HELPLESS AND HAPLESS IN THE
CAUCASUS

The Russians are chess players. They
don't move without weighing where, why,
and what is to be expected to happen. It's
called strategy. Mr. Bush? Not so much.
He plays checkers, thinking that if he jumps
enough people, someone will surely King
him! He jumped on the Taliban, and is
bogged down there as we speak. The
Taliban is growing steadily, and controls
much of the countryside. It now threatens
Kabul. This is the real endless fight that
McCain keeps talking about, though he
hasn't a clue what it's all about. Or who's
on first. Bush also jumped on Saddam,
and is bogged down there as well. He has
threatened Iran, a Russian business part-
ner who is developing nuclear technology
with Russia's help. Russia is obligated by
a long-standing treaty to help Iran if they
are attacked.

Upon the fall of the Soviet Union the U. S.
proclaimed itself "the lone superpower."
It wasn't and isn't, of course, as is clear
from events in Georgia. We certainly have
the military hard and software to crush
most if not all comers. But we have neither
the wit nor the will to employ that power
effectively. Speaking of the way we bullied
Russia when it was weak, Immanuel Waller-
stein has written: "There was only one prob-
lem with this: The United States was not the
lone superpower; it was no longer even a
superpower at all. The end of the cold war
meant that the United States had been de-
moted from being one of two superpowers
to being one strong state in a truly multi-
lateral distribution of real power in the
interstate system. Many large countries
were now able to play their own chess
games without clearing their moves with
one or two erstwhile superpowers. And
they began to do so."

Still quoting Wallerstein: "Two major
geopolitical decisions were made in the
Clinton years. First, the United States
pushed hard and more or less success-
fully, for the incorporation of erstwhile
Soviet satellites into NATO membership.
These countries were themselves anxious
to join, even though the key Western
European countries --Germany and
France -- were somewhat reluctant to go
down this path." Tom Friedman, in the
N. Y. Times wrote on 8/20/08 concerning
this: "I was among the group -- led by
George Kennan, Sen. Sam Nunn and the
foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum
that argued against expanding NATO at
that time. It seemed to us that since we had
finally brought down Soviet communism
and seen the birth of democracy in Russia
the most important to do was to help Rus-
sian democracy take root and integrate
Russia into Europe. . . .this was especially
true because, we argued, there was no big
problem on the world stage that we could
effectively address without Russia -- parti-
cularly Iran or Iraq. Russia wasn't about
to re invade Europe. And the Eastern
Europeans would be integrated into the
West via membership in the European
Union. No, said the Clinton foreign poli-
cy team, we're going to cram NATO ex-
pansion down the Russian's throats, be-
cause Moscow is weak and, by the way,
they'll get used to it. Message to the Rus-
sians: We expect you to behave like Wes-
tern democrats, but we're going to treat you
like you're still the Soviet Union. The cold
was is over for you, but not for us."

"'The Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams
acted on the basis of two false premises,'
said Mandelbaum. 'One was that Russia is
innately aggressive and that the end of cold
war could not possibly change this, so we
had to expand our military alliance up to its
borders. Despite all the pious blather about
using NATO to promote democracy, the be-
lief in Russia's eternal aggressiveness is the
only basis on which NATO expansion ever
made sense -- especially when you consider
that the Russians were told they could not
join. (emphasis mine.) The other (false)
premise was the Russia would always be too
weak to endanger any new NATO members,
so we would never have to commit troops
to defend them. It would cost us nothing.
They were wrong on both counts.'"

"The humiliation that NATO expansion
bred in Russia (back to quoting Friedman
now) was critical in fueling Putin's rise
after Boris Yeltsin moved on. And Ameri-
ca's addiction to oil helped push up energy
prices to a level that gave Putin the power
to act on that humiliation." That's what's
happening now in Georgia. The stupid
chickens always come home to roost.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net