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Monday, August 18, 2008
We must protect Georgia … someday, maybe
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a ceasefire agreement committing his country to withdraw from occupied areas of Georgia, but if the Russians intend to honor that commitment, they’re going to do it in their own sweet time.
Eyewitness reports from Gori say there’s no sign of a Russian withdrawal, and in fact Russian troops seem to be preparing for a long stay. If that proves true, there’s not much the United States can do about it except complain and try to make the Russians pay as high a price as possible in diplomatic and economic terms.
But it does seem time to ask: How did we get into this mess? After all, this is a war in which everybody has lost.
The Russians will now incorporate South Ossettia and Abkhazia into their sphere of influence if not into their country, but those two impoverished areas surely aren’t worth the damage this war has done to Russia’s reputation and economic relationships.
Georgia of course has suffered far greater damage — militarily, economically, physically and psychologically. And the United States has been embarrassed by its inability and unwillingness to protect a close ally from invasion.
The Georgians wanted very badly to believe that America would come rescue them in a crisis — after all, tiny Georgia had sent 2,000 troops to help us out in Iraq, so surely the big, bad United States would return the favor for their little friend, right?
For their part, American officials gave the Georgians just enough subtle encouragement to keep that belief alive, in part because they never thought the crisis would come. Both the Georgians and Americans convinced themselves that the Russians would never dare treat a U.S. ally so harshly.
Well, the Russians would, and did, and still are.
At root, the Georgian tragedy can be blamed on a disconnect in U.S. foreign policy. The American people like thinking of their country as the world’s policeman, protecting the little guy. “We are all Georgians,” as John McCain expressed it. That’s why both McCain and Barack Obama continue to talk tough even now, claiming to support Georgia’s inclusion in NATO even though they both know that would require the U.S. to defend Georgia militarily against attack.
Yet right at the moment, the moment when it matters, neither one of them is willing to take that step. They’re talking smack while they’re backing out the door.
That’s the essence of the problem right there: Even after Russia has called our bluff, we still try to pretend that someday off in the future, we will protect Georgia.
Just not today.
In the end, the Georgians are victims not just of their own self-delusion, but of our little national ego trip. We like to think of ourselves as defenders of democracy; we like others to think of us that way. But unless our direct national interests are on the line, we aren’t willing to pay the price required.
The Russians knew that. The Georgians now know it too. Only the American people and their leaders still pretend otherwise.
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McCain’s instincts push him toward war
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sen. John McCain has seized on the Russian invasion of Georgia as a chance to demonstrate to the American people what kind of president he would be on foreign policy matters.
For better or worse, I think he’s succeeded. McCain has clearly been more confrontational and aggressive than the Bush White House, going so far as to announce that in the wake of the invasion, “We are all Georgians,” a statement that implies a degree of commitment that the United States is not in a position to honor.
Even more startling was McCain’s decision, as a mere candidate for president, to send personal envoys to confer with Georgia’s leadership. Such a step is the prerogative only of a president, and is an act of dangerous presumption at an extremely delicate time.
To some Americans, McCain’s rhetoric has nonetheless communicated an image of authority that they find reassuring in a president. It also confirms him as an instinctive type of leader, someone whose response to a crisis is driven more by his own character than by the specifics of a challenge.
That has produced a consistent response to a wide range of policy questions.
In 1999, when President Clinton decided to launch air attacks to stop Serbian attacks on civilians in Kosovo, most Republicans in Congress opposed military intervention. McCain was also a harsh critic of the Clinton policy, but for a very different reason: It wasn’t aggressive enough.
McCain claimed —- incorrectly, it turned out —- that bombing alone would never work. Instead, he wanted to send tens of thousands of U.S. troops to the region, ready to intervene.
“Militarily, you just go in and drive them out of Kosovo,” he said at the time. “Yes, the terrain is terrible; yes, the Serbs are tough. But … if we can’t prevail over a country the size of Ohio with 10 million people, we’ve wasted several trillion dollars in defense spending.”
In the Republican primaries of 2000, the hard-line conservative foreign policy “experts” who later pushed hardest for an invasion of Iraq did not support George W. Bush. Their candidate was McCain, because they believed he would be most likely to conduct the sort of militarily interventionist policy they advocated.
More recently, McCain’s aggressive instincts have been apparent in his policy toward Iran. There too he has been more eager than most —- including many in his own party —- to talk of military solutions to a problem that to many experts defies a military approach.
The question for the American voter, of course, is whether a candidate of such instincts is well-suited for the White House in times such as these. At rare moments in history, a military response is essential and required, as it was in World War II, and as it was in Afghanistan in the wake of Sept. 11.
But more often, the choices offered by history are more complex, requiring judgment and wisdom. Choosing confrontation and war too quickly when other options are available can prove disastrous, as the example of Iraq should have taught us.
McCain’s instinct, demonstrated time and again and most recently now in Georgia, is to cast America as a global policeman. In the next few months, American voters have to ask themselves whether they share that vision and instinct.
UPDATE: The original version of this column reported that in 1998, John McCain signed a letter drafted by the Project for a New American Century that urged President Clinton to take military action against Saddam Hussein. McCain did not, and the column has been revised to that effect. — JB
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