Monday, August 11, 2008
Bear Food
Once upon a time there was a heroic Hungarian named Imre Nagy. In November 1956, Hungary under Nagy's Premiership withdrew from the Warsaw Pact. Within days, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, and by 1958, Nagy had been executed under the supervision of Nikita Khrushchev - The USSR's "reformist" leader.
Not unlike today, there were some quarters calling for an aggressive US policy response to the Soviet Union's naked aggression in Hungary.
Brezhnev's Soviet Union repeated the same aggression in 1968 with Czechoslavakia and its leader, Alexander Dubcek. He did not meet quite the same fate as Nagy, but nonetheless saw an end to an effort to weaken the Bear's grip on his country.
Again, many called for a strong US policy response.
In both cases, the US elected not to cross the Russian Bear. I suspect we will act in a fashion consistent with past precedent. Georgia falls into what we would traditionally view as Russia's immediate sphere. In order to defend Georgia, we would have to extend ourselves to an extraordinary degree in order to defend a very limited strategic interest.
I would also posit that Russia's brazenness viz. Georgia is a useful wakeup call to Europe, and especially Germany. And, if we quickly survey a map, it is not a bad reminder to Turkey and even Iran that the Russian Bear is awakening flush with energy profits and refocused on regaining its regional strategic position. Against the backdrop of an expansionist Russia, the US might again regain some of its "lost" popularity. Heh.
It's about 20 years ago that the pendulum swung dramatically away from the Warsaw Pact construction that defined the Soviet Empire. Ten years later, Russia bottomed out amid an international debt default and oil price weakness. She is reestablishing herself today with a renewed economic strength and a historical taste for authoritarianism and brutality.
We cannot and will not pick every fight to defend every democratic nation. While defending Georgia would be consistent with our moral desires to preserve and extend freedom, it would be inconsistent with our strategic priorities and invite an unwinnable conflict. It is not dissimilar to Hungary and Czechoslavakia on a different day.
We could elect to pursue a robust humanitarian mission and attempt to shame the Russians into leaving Georgia to her own, democratic devices. I do not know what the dimensions of that mission might be or how it might be executed. But it strikes me that such an effort would be at the outer limits of an American policy response to this crisis.
One last observation. The Russians elected to pursue each of these invasions in the runup to a US election, perhaps sensing an opportunity in a lame duck presidency. In the aftermath of each, the US electorate opted for Republican candidates, first Ike (an incumbent) and then Nixon. Keep it in mind.
12 Comments:
By 
Anthony, at
Mon Aug 11, 11:20:00 AM:
One possible reaction would be to organize the expulsion of Russia from the G8: they were desperate to join that. McCain was already broaching the idea even before the Georgia crisis. While I agree that sending an MEU is out of the question, I think there's quite a bit diplomatically and economically we can do to make Moscow pay a price for Putin's rapacity.
By Dawnfire82, at
Mon Aug 11, 11:54:00 AM:
Won't work. It hasn't worked on Iran. It hasn't worked on Cuba. It hasn't worked on North Korea. It hasn't worked on Syria.
What makes you think it would work on Russia, a much larger and stronger power?
By Anthony, at
Mon Aug 11, 12:34:00 PM:
Diplomatic and economic sanctions would only be a first step. Don't forget, Russian officials hold lots of money in accounts outside Russia: freezing those would make the pain personal for the Mafiosi of Moscow. And, while we can't send troops Georgia, we can still give them the means to fight back: stingers (with which the Russians have bitter experience) and man-portable anti-tank rockets. The Georgians have a good army, they'll know what to do.
By Dawnfire82, at
Mon Aug 11, 12:41:00 PM:
Ah, military assistance. That's more like it.
Though that will technically make the US a belligerent in the conflict and may lead to shooting with the Russians, I'm strangely comfortable with that. Though it doesn't make headlines, the Russians never stopped fucking with us after 1991, and it got worse under Putin.
They richly deserve a kick in the teeth.
By 
, at
Mon Aug 11, 01:52:00 PM:
it would be inconsistent with our strategic priorities and invite an unwinnable conflict.
Don't need to win. Just need to make it too expensive for the Russians to persist. A bit of advanced weaponry in the right hands can accomplish that.
By , at
Mon Aug 11, 04:23:00 PM:
At least there wouldn't be blowback from arming the Georgians, unlike that great strategic success, arming the Taliban against the Russians.
By , at
Mon Aug 11, 05:09:00 PM:
It is good to know that brave Georgian soldiers who fall into Russian hands will be arrested and turned over to civil authorities for treatment and pottery classes. I wonder if any of the skiing gulags are still open.
Here, in the US, college professors, media types and State Department employers called to duty by their Russian masters should be treated with respect and not hassled for simply doing what they have trained for over these many years.
By Georg Felis, at
Mon Aug 11, 05:18:00 PM:
The first impulsive reaction went back to the Kuwait conflict, where a small number US troops were flung into Saudi to provide a tripwire to Saddam’s territorial ambitions. I thought, instead of sending Marines to Georgia, what if George W. were to go himself, take a couple of days tour, and directly visit the conflict, see what is going on personally. Can you imagine how quickly the Russians would jam on the brakes to avoid any "incidents"? No way in (censored) would the Russians do any kind of action during the visit, the prospect of accidentally getting the US involved under President Cheney even for a month or so, would be unthinkable. Not to mention the long string of Congressional Critters sure to follow that just can not let the Presidential footprints go un-stomped upon. Heck, his one visit could stop this little attempt at Russian Hegemony cold in its tracks.
GW has surprised us before, he has more nerve than the press will admit. And if Special Forces are not presently wandering around the Georgian landscape in civvies, I’ll paint Gore’s house for free.
By Dawnfire82, at
Mon Aug 11, 05:28:00 PM:
"At least there wouldn't be blowback from arming the Georgians, unlike that great strategic success, arming the Taliban against the Russians."
There was no Taliban in the 1980s. They did not appear on the world stage until 1994.
It's hard to tell if you're being sarcastic here, but arming the Afghans against the Russians *was* a great strategic success.
Georgefelis: What an intriguing idea. It's too bad he's at the Olympics.
By , at
Mon Aug 11, 06:27:00 PM:
arming the Taliban against the Russians.
Ummm...clue up dude. The Taliban didn't exist until LONG after the Russian occupation had ceased.
By , at
Mon Aug 11, 11:01:00 PM:
There was no Taliban in the 1980s. They did not appear on the world stage until 1994.
While they did not emerge from anonymity as a nationwide power until 1994, the origins of the Taliban lie in the refugee camps of Afghanistan during the 1979-1889 war with Russia. Following the Soviet withdrawal, the Taliban were one of the factions vying for control of the country. The Taliban's weapons were leftovers from US support against the Soviets. Our aid in defeating the Soviets was a great success, but the side effect of arming thousands of religious fanatics who want to kill us as much as they wanted to kill the Soviets is arguably worse than letting the Soviets occupy Afghanistan.
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Aug 12, 01:29:00 PM:
That's a little bit like saying that the British armed the American Revolutionaries in the French and Indian War... sure they beat the French, but then the Revolutionaries fought the British.
But that's completely impossible. The British could not have armed the American Revolutionaries during the French and Indian War because there were no such things.
Likewise here. You said that the US armed the Taliban against the USSR. There was no such thing as the Taliban, and their arrival could not have been foreseen at the time.
But even if it had been, this was in the context of the Cold War. If it hurt the Soviets, it was worth it. And I should mention that to date, not a single Stinger missile system has been found to have been used against us.
Islamic religious nuts have never had much problem getting and using weapons anyway; they have too many patrons. The muj and company used Soviet-made weapons gleaned from their state allies with much greater frequency than American-made weapons. I wonder, does that then imply that the Soviets armed the mujahidin against themselves?
"arming thousands of religious fanatics who want to kill us as much as they wanted to kill the Soviets is arguably worse than letting the Soviets occupy Afghanistan."
It's not Afghanistan that worried us. Afghanistan by itself is an irrelevant shit hole. It was nearness of the Red Army to the Indian subcontinent and Persian Gulf that was so worrisome.
Not the invasion itself but the invaders were the problem.
