as adept at avoiding direct questions as you are generous with your opinions, no matter how absurd they are.
The US wishes to construct a missile defence shield to protect Europe and the US from attacks by irrational governments such as those in Iran. Poland is a democratic and autonomous nation that happily has rid itself of the stifling, arbitrary, and murderous Soviet regime. The Polish Government need not seek any nation’s approval for locating a defensive network on their soil. This point entirely escapes your notice. Were the weapons offensive in some way, then I might understand the Russian claims of a threat.
I would say that it is you, Mr. Murray, who seem to be living in the past when the US and the Soviets vied for influence in lesser states. This is the 21st century and you do not appear to have grown up with the profound global changes of the last 20 years.
With each sentence you reveal a shameful ignorance of democracy, government, economics, and of Soviet history. You also seem to have an understanding of Russia’s present course one might attribute to an imbecile.
Perhaps you should read a little more on the subject before tapping wildly on keys.
Certainly, the Russian Adminsitration is easily provoked these days, by wealthy and ordinary citizens expressing and demonstrating their opposition to present rule, by foreign companies stripped of assets after having invested immense amounts of money, by inquisitive journalists, and by autonomous states acting in their own interests.
What nation or person on this earth would fear such a grand paternity as that offered by the benevolent ‘Uncle Vladimir’?
Write as freely as you do in Russia as you do presently in the United States, and I suspect you will be no more heard of again.
Regards,
Posted by: Gary Marshall | August 19th, 2008 at 2:31 am | Report this commentGary Marshall
I posted a comment to Mr. Chuckman that was initially been withdrawn by persons unknown with a note that it was ‘awaiting moderation.’ Whatever that means is quite a mystery to me.
Whoever is performing the task of ‘moderation’ seems somewhat slow as the clock sits at 4 days and counting.
I then posted the comment again, which was subsequently withdrawn, by persons unknown.
Usually an explanation follows such censorship. Would the person responsible care to offer one?
Regards,
Posted by: Gary Marshall | August 19th, 2008 at 6:26 am | Report this commentGary Marshall
Gary Marshall: Not sure why that comment (and a couple of others, also now stetted) was filtered out for moderation. The subsequent delay was my fault. Sorry about that. — Clive
Posted by: Clive Crook | August 19th, 2008 at 12:07 pm | Report this commentI am no imbecile, nor do my comments remotely reflect those of an imbecile. Your comments are ad hominem, irresponsible and without any basis in fact- all clear hallmarks of extreme right-wing thinking.
“Certainly, the Russian Administration is easily provoked these days, by wealthy and ordinary citizens expressing and demonstrating their opposition to present rule, by foreign companies stripped of assets after having invested immense amounts of money, by inquisitive journalists, and by autonomous states acting in their own interests.”
Any facts to support these assertions aside from tertiary repeating of the propaganda emanating from virtually all mainstream USA media and from too many other Western media?
Facts are facts. Regarding USA government complicity in the actions of President Shaakashvili the facts will eventually come out over time reported by those involved directly. There is always someone who will rather face the personal attacks from the liars at the head of the USA government who have everything to hide rather than allow those lies to be perpetuated.
“Write as freely as you do in Russia as you do presently in the United States, and I suspect you will be no more heard of again”
What evidence do you have for that assertion? By the way, President Bush has arrogated to himself - good example of an imbecile, if you are looking for one - the sole option of declaring anyone - USA citizen or not - an enemy combatant, presumably me included. My rights as citizen are currently abrogated here and now.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | August 20th, 2008 at 12:23 am | Report this commentWendell Murray asks what evidence there is for Gary Marshall’s assertion: “Write as freely as you do in Russia as you do presently in the United States, and I suspect you will be no more heard of again.”
I would point to Politkovskaya, Litvinenko…
Mr Murray would probably claim these cases were never proven. Neither were the agricultural yield statistics in the former Soviet Union. In an imperfect world we have no choice but to infer facts from incomplete information.
Posted by: RCS | August 20th, 2008 at 1:34 am | Report this commentI suppose that by waking up in the morning Pres. Bush held responsible for a hundred Armageddons by the maniacal Left.
Couldn’t it just be possible that Shaakashvili erred in judgment and Putin over-reacted? Given the simplicity (and plausibility) of this explanation, I suppose we should toss it aside and bring on the conspiracies.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | August 20th, 2008 at 1:53 am | Report this commentHello Mr. Murray,
I did not say that you are an imbecile. I know you are not. I said that your opinions indicate as much.
You want facts.
The head of British Petroleum was just expelled from Russia. Oil companies having invested billions in certain regions that Russian technology could not penetrate were stripped of their assets by a state owned oil company just as production commenced. A certain Russian billionaire was jailed and his company plundered by the same, for attempting to use his influence in an election, the right of any citizen in a democratic nation.
A former Russian national highly critical of Putin and his gang was assasinated in London just a year ago. The candidate for the Ukrainian presidency survived such an attempt. The murders and disappearances of numerous journalists remain unsolved. Few, if any, private Russian newspapers and television stations remain. All are under the rigid control of the government.
Any sitting member of Russia’s Parliament is free from criminal charge.
A Russian general threatened a former enslaved state with nuclear attack for locating a purely defensive military system on their sovereign soil.
The sovereign nation of Georgia was attacked while attempting to reassert control over Georgian territory. This induced Russian ‘peacekeepers’ to invade a foreign country and abet their rebellious Georgian allies in committing all sorts of attrocities against the Georgian people in defence of the Georgian people.
These are facts that you seem incapable of understanding or facts that you neglect as it renders most of what you have said in this thread worthless.
I believe it is the latter because you hold to an ideology that defies reason and sense. Any information that confirms this wretched and misguided ideology you embrace; That which indicates the contrary you childishly ignore.
As an example, you say the facts about US complicity in and endorsement of Georgian actions will become known. Perhaps these assertions form some part of the truth. I doubt it, and for the moment these supposed facts are little more than fanciful ideas spinning about in your pathetic mind.
In the United States you are free to speak, even with a singular stupidity. In present Russia you will learn very quickly to shut your mouth in order to perhaps avoid some mysterious disappearance or bizarre poisoning.
I am sure you will disregard most of what I have said and go passing foolish assertions as fact or truth, something that is probably instinct for you.
Regards,
Posted by: Gary Marshall | August 20th, 2008 at 5:50 am | Report this commentGary Marshall
Hello Mr. Crook,
I did read your comment. Thank you for responding so quickly and for resolving the matter.
Regards,
Posted by: Gary Marshall | August 20th, 2008 at 5:57 am | Report this commentGary Marshall
Yes, I will keep spinning such fanciful ideas in my mind … so long as they are based on facts.
“The head of British Petroleum was just expelled from Russia”
I have made no effort to determine the facts regarding this assertion, although I am certain that there is much more to the circumstances than is evident from this comment.
“the facts about US complicity in and endorsement of Georgian actions will become known. Perhaps these assertions form some part of the truth.”
I obviously have no direct knowledge, although I do know someone who may have direct knowledge. To my knowledge, neither Secretary Rice and President Bush has offered any objective journalist the opportunity to question her or him whether the USA had involvement or minimally was aware of Saakashvili’s intentions beforehand, while as loudly and widely as possibly making mostly baseless accusations. It is completely implausible by the way that the USA government was unaware of Saakashvili’s plans before Georgia attacked South Ossetia. USA military personnel are fully integrated with Georgian military personnel. In addition is more than implausible that President Saakashvili would act as he did knowing the reaction from Russia without more than an assumption of military support from the USA.
“I believe it is the latter because you hold to an ideology that defies reason and sense”
You are correct, that is your belief in the sense of faith lacking factual evidence.
“even with a singular stupidity”
Sorry again, my comments are neither stupid nor singular.
“The sovereign nation of Georgia was attacked while attempting to reassert control over Georgian territory.”
Yes, Georgia is sovereign, but so was Iraq, brutally invaded on utter lies and pretense, now occupied by USA troops going on 6 years with no end in sight. Hardly democratic however as Iraq was hardly democratic.
The political division of South and North Ossetia is an artificial one stemming from the gerry-mandering of borders under Stalin. The sudden collapse and the subsequent utter chaos have led to territorial and ethnic conflict exploited by many outside parties including Middle Eastern dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia in Chechnya and the USA in Georgia. Saudi Arabia is one of the largest funders and exporters of the perpetrators of “Muslim” terrorism - so long as it occurs outside Saudi Arabian borders.
The know-nothingness of the phrase represents extreme right-wing commentary at its ripest. The phrase sounds as though it was lifted verbatim from one of President Bush’s recent misstatements about the events in South Ossetia and Georgia.
“a former enslaved state”
Have you asked any Georgians about that concept? Does the average Georgian agree with you?
Posted by: Wendell Murray | August 20th, 2008 at 12:29 pm | Report this commentHello Mr. Murray,
I see that you question my ‘assertions’ about the head of BP. Yet, by avoiding all the other condemnatory points, you tacitly concede that Russia is an undemocratic nation governed by a ruthless regime. But do concentrate your efforts on ascertaining the true nature of Mr. Dudley’s expulsion.
You have reckoned upon US efforts to prod the Georgian president to act. I propose an alternate theory. The US knew nothing of the attack.
What support could and did the US offer to inspire Mr. Sakashvili to reassert control over Georgian territory? No US troops came to Georgia. No preparations were made. The US military group residing there are little more than instructors and they number about 100. You call this full integration?
Do you have any idea of the effort required to move even a brigade of US troops, ships and supplies from the US or elsewhere to remote nations? The labours are immense as are the requisite resources. There has been no indication from any quarter of such arrangements or actions. There is no US presence in the region save in Afghanistan, and the troops are still there.
You sound like the incorrigbly frenzied alchemist intent on discovering the method of turning mercury into gold. Yes, if only Mr. Bush would submit to interrogation with a few Russian agents and several bottles of Sodium Pentathol, then ‘facts’ will be known and I, the omniscient Wendell Murray, shall be vindicated!
There was no US knowledge of the event, There was no US involvement. There were no US pledges of military assistance because there has been no military assistance. Mr. Sakachvili would have insisted on overt demonstrations of security before embarking on that dismal excursion. Mr. Sakashvili acted with his military and advice from his counsellors. And as all know, he judged badly on drawing Russian into the fray.
I believe I have already answered your comparisons between the Georgia reasserting control within its dominion and the US strike against and occupation of Iraq. I shall repeat it here for one not so inclined to listen to and learn from opinions not his own.
“Iraq was an entirely different matter. Hussein was not elected. He repeatedly threatened his neighbors and stationed troops on the borders ready to attack Kuwait a second time, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. He made every effort to devise and pose a nuclear threat.
Afghanistan was a nation overrun with militant foreign nationals enforcing an Islamic State by force and the heart of operations against the United States. That the US attacked it is no surprise. ”
As for Georgia and the ‘disputed’ Georgian territory, every nation, even Russia, seems to acknowledge the two provinces as belonging to Georgia. You appear to be in a negligible minority.
I can only describe what I see, Wendell, regarding Soviet enslavement of nations in and around Russia. None then seemed to enjoy that barbarous, pitiless rule, and none seem to relish its resurrection by governors equally barbarous and pitiless.
You apparently do for reasons that I cannot fathom. Perhaps you admire narrow minded and hellish brutes crushing every conceivable freedom. Perhaps you savour military corps hunting, persecuting, humiliating, and murdering defenseless citizens. I do not know what the attraction may be, but it is not something that appeals to those who favour the liberties one associates with representative Democracy and all its heartening, diverse, and enriching elements.
Regards,
Posted by: Gary Marshall | August 21st, 2008 at 2:11 am | Report this commentGary Marshall
Final note on this. I am of course not suggesting that the USA had any intention of committing troops to aid Georgia in its activities for the practical reasons you cite as well as for any number of other reasons.
I do not know the number of USA military personnel resident in Georgia. I also do not know the degree of integration with Georgian troops, except that the USA military has had a continually close involvement with the Georgian military for many years now and has had military bases built by Pentagon contractors, some or all of which were apparently destroyed by the Russian military.
I do not condone what appears to be gratuitous destruction of Georgian infrastructure by Russian troops. That is particularly senseless, although I do not know the facts.
My main point is that the circumstances are highly suspicious, particularly in light of the constant Bush Administration false propagandizing about virtually any foreign activity it undertakes, most visibly the Iraq invasion and occupation.
As I have written before, the truth will eventually come out. I suspect the truth will be at considerable variance to the loud protestations made by President Bush and Secretary Rice, but time will tell.
I decline to comment on Iraq or Afghanistan except to say that I completely disagree about any justification for invasion and current occupation by the USA government, no matter how heinous the Iraqi regime may have been.
I also will pass on debating the merits and demerits of various Soviet regimes, but I certainly do not share your vitriolic view of all things Soviet.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | August 21st, 2008 at 11:23 pm | Report this commentHello Wendell,
That is fine.
I shall just offer one last thought.
In order to truly grasp how rotten the Soviet regime was, you really had to live under it. Then you would know why so many peoples and nations within its walls and under the foot of its military were ecstatic when it fell apart. It is all very nice to preach the virtues of a system that one knows only from a great distance. When you get closer, you start to see it for what it really is.
Many Nazi sympathizers, when the German tanks rolled into their own lands so many years ago, finally and with much regret personally witnessed the diabolical nature of that regime that they had vigorously championed. You should thank all those democratic nations, especially the US, for sparing your neighborhood the same fate.
Regards,
Posted by: Gary Marshall | August 22nd, 2008 at 3:05 am | Report this commentGary Marshall