Another Post That Made Me Cry

This is right out of a Russian novel.

I am a sentimental old fool, for which I am grateful.

A Bit of Wisdom From Victor Hanson

I admire Victor Hanson, who is a classicist and military historian. He's too enamored of the crusade to save democracy everywhere, but he's a smart guy.

He's figured out that NATO's obsolete, like an overgrown plum tree.

Don't take my word for it. Take his.

If it's obsolete and ineffective, why provoke Russia by expanding a useless alliance?

Tremble For the Republic

Pat Buchanan, love him or not, is hot today:

Mikheil Saakashvili started this war with his barrage attack and occupation of South Ossetia. Russia's war of retribution was far less violent or excessive than the U.S. bombing of Serbia for 78 days over Kosovo, or our unprovoked war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which has brought death to scores of thousands, or Israel's 35 days of bombing of Lebanon for a border skirmish with Hezbollah.

Yet, declared John McCain of Russia, "In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations." Even Dick Cheney must have guffawed.

Russia must get out now, adds Bush, for South Ossetia and Abkhazia belong to a sovereign Georgia. But when did Bush demand that Israel get off the Golan Heights or withdraw from the birthplace of Jesus, which Israelis have occupied for 41 years, as he demands that Russia get out of the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, which Russia has occupied for two weeks?

As Israel was provoked in 1967, so, too, was Russia provoked.

Russians died in Saakashvili's attack, as American died in Pancho Villa's raid on New Mexico in 1916. We sent "Black Jack" Pershing, future Gen. George Patton and a U.S. army 300 miles into Mexico to kill Villa. Was this proportionate?

The neocons are barking mad, McCain is in their pocket, and Obama doesn't have the wit or courage to make a systematic challenge to their dangerous, Russophobic nonsense.

Think:

Would we send U.S. troops into the Baltic republics to signal that we will fight Russia to honor our NATO war guarantees? Which NATO allies would fight alongside us against a nuclear-armed Russia?

If we bring Ukraine into NATO, what do we do if Russified east Ukraine secedes and Russia sends troops to back the rebels? Do we send warships into Russia's bathtub, the Black Sea, and commit to fight as long as it takes to restore Ukraine's territorial integrity?

Our leaders have no answers, only bravado. Tremble for the Republic.

Two Smart Takes on Georgia

The British, at least outside their rather inbred and grotesque left, tend to be more realistic about international affairs than the Americans, who are too prone to ideologize. Here's a wise Brit, Michael Binyon, on Georgia:

The attack was short, sharp and deadly - enough to send the Georgians fleeing in humiliating panic, their rout captured by global television. The destruction was enough to hurt, but not so much that the world would be roused in fury. The timing of the ceasefire was precise: just hours before President Sarkozy could voice Western anger. Moscow made clear that it retained the initiative. And despite sporadic breaches - on both sides - Russia has blunted Georgian charges that this is a war of annihilation.

Moscow can also counter Georgian PR, the last weapon left to Tbilisi. Human rights? Look at what Georgia has done in South Ossetia (and also in Abkhazia). National sovereignty? Look at the detachment of Kosovo from Serbia. False pretexts? Look at Ronald Reagan's invasion of Grenada to “rescue” US medical students. Western outrage? Look at the confused cacophony.

There are lessons everywhere. To the former Soviet republics - remember your geography. To Nato - do you still want to incorporate Caucasian vendettas into your alliance? To Tbilisi - do you want to keep a President who brought this on you? To Washington - does Russia's voice still count for nothing? Like it or not, it counts for a lot.

I admire Putin in some ways, but he aint' warm ner fuzzy. Just smart.

But, as Steven Plocker points out (HT: David Hazony), he shouldn't be cocky. Militarily, Putin was shooting fish in a barrel, and the fact that he couldn't accomplish his ends by a quiet diplomatic dressing-down shows how far Russia has to go to regain something of her former influence, even in her "near abroad":

The Russian army entered those areas while facing little resistance, but this does not attest to its fighting abilities. This “war” did not see the utilization of complicated technological means, massive troops were not flown great distances, no headquarters were established, and there is no room for comparison between the “Georgia war” and the two American wars against Saddam Hussein.

Neither Putin nor we should push too hard. Neither side should want the Sixth Fleet stalking the Russian Navy in the Black Sea.

Keep This Man Away From the Nuclear Football

From FOX:

YORK, PA — John McCain maintained his focus on the war in the Caucasus for the second straight day, declaring, “we are all Georgians,” during a town hall meeting before more than 2,000 voters in central Pennsylvania.

“We learned a great cost of the price of allowing aggression against free nations to go unchecked. With our allies we must stand in united purpose to persuade Russian government to withdraw its troops from Georgia,” McCain told the crowd. “(President Mikheil Saakashvili) wanted me to say thanks to you, and give you his heartfelt thanks for the support of the American people for this tiny little democracy far away from the United States of America. And I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, ‘Today we are all Georgians.’”

This is a truly dangerous man.

Just look at a map.

War in the Caucasus

Daniel Larison has gone into the war pretty exhaustively. Even at my most prolific and my fastest keyboarding speed, I cannot keep up with the man, who is most wise for one so young. I would say this about very few people.

That said, a few bullet points:

• This war is an absolute tragedy and a potential disaster. Three Orthodox Christian peoples are going at it; this war, like many, was avoidable. Patriarch Alexey has said all the right things. It's time for the bishops to be prophetic.


• The meme of poor "democratic" Georgia slammed by the Russian bear is false. Russia was encouraging the Ossetians and the Abkhaz in their separatism, much as Europe and the U.S. nurtured Kosovo. But Georgia is no more or less democratic than Putin's Russia, and for all his U.S. education, Georgia's Saakashvili is an admirer of Stalin, Beria, and Gamsakhurdia.


• The Russians were ready to respond, but Georgia started the thing by trying to take and isolate South Ossetia's capital. She failed. Stupid move. When you shoot at a king, you must kill him.


• These events are partly payback for the foolish Euro-american Kosovo adventure. What goes around, comes around. Always.
  


• The big question is whether Russia will invade Georgia proper, as opposed to just bombing it, which is bad enough. This would be foolish. Georgia is a good place for partisan warfare, and the world, which will tolerate the Ossetian and Abkhaz adventures, especially after Kosovo, will be both frightened and angered by a full-scale attack on Georgia. A limited foray makes more sense.


• The "expansionist Russia" meme is unproven and probably false. The Russian Federation is in some ways a rump state of the old Soviet Union, and has an understandable and strong interest in its "near abroad," much as the U.S. does in the Caribbean and Central America. As Russia recovers from Yeltsin and profits from costly oil, she was bound to reassert herself.


• The U.S. policy of dishonoring these Russian interests, expanding NATO, supporting "color revolutions" and the like was reckless and foolish. It antagonized Russia and is proving unsustainable. Cozying up to Georgia militarily, holding out the carrot of NATO membership, but then blinking when the Russians call our bluff, was typical of the folly of this administration.


• Obama's cautious response, calling for diplomacy and a cease-fire, was a lot more sensible than McCain's fire-breathing. McCain (aka Col. Kong) is at his worst on the Russian question. Russia has thousands of nukes. A confrontational approach to a conflict in Russia's backyard is nuts. It almost makes me want to support the inexperienced, left-liberal metrosexual for the Presidency.


• The most dangerous political tendency in this country is the neocons. They are foaming at the mouth to defend every "democracy," screaming about 1938, and invoking the evil Russian bear. Suspicion of Russia is an old story in the U.S., and one must add to the mix the anti-Orthodox and anti-Slavic prejudices of many Jews (see "Borat"). They are prolific, they are organized, they are articulate, and the other tendencies--liberal internationalism, conservative "realism," and my personal view, patriotic anti-interventionism--are much less well-organized. This crisis has made me realize again, just how dangerous these people are.

OK, coffee break's almost over. Discuss amongst yourselves, then back on your heads.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, RIP

The Russian writer has died at 89.

Memory eternal. вечная память.

Debate No. 20

I sat through the rematch last night. Nothing happened to turn the race around. Here's a middle-of-the-night riff on the thing, PC to the contrary be damned.

Obama is engaging, and his coolness beats Hillary's nerdy intensity by a mile. Lots of men who in theory would vote for a woman President, will never vote for her. Her public persona just grates on men. We all know the Hillary from high school or college. She might get better grades than we, but she's just so damn annoying. Who would date her just to get help on his term paper? Plenty of people would key her car.

Michael Medved, who went to Yale Law with Hillary, and doesn't agree with her politically, says she was kind and compassionate. It doesn't show on the campaign trail.

On substance, they're both off base on Russia. Yes, she's authoritarian, but that's not our business. Why we insist on antagonizing a no-longer-expansionist country that has 5,000 nukes is beyond me. I don't think Obama had a clue who Medvedev, the President-to-be, is, so he was smart to let Hillary mispronounce the name. Their answers about Russia and Kosovo show they are just as interventionist and hegemonist as "Chimphitler," but they buy UNICEF cards, which Bush won't do.

Then there's the Oprah bit. Women with sick children, people who are unemployed, yadda yadda. Somehow the Nanny State is going to rescue each and every one of them. This is unadulterated poppycock that won't withstand serious examination. Compassion won't trump analysis, although a show of it wins Democratic primaries, dominated by women and minorities, every time. A nation of whining victims? Disgusting.

As much as I think he's wrong about just about everything, I find Obama likeable. He'll actually concede a point, with charming condescension. Imagine, OTOH, a Hillary State of the Union message. I'd run screaming from the room.

Listen to Vladimir

Mr Putin defended his authoritarian style, making clear that he thought a strong president was essential for many years to come as the country had not developed strong enough political parties for a Western-style democracy. Otherwise, he said, there would be chaos. Even in Germany, the system could misfire, as it did after the last election, and the Czech Republic, he said, had been without a government for months.

Mr Putin said that, after he had stepped down, he would not disappear or take up residence in another country. He loved his country and felt rooted to it. But he all but ruled out any return to power for himself in 2012. “In 2012 I hope to find a place where I will be comfortable instead of reading in the Western press nasty things about becoming the new president.”

In a three-hour meeting, the fourth he has held with the same group of Western academics and journalists, Mr Putin demonstrated an extraordinary grasp of detail and statistics and ranged across domestic policy, Iraq, Afghanistan, investment policy, macroeconomics and the future of the various political factions in the Duma.

--The Times

The man actually knows what he's about. He's not some Slavic Voldemort.

Remember diplomacy, fellows?

HT: Larison

Rabid Old Men

The gray eminence of neocondom, Norman Podhoretz, continues to beat the war drums against Iran, and his acolytes have formed up a phalanx around him.

Iran would like to throw its weight around regionally, and its unsavory President makes bizarre and aggressive comments. That’s hardly a reason for the U.S., which is a world away, to bomb the place, when the result would be to cause the Iranians to rally around the mullahcracy and provoke Iran to make serious local mischief. Even the deranged Podhoretz Père doesn’t propose reinstituting the draft and sending a million men to occupy Iran, locus of a proud civilization. an effort that would not be worth a fraction of the lives and treasure it would take.

As for Russia, the West’s approach has been wrongheaded. Once the threat of a massive armor attack on Europe, abetted by local communists, was gone, the reasons for NATO and the encirclement of Russia were gone. Instead of respecting Russia’s sphere of influence and treating it as an imporant interlocutor, we expanded NATO to within a few clicks of St. Petersburg, and many of our opinion leaders cultivated Russophobia (and also Sinophobia) as if they were in search of an adversary to give meaning to their shallow lives. There’s no issue with Russia that a realistic view of U.S. national interests and competent diplomacy can’t manage. (By the way, this doesn’t mean we need to love Putin, any more than we need to love Mubarak).

Podhoretz is just another old man who is willing to spill the blood of the young men of his country, in furtherance of his mad delusions and out of envy of their youthful vigor. Unfortunately he’s still endowed with rhetorical skill and has some remaining influence, and therefore remains a danger to the Republic.

Moscow Goes Czech

A critical journalist in Moscow was defenestrated recently:

A military correspondent for Russia's top business daily has died after falling out of a window, and some media alleged Monday that he might have been killed for his critical reporting.

Ivan Safronov, the military affairs writer for Kommersant, died Friday after falling from a fifth-story window in the stairwell of his apartment building in Moscow, officials said. His body was found by neighbors shortly after the fall.

With prosecutors investigating the death, Kommersant and some other media suggested foul play.

"The suicide theory has become dominant in the investigation, but all those who knew Ivan Safronov categorically reject it," Kommersant said in an article Monday.

Safronov's colleagues and relatives have described him as a strong, cheerful person who would be extremely unlikely to kill himself.

Defenestration is a classic Czech specialty of long standing.

Does this betray a lack of imagination on the part of the Moscow authorities? Or is it a sign of Westernization?

Throwing the Steering Wheel Out the Window

A classic game theory example is that of two juvenile delinquents of my era playing "chicken." This was a contest in which two cars are driven at top speed toward each other. The driver who veers off first loses. He's the "chicken."

How do you maximize your chances of winning? Throw the steering wheel out the window where your opponent can see you do it. If he's not suicidal, he'll assume that you are, and veer off. You win. He loses.

Unless, of course, neither of you turns off, because he's as crazy as you are. Then you both lose.

Israeli nuclear policy has resembled this game, according to a fascinating paper by Lt. Col. Warner D. Farr, a medical doctor and counterproliferation expert. There are additional complications, because Israel's policies and those of its Arab opponents, especially Egypt, in turn affected the calculations of Israel's backer, the U.S., and Egypt's, the Soviet Union. The brief discussion here assumes that Farr's analysis is generally accurate; it's certainly amply footnoted, sober, and well-reasoned.

HT: The Ape Man, the Chieftain of Seir.

Col. Farr's paper is worth reading. In essence, he argues that U.S. support of Israel with conventional weapons was partly motivated by the fact that Israel possessed, and on several occasions appeared ready to use, a substantial arsenal of nuclear weapons. In an era of "mutual assured destruction," the U.S. feared the consequences of an Israeli first use of such weapons, especially a possible Soviet reaction.

Israel in its infancy was armed by Soviet-influenced Czechoslovakia and by smuggling. Then, as France battled to keep its control over Algeria against Egyptian-supported rebels, France supplied arms and technology to Israel. It was after Israel obtained the bomb, and seriously threatened, as its leaders believed, went on nuclear alert, the U.S. twice (in 1967 and 1973) airlifted conventional weapons to avert an Israeli military defeat and the consequent first use of nukes.

It follows that the vaunted "Israeli lobby," influential though it may be, does not offer the principal explanation for U.S. military support of that country. It is the Israeli sense of danger, exacerbated by its geographical position and post-Hitler anxieties, that motivated its nuclear armament and has triggered its nuclear alerts.

What are a few tanks and aircraft, compared to the risk of nuclear war, especially when the military defeat of Soviet clients represented points for our side? If Israel has unscrewed the steering wheel and has only to snap its wrist to toss it out the window and into the Mediterranean, their U.S. backers were highly motivated to encourage them not to make the toss, and instead to veer at the last minute. Weapons, technology and money offered this encouragement.

The threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb changes the game. Touchy and anxious as the Israelis are, the Iranians manage to appear fanatically irrational. At least President Ahmadinejad does so. The Israelis have some Dolphin-class submarines, presumably nuclear missile capable, but it's a small country with concentrated population centers. When the Iranians first get nukes, if they do, they will have only a small number.

When and if Iran gets nukes will be the time of maximum danger. The aggressor in a nuclear exchange between the two would enjoy substantial advantages, the second-strike capacities of each being limited.

As I've said before, I don't particularly like the Israelis, but they've fought for and won their sovereignty, and the reciprocal expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs and the Jews of the Arab World is different from many such events in the age of nationalism only because the Arab lands have refused to receive and integrate the Palestinian refugees.

Although it might have been greater at one time, the prospect that a Palestinian state created today would control its population enough to ensure a tranquil border is dim. A pragmatic Palestinian dictatorship with efficient and probably brutal police that saw stability as in its interest would be required, and none is on offer.

I don't favor an American attack on Iran, for reasons I've stated before, and question whether on present evidence an Israeli attack on Iran (which will be seen to be U.S,.-sponsored, even if it isn't) is either desirable or possible.

Israel and Iran are in their cars. Gentlemen, start your engines.

We are cursed to live in interesting times.

UPDATE: I'm told the Farr link above is to something other than Farr's paper, which appears to be true, although it's a relevant link. Here's the link to Farr's paper.

Sass-Putin

Russia's President Putin gave a speech the other day, complaining about U.S. indifference to international law and U.S. and European disrespect for Russia's national interest.

Max Boot didn't like the speech:

Putin's condemnation of the U.S.' "illegitimate" use of force was no more convincing, given the scorched-earth campaign he has carried out in Chechnya. While insisting that the U.S. needs U.N. sanction for its military actions — which, he failed to note, was granted in Afghanistan and Iraq — he argued that Russia needed no such approval in Chechnya because it was acting in "self-defense." (Try telling that to a Chechen.)

[snip]

Putin did not win many friends in Munich with such remarks. He alienated the audience even more when he turned from criticizing the U.S. to deriding the innocuous Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which seeks to promote human rights and free elections, as a "vulgar instrument." In fact, Putin did the United States a favor by scaring the Europeans and showing why a transatlantic alliance remains necessary.

Daniel Larison, on the other hand, didn't think the speech was all that bad, and rather sees an unpleasant Russophobia lurking:

Mr. Putin’s speech is an early warning alarm and, I think, an attempt to make Washington see reason. That the speech is, of course, self-serving to some degree and coming from the mouth of an elected authoritarian populist with rather dubious moral authority is really neither here nor there. Putin was saying what most allied governments have been saying in less direct ways and what most friendly (or formerly friendly) nations have been thinking and saying about our government for years.

The question is not, as the incredibly overrated Tom Friedman puts it, “why do remarks like these play so well in Russia today?” (Anyone could answer that question, as Friedman does by discovering that Russians are not all together happy about being encircled and threatened by NATO expansion–you don’t say!) The question is: how, beyond the last round of NATO expansion in 2002, has Mr. Bush managed to so profoundly alienate the government that was the first to offer its support to us after 9/11, and how is it that the appropriate and mutually beneficial cooperation between our two countries has been so grievously jeopardised by six years of pointed confrontation and insults?

Larison goes so far as to suggest that some are "persecuting Putin," summing the matter up as follows:

It is in the context of such dangerous and provocative anti-Russian Western activism that Americans and Europeans need to view the inevitably heavily biased reporting, frequently excessive criticism and ideologically and politically driven commentary that seek to make Putin’s regime appear somehow uniquely abominable and seeks to make Russia, a natural ally against jihadis, once more into an implacable enemy. This does not require us to endorse all of the Putin regime’s actions, nor does it mean that Americans should ignore when legitimate American interests do conflict with those of Russia, as will sometimes happen, but it does require us to be wary about trusting the obsessive vilification of another nation and another government when tension and conflict between America and Russia serve the interests of neither great nation.

Calling this attitude "persecuting" the man is a bit hyperbolic, but our stance vis-à-vìs Russia has indeed been unwise. We don't need to see into Putin's soul to do business with him. Russia is now a regional power (in many regions) that happens to have a legacy of atomic weapons and lots of hydrocarbons. It's also recovering from the nightmare of communism and the grubby aftermath. Putin's régime is overcentralized, at times incompetent, and sometimes brutal. (All three are true of our country as well: think No Child Left Behind, Katrina, and Waco).

We share no common border and have no significant commercial rivalries. Russia is not threatening to gain control of all Eurasia or all Europe, as it once did.

Expanding NATO to Russia's borders and within its sphere of influence when NATO was ripe for dissolution and Russia ceased to be a major threat, overstating the scope and severity of human rights issues, and dissing Putin for an authoritarianism that's milder than Pinochet's, are all provocative acts. It's as if the Max Boots were nostalgic for the Cold War. If it's not a Chinese threat they imagine, it's a resurgent Russia that's in some ways an improvement over its former self, and in others a mere shadow of the former bear astride its hemisphere.

There's little point to these secular anathemas, and there would be even less if this country, notwithstanding the threat to think-tank funding, returned to its older tradition of keeping out of Old World quarrels and keeping our powder dry.

What a concept!