Category: Foreign Policy

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Domestic issues Economics Election 2008 Foreign Policy Iran Iraq McCain National Security Obama Politics Russia The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism The Web and Technology Videos

11 Reasons to Donate to Barack Obama Tonight

[digg-reddit-me]Sarah Palin’s speech last night galvanized Obama’s supporters and created a surge in fundraising for him. Tonight, it’s John McCain’s turn to speak. Though it seems unlikely he will inspire feelings as strong as Palin either for or against him, he is the candidate we are running against. And now that McCain is the official nominee and is accepting federal financing, he will be forced to curtail his spending. ((To $84.1 million dollars – so it’s no chump change.))

We all know this is an important election. This is the time to donate for the maximum effect – to allow Obama to out-manuever McCain over the coming months.

Here are some reasons to donate right now, while McCain is giving his speech, and in the immediate aftermath:

  1. To throw the bums (aka Republicans) out. Enough is enough. We need change before it’s too late.
  2. To prevent (another) unnecessary war. A new cold war with Russia? Killing the United Nations? Sabre-rattling with Iran – which would be further destabilized if the situation with Russia deteriorates. John McCain thinks that Iraq and Pakistan border one another and can’t tell the major Muslim factions apart. All he knows is that there are enemies, and we must defeat them. Sun Tzu said that you must know your enemy to defeat him. John McCain prefers to wing it, and he has quite a temper.
  3. To save the internet as we know it. Barack Obama supports net neutrality. John McCain opposes it.
  4. To get out of Iraq. The Iraqi prime minister said he likes Obama’s plan. The Iraqi people prefer Obama’s plan. George W. Bush is moving towards Obama’s timeline. The only person still too stubborn to acknowledge the facts on the ground is John McCain.
  5. To reinvest in America – with tax cuts to the middle class, with investments in infrastructure, with incentives to develop green energy alternatives, with health care reforms.
  6. To stop Palin from burning our books, teaching creationism, and opening up our local parks to hunters in helicopters.
  7. To restore the Constitution. To restore the balance of power in Washington, to stop the cruel and inhuman torture of our prisoners, to acknowledge the vice presidency is part of the executive branch, to have a president who does not consider himself above the law, and to punish those who have committed crimes against the Constitution in the Bush administration. ((For those whose thoughts immediately went to FISA when seeing this, I gave my opinion already.  And regardless – you have to admit Obama would be better on these issues than McCain.))
  8. To get my tax cut.
  9. To finally have a president who will be serious about national security.
  10. To demonstrate against the crass politics of celebrity and the crowds chanting, “Drill, baby, drill!” so that we can take on the serious and complex challenges facing America – including terrorism, global warming, the destabilizing effects of globalization, the massive shifts in power in the world, and the economic stratification of America.
  11. Because after over 25 years of Republican dominance in Washington, four more years is not an option.

Bonus:Because John McCain’s campaign will be under spending restrictions from here-on out. And Obama can pursue a 50-state strategy.

Aside from all this, here’s my one sentence explaining why I support Obama.

If you think this election will be important, now is the time. Our moment is now. Donate tonight.

Believe that there is a better place around the bend, as yet unseen. And help make that a reality.

Thank you.

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Economics Election 2008 Foreign Policy History McCain Obama Political Philosophy Politics The Opinionsphere

Vision versus Compromise

Sam Tanenhaus, an historian and editor of the New York Times Book Review, had a piece in Saturday’s Week in Review discussing vision and compromise in politics. The byline was: “Vision has its limits. Compromise has its opportunities.” While I agreed with the overall thrust of the piece – that a mediocre man’s compromise is often more effective a great man’s vision – Tannenhaus is setting up a false dichotomy:

Visionary leaders are inclined to create or imagine their own goals and then try to propel others toward them. Sometimes these leaders achieve greatness. Lincoln is the salient example. But he was also a canny and calculating politician, attuned to the nation’s mood, whereas another visionary president, Woodrow Wilson, was stymied precisely because of his imperious disregard of the public will.

I don’t see how an historian who had studied Lincoln can believe that vision and compromise can be mutually exclusive. The genius of Lincoln was that he first saw the world for what it was, saw what was possible and what was not, identified the core challenges ahead, and took what steps were necessary to achieve his objectives. Lincoln did have a vision – but it was a vision anchored in reality, and one that changed as realities changed. For Lincoln, his vision was not an independent idealistic end, but a goal that was based on the best he could do at that moment. He was willing to allow slavery to preserve the Union; he was willing to fight a brutal war to prevent secession; he was willing to let Britain commit acts of agression without retribution in order to keep the nation’s focus; he was willing to contravene the Constitution in order to preserve it. Lincoln cast a cold eye on war and peace and did what he believed was needed. Lincoln was neither an idealist nor a flip-flopper. He did not act as if there was something irreconcilable about having a vision of a better nation and actually accomplishing something. Lincoln believed that through powerful words and determined action, and most important, an understanding of the world and the possible – an individual must strive to do whatever they could, and to make the world a better place. Wilson failed because he was a stubborn idiot (whose stubbornness was exacerbated by medical issues) – not because he was a visionary.

Tanenhaus tries in his piece to treat John McCain and Barack Obama evenhandedly. But clearly, he favors Obama. He treats Obama’s flip-flip on public financing and change in tactics regarding telecom immunity (which Tannenhaus grossly mischaracterizes or misunderstands as a change in position on FISA) with McCain’s radical changes of position on tax cuts and on whether or not to run an honorable campaign. (He doesn’t mention McCain’s other flip-flops on offshore drilling and torture.) In attempting to treat them equally, he does a disservive to both men. But most importantly, by setting up an inherent conflict between being a visionary and a statesmen, he ignores the clear lessons of history. (And by equating partisan politicians with visionaries, his argument verges on the ridiculous.) Statesmen have propped up some of the worst regimes on the planet and protected the worst practices – all in the name of reasonableness and compromise. Visionaries have wreaked the worst violence on the history of the planet, attempting to remake the world to match their visions.

If all we can do is choose to compromise or choose to see a better world, then there are no good choices. But history shows us a better path – one which Lincoln demonstrates above all. Radicals are visionaries who seek to remake the world to match their visions; apologists are statesmen who compromise to protect the status quo at all costs. Lincoln was a pragmatic politician who had a few ideas about how to approach the challenges our country faced, who was willing to compromise to get something done, who saw the world as it was and not as he wished or feared it to be,  but who most of all attempted to push – to nudge – the country in a better direction.

As Sam Tanenhaus knows, and as I know – John McCain is not that type of politician. He has a set view of the world – and he believes that America can demand everything it wants and get it. He does not realize that we live in a nonpolar world in which states have great power, but not all power. He does not realize that if we kick Russia out of the G-8 as he was threatening to do before their invasion of Georgia – then we will pay a price in less cooperation on other fronts. He has accepted the failed orthodoxy of the far right-wing on economic policy – an orthodoxy that has led us to Enron, to a shrinking and less stable middle class, to a destabilizing dependence on oil, to an ossification of American society into classes, ((Except that those in the middle have no safety net to prevent them from falling into poverty while those as the top have various safety nets to prevent them from becoming middle class.)) and to the perfect storm of crises we are in the midst of now.

As Sam Tanenhaus knows, and as I know – Barack Obama could be that politician. He might fail – but there is no doubting that he is a pragmatist who sees that we are the single most powerful force in in a nonpolar world; but who also sees that unless we invest in our infrastructure, in new industries, and take steps to prevent us from becoming a stratified society, we will not be able to maintain our power. He has a vision of a better America, still unseen, around the corner – and his policies are all attempts to nudge our society in the right direction.

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Election 2008 Foreign Policy Iraq McCain National Security Obama Politics The War on Terrorism

Bush-McCain Refuses to Make Tough Foreign Policy Choices

Last night, Barack Obama said:

You don’t defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq.

Joe Biden, in a 2004 interview with Joshua Marshall of the Talking Points Memo, made a similar point, but in a more roundabout way that encapsulates some portion of the difference between the two men and their approach to speaking:

No, I really mean it, ask Norm [communication director Norm Kurz]. I mean Norm’s had to sit through, listening to me in all these things. This is the point that I was trying desperately to make to my colleagues and I tried to articulate it on Stephanopoulos’ show. The fundamental flaw in the neo – forget flaw, the fundamental difference between Joe Biden, John Kerry on the one hand, and the neoconservatives on the other is that they genuinely believe – I’ll put it in the negative sense – they do not believe it is possible for a sophisticated international criminal network that will rain terror upon a country, that has the potential to kill 3,000 or more people in a country, can exist without the sponsorship of a nation state. They really truly believe – and this was the Axis of Evil speech – if you were able to decapitate the regimes in Iran, Iraq, North Korea, you would in fact dry up the tentacles of terror. I think that is fundamentally flawed reasoning. If every one of those regimes became a liberal democracy tomorrow, does anybody think we wouldn’t have Code Orange tomorrow in the United States? Rhetorical question. Does anybody think we don’t have to worry about the next major event like Madrid occurring in Paris or Washington or Sao Paulo? Gimme a break. But they really believe this is the way to do it. [My emphasis.]

Richard Haas, President of the Council of Foreign Relations, has been making the point in broader terms – explaining that we have moved from a unipolar world in which America’s power in every sphere was unrivaled to a nonpolar world in which power is decentralized – and many large corporations have more power than states and local power often trumps world power. Haas sees America as the single greatest power on earth – but rather than understanding the entire world as a system of countries, he sees a vastly more complicated power structure – where a loosely organized band of a few hundred can change the course of the world, and corporations operate according to their own interest rather than national interest; and large countries can exert influence in their backyard without American retaliation (as China and Russia proved recently).

McCain and Bush just don’t get these two realities of the world we live in today – a world in which power is decentralized and not exclusively held in nation-states and a world in which America cannot impose it’s will everywhere all of the time. They act as if we have the power to force our will upon every nation and organization. They do not believe we need to choose between Russia’s cooperation on terrorism-related issues and expanding NATO to Georgia and the Ukraine. They believe we can do both. They do not believe invading Iraq took away resources from Afghanistan – because we can do both. Their is an unreality in these positions, a determined insistence that refuses to make the tough strategic choices that foreign policy is about. That cowardice is at the heart of the Bush-McCain foreign policy. They do not acknowledge the central truth that drove America’s greatest foreign policy successes – in World War II and in the first years of the Cold War:

We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized.

They insist instead on our absolute power and on our moral purity. Coupling this with a mistaken view of the nation-state as all-powerful, a view substantially at odds with the titular Republican position of focusing on the power of individuals and corporations over that of government, they led us into Iraq, and now they are playing games of brinkmanship with Iran and Russia, in the vain hope that neither sees how weak our hand has become since we invaded Iraq.

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Election 2008 Foreign Policy McCain National Security Politics The War on Terrorism

“A Clear and Present Danger to the Security of the West”

After listing the tremendous strategic blunders of the Bush administration‘s neoconservative approach to national security and foreign policy, Andrew Sullivan concludes:

Insofar as neoconservatives do not understand this, and cannot understand this, they are a clear and present danger to the security of the West. Their unwillingness to understand how the US might be perceived in the world, how a hegemon needs to exhibit more humility and dexterity to maintain its power, makes them – and McCain – extremely dangerous stewards of American foreign policy in an era of global terror. They are diplomatically and strategically autistic.

McCain’s response to the calamities of the past eight years has been to compound them all.

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Election 2008 McCain National Security Politics Russia

Quote of the Day

Outrage is not a policy. Worry is not a policy. Indignation is not a policy. Even though outrage, worry and indignation are all appropriate in this situation, they shouldn’t be mistaken for policy and they shouldn’t be mistaken for strategy.

Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state under President Clinton, Russia specialist, and president of the Brookings Institution, commenting on the McCain campaign’s and the Bush administration’s response to the Georgia crisis.

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Domestic issues Economics Election 2008 Foreign Policy McCain Obama Politics The Opinionsphere

Why I Am Still Confident About Obama’s Campaign

[digg-reddit-me]Drudge has the scare headline up today. And pundits across the world are speculating about why Obama hasn’t blown McCain away yet. Yet I’m still confident in Obama’s campaign.

One of my first blog posts – and my first blog post to gain a sizeable readership – ran last October 12 when Obama was trailing Hillary by sizable margins and was entitled: “Why I Am Confident About Obama.”

My conclusion – despite the media’s almost universal consensus that no one could take down the Clinton juggernaut at that late date (with a 20 point lead nationwide and a slim lead for Clinton in Iowa) – was:

Clintonian hubris, an Obama strategy to put the pressure on Clinton late, with Iowa in a statistical dead heat, and a ton of other primaries following hard-upon Iowa.  It seems to me that Obama has a good chance of winning even if he doesn’t hit his stride.

The overall perception driving me to this conclusion was that Obama was the natural candidate for this time – that his candidacy and person fit the moment in a way no other candidate’s did. George F. Will, among a few other astute observers of American politics, saw this too. Obama was the candidate that fit the times – and he had a smart and hard-nosed plan for getting the nomination from Hillary and the presidency from any Republican. The intellectual ferment, the grassroots enthusiasm, and the international support for Obama all confirm that he is the candidate of the zeitgeist.

These fundamentals have not changed.

Which is why, now, with McCain ahead of Obama by five points nationally (the first lead he has had against the presumptive Democratic nominee) and with McCain outspending Obama in many key states, and with many media supporters of Obama beginning to panic and conservatives beginning to gloat, and McCain finally finding his voice given the prospect of a war with Russia – I am still confident about the Obama campaign.

  1. I trust the Obama campaign’s game plan. They have run one of the best campaigns in recent memory – they are confident and they have a plan. They beat the feared Clinton machine. And they knew it after Super Tuesday – months before anyone else. They strategized perfectly and executed their plans almost flawlessly. No other campaign this election cycle can say that.
  2. Obama will get more bounce from the Democratic National Convention next week than McCain will get from the Republican National Convention the week after. Why? Because Obama does not have George W. Bush and Dick Cheney speaking at his convention.
  3. Contrary to the “conventional wisdom” of the right-wing opinionsphere, Obama has more to gain from debates with McCain than McCain. Obama’s presence and answers will stand in stark contrast to the terrifying image of “Barack Hussein Obama.” Just as Ronald Reagan did not take a clear lead over incumbent Jimmy Carter until just after their sole debate (in the last week of the campaign) – so Obama will capitalize on his debates. Reagan was running as a change agent light on specifics, high on rhetoric and hope, against a reformer who defended a good deal of the status quo whose party had been blamed for significant foreign policy and economic disasters at a time when most people felt their country was going in the wrong direction. Many people didn’t feel comfortable with Reagan until they saw him stand side-by-side with Carter and felt he seemed reasoanble. The same dynamic seems to be working now.
  4. Obama’s supporters discovered in July and August that he’s not a perfect candidate. He supported the FISA compromise; he explained again that he was in favor of individual gun rights; he reiterated his longstanding support for faith-based programs; he went back on his (slightly hedged) promise to participate in the federal financing program for the general election campaign. They’ve been getting antsy. But with the serious prospect of a McCain presidency, most of those who care about liberal values will discover how much better Obama is than the alterative.
  5. McCain doesn’t do frontrunner well.
  6. Polls are only as good as their turnout models. Obama’s supporters come from those demographics least likely to have a landline – and thus, many of his supporters are not taken into account in polls. Plus, if black Americans and young Americans turn out at higher than predicted levels – given that both groups are extremely energized by the Obama campaign – this could tip the election further.
  7. If McCain is understood to be the frontrunner, his gaffes suddenly take on a new importance – and the media will be much tougher in covering him. Thus far, they’ve treated him with kid gloves – and mainly ignored his negatives (because they’ve been ignoring him altogether.) Where is the Iraq-Pakistan border again, Mr. McCain?
  8. Although McCain is outspending Obama now in some key states, Obama will have far more money down the stretch – and already has a more significant campaign organization in each state than Kerry or Gore did. Right now, he is spending most of his money on creating boots on the ground and campaign infrastructure which he can call on in November to turn out the vote. Once McCain’s spending is restricted, Obama can saturate any market he wants with ads.
  9. Obama’s supporters are more enthusiastic. McCain’s are too old to be enthusiastic, and most don’t like him all that much anyway.
  10. Much of the public still sees McCain as a maverick rather than as someone who “totally supports” Bush on “the transcendent issues” like Iraq. Most of the public does not know that McCain has flip-flopped on torture and on economic policy – and that four more years of McCain promise to be no better than four more years of Bush with regards to the economy.
  11. Finally – and the biggest reason – neither Obama nor his surrogates have started to attack McCain yet. They have local issue ads up in many states already. But the Vice Presidential nominee’s number one job will be to take the fight to McCain. McCain is wide open to attacks on so many fronts –

I trust the Obama campaign has a plan and that they will execute it well. That plan will include hitting McCain hard when he has less money to spare. There’s no guarantee, but Obama’s chances are still very good – and he has been consistently doing better in the polls than Gore or Kerry at similar times in the race. Obama has said that he is in this to win.

I hope so – and I know I will do all I can to ensure that he does.

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Humor Pakistan

Mr. 20%

Zardari was known as “Mr 10%” in Bhutto’s first term as prime minister because of bribery allegations, later as “Mr 20%”.

Inflation!

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Domestic issues Election 2008 Foreign Policy Liberalism Libertarianism Obama Political Philosophy Politics Reflections

Why I Support Obama

[digg-reddit-me]A few months ago, on the Long Island Railroad in the evening on my way home after work, a young black woman asked me if she could sit on the inside seat. (I always sit on the outside, and this was a three person seat.) After she sat down, she noticed the Barack Obama button I had on my bag at the time and pointed to it and said: “Thank you.”

We went on to have a conversation about the campaign and the Broadway play she had just been to – but that, “Thank you” bothered me. She was not a member of the campaign or a relative of Obama’s. I, in fact, have raised over $3,000 for the Senator, donated a good deal myself, and have tried through this blog as well as other activities to support his campaign. Although I do not know this for certain – based on the tone, the way she said it, and the rest of our conversation, I think that she was thanking me, as a white person, for supporting Barack, “her” candidate.

What I felt, but did not say, was that I was supporting Obama not because he was black or because any of my friends are black or because I wanted to make up for persecution of blacks in American history – but because … well, I’ll get to that in a minute.

One more story. A co-worker of mine described Obama to me as an empty suit, a typical, spineless, academic, elitist, whose only redeeming and unique quality is his race. ((Although I attempt to converse with my co-worker about this, our conversations always end up in some nether world of side topics – debating evolution or global warming or whether Congress has any power to intervene in foreign policy.)) He never believes me when I deny that my support of Obama is because of his race.

I have explained several times on this blog my gradual evolution from a McCain supporter in 2000 to an Edwards then Hillary than Obama supporter in 2007, including most recently here. By the summer of 2007, I had decided to support Obama – and had started talking about trying to work for the campaign. ((Unfortunately, a relative of mine persuaded me otherwise, saying that the wise thing to do was to wait it out.))

Since then, my opinion has been reinforced by events more often than it was challenged.

My decision to support Obama did not hinge on any single issue or position, but was a reflection of my attempt to gather as much information as possible about all of the candidates. I assumed that the direction the country needed to go in was rather obvious – as most Democrats and many moderate Republicans agreed, from Secretary of Defense Gates to Secretary of Treasury Paulson to Secretary of State Rice to Senator Clinton to Senator Obama to (I thought) Senator McCain. The real question is what specific policies, what methods, what means could be used to get there.

I did not support Obama because he was black, liberal, progressive, young, charismatic, or an idealist.

What did lead me to support Obama first was his character and judgment: he is a liberal pragmatist, with a conservative temperament, who seeks to understand the world as it is, to identify our long-term challenges, and to push (to nudge it) in a positive direction by tinkering with processes and institutions and creating tools to get people more involved in the government.

In addition, there are three extremely positive movements that are associated with Obama’s candidacy:

The intellectual ferment around Obama’s campaign – with Lawrence Lessig, Cass Sunstein, Richard Thaler, Samantha Power, and many others, all reflective thinkers who have influenced his campaign policy and would play a role in an Obama administration – is tremendously exciting. Added to this ferment is a sense of humility that is a bit odd. Samantha Power, who traveled to war zones around the world in 1990s, and learned the lessons of Rwanda and Sarejevo and Kirkuk deeply, does not believe unilateral American force must be used to stop genocide. Rather she places the blame on a flawed international system. Lawrence Lessig describes our political system as inherently corrupt – yet his Change Congress movement is not a radical call to arms but a series of modest proposals designed to catalyze serious changes. Cass Sunstein’s and Richard Thaler’s libertarian paternalism probably best encapsulates the pragmatic steps that can taken to greatly improve the lives of most Americans.

The grassroots movement supporting Obama also reveals the hidden side of this past four years – as George W. Bush created a liberal majority. This movement represents a new force in American politics.

The international support for Obama demonstrates that, like many Americans, people around the world want a new face to represent America – a re-branding, and hopefully a reevaluation of America’s priorities around the world.

By the time John McCain abandoned sensible policies in his quest to win over the Republican base – and emphasized his least attractive quality, a preference for the use of military force – I had already decided Obama was the best candidate.

Categories
Foreign Policy National Security

A Timeline of the Russian-Georgian War

[digg-reddit-me]I’ve refrained from writing about the Georgia crisis until now, because although I have had an interest in Russia, and had been sensing a growing wariness about Russia among the rarified field of foreign policy experts, I did not have an immediate sense of what was going on in that conflict.

Although it was clear that Russia was increasingly attempting to dominate it’s near-abroad, the timing of the conflict seemed to indicate that it was Georgian President Saakashvili who had most to gain.

In my discussions with others about the matter, there seems to be a great deal of confusion – and narratives and counter-narratives driven by propaganda have dominated these discussions.  So, as a preliminary step, and for backwards refences, I am constructing here a timeline of events and a list of the players.

The Players

Georgia has been part of various Russian empires since the 1800s. After Communists took over in 1917, Georgia declared independence. By 1921, the Soviet Union had attacked and subjugated it again. As the Soviet Union began to crumble in 1989, Georgia again began to push for independence. This led to the massacre of Georgian citizens by the Soviet army at an unauthorized but peaceful demonstration. By 1991, Georgia was again independent. But ethnic tensions soon led to two civil wars taking place – with Russians supporting the forces that opposed the central Georgian government in both places.

One of the civil wars took place in Abkhazia, where Russian supported the minority Abhkaz who sought to ethnically cleanse their part of the country. A 1989 census reveals that just under half of the country’s population was ethnically Georgian (239,872) and under 20% was Abkhaz (93,267). Fourteen years later, The Abkhaz made up over 40% of the population with only a small rise in total population (94,606) while ethnic Georgians now accounted for just over 20% of the population (45,952). The Georgian population in Abkazia decreased by almost 200,000 over this time. Of course, these statistics do not tell the entire story. The Abkhaz minority had opposed the Georgian attempt to achieve indedependence from Russia and both sides had used ethnicly directed violence in the civil war in the early 1990s. See the Human Rights Watch report on the conflict. (PDF). Russian peacekeepers have been deployed in Abkhazia since the end of the violence.

The other Georgian civil war took place in South Ossetia. South Ossetia has been considered part of Georgia for some time – and was incorporated into the Russian empire as part of Georgia in 1801, and was part of Georgia when it declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1917 and 1991. However, in both instances, the South Ossetians opposed breaking from the Soviet Union – and took up arms with the support of the Russians against the central Georgian government.  The Soviet Union’s most prominent leader, Josef Stalin, was, in fact, from the country of Georgia, and an ethnic Ossetian. When Georgia declared independence, the South Ossetians opposed this and boycotted elections. After Georgia established it’s independence, a civil war broke out with some 25,000 ethnic Georgians fleeing the region with ethnic violence being used by both sides. By 1992, a peacekeeping force led by the Russians, but including both Ossetians and Georgians was able to enforce a peace agreement. There was relative peace in South Ossetia until 2004 when tensions began to mount. The Russians had continued to build up their peacekeeping force in the region, and had been supplying the South Ossetian army with large caches of weapons. They had allowed free reign to various criminal gangs operating out of South Ossetia (including one that attempted to sell nuclear materials to a joint US/Georgian sting operation.)

Russia considered the American alliance with Georgia (as well as American alliances with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuiania, Ukraine, Poland, Kazakhstan, and other former Soviet colonies) to be a regional challenge to Russian dominance. When America and Europe recognized the independence of Kosovo (a part of Serbia, a traditional ally of Russia), Putin declared that he would begin to push for independence for the two disputed regions in Georgia. Russia – with it’s peacekeepers in each region and supply of arms to local militias and militaries – already exercised de facto control over these regions. Moreover, inundated with a mountain of cash from it’s sale of oil and natural gas, Russia has begun to act more assertively in international affairs.

America saw the small democracy of Georgia as a natural ally. America supplied arms and training to the Georgia military. Since the Rose Revolution of 2003 in which the current president, Mikheil Saakashvili, took power, America has grown closer to Georgia and recently pushed it’s membership in NATO. Aside from it’s democracy, Georgia is also seen as useful from the American perspective because it can be used as a counter to increasing Russian influence in the region.

A Timeline

From 2004 to 2008, tensions between Russia and Georgia mount.

  • The Ukranian Orange Revolution and the Georgian Rose Revolution, both of which involved attempts to steal elections by the more pro-Russian force being turned back by peaceful and mass demonstrations of the public, take place. Russia is not happy.
  • The Russian government accused the Georgians of supporting rebel Chechens in the Second Chechen war, though the evidence is inconclusive.
  • Russia also opposed Saakashvili’s efforts to crack down on seperatism in Georgia. Shortly after taking power in the Rose Revolution, Saakashvili began to pressure the autocratic leader of the independent region of Adjara to resign and allow the central government a greater role in the region. Under great pressure from internal demonstrations and international pressure, Adjara’s leader resigned and fled to Moscow before he was indicted on various charges of embezzlement, misuse of office, and murder. Adjara maintains it’s autonomous status, but is becoming further integrated into the Georgian polity. Russia had sided with Adjara’s leader during the conflict and had wanted to maintain a military base in the region. So this further escalated tensions. Russia is not happy.
  • Georgia began a military build-up in the regions outside of Abhkaz and South Ossetia. Russia continues to increase it’s peacekeeping force and to arm those opposed to the central Georgian government. Neither side is happy.
  • Georgia pushed for and America supported Georgia’s bid to become a member of NATO, a military alliance originally created to oppose the Soviet Union.  Russia is not happy.
  • Russia’s power and wealth is increasing as it has become Europe’s main source of natural gas and a major exporter of oil. Russia is happy and more powerful.

August 8, 2007: Georgia claimed that a Russian jet violated it’s airspace and fired a missile, which did not explode. American and European countries urged both countries to ratchet down the rhetoric.

In March 2008, things began to escalate. America recognized Kosovo as an independent nation. Kosovo was part of Serbia, a traditional Russian ally, and the Russian opposed the independence of Kosovo. Russia threatened to take steps to escalate the situation in South Ossetia and Abhkazia.

Later in March, Russia took diplomatic steps to further the process of recognizing these two regions as independent states.

In April 2008, the Georgian government accused the Russians of shooting down an unmanned drone in Georgian airspace. Russia denied this. A United Nations report later backs up the Georgian version of events. The rhetoric escalates on both sides as they both accuse the other of attempting to escalate the conflict.

May 2008 sees Russia inceasing it’s peacekeeping force in Abhkazia. Seperatists in Abhkazia claim to have shot down Georgian drones operating over Abhkazia. Georgia denied having any drones operating there. (The Georgians are probably lying about this.)

In July 2008, Russian fighter jets flew over South Ossetia, into Georgian airspace. Moscow claimed it violated Georgia’s territory in order to “cool heads” in Georgia’s capitol. Georgia withdrew it’s ambassador to Moscow in protest.

Meanwhile, mixed messages are being sent. The United States continued to express strong support of Georgia and Saakashvili in public and to caution him in private to avoid taking any steps to escalate the situation. At the same time, Russia’s peacekeepers are allowing various criminal gangs to operate out of South Ossetia, and periodic attacks by Ossetian seperatists into Georgia are overlooked.

August 1, 2008: Fighting between Georgian and South Ossetian forces breaks out. Georgia accuses the South Ossetians of shelling nearby Georgian villages. The seperatists deny this.

August 5, 2008: As ethnic South Ossetians begin to evacuate into Russia, the Russian ambassador declares that Russia will defend South Ossetia against Georgia.

August 7, 2008: Georgian President Saakashvili orders a ceasefire, but fighting still intensifies. Later in the day, in a televised address, he orders Georgian forces to remove what he calls the “criminal regime” in South Ossetia.

August 8, 2008: Russian troops storm South Ossetia with massive force pushing back the Georgians, and launching attacks deep into Georgia to entirely destroy it’s military infrastructure. Russia claims that Georgia had killed thousands of Ossetians in an effort to ethnically cleanse the region. Human Righs Watch is unable to find any evidence of this, finding only 45 civilian deaths in South Ossetia. However, they find massive evidence of ethnically motivated attacks on ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia and widespread looting by seperatists.

August 9, 2008: Russian-backed seperatists in Abkhazia launch an attack on the region still controlled by ethnic Georgians who wish to remain part of Georgia.

August 10, 2008: The Russians move SS-21 medium-range ballistic missile launchers into South Ossetia, weapons which could potentially be nuclear.

August 11, 2008: Russians deploy paratroopers in Abhkazia to raid Georgia proper.

August 13, 2008: Georgia withdraws all of it’s forces from the disputed territories. Despite a ceasefire order by the Kremlin, Russian forces occupy the country’s main highway and attacks the city of Gori, splitting the nation in two.

Human Rights Watch issues a report documenting the burning and looting of ethnic Georgian villages as well as the restraint of the Georgian army in South Ossetia.

August 15, 2008: Human Rights Watch reports that Russia used cluster bombs on the civilian population of Georgia.

August 16, 2008: Russians occupy the Georgian port city of Poti and several other strategic positions within the nation and advance within 34 miles of the Georgian capitol of Tblisi. The Associated Press reports that ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia have been drafted as forced laborers under guard by Russian and South Ossetian troops.

August 17, 2008: The Russian President Medvedev announces that Russian troops will begin to pull out of the undisputed territory of Georgia on Monday.

Edit: August 18, 2008: In a report meant to sum up the human rights violations in this conflict to date, Human Rights Watch reports that the Georgians’ used “indiscriminate force during their assault on Tskhinvali and neighboring villages on August 7-8, [caused] numerous civilian casualties and extensive destruction.” The report mainly describes:

Russian military’s use of indiscriminate force and its seemingly targeted attacks on civilians, including on a civilian convoy. The deliberate use of force against civilians or civilian objects is a war crime. Human Rights Watch has also confirmed the Russian military’s use of cluster bombs in two towns in Georgia.

Ian Traynor of Britain’s The Guardian and Michael Dobbs in the Washington Post each had insightful columns this weekend analyzing the conflict with clarity.

Dobbs summarizes the war:

Saakashvili’s decision to gamble everything on a lightning grab for Tskhinvali brings to mind the comment of the 19th-century French statesman Talleyrand: “It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake.”

Michael Walzer in the liberal Dissent magazine also has a good piece.

But the single most important insight came in a column by this blog’s nemesis, Paul Krugman, last Friday:

By itself, as I said, the war in Georgia isn’t that big a deal economically. But it does mark the end of the Pax Americana — the era in which the United States more or less maintained a monopoly on the use of military force. And that raises some real questions about the future of globalization. [My emphasis.]

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A President for Our Dangerous Times

[digg-reddit-me]In dangerous times, we cannot let the larger issues out of sight:

The day to day grind of this campaign – months and months of fights over demographics, over gaffes, over lobbyists, over media bias – has distracted most of us from the essential issues at stake.

The essential choice we face is whether or not our country is going in the right direction.

There is an economic component to this – which will rightfully take up much of the country’s attention in the next few months, and between McCain and Obama, the economic differences are stark.

Perhaps more important is the question of whether or not America should embrace it’s current role as an imperial power, as a neo-empire. McCain clearly accepts this view. One of his foreign policy advisors has explicitly accepted the American empire. Another McCain advisor explained how McCain is planning on creating a League of Democracies to destroy the United Nations and marginalize Russia, quite possibly provoking a new Cold War ((N. B. Fareed Zakaria is not an Obama surrogate as this YouTube video claims but a journalist for Newsweek with his own show in PBS.)) . McCain has said that withdrawing from Iraq – which is what the Iraqi prime minister is requesting of us – would be a surrender to our enemies. (He still doesn’t seem to have noticed that many of our enemies are warring amongst themselves – Sunni extremists, Shia extremists, Al Qaeda, Iranian factions.) At the same time, he has threatened war with Iran while claiming it is naive to consider meeting with any Iranian leaders. (McCain never mentions the candlelight vigils in Tehran after September 11 or Iran’s efforts to come to a comprehensive settlement of all issues between America and Iran immediatly afterwards that were ignored using the same justification McCain now uses to avoid dealing with Iran.) Instead, he jokes “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran…)

As Andrew Sullivan wrote:

After the last eight years, we simply cannot risk a continuation of the same reckless, belligerent, argument-losing, ideological and deceptive foreign policy of [the Bush administration.] From his knee-jerk Cold War posture over Georgia to his Rovian campaign tactics, McCain is simply too close to this disastrous record to contemplate… McCain’s trigger-happy temperament, shallow understanding of the complexities and passion for military force as the answer to everything is the bigger risk. He is a recipe for more, wider and far more destructive warfare.

As the conservative curmudgeon George Will explained, invoking Barack Obama’s historic candidacy as a marker:

[I]t illustrates history’s essential promise, which is not serenity – that progress is inevitable – but possibility, which is enough: Things have not always been as they are.

In other words, we can change. We were not always an empire, and we need not always be an empire. We were not always at war, and we do not need to remain at war. Barack Obama will not change anything overnight (we will not all be given bicycles) – because that is not the type of leader he is. He is not a revolutionary urging us to storm the barricades. He is an imperfect leader. He is a sensible pragmatist who believes we are in a unique moment in history in which we have an opportunity to establish meaningful changes by reforming our political, economic, and governmental processes.

The alternative is stark. While I have long been an admirer of John McCain – because he stood up to the President on torture, tax cuts, swiftboating, and global warming – he lost my vote some time ago. He has fought this campaign without honor – ever since his campaign went bankrupt and he began to repudiate every stand he took that hurt him with the Republican base (including on torture, tax cuts, and now apparently, swiftboating.)

In the end, as dire as our economic strength is, this election will be remembered as the the moment when America decided if it was going to remain an empire, or if instead we would return to the best of our traditions, and take our place as a leader in the world community.

In these dangerous times, one candidate poses too great of a risk, and the American people cannot afford to allow a party which has undermined our national security at every turn to remain in power.

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