International Affairs

The Russian invasion of Georgia is an example of Vladimir Putin’s expansionist imperialism and his effort to reclaim the lost greatness of the Soviet era.

Or it’s all George Bush’s fault.

On the face of it, it would seem that this invasion is yet another example of Putin’s plan to create a new version of the Warsaw bloc.

He has a history of totalitarianism that would lead one to that conclusion. His agents have assassinated critics in London, killed journalists in Moscow and jailed businessmen in St. Petersburg. He has used his secret police to throw rivals into prison camps in Siberia. He has shown himself to be a despot in the same vein as Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev. Read more...

The Russians’ planting of the flag at the North Pole last autumn was a Sputnik moment, but underwater. Its purpose was to territorialize our northern regions and turn our gaze north as surely as if it was a war dog peeing on the frozen tundra property line to warn off Canadian coyotes. Just as the U.S. intended to territorialize — by which we mean to dominate psychologically [see Sun Tzu] — Russia by planting missiles on its borders.

Yet it went unnoticed by a Democratic Party still laughing and dancing through the night with a flower in its mouth, as Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright did when the wisest voices in American foreign policy declared our intentions in Orthodox Europe to be “policy error of historic proportions.” Read more...

The ongoing Russian military pounding of the former Soviet bloc nation of Georgia offers an interesting insight into the minds of the two presidential candidates. This is serious business, and incidents like these are excellent trial runs of what our next president would do when that phone rings at 3 in the morning.

By most metrics, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has handled this issue better. From his bold statements in quickly (and specifically) denouncing the Russian onslaught to his repeated criticisms of where the current Medvedev/Putin regime is headed as a superpower, the ex-Navy aviator and Senate Armed Services Committee member proved his mettle, in my estimation. He even went so far as to say he would support Georgia’s ascendancy to NATO. Like it or not, that sort of statement shows McCain is peering around the corner — something America must do if it wants to resume its rightful place in the world. Read more...

Interesting op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today written by Melik Kaylan, a New-York based writer who has reported often from Georgia. Titled “Welcome Back to the Great Game,” it gives some important insights into the game that Russia is playing.

He points this out: “Having overestimated the power of the Soviet Union in its last years, we have consistently underestimated the ambitions of Russia since. Already, a great deal has been said about the implication of Russia’s invasion for Ukraine, the Baltic States and Europe generally. But few have noticed the direct strategic threat to U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Kremlin is not about to reignite the Cold War for the love of a few thousand Ossetians or even for its animosity toward five million Georgians. This is calculated strategic maneuvering. And make no mistake, it’s about countering U.S. power at its furthest stretch with Moscow’s power very close to home.” Read more...

An article by Charlemagne of The Economist this last week succinctly explains that the EU is made up essentially of four economic subgroups — Mediterraneans, Continentals, Anglo-Saxons and Nordics. These groups seem a union of traditionally Catholic and Protestant Europe intentionally designed to keep out Orthodox Russia.

This reflects the oldest and the first division of rising European consciousness, and one that has plagued Europe since the fourth century. In light of the ongoing conflicts in Kosovo, South Ossetia and Georgia, perhaps older cultural contours of Christendom would work better. Orthodox, Muslim, Catholic and Protestant were Europe’s ancient four pillars from its beginnings and through its history. These four form a European quaternity: a psychological pattern of wholeness described by C.G. Jung as a complex and interacting pattern in which any one element was not complete, but broken, without the others. Read more...

CQ reports that Mr. Foreign Policy, John McCain, just plagiarized Wikipedia in his recent comments on Georgia.

Remember, this is the man who confused Sunnis and Shiites and had to be corrected on his third attempt by Joe Lieberman. Also, the one who brags about his foreign travel but seems to think that there is an “Iraqi-Pakistan Border,” referring on "Good Morning America” to the “hard struggle” on the non-existent border.

The editor complained to CQ that McCain lifted lines without attribution, as required by their terms of use. Here are two instances, according to CQ: Read more...

So I took my son Jack to visit his grandparents and cousins in Chicago, and all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose.

First, the not-so-shocking revelations that John Edwards was having an affair with somebody who worked on his campaign.

And then, Russia invades Georgia, as George Bush and Vladimir Putin watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing.

Not a great time to be on vacation, especially if you are in the media or running for president. Read more...

It was characteristic of Bush’s secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to refer to Eastern Europe’s oldest Byzantium regions as “New Europe.” This was the kind of oxymoron and conspicuous make-believe that marked the all hat, no cattle Bush administration. What was a little spooky about it all was that when they pretended to tell the truth with fixed jaw and flat eyes, people pretended to believe them.

When these states of Europe’s oldest soul — Kosovo, the Czech Republic, South Ossetia and Georgia among them — were released from the grip of the Soviet Union, they had little in common with Catholic and Protestant Europe, but they wanted to join NATO. They did have the experience of television and radio. And they had cousins in America, some of whom were senators. What they really wanted was to become secondary American states and have America defend them against their closest and oldest cultural relative, Orthodox Russia. Read more...

In the first real-time foreign policy crisis to take place after the primary elections, we find Barack Obama appeasing Russian imperialists. Obama said he strongly condemned "the outbreak of violence in George" and urged "an immediate end to armed conflict." He said "now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint and to avoid an escalation into full-scale war." He called for direct talks and urged that Georgia's "territorial integrity ... be respected."

McCain told it like it is, noting that "Russian military forces crossed an internationally recognized border into the sovereign territory of Georgia." He called for Russia to "immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations" and pull out its forces. Read more...

Three decades ago, China was a mystery to Americans. Its society and economy were closed, and we viewed it as an appendage of the biggest and baddest of them all, the Soviet Union.

Today, the situation couldn't be more different. I, for one, find China's cultural history fascinating, and I'm crazy about the Chinese people I know in Washington and China. That's not to say that the United States and China are chummy, but China's on the front pages of our newspapers every single day. In Washington, it's at the heart of just about any debate on outsourcing, competitiveness and power. Read more...