Suite: 15

Almost didn't post this year. (Still counts if I haven't slept, yah?)

This was the first time since That Tuesday that I've actually been in New York on 9/11. Went up alone this weekend to help out my mom, in my childhood home.

As I drove back to my present home tonight, on the Belt Parkway, I could see --for the first time with my own eyes-- those twin pillars of light, tracing their starward trajectories opposite those described by the Towers whose memories they evanescently embody each year.

Zero-Seven hushed from the speakers. Late-night traffic was sparse. The Moon serenely choreographed its silvery swarms on the estuary.

I was Sad.

Still am.

This has been a year replete with Losses: Bowie, Rickman, Wilder, Schandling, Marshall, Vigoda, Finkel, Baker, Formerly-Formerly-Known-As, etc., etc.

And other Losses, FAR more personal. Losses of the kind that BAMPF the marrow from your bones, suck the mitochondria out of each and every cell, leave you gasping for joy like a COPD sufferer on Everest's summit. One of them I associate inextricably with New York (I fear seriously for my equilibrium and my breath, when next I set foot in Lincoln Center...or in pretty much any Irish pub...).

So, awash in the howling winds of all those vortices (and yet VERY consciously Mindful of one I've thus far been spared [Kenahorah-Poo-Poo-Poo]), revisiting That Other One seemed a bit much.


So, I almost didn't post.

It was the lights, done me in.

Photons, fired from the very site of such ruin were striking mine own retinae at just under vacuum-C, in real-time. 

Whatthefrak was I supposed to do with that??

As I've said before, I watched those Towers go up. From my sixth to my thirty-fifth years, they lived....and then they died.

And they were anything but alone.

Alas, it made me think of the status of the zeitgeist that lurched its charnel-fanged maw to our throats on That Day.

And that did nothing for the Sadness.

The three --variously-quixotic-- contenders for the Oval Orifice do not inspire.

One, whose tenure as SecState offered up a dreary litany of squandered opportunities (Green Revolution, Al-Maliki's Electile Dysfunction, Ukraine incursions, Arab Spring, "'Reset' Buttons" [Staples irregulars?]...), and a prickly, imperious tone that frosted every interface. It was dismal to a degree that rivals even that of her sodden successor at Foggy Bottom.

And another: notoriously mercurial, viciously thin-skinned, exuberantly-unburdened by any discernible capacity for critical, strategic thought...nor much in the way of raw material for such thought.

And, of course, the Upstart: affable, experienced, idealistic, congruent (at times to the point of unprecedented --and very refreshing-- self-deprecation)....but possessing his party's characteristic Achilles...well...LEG of a breathtakingly naïve conception of geopolitical realities.


So....Yah. Not sanguine.

Neither volatile bellicosity, reptilian manipulation, nor ostrich imitations stand even a Truth's chance on social media of bending the orbit of such Malevolent Clarity by so much as an arc-millisecond.

"Spectacle" attacks like the one having its Quinzeañera today seem to have fallen out of vogue (cf. Yiddish utterance, above), having been succeeded by Lone (/Known) Wolf, and platoon-level soft-target wetwork.

Decisively draining the political, ideological, and economic feeder streams of such "democratized" mayhem would require a multifarious deployment of subtle, nimble, attuned, toothy (with baked-in face-saving compromises), FOCUSED foreign policy, a global Counterinsurgency approach whose likelihood of arising from the daily briefings of any of these Misfit Toys' tenures on Pennsylvania Avenue is....well...


Let's just say that, amid everything else, I was aware of being rather ignominiously discomfited at the fact that I was in New York today.




And that Pisses Me OFF.




Troofer-Dipshit Half-Wit Mental Gymnastics aside, it's plain to any reasonably-informed, rational thinker from the pic below that the Towers' structural support system was exceptionally well-conceived...save for a low-probability but devastatingly exploitable vulnerability.

Alas that the same might be said for the security of the Republic and of its citizenry.




Damned lights.

Pawns, Beware

The estimable Victor Davis Hanson gives a tour de force at Pajamas Media, drawing connections to the inevitable-in-retrospect but far-from obvious at the time messages one can draw from WW2. It is through this lens that he examines the Obama Administration's erratic and perilously unserious approach to foreign policy, specifically viz Russia and Iran. Here's a sample:

Consider Russian calculation: A nuclear Iran causes the U.S. all sorts of headaches, along with its Sunni Arab allies. There is money to be made in arms and nuclear sales. Nuclear Iran–or the efforts to stop it– will cause havoc in the oil-exporting region, and such uncertainty can only help raise the price of oil for what is now the world’s largest oil exporter (7.4 million Putin barrels sold per day abroad).

In other words, Iran is a win/win/win deal for a Russian dictatorship, always was and probably will be. We wonder why is Putin causing trouble, or why did Bush offend him? The only proper question is why not cause trouble without much risk if you’re an ex-KGB thug?

Trouble means lucrative trade, with rogue oil states that want to buy blow ‘em up stuff from Russia.

Trouble shuts up the self-important, moralizing Western Europeans.

Trouble sends a message to former subjects.

Trouble means the U.S. is tied down with a nuclear power threatening Israel and the pro-US Arabs.

Trouble means billions of dollars in new oil profits as global prices soar.

Trouble means showing the world’s onlookers that the Obama hope and change rhetoric is a good way to get yourself in a lot of trouble, and reminds others that Russia is a dependable if not thuggish regime to have on your side. (When the Wehrmacht approached Moscow in late 1941, “civilized” European neutrals like Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Spain and Portugal all started to horse-trade with the sure winner Hitler, angling for trade, cash, borderland, the clearing of old grudges, etc—without a whit of care that he was killing millions of Russian civilians and murdering on sight the Jews of Poland and the Ukraine.[By late 1944 these same “civilized” states were damning Hitler and now angling with the allies]). So yes, the past is helpful.

Obama's foreign policy has not been without successes. Where they have occurred, I have marked them with ungrudging satisfaction. That is not the point. I have been a fairly competent chess player from a piece-by-piece perspective. However, as Mr. Hengist could tell you, I never developed my game to the point where I was especially good at setting up a campaign culminating in check-mate for my opponent. Consequently, I would not place any wagers on myself in a game with Kasparov. Obama, being a bright fellow, has shown an ability to score tactical victories. But his strategic vision is cloudy and incoherent, and he is matched up against some very hefty chessmasters, whom one can imagine chortling with astonished glee at the gift which the American electorate has bestowed upon them. It would be hard to sit in the Kremlin, watching Obama deal haphazardly and distractedly with one vital geopolitical issue after another before returning his attention to the task of remaking the US into a model of Western Europe (while the latter seems to be straining in the opposite direction!), and not take heart at the opportunity before them.

It would be hard to sit in Warsaw or Tblisi, or Tel Aviv, (not to mention Tegucigalpa) scanning the horizontal and the vertical (and the diagonal), and not experience the uncomfortable sensation of seeing unopposed rooks and bishops all around.

Actionable Intelligence

Last week, shortly after his slim but historic victory in the US Presidential election, Barack Obama finally got a chance to peek beneath the veil. He has begun to receive classified intelligence briefings about the full range of the threats arrayed against the US and its interests at home and abroad, and about the responses to those threats which he will presently be entrusted to oversee. This is information which would not have been available to him as a senator and a candidate, and it appears to have been a sobering experience for him.

Obama can hardly be blamed for seeming a bit less ebullient as the full weight of the responsibilities he must bear begins to settle on his shoulders. In characteristically irresponsible fashion, the New York Times has reported (again!) on a portion of the covert operations which were authorized by the Bush Administration to pursue and harry al Qaeda across the globe. Depending on your orientation, this story reads like a Bush-Derangement fantasy of Imperial overreach, or as a sobering account of the hitherto (and appropriately!) unseen portions of the Long War in its far-ranging and valiant campaign to keep us safe from the murderous ideologues who would slaughter our children for the sake of piety. Either way, it is part of Obama's world now.

The full scope of the threat landscape in which our President-Elect must immerse himself is daunting in the extreme. However much he has staked his claim on the notion that the US must withdraw from Iraq with all possible speed, I strongly suspect that his access to the Full Story will (hopefully!!) act to stay his hand (no doubt to the considerable annoyance of his supporters):

Iran would cheer a quick American withdrawal, but as soon as the US leaves Iran will use its Shia proxies in Baghdad to create an Iraqi government manipulated like a puppet by strings that stretch to Tehran’s mullahs.

Iraqi Sunni and Kurdish minorities will feel disenfranchised by a quick withdrawal because they expect the Shia majority will then manipulate Baghdad’s government to deny them opportunities and resources. That could ignite a real civil war.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, al Qaeda’s [fictional] Iraq leader, offered President-elect Obama a truce in exchange for removal of all forces from the region. But American intelligence officials caution any step that could be perceived as a victory for al Qaeda, like pulling troops out of Iraq before the country stabilizes, would only strengthen the terror group’s ability to recruit.

A precipitous US withdrawal is opposed by important allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Saudis fear that Tehran might take advantage of an early withdrawal to seize oil fields in the Shia dominated eastern Arabian Peninsula. Israel, which says it faces an existential threat from a nuclear Iran, wants the US to remain in Iraq in order to keep Tehran in check and hopefully deal with the mullah’s atomic weapons program.

To his credit, Obama has stuck by the theme that a nuclear-armed Iran is "Unacceptable." Indeed, it is. However, the path which he must walk to prevent this is far less than clear. Iran has gamed the international system most adroitly, and has scoffed at all attempts to rein in its nuclear ambitions. There is no reason to believe that this will cease as a result of Obama's much-vaunted willingness to engage in diplomacy with the Mullahcracy. Indeed, on its face, that willingness would seem to play right into the Persians' hands, offering the opportunity to play for time while its centrifuges spin inexorably toward the unacceptable. I expect that the most current intelligence estimates of Iran's capabilities and intentions have now become available to Obama. What will he do with them?

Much has been made of Obama's ill-advisedly public though essentially correct intention to violate Pakistani sovereignty in pursuit of al Qaeda Prime. Indeed, he has made it a cornerstone of his war plan to address the as-yet unfinished business in the shadow of the Hindu Kush. But I have long felt that he has glossed very badly over the complexities of the Af-Pak theater, and so painted himself into a perilously untenable corner:

Recently, Obama’s staff was briefed that the situation in Afghanistan is getting worse – American casualties are up and the Taliban militias are gaining strength and now control large swaths of that country. That’s why the Bush administration told Obama’s people that they must come to office with a battle plan that addresses troops, Pakistan’s safe havens area (where as many as one million Islamic radicals have refuge) and whether to negotiate with the enemy.

Sending more troops to Afghanistan must be part of a winning strategy. But US forces are overstretched globally and that’s why Obama must ask NATO allies to provide more forces. Even though Europeans overwhelmingly endorsed Obama’s presidential bid they have no desire to increase their Afghan role. In fact, the Taliban’s recent campaign of violence has shaken European will to contribute any troops much less more to NATO’s Afghan mission.

Obama’s Afghan war plan must also address the politically sensitive issue of aggressively pursuing Taliban militias and al Qaeda terrorists that are taking refuge in Pakistan’s tribal areas. In 2007, Obama promised that “…if we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets” in Pakistan and that government “won’t act, we will.”

Recently, the US increased cross-border raids and drone missile attacks against enemy forces inside Pakistan. Those assaults have angered Pakistani officials such as Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s military chief, who promised to defend his borders at “all costs.” Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said US attacks were “…counterproductive and difficult to explain by a democratically elected government.”

Obama must now confront the reality of a precariously unstable Pakistan's domestically unpopular alliance with the West, the extensive infiltration of its military and intelligence services by Islamist radicals, the fractiously feudal composition of the populations along its border with Afghanistan, and --perhaps most poignantly-- the likely intransigence and apathy of our so-called "traditional allies" in Europe, whose military capabilities are only slightly more limited than their willingness to use them. He must thread multiple needles, with the growing knowledge that many lives will be lost if he should so much as drop a stitch.

Already, Russian puppet-president Medvedev (for the record, pronounced med-VYED-yev) has wasted no time in throwing down the gauntlet before the untried POTUS-to-be. Puppet-master Putin is banking on Obama's previous statements expressing skepticism about the effectiveness and desirability of missile interceptor batteries stationed in Eastern Europe, and, as usual, has masterfully scoped the table before playing his hand:

Medvedev said he holds no animus for Americans and hopes “…the US administration, will make a choice in favor of full-fledged relations with Russia.” But he didn’t backdown [sic] on any front to include expanding Moscow’s military activities in the Middle East, Northern Africa and the Caribbean where Russian bombers and warships recently visited Cuba and Venezuela.

President-elect Obama will need all the political savvy he can muster and allies to deal with a belligerent Kremlin. But he shouldn’t expect help from Europe because Russian energy markets tend to be European-based and Moscow will leverage them to make the European Union squirm.

That last point deserves special mention: the degree to which the Russian economy is based on its ability to leverage its considerable energy supplies to gain geopolitical advantage cannot be overestimated. A sharp drop in the cost of oil and natural gas on the global markets would be devastating to Russia (as indeed it would be for a host of our adversaries). Obama's laudable but ill-conceived reluctance to develop domestic hydrocarbon energy supplies in favor of renewable sources which are just entering a very long pipeline (if you will pardon the pun) indicates a degree of naivete of which I hope he is presently cured. The global economic contraction which has accompanied the recent financial crisis has already precipitated a steep reduction in demand (and thus a concomitant drop in price) for petroleum. If this opportunity were maximized through aggressive pursuit of additional supplies, it could signal a perfect storm for the economies (and accompanying capacity for global mischief) of our various foes.

It is entirely possible that Obama's recent briefings will apprise him of the manifold ways in which these multiple threads wind round each other and form the fabric of the geopolitical veil-dance which George W Bush has doggedly (if often clumsily) executed during these last seven-plus years. It is still my belief that history will vindicate the Presidency of George Bush, but that is out of my hands (maybe the Li'l Cyte will write a thesis on the subject someday...). It is no secret that Obama was not My Guy...but he will presently be my President. As such, I wish him well, and would be more than happy to research the best ways to prepare a hearty dish of crow.

In the meantime, Senator Obama has tasted of the unexpurgated menu whose aroma outsiders like myself can discern only through a probably-unhealthily obsessive daily sniff. I have little doubt that it has seared his taste buds something fierce. I can only Hope that the experience will help him to Change his mind about how he deals with the kitchen staff. It could happen; he is a very smart man. But as with Intelligence, intelligence is only as good as what you do with it.

Russian Roulette

Riffing on George W. Bush's infamous comment about gazing into Vladimir Putin's eyes and experiencing what one can only assume was an optical illusion suggesting the presence of a soul, John McCain is widely quoted as having said, "I looked into his eyes and saw three letters: a K, a G and a B.” He's gotten a lot of grief over that from those who felt that he was being unduly and dangerously provocative. But, more and more, it's looking like yet another case of McCain-as-Cassandra.

Along those lines, this week's STRATFOR Geopolitical Briefing is a must-read. Here's an extended excerpt:

After the Aug. 7 confrontation between Georgia and Russia and the Sept. 10 deployment of Russian strategic bombers in Venezuela , there is little doubt that Russia is reasserting itself and that we are entering a period of heightened geopolitical tension between Russia and the United States. This period of tension is, as forecast, beginning to resemble the Cold War — though as we have noted in previous analyses, the new version will be distinctly different.It is very important to remember that while the hallmark of the Cold War was espionage, the efforts of the intelligence agencies engaged in the Cold War were far broader. Intelligence agencies like the CIA and KGB also took part in vast propaganda campaigns, sponsored coups and widely used proxies to cause problems for their opponent.

[...]

Fast-forward to 2008. Russia is no longer a Soviet republic in league with a number of other communist republics. Today, Russia is technically a constitutional democracy [ed. BWAA-ha-ha-ha!] with a semicapitalist economic system; it is no longer a model communist society or the shining light of Marxist achievement. In spite of these ideological changes, the same geopolitical imperatives that drove the Soviet Union and the United States to the Cold War are still quite real, and they are pushing these powers toward conflict. And in this conflict, the Russians will reach for the same tools they wielded so deftly during the Cold War.

[...]

Another consideration is that ideological change in Russia could mean Moscow will reach out to radical groups that the KGB traditionally did not deal with. While many KGB officers didn’t completely buy in to communist ideology, the Communist credo did serve as both a point of attraction and a limiting factor in terms of whom the Soviets dealt with. Since the Russian state is no longer bound by Soviet ideology — it is really all about power and profit these days — that constraint is gone. The Russians are now free to deal with a lot of people and do a lot of things they could not do in Soviet times. [emph. added]

If the preceding passages made the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, then you were paying attention. Although it was supposed to serve the Party, the KGB was reputedly composed of steely-eyed sophisticates whose icy pragmatism left little room for grandiloquent Communist bombast. They had always been all about power, but at least nominally served the interests of the Revolution, and so had to at least appear to work within the strictures of Communist ideology.

Now, it appears, the only red you'll see is on the teeth and claws of an unchained bear in a very, very foul mood.

As I've said before, there were some precious opportunities during the early 90s to shore up the Russian state, support its fledgling capitalist economy, and make true allies of our long-standing enemies. Those opportunities were resoundingly squandered by the Bush41 and (especially) Clinton administrations, and are likely lost for the foreseeable future. What is left to us is a bitter adversary with a long reach, a lot of practice, and very full coffers.

I truly believe that, if it is properly and firmly contained and confronted, the threat represented by Russia will be reasonably manageable, and full-on hot war could very well be avoided. Russia has no interest in pushing the envelope so hard that it would be truly isolated in the world; its economy may be flush with energy revenue, but it is brittle and shallow for now. Introducing more supply into (and/or removing some demand from) the global petroleum markets could strengthen our hand in this game (and in so many others besides) by lowering prices and thinning out the revenue streams with which Russia (and so many others) tend to finance the worst of their mischief.

But make no mistake, Putin's Russia will push in every direction in search of soft spots, and will fill any void it finds. We and our true allies (notably those who remember what it was like, back in the USSR) need to be everywhere they look.

So, the reader is heartily encouraged to reflect at length on exactly who it is that they want sitting across the table from the man that this fine young fellow grew to be...

Caucasus Belli (Part Two)

A little loopy on cold meds right now, so I beg the reader's forbearance for any graceless language which may emerge from the fog. Cooped up with me in the fuselage of that small jet this past week-end, it seems, was a virus with my name on it.

Last month, I wrote about Michael Totten's interview with two experts on Georgia, who convincingly argued that it was not Georgia which had struck first in South Ossetia, as is commonly believed. Instead, the contention is that it was Russia which had provoked a Georgian response, then used that response as the occasion to overrun and subdue its uppity neighbor to the south, and to thumb its nose at an international "community" which discovered --belatedly-- that it was powerless to do a thing about it.

In today's Examiner I found a piece in which the Georgian government has released recordings of intercepted phone calls from border guards near the mouth of the Roki Tunnel connecting Russian-controlled North and nominally Georgian South Ossetias.

The recordings released Tuesday, if authentic, will not cut through the fog of the final hours when escalating tensions burst into war. But President Mikhail Saakashvili hopes they will help dispel a dominant narrative that says his country was on the attack. He said they prove Russian tanks and troops entered South Ossetia many hours before Georgia began its offensive against separatist forces.

"Evidence in the form of telephone intercepts and information that we have from numerous eyewitnesses conclusively prove that Russian tanks and armored columns invaded our territory before the conflict began," Saakashvili told reporters.

Naturally, the Russians are bitterly disputing the authenticity of the recordings, and they may yet prove right to do so. Gods know, the situation in that part of the world does not lend itself to tidy narratives, and neither side can exactly claim objectivity.

Still, it is another data point among many which suggests that Putin's Russia is playing hard ball, and more than willing to exploit weaknesses where it sees them.

Witness also the willingness which the Kremlin has shown to align itself with even the most unhinged of Americas foes, and to play a very dangerous and short-sighted game of nuclear brinksmanship by proxy with the Mad Mullahs of Tehran. What emerges is a Russia which is calculating every opportunity to leverage whatever resources it can to thwart American interests abroad, and to position itself as a major player on the world stage. Using its energy resources as a strategic weapon, Moscow seeks to cement its ability to seduce and intimidate its potential competitors abroad, as well as its increasingly centralized and anti-democratic hegemony at home.

With a chilling mixture of guile and naked force, the neo-tsarist elites of Russia present a very serious challenge to the internationalist, soft-power orientation of the EU (and of leading Democrats here in the US). They are the bully on the global playground, and must be confronted accordingly.

Caucasus Belli

Today's post on Tigerhawk reminded me that I really need to read Michael Totten's postings more regularly. Totten has been in Tbilisi, Georgia, and his conversations with regional experts and with wounded Georgian soldiers call into serious question the dominant narrative that it was Georgian president Saakashvili who initiated hostilities in South Ossetia.

Instead, Totten's reporting suggests that Saakashvili's forces rolled into Tskhinvali en route to interdict a Russian incursion already in progress. This excerpt is from Totten's interview with two analysts (one hired by Georgia, but backed up by an independent --though admittedly anti-Kremlin-- colleague):

“On the evening of the 7th, the Ossetians launch an all-out barrage [ed. in some cases using illicit 120mm artillery] focused on Georgian villages, not on Georgian positions . Remember, these Georgian villages inside South Ossetia – the Georgians have mostly evacuated those villages, and three of them are completely pulverized. That evening, the 7th, the president gets information that a large Russian column is on the move. Later that evening, somebody sees those vehicles emerging from the Roki tunnel [into Georgia from Russia]. Then a little bit later, somebody else sees them. That's three confirmations. It was time to act.

“What they had in the area was peacekeeping stuff, not stuff for fighting a war. They had to stop that column, and they had to stop it for two reasons. It's a pretty steep valley. If they could stop the Russians there, they would be stuck in the tunnel and they couldn't send the rest of their army through. So they did two things. The first thing they did, and it happened at roughly the same time, they tried to get through [South Ossetian capital] Tskhinvali, and that's when everybody says Saakashvili started the war. It wasn't about taking Ossetia back, it was about fighting their way through that town to get onto that road to slow the Russian advance. The second thing they did, they dropped a team of paratroopers to destroy a bridge. They got wiped out, but first they managed to destroy the bridge and about 15 Russian vehicles.

The Ossetian villages had been previously evacuated and the illicit shelling of Georgian positions appears to have begun on August 6th, one day before the purported initiation of hostilities by Georgian forces which we have generally been told was the proximate cause of the conflagration which swiftly engulfed the area.

If the substance of this report turns out to be all that it appears, then it should serve as an even more stark wake-up call about the intentions and tactics of Moscow in the region than we had thought. I will be watching this story rather more carefully, to be sure. Meanwhile, it may have captured the attention of those who would not want it widely known, which leads me to hope most fervently that the estimable and indispensable Micheal Totten will keep a geiger counter with his tea service.

As ever, do please consider making a contribution to the efforts of independent journalists like Totten, who risk life and limb to keep the facts flowing (PayPal link at the bottom of his posts).

Czar Trek: The Next Generation

Russia's invasion of Georgia has unmasked some hard realities about the nature of the Putin regime in particular, and has revealed ominous cracks in the very foundations of the nation-state in general. The rumblings of Russian tanks through the Roki Tunnel, I fear, were only the end of the long overture to a very dismal and protracted opera yet to come.

Last Tuesday's free Stratfor briefing (amply worth reading in its entirety, if for no other reason than the very instructive maps it includes) dealt with the history and implications of the Georgia affair. First, the Russian predicament:

From the Ukrainian experience [i.e., the "Orange Revolution"], the Russians became convinced that the United States was engaged in a plan of strategic encirclement and strangulation of Russia. From the Kosovo experience [see again, here], they concluded that the United States and Europe were not prepared to consider Russian wishes even in fairly minor affairs. That was the breaking point. If Russian desires could not be accommodated even in a minor matter like this, then clearly Russia and the West were in conflict. For the Russians, as we said, the question was how to respond. Having declined to respond in Kosovo, the Russians decided to respond where they had all the cards: in South Ossetia.

Let's not sugar-coat it: Russia had and still has some very legitimate concerns about the decline of its economic and geostrategic mojo following the breakup of the USSR, and about the US' role in abetting (or at least failing to help ameliorate) that decline. The Clinton administration utterly failed to recognize the dangerous short-sightedness of tacitly assuming that our new friend, non-Communist Russia would just go quietly into that good night. Clinton hitched his star way too tightly to an erratic and increasingly authoritarian Yeltsin. He almost entirely reneged on Bush/Gorbachev-era promises for massive infusions of economic aid and favorable trade status which might have staved off some of the worst of the grinding humiliation and Muscovite Mafia mayhem which blighted Russia during the Naughty Nineties. These blunders, as well as myriad mystifying missteps in mutual disarmament (to which the "Atlanticists" in the Russian foreign policy establishment had initially been very hearteningly receptive) will no doubt feature prominently among the very many squandered historical opportunities of those times. The brittle and pugnacious nationalism which arose out of what any sensible Russians could scarcely help but see as a determined effort to drive a holly stake through their hearts was as initially avoidable as it ultimately became lamentably inevitable. After all, "Paranoia is just reality on a finer scale."

That said, Vladimir Putin is a very nasty bit of business and no mistake. In the ostensibly post-historical world which so many Transnational Progressives insist that we occupy, the sheer reptilian purity of the calculations which informed Putin's choice to pull the trigger on Georgia must feel like rolling off an Alaskan dock during a sound sleep (at least for the twelve or thirteen of them who don't see it as Bush's Fault). He did it because he judged that he could, using the molecule-thin pretext of Georgia's military response to the agitations of pro-Moscow separatists in South Ossetia (and the degree to which that response may have been an overreaction is a legitimate and important one...which has virtually nothing to do with the situation before us right now). Per Ralph Peters:

As a former intelligence officer, I'm awestruck by the genius with which Putin assessed the strategic environment on the eve of his carefully scripted invasion of Georgia.

With his old KGB skills showing (he must've been a formidable operative), Putin not only sized up President Bush humiliatingly well, but precisely anticipated Europe's nonreaction - while taking a perfect-fit measure of Georgia's mercurial president.

Putin not only knew what he was doing - he knew exactly what others would do.

...Which was mostly falling off the bleachers in Beijing and saying "Whaaa?!"

For most of us in the West, the idea that one supposedly civilized sovereign nation would simply roll into another, based only on unvarnished self-interest and a cool appraisal of the unlikelihood of any meaningful opposition is chillingly alien (and please, spare me the facile comparisons with Operation Iraqi Freedom; there are a multitude of fundamental differences which I steadfastly refuse to get into in this post).

But the very notion of national sovereignty which has stood mostly intact since the Peace of Westphalia has been undergoing substantial strain for some time now.While laudable in its intent and serving as the occasion for some very inspiring rhetoric, the recognition of Kosovo's independence from Serbia was an especially clear example of this, and may have done far more harm than good:

The lesson separatists took from Kosovo is that any ethnic group has a right to secede from a sovereign nation simply by being different from their countrymen. As [LA Times columnists] Meany and Mylonas note, that could apply to almost every nation in the world, including the US, Canada, Great Britain, Spain, France, Germany, and so on. That precedent undermines the concept of sovereignty as understood since at least the Peace of Westphalia, and leads the world into dangerous territory, especially in an age of terrorism.

Russia had relatively recently achieved substantial success in brutally putting down the (at best equally brutal) Chechen separatist movement within what it unequivocally held to be its own borders. While drawing much well-earned opprobium for the tactics it employed, the essential concept that the sovereignty of the Russian State gave it the writ to resist separatist sentiments of its ethnically distinct but nationally constituent cantonments was not widely questioned. However, the explicit recognition by many nations (including, notably, the US) of Kosovo's independence from Russian-backed Serbia directly challenged not only Russia's sense of security and integrity (which it surely did), but the very underpinnings of the model which holds that national borders can legitimately contain and subsume a variety of sub-groups while still remaining intact. Even as it may have come from the best of intentions, and even as the much-abused Kosovars may have deserved a measure of autonomy given the all-too recent depredations of the Serbs against them, the ready international endorsement of their independence provided a powerful precedent for the aspirations of fractious factions within nations spanning the globe. It diluted the glue which holds nations together, and the bits that fly off of that long-standing edifice of sovereignty are apt to do much damage in the years to come. When any Basque or Québécois or Tamil can legitimately ask why the Kosovars got to break free when they don't, then national governments worldwide suddenly have a great deal more to worry about.

So, now that that genie is out of its bottle (withdrawing support for Kosovo, should Serbia make a play for re-annexation, would be the very worst sort of self-defeating realpolitik), what now?

One thing is quite clear: the example of Kosovo has provided the perfect pretext for cynical power vampires like Vlad I to impose their will and their might, and a potent narrative with which to slather a credulous international media with its own syrupy slurry of multicultural Kool Aid. For years, Russia had patiently seated the chisel within existing fracture lines in the South Ossetia region of Georgia, only waiting for the appointed moment for its precise hammer-strike. Emboldened by its undoubted success, no sane person would believe that Russia will content itself with having made its point and not strive to consolidate further its hegemonic aspirations for the region. Per Strategy Page:

The war in Georgia comes on the heels of threats (of violence) made to Ukraine. Before that, Russia cut off energy supplies to Ukraine to show who was really in charge. Russia makes more threats to the Baltic States and East European countries over membership in NATO and the construction of a U.S. anti-missile system. The bear is back in a fighting mood, and the world wonders how far this reassertion of empire will go.

If anything has been made clear from recent events, it is that the answer to that question is: "as far as it can." Russia has plainly thrown out the (already frayed and wormy) playbook of cautious diplomatic and economic action with due consideration for international opinion. It's declared that it will do whatever it chooses and realistically concludes that it will not be prevented from doing.

So, we need to do a lot of preventing.

First off, we must resist the impulse to lend our support to the secessionist aspirations of relatively homogeneous sub-groups within the borders of sovereign states. This may seem a bit cold-blooded at first glance, and may even cost us short-and mid-term advantages against rival states. Over the long haul, however, it will act to preserve the integrity of the nation-state itself, and so shore up the boundaries which constitute the very cell walls of the global political organism, and which act to check the opportunistic infections of expansionist regimes which will capitalize on any wobbliness of resolve to defend territorial borders against them.

Second, we must not allow Russia to go unpunished. By subduing Georgia, Moscow has both sent a warning and a delivered a probing thrust. The former is aimed squarely at the Eastern European and Baltic states which might dare to act at variance with the Kremlin's wishes. The latter is analogous to sending a platoon into an uncertain battlespace in order to draw fire and so determine the scope and configuration of resistance which the main unit is likely to face. That one was aimed at NATO, Western Europe, and the US.

That's our cue, folks.

That national treasure, John Bolton, wrote in an editorial for the Telegraph, that Russia has resumed its familiar Cold War strategy of striving to exert control within the states which lie within the "gap" between its own borders and the edges of NATO. As the history of the Cold War so clearly demonstrates, it will keep pushing until and unless something pushes back (I'll quote at length here, but it is well worth your time to read the whole thing):

By its actions in Georgia, Russia has made clear that its long-range objective is to fill that “gap” if we do not. That, as Western leaders like to say, is “unacceptable”. Accordingly, we should have a foreign-minister-level meeting of Nato to reverse the spring capitulation at Bucharest, and to decide that Georgia and Ukraine will be Nato’s next members. By drawing the line clearly, we are not provoking Russia, but doing just the opposite: letting them know that aggressive behaviour will result in costs that they will not want to bear, thus stabilising a critical seam between Russia and the West. In effect, we have already done this successfully with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Second, the United States needs some straight talk with our friends in Europe, which ideally should have taken place long before the assault on Georgia. To be sure, American inaction gave French President Sarkozy and the EU the chance to seize the diplomatic initiative. However, Russia did not invade Georgia with diplomats or roubles, but with tanks. This is a security threat, and the proper forum for discussing security threats on the border of a Nato member – yes, Europe, this means Turkey – is Nato.

Saying this may cause angst in Europe’s capitals, but now is the time to find out if Nato can withstand a potential renewed confrontation with Moscow, or whether Europe will cause Nato to wilt. Far better to discover this sooner rather than later, when the stakes may be considerably higher. If there were ever a moment since the fall of the Berlin Wall when Europe should be worried, this is it. If Europeans are not willing to engage through Nato, that tells us everything we need to know about the true state of health of what is, after all, supposedly a “North Atlantic” alliance.

Finally, the most important step will take place right here in the United States. With a Presidential election on November 4, Americans have an opportunity to take our own national pulse, given the widely differing reactions to Russia’s blitzkrieg from Senator McCain and (at least initially) Senator Obama. First reactions, before the campaigns’ pollsters and consultants get involved, are always the best indicators of a candidate’s real views. McCain at once grasped the larger, geostrategic significance of Russia’s attack, and the need for a strong response, whereas Obama at first sounded as timorous and tentative as the Bush Administration. Ironically, Obama later moved closer to McCain’s more robust approach, followed only belatedly by Bush.

In any event, let us have a full general election debate over the implications of Russia’s march through Georgia. Even before this incident, McCain had suggested expelling Russia from the G8; others have proposed blocking Russia’s application to join the World Trade Organisation or imposing economic sanctions as long as Russian troops remain in Georgia. Obama has assiduously avoided specifics in foreign policy – other than withdrawing speedily from Iraq – but that luxury should no longer be available to him. We need to know if Obama’s reprise of George McGovern’s 1972 campaign theme, “Come home, America”, is really what our voters want, or if we remain willing to persevere in difficult circumstances, as McCain has consistently advocated. Querulous Europe should hope, for its own sake, that America makes the latter choice.

Vladimir Putin has shown us that he is willing "to boldly go" wherever he thinks we will let him. Flush with energy revenue and with the carefully cultivated grievances of the Russian people (which are all the more powerful for not being entirely off the mark), he could go very far indeed.

And he would very definitely pick his pointy, blood-stained teeth with a rookie like Obama.

Russia invades Georgia: Blame America First

[by Mr.Hengist]

When there’s trouble in the world, Western Liberals are usually sure of one thing: Somehow, America is to blame. Whether it’s war, famine, pestilence, or just a fly in your soup, it must be the result of some fault of the United States. We did the wrong thing - or nothing, we did too much - or too little, we started it - or didn’t stop it. At best, all other actors on this stage are reacting in response to us; at worst, they are like mindless forces of nature or animals acting on an instinctual level, unaccountable to their own actions.

Russia’s war of aggression on Georgia provides clear examples of this mindset. Yesterday, two senior Clinton Administration officials wrote an op-ed for the WaPo in which they said, in passing, “The West, and especially the United States, could have prevented this war.” No explanation is provided other than the magic Liberal pixie dust of Diplomacy and "transatlantic unity" as the preventative medicine which would have kept the peace, nor is any other needed for the Liberal readers of the Liberal MSM because for them it rings true. I'll refrain from speculation on what they might have had in mind and let the insubstantiation of their accusation speak for itself. Read this otherwise stinging piece, if only for the unintentional humor of their disdain when noting that Russia "hardly demonstrates its commitment to Olympic ideals."

Today the NYTimes published an article entitled, “After Mixed U.S. Messages, a War Erupted in Georgia", from which we can deduce that we are to blame for a war that “erupted” - almost like a natural disaster. War? It just sort of happens, like a tornado; the only thinking actor represented in this headline is the United States, and we are, of course, to blame. What’s remarkable is that there’s nothing in this article about mixed messages from the United States to suggest that our messages were mixed at all. Over and over, in the clearest possible terms, the article quotes Bush Administration officials as having warned the Georgian government not to succumb to the provocations of the Russians and their proxies, even as it makes the unsubstantiated assertion that “Georgia may have been under the mistaken impression that in a one-on-one fight with Russia, Georgia would have more concrete American support.”

As for the Russians, the NYTimes tells us that we provoked them. We provoked them by starting work on an anti-missile shield for Western Europe against missiles from Iran and Syria, friendly client-states of Russia, in the former Soviet slave-state of Poland. Self-defense, and the defense of our friends, is no excuse when it comes to thwarting the ambitions of our enemies, according to Liberals. We are also told we provoked them by recognizing the independence of a free Kosovo; the Russians are now citing this as analogous to their invading the Abkhazia and South Ossetia provinces of Georgia. Of course, we didn’t so much invade Kosovo as save them from the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs, also a friendly client-state of Russia.

Lest you think that Liberals believe that action in defense of the free or helpless is tantamount to aggression in the Liberal world of universal moral equivalence, I refer you to the ethnic cleansings in Rwanda and Darfur, where America has once again been cast into the role of being the world's only policeman only to be castigated for failure kiss the world's boo-boo's and make it all better. It might seem contradictory, but it’s not when you remember that for Liberals, what the U.S. does is wrong – and whatever we don't do, that’s wrong too.

Georgia On My Mind (UPDATED)

Richard Fernandez of The Belmont Club offers an excellent roundup of the background and unfolding events in Georgia and its would-be breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The history is a typically tangled affair of little-known, bitterly contested patches of land, each with its panoply of grievances and claims. Don't fail to click through to Ralph Peters' caustic indictment of Russian scheming and perfidy in the region. I'm currently blazing through his picaresque and gripping accounts of his travels though the Caucasus and other former Soviet serfdoms. His trenchant analysis of the short-sightedness of the Elder Bush and Clinton Administrations in their dealings with the twitching corpse of the USSR, and how the stage was thus set for the pugnacious Putin, lend much weight to Peters' assessment of Russia's role in fomenting the furball which is flailing toward full-on war at this time.

Things are apt to get a whole lot worse over there before they get any better, and the fates of some young, embattled democracies hang in the balance. Georgia in particular has been a staunchly pro-Western enclave, whose aspirations to NATO membership lie close to the heart of the chaos which a recalcitrant Russia seems hell-bent on stoking. With the independence of Kosovo earlier this year, Russia warned of then-unspecified "steps" which would be taken to punish the West for supporting ethnic Albanian Kosovars in their bid for self-rule. I suppose part of what we are seeing here is sour grapes, Russian style. To be fair, Russia had fallen far during the 90s, and the emergence of a Putin, who leverages nationalistic outrage and the newfound power of petroleum and gas revenues to regain some geopolitical clout, is an understandable development. Russia needs to be contained, but not overly shamed, or the wheel will simply turn faster, crushing many beneath its treads.

Unfortunately, as the Bush Administration runs out the clock, and the nature of the Administration to come remains in play, Russia can be expected to try and consolidate as much of its former glory as it can wrest from situations like this, while Europe wrings its hands. We do need very carefully to watch the actions of Ukraine, Poland, and other former Soviet satellites in the days to come. Will they rush to the aid of Georgia, and present a credible deterrent to Moscow's machinations? Will they sit this out, lest they inflame the ire of their own separatist movements?

This is not going to be pretty.

UPDATE: 8/11/2008

As expected/hoped, Ukraine has sent a signal that it will not simply roll over in this matter. By denying Russian warships access to Ukrainian port facilities on the Black Sea, Kiev has markedly complicated the logistics of the Kremlin's Georgian adventure, and issued an unambiguous warning that its ambitions will not be without non-trivial diplomatic cost. More of this sort of thing would be better.

Also, Georgian president Saakashvili has penned an editorial for the WSJ which vividly and poignantly lays out the variables and stakes in this conflict. It presents all-too familiar themes of appeasement versus confrontation in dealing with aggressive actors, and should give due pause to all those who believe that making good-faith concessions and sitting down for earnest deliberations will automatically result in reasoned, peaceful resolutions of all geopolitical conundra. The pen may be mightier than the sword in the end, but it makes a lousy defensive weapon once the duel is on.

Oh, and it appears that I inadvertently mirrored Richard Fernandez' Ray Charles reference in titling this piece. Oops. Sorry, Wretchard; parallel evolution, not plagiarism, I assure you.