Bloodless Coup in Georgia? 11/22/03--Following Georgia.

OE-- Enjoying the dialogue with you. I don't value the "appearance of control," I guess. I just value the seamless execution of a well-thought out response. ...hope I get to revel in one...

I think he handled Afghanistan quite well. When I was under the perception that Saddam Hussein possessed globally threatening weapons, I thought Bush moved well there. As I was as wrong as he was (and most everyone else on the planet at the time), speaking further about it seems a waste.

The poor planning of the aftermath of the Iraq war coupled with the fact that there were no WMDs have made his critics and political foes quite self-righteously critical of his every breath and bowel movement.

Precisely -what- is Bush going to do, exactly?

We're not going to war with Russia over this. Even if we were inclined to - even if Georgia were our best friends, and there was a huge Georgian-nationality voting bloc in the US - it still remains that we don't really have any options for intervening. This is still Russia we're talking about, #2 on the list of "countries which could initiate the annihilation of the human species if their leader wakes up cranky enough one morning". Frankly, the territorial integrity of a breakaway ex-Soviet republic isn't worth triggering World War Last.

That said, what's the point of rattling the saber? Are we really prepared to try to isolate Russia diplomatically, cut off their trade relations, go back to a Cold War world? Do you really think that'd help?

In a way, not dropping everything and going into crisis mode is a good response. Given that we can't help Georgia in any material fashion at this point, it's probably more useful to signal to Russia that we're not freaking out, that we don't consider this to be a reason to go to war, especially with the more nationalistic of the Russians already thinking that we were the ones who provoked this somehow (man, I guess it's not just our domestic folks who blame everything on Bush!) Bush at the Olympics is a lot less intimidating than Bush in the presidential bunker, issuing hourly condemnations of Russian imperialism.

But yeah, if you can't figure out what good Bush -could- do, why the hell blame him for not doing it?

In a way, not dropping everything and going into crisis mode is a good response. Given that we can't help Georgia in any material fashion at this point, it's probably more useful to signal to Russia that we're not freaking out, that we don't consider this to be a reason to go to war,

Bush at the Olympics is a lot less intimidating than Bush in the presidential bunker, issuing hourly condemnations of Russian imperialism.

Nimh and OE -

I'm an American Liberal, and I don't think that intervention is exactly the way we want to go at this time. Where the hell is Europe in this? Why don't their Liberals take care of what needs taking care of?

What help can we give? Troops? No way. I think that the current bunch has shown themselves to be completely and totally incapable of being trusted with that sort of power and authority. The idea of getting involved in a major international conflict is not a good one.

Cycloptichorn

Lash wrote:

Shows of force in the water...reminds me of the Bay of Pigs...and the time we nearly all got nuked...

OK, fair enough, I did say realists would consider it reckless... but I still think it would be worth it...

What would you propose, concretely, that we do? I mean, yes, raise the issue at the UN... that's already being done. What else?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Nimh and OE -

I'm an American Liberal, and I don't think that intervention is exactly the way we want to go at this time. Where the hell is Europe in this? Why don't their Liberals take care of what needs taking care of?

What help can we give? Troops? No way. I think that the current bunch has shown themselves to be completely and totally incapable of being trusted with that sort of power and authority. The idea of getting involved in a major international conflict is not a good one.

Cycloptichorn

Those are almost precisely the arguments people made against a military intervention in the Kosovo. Of course, both Europe and the United Nations **** up royally in that conflict.

No way of telling where it would have ended, had it not been for NATO intervention. And both NATO and the United Nations are still in the Kosovo, too. Would you say this demonstrates a lack of leadership by Clinton?

I'm an American Liberal....

Awful Update
The violence is dreadful...the rhetoric, frightening.

In the many years I have been writing this blog I have been a consistent critic of Clinton's foreign policy, especially in the Caucuses and as relates to NATO expansion. I made these points many times during the primaries. But there are two things you need to keep in mind. Just because there are legitimate criticisms of U.S. foreign policy does not mean that Russia is on the right side of history. But, more importantly, the foreign policy Establishment is united behind these policies and has invested in them over the course now of almost 20 years. There isn't a whole lot of room for debate over what should have been. We're here now. Like an aircraft carrier, you cannot turn around bipartisan U.S. foreign policy on a dime. This is not some uniquely neoconservative policy. This is U.S. policy.

Working to change that policy demands that we understand the policy as it is and as it has been. We need to understand the military justification of that policy (access to energy supplies to fuel our Naval Fleets and Air Force) as well as the economic justifications. And we should not kid ourselves that we will find Democratic allies in Congress or the Obama campaign that are going to argue that our policy has been all wrong all along. That will never happen. If this conflict becomes a matter of debate in the presidential campaign, it will not be over the wisdom of the overall policy. Obama would be abandoned by the foreign policy Establishment in a New York Minute.

That's the sad fact. So, the U.S. is not going to back down willingly. If it backs down it will be for the same reason that the USSR ultimately backed down during the Cuban Missile Crisis. If we back down it will be because this is ultimately in the Russian sphere of influence and we have no better options given the risk of nuclear conflict.

Beware

You can see the extremely bellicose statements of Vice President Cheney and Sen. McCain (soul mates on this issue) on the conflict in Georgia. And a number of Democratic-affiliated foreign policy hands are roughly on the same side of this issue, if not quite as utterly nuts and eager to get into a war with Russia as Cheney and McCain.

But let me briefly (I hope to come back to this later today) register my deep skepticism about a great deal of the coverage we're seeing about what's happening. We're hearing analogies to Czechoslovakia and Kuwait (which was of course supposed itself to be a latter-day Czechoslovakia) and many other charged incidents of the past. But this strikes me as a lot of crap.

To the best of my understanding, the separatism in these 'breakaway' regions of Georgia is not something ginned up by Russia, though certainly they've exploited it in their effort to either reclaim or dominate parts of what was the Soviet Union. And the Georgians themselves triggered this crisis, however 'disproportionate' the Russian response may be.

This is a vexed part of the globe we're talking about, with a host of overlapping ethnic and separatist conflicts that can make the difficulties of Kosovo and the Palestinian territories seem tractable by comparison. As the standard line goes, my point is not to justify Russian actions. And I should be clear that I have not researched the details of this conflict nearly as deeply as I would now like to. But we should be clear that there are small state actors in the region (Georgia being one of them) interested in making high stakes gambles vis a vis the Russians and they are trying to do it on our dime -- that is, both literally on our dime but more importantly by trying to involve us militarily in their defense.

Meanwhile, there are players (largely, though not perfectly, overlapping with the folks who got us into Iraq) in the US who want to use this period of relative (though diminishing) Russian weakness to push American security guarantees (primarily NATO) not just to the borders of the old Soviet Union (which we've largely already done) but actually within the borders of the old Soviet Union. John McCain has been a supporter of inducting Georgia into NATO. And it is worth noting that had we done that we would currently be in effect in a state of war with Russia since we would be obligated to see the treat the attack on Georgia as an attack on us. Indeed, McCain is saying now we should move ahead quickly and bring them into NATO.

It's worth asking McCain whether he thinks we should be sending American troops into Georgia because in the current circumstances the two moves are close to synonymous.

As I said, there are many complexities to this current situation. And the Russians have a crass and brutal way of expressing their pretensions to regional hegemony. But we need to think closely and carefully just whose defense we're signing on to and whose risk-taking behavior we're underwriting.

As I said, do you want to go to war with Russia over Georgia? John McCain, and unfortunately quite a few others, seem to be saying yes, they do. The hawks will say that the example set in Georgia will foreshadow that to be applied in Eastern Europe. But that's a highly, highly questionable leap. We're in the midst of being led very far astray.

--Josh Marshall