Check out the excellent article by Doug Bandow of the American Conservative Defense Alliance on Washington’s policy of expanding the NATO alliance to include more useless security dependents in Eastern Europe. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, NATO outlived whatever usefulness it might have had during the Cold War. But the alliance is not merely an institutional dinosaur, it increases the danger of a needless military clash with a nuclear-armed Russia. Several of the new NATO members have extremely unfriendly relations with Moscow. Washington’s current proposal to add Ukraine and Georgia to the alliance would increase the danger even more. The new administration would be wise to heed Bandow’s analysis.
John McCain blisters Russia for its military intervention in Georgia, saying “in the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.” Excuse me?? What does the good senator think the United States did in Afghanistan and Iraq? And the last time I looked, both 2001 and 2003 were years in the 21st century. The man has apparently no sense of irony, or he is elevating hypocrisy to a whole new level.
Similarly, President Bush accuses the Russians of “bullying” behavior. Now, I certainly don’t like what the Russians are doing in Georgia–even though the Georgian government is not exactly the poor democratic victim of unprovoked aggression as it it typically portrayed in the Western media. But even if Moscow’s actions do constitute bullying, consider the number of occasions since the end of the Cold War that the United States has initiated military force against small, weak countries. Panama, 1989, Iraq 1991, Somalia, 1992, Haiti, 1994, the Bosnian Serb republic, 1995, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq (again), 2003. Only the invasion of Afghanistan was truly justified on the basis of self-defense.
Before Bush, McCain, and their warhawk allies start lecturing Russia about improper use of military force, they need to acquire one crucial foreign policy tool that they apparently lack. A mirror.
I’ve grown accustomed to the steady stream of foreign policy drivel coming from America’s political leaders, but the reaction of both Barack Obama and John McCain to the war between Russia and Georgia reaches a whole new level. There is a difference, though. Obama is bad on the issue, but McCain is dreadful.
Both political luminaries think that it is a dandy idea to admit Georgia to the NATO alliance. That is a horrible idea. Just imagine how much worse the current crisis would be if that country were a member of the alliance. Under article 5 of the treaty, the United States would have to consider Russian military action in Georgia as equivalent to an attack on America, and we would be obligated to help Georgia in its fight. In other words, we would be going eyeball to eyeball with a nuclear-armed Russia over the status of two secessionist regions in a tiny country on Russia’s border. There might be situations in the world that are less relevant to the security and liberty of the American people, but it would take a concerted search to find them.
Unfortunately, McCain goes well beyond favoring NATO membership for Georgia. In response to the murky conflict that erupted last week, the gentleman from Arizona stated: “I know that I speak for every American when I say to [Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili], today we are all Georgians.”
His comment encapsulates a pervasive attitude among America’s political and policy elites. They repeatedly act as though the interests of various small client states (e.g., Georgia, Estonia, Israel, Taiwan, Kuwait) are identical to America’s interests. Even worse, they are perfectly willing to endanger America to advance the interests of those client states.
Whatever happened to the principle expressed so well by George Washington that America should avoid either strong antipathy or passionate attachment to any other country? I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, though. Given the transition from the caliber of Washington and Jefferson to the likes of Bush and McCain, it becomes clear that, when it comes to politics, Charles Darwin got the theory of evolution backwards.