Obsidian Wings

By Their Fruits, Ye Shall Know Who's Right

by publius

Big news today from Afghanistan. The WSJ reported that the US is now “actively considering” direct talks with the Taliban to negotiate stemming the violence. The article notes that this idea is supported by McCain’s second best friend in the whole wide world – David the General (Petraeus). And it makes sense that Petraeus would support it – after all, it’s the same logic underlying the Sunni outreach.

Stepping back, it’s worth noting that this development is yet another recent vindication of progressive policy assumptions. Before I go further, I should note that there are of course many scary-smart, reality-based conservatives out there – I’m not trying to paint with an overly broad brush here. But I’m not talking about individual conservatives – I’m talking about what I’ll call the “institutional party sphere.” This group includes elected officials, staffers, and various influential pundits and wonks – i.e., the people that matter within the party.

Seen at this level, recent events have repeatedly proven the progressive “sphere” more correct than the conservative “sphere.” Progressives’ policy assumptions seem to jibe better with empirical reality than the fairy tale world inhabited by many in the conservative sphere. In short, in the laboratory of ideas, progressives are winning.

Foreign policy is one such area – and progressives should be louder in advertising these successes. For instance, there’s been a sharp dispute in recent years about what to do with bad actors on the foreign stage. Under the neocon view, you don’t reach out, you don’t negotiate – you show strength and you’ll eventually dictate your preferences. Under the more progressive internationalist view, you talk to your enemies. Not because you like them, and not because you’re going to give away the store. But because that’s the most empirically effective way to achieve your objectives.

Neither argument is absurd in the abstract. You can understand how smart people could be drawn to either vision. But what’s interesting is that we’ve had a laboratory over the past 8 years to test each hypothesis – and it’s pretty clear which vision has proven the most effective. In Iraq, some of our first clear-cut “successes” came (at least partially) from our willingness to negotiate with former enemies. The same is true in North Korea. Stonewalling achieved literally nothing – actually, it achieved less than nothing because things got worse. Engagement, by contrast, has been far more effective.

It’s no accident, then, that the most successful general in Iraq operated under reality-based assumptions that the neocons (and McCain) didn’t share. Indeed, it’s sort of ironic that McCain has tried to get so much traction out of the surge. The surge, remember, was just one piece of a larger operation premised on assumptions directly contrary to McCain’s neocon “never negotiate” worldview. In this sense, the recent successes McCain likes to trumpet actually illustrate just how wrong his foreign policy philosophy truly is.

The same is true with the Petreaus-supported talks with the Taliban – they too illustrate McCain’s failed foreign policy vision. Admittedly, the McCain campaign did claim to support the talks in the WSJ article. And that’s great – good for them. But it shouldn’t obscure the larger point that these talks (the logic of these talks) are antithetical to the McCain/Palin/Kristol philosophy of refusing to engage with those deemed “evil.”

Foreign policy, though, isn’t the only area where the progressive sphere’s vision has been vindicated by recent events. It’s become clear that the conservative sphere’s ideas aren’t capable of addressing a number of critical problems – health care, global warming, financial regulation. It’s not merely that the policies are wrong, it’s that they are often premised upon factually inaccurate assumptions about how the world works (e.g., individual markets will solve health care crisis; global warming not real).

At some point, “sphere conservatives” need to provide some actual empirical evidence that their foreign and domestic policies actually work. If not, they need to make way for better conservative wonks who are more grounded in reality.

[UPDATE: Can I also add stimulus plans to the list? Kevin Drum posts an EPI chart showing which specific types of stimulus spending provide the most benefits. If you'll note, the items at the top of the chart (food stamps, infrastructure projects, unemployment benefits extension) were the measures the Dems tried to push last time, but were opposed by Republicans. By contrast, the items on the bottom of the list -- well, just go look at it. You know how this ends.]

Obama and the Peace Process

by publius

As I mentioned earlier, I really enjoyed the New America panel this morning (“Can the Next President Make the Middle East Irrelevant?”). There were several interesting takeaways, but I’ll try to limit them to one post at a time.

Frankly, I think Zogby made one of the most thoughtful observations (Zogby is on the left in the picture, Daniel Levy is to the right). Another panelist (Levy) had sharply criticized the Bush administration’s “7 years of disengagement” with Israel and Palestine. Zogby noted, however, that disengagement must also be conceptualized as acquiescence. In other words, it’s not merely that the US has ignored the region. It’s that the US has turned a blind apathetic eye to things like settlement construction, Lebanon, etc.

The problem, Zogby explained, is that this acquiescence (or at least perceived acquiescence) has poisoned the street, thus making political progress impossible. And social conditions matter — the civil rights movement taught us that. Both Brown v. Board and the 1964 Act were made possible because of the tireless work of activists who created the necessary conditions for dramatic legislative progress. I would guess that anti-abortion activists feel the same way — their activism is necessary to create the social conditions to overturn Roe. In short, whatever your politics may be, shaping social conditions is important.

Turning back to the Middle East, it’s important not to overlook the role that these “pre-existing conditions” play in the peace process. If they’re not where they need to be, then the leaders are structurally powerless to make change happen, no matter how badly they may want to.

With this in mind, we can understand more precisely why an Obama presidency could move the peace process along. It’s not that Obama could walk in and negotiate a peace deal. It’s that an Obama presidency would provide a brief fleeting window to get social conditions moving the right way. When he is elected, the Arab street might be willing to give him a listen. Obama could — if so inclined — get the longer-term motion going.

But it will take more than speeches. There needs to be some real action — action that actually constrains Israel in some way (e.g., getting serious about settlement construction). If Obama fails to act (which is what the underground sliming is presumably meant to prevent), then absolutely nothing will change -- which is bad news for ALL countries. After all, an Obama presidency means nothing in and of itself to these people. It only takes on meaning if Obama can take the brief window he’ll enjoy to do something to shift the social conditions.

Foreign Policy ADD

by hilzoy

This post from Undiplomatic provides a quick illustration of why Foreign Policy ADD is a Very Bad Thing. It's called "Russia - Georgia: The Big Winner":

"Iran.

1. The neocons are so distracted by the new meme of Russia as Nazi Germany, they’ve forgotten all about their old meme of Iran as Nazi Germany.

2. The Bush Administration, attempting to save face as a result of its failed promises to Georgia, appears determined to shame and isolate the Russians. If they keep it up, it’s unlikely they’ll get Russia’s continued cooperation on Iran.

3. The Russians have every incentive now to cultivate the Iranians rather than sanction them.

If I were the Ahmadinejad, I’d be laughing my missile-photoshopping jihadist butt off right about now."

A good President needs to be able to keep our objectives in Iran, and Russia's role in helping us secure them, in his mind even when Russia is attacking Georgia. Some of those objectives, like keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, matter enormously. It's one thing for William Kristol to have the entire rest of the world fly out of his head in the thrill of the moment. It's another thing altogether for our President to.

McCain and the "Last War"

by publius liukin

I want to follow up on Hilzoy's last post. Of all the McCain gaffes, I think yesterday’s is arguably the most significant — and the most troubling. In case you missed it, McCain said:

My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression.

At first glance, it’s just a silly misinformed statement. But if you look a bit deeper, there are some very interesting and problematic assumptions lurking beneath. Over the past week, McCain and his excitable supporters have cited his “muscular” response to Georgia as something voters should consider this fall. Actually, I agree with that — it’s just that I think it shows why McCain should never be president. Specifically, it shows that McCain — and his policies — are stuck in the past. He is a Cold War candidate in a post-Cold War world.

“Fighting the last war” is a thread that runs throughout military history. Civil War generals used Napoleonic tactics that led to slaughter in the face of new technology (interestingly, the end of the Civil War saw early forms of trench warfare). At the beginning of World War I, cavalry units on horseback charged Gatling guns. The point is that, in the face of new conflict, military leaders throughout history have seen it through the lenses of the past, often with tragic results.

And that’s exactly what we’re seeing with McCain — both in response to the Georgia crisis and to foreign policy more generally. Like the neocons surrounding him, McCain’s worldview was forged in the fires of the Cold War. To him, foreign policy is essentially about nation-states, some of which are evil, some of which are good. In McCain’s eyes, there’s always an imperialist existential threat threatening to expand and gobble up the world. Yesterday it was communism. Today it’s “Islamofascism.” Tomorrow, probably China.

Country First

by publius

Like the presumptive Democratic nominee, I went on vacation around the time the Georgia mess started. But Hilzoy and Eric have done a fantastic job covering the ins and outs this week. I wanted to weigh in though from a somewhat different perspective.

For me, it’s been fascinating to watch the militant anti-Russia critiques from McCain and the neocon usual suspects. What’s interesting is not so much the intensity of the critiques, but the underlying similarities between the neocons and the Russians. More precisely, what’s interesting are the parallels between neocon thought and the thought that led the Russians to attack (or counter-attack). In short, both are motivated by militant nationalism.

I mean, let’s imagine if Bill Kristol could be magically transformed into a Russian. And let’s say that the Russian Kristol saw the following happen over the years: (1) the Soviet Union collapsed; (2) NATO and the West began militarily encircling a country whose foreign policy has been obsessed for 60 years with avoiding another WW2-style invasion; (3) NATO humiliated an impotent Russia by bombing the holy crap out of Serbia and then supporting independence for Kosovo; (4) a hated uber-nationalist neighbor (Georgia) wanted to join this military alliance (NATO!); (5) said hated neighbor launched an attack essentially rubbing Russia’s nose in it.

What exactly do you think Kristolovich would recommend? Respect for territorial sovereignty?

No, he’d recommend pretty much what he’s recommending now, just with the countries reversed. That’s what militant nationalists do. They convince themselves of their own unambiguous superiority. Once that point is established, everything else flows logically. Because we’re so good, we can use force whenever and wherever we want. We won’t be excessive of course, because we’re constitutionally incapable of being wrong.

These militant nationalists also share a paranoid sense of decline. The great nation is always in danger of being overrun or embarrassed. There’s always some threat among us. Thus, there’s always some need to re-establish our strength and greatness – preferably through force. Because we’re so good.

My point is that the problem with the Russia response is, at bottom, the same problem with the response to the response. That problem is nationalism. Russia is doing exactly what the neocons want America and Israel to do.

NATO

by hilzoy

In this post, I want to develop an argument I've been making sporadically in comments.

I think it is a wonderful, wonderful thing that it has become unthinkable that Russia would invade Western Europe. It wasn't always that way: certainly not in the immediate aftermath of World War II; arguably not until the 70s or so. And while there were many things that led it to become unimaginable, NATO protection is surely one of them.

I supported the expansion of NATO to include Eastern European countries back in the 1990s. I did so because I thought that this would secure those countries' independence from Russia, and that this was a wonderful thing to do. I did not, of course, imagine that Russia would not be able to harass them in various ways -- of course it could. I just thought that the US should do what it could to take invasion, in particular, off the table. I was, of course, aware that Russia did not want NATO to expand, and that it might reasonably (if wrongly) feel threatened by the entry of former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO. But I thought that locking in their independence was worth it. Similarly, I supported some of the later expansion, though I think it was probably excessive. (Albania?)

The reasons why I support some expansion of NATO, but not all possible expansions of NATO, ought to be obvious. First, the sort of change in the world that occurs when it becomes unimaginable to invade a country takes time. It also involves a serious commitment to defend that country, and since we have finite resources, it's really not possible to realistically commit ourselves to the defense of the entire globe, all at once. This sort of thing therefore has to proceed bit by bit. Moreover, if the goal is to convince one country that it should not regard invading those you've taken under your protection, then it matters not to give that country reason to feel encircled or threatened.

This last bit, I imagine, will be criticized by some conservatives. Ooh, they might say: so solicitous of Russia! Eager not to give offense to an amoral, dubiously democratic country that apparently does not blink at invading its neighbors! Any moment, you'll be suggesting we all sit down and sign 'Kumbaya' together -- after we finish the Russian group therapy sessions, that is!

To which I say: oh, please. I think of dealing with countries like Russia in sort of the same way I think of dealing with some unpleasant person at work who has a considerable amount of power to make my life and the lives of others miserable. I think it would be wrong to decide never ever to do anything that might annoy such a person, but it would be insane to decide that it was never worth thinking about what that person thought, and how she might react. (And even more insane to think, as some conservatives seem close to thinking, that it would be good policy to provoke her for no reason at all, just to show how tough we are.) If there are two ways of doing something, one of which will really anger her and one of which will not, of course you choose the one that won't. Moreover, even when there's only one way of doing something and it will anger her, you need to ask whether doing that thing is worth the cost. This is especially true when, as in this case, you are not the person most likely to suffer from her anger.

This seems to me to be pure common sense.

If I thought it was never worth doing anything that would really upset Russia, I would not have supported the expansion of NATO. If I supported some sort of 'spit in their faces whenever possible' policy, I suppose I'd be for offering NATO membership not just to Georgia, but to any bit of Russia that wanted it. (Chechnya, anyone?) I try to take an intermediate view: Russian reactions are real consequences of our actions, and should be weighed along with everything else, but they are not necessarily (or even often) decisive.

This is especially true in the case of NATO expansion. Again: the point, as far as I'm concerned, is to take invading certain countries off the table for the foreseeable future; to make invading those countries unimaginable, the way it is now unimaginable that Russia should invade, say, the Netherlands. That absolutely requires (among other things) Russia's coming to believe that the independence of those countries is not a threat. And that means that I cannot just not pay any attention to what Russia thinks. Changing what Russia thinks is part of the point.

So: the reason I do not support expanding NATO to include Georgia isn't just that Georgia has outstanding territorial disputes with Russia and a leader who is willing to start wars over those disputes. That would be enough of a reason:

"Nowhere in what I have read of the comment on this small but important war has it been explained why neither Georgia nor Ukraine should belong to NATO. They carry with them ready-made wars that NATO neither can nor should be expected to deal with. They are both ethnically and culturally divided nations whose histories are of struggle between or among their component parts.

In Georgia it is between the linguistically distinct enclaves that in the past were Russian and wish again to be Russian, and the majority of Georgians who want to be part of the West, but are also determined to dominate their rebellious territories.

If they would peacefully renounce those territories, an ethnically and culturally united Georgia would have every right to demand NATO membership. But as things are now (or were, until the last few days), Mikheil Saakashvili wants his country inside NATO to protect him from the consequences of forcing those dissident territories to remain under Georgian domination. NATO has no business doing such a thing, and as Russia supports the rebel enclaves, NATO membership for Georgia has war with Russia built into it. As we have just seen."

But I also think that allowing Georgia to join NATO, under any circumstances that remotely resemble the present, would make people wonder: are the United States and the other NATO countries really willing to go to war to protect Georgia? And the reason it would make people wonder is that it is not, in fact, even the least bit clear that we would, still less that we should. And that means that admitting Georgia to NATO would badly damage NATO's status as a credible defensive alliance.

It's really important to recognize this. If one does not, one might think: why not take a chance for Georgia? But if the cost is: damaging NATO's status as a credible defensive alliance, then we need to recognize that that's a cost will be borne by the other countries that are NATO members, and that are close to Russia. It is NATO that protects them. And it is NATO's status as a credible defensive alliance -- which means, other people's belief that if some NATO member were invaded, we would go to war to defend them -- that allows that protection to take the form of not being invaded, rather than the much less desirable form of having us roll in the tanks in response to a Russian attack.

Likewise, someone who didn't recognize the costs of admitting Georgia to NATO itself might be inclined to think: hey, why not extend NATO membership to Georgia, and gamble on the proposition that if Georgia were a NATO member, Russia would not invade? That line of thinking is not just (imho) inexcusably cavalier about the prospect of a shooting war with Russia; it also neglects the extent to which we cheapen our promises by overextending them. If we made a promise that it seemed very unlikely that we would follow through on, it would not carry anything like the weight it would have had we given it out more sparingly. And, as I said before, to the extent that similar promises are protecting other people, by degrading our word, we also harm them.

So I completely reject the idea that my unwillingness to support Georgian membership in NATO means that I am insufficiently sensitive to the need to protect Russia's neighbors. On the contrary: I worry not only about getting into a shooting war with Russia, but also about the credibility of the protection we have offered to other Russian neighbors. My disagreements with the people who say these sorts of things do not concern our views about the importance of protecting small countries with large neighbors, but our beliefs about the options we have available to us, and the consequences of various courses of action we might take.

Judgments about foreign policy are often high-stakes judgments with enormous amounts of risk. If I am wrong on this one, then by simply offering NATO membership to Georgia, we could protect it against invasion, and start the process by which it too might become a country it's just unimaginable for Russia to invade. But if people like John McCain are wrong, then letting Georgia join NATO would not only risk getting us into a war with Russia (and a war in which it would have a huge logistical advantage); it would also put at risk the peace and stability of Russia's other neighbors, and the survival of NATO as a credible defensive alliance.

These are very serious costs. They are worth discussing seriously. Reflexive statements about the need to stand up against Russian aggression and the "weakness" of whoever does not agitate the loudest are not serious, and do our country and our allies an enormous disservice.

What Did We Tell Georgia?, Take 2

by hilzoy

A couple of days ago, I wrote about Georgia's assault on South Ossetia:

"It is hard to believe either that we didn't know this was going to happen, or that we used our leverage to prevent it. And that is inexcusable. Thousands of people are dead, the freedom of action of Russia's neighbors has been drastically reduced, and our own credibility, such as it was, has been badly damaged."

(Note for the record: the reason I think we should have tried to prevent Georgia from attacking South Ossetia is not that I think that it's all the Georgians' fault, or anything like that. I think that Russia had plainly been trying to provoke this sort of attack, that Georgia was incredibly stupid to give Russia what it wanted, that Russia's response has been really excessive, and that as a result, thousands of people are dead, Georgia's independence is seriously compromised, many of Russia's other neighbors have a lot less room to maneuver than they did before, and our own interests have been set back badly. I also think that the one point at which we had the greatest likelihood of preventing this whole disaster was Georgia's decision to attack South Ossetia. That, rather than any view about blame, is why I focus on it. The reason I focus on what we could have done is not that I blame the US for this, which would be silly, but that as an American, I am interested in what my country might have done to prevent this.)

Since then, there have been reports that we did try to stop the Georgians:

"Bush administration officials, worried by what they saw as a series of provocative Russian actions, repeatedly warned Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to avoid giving the Kremlin an excuse to intervene in his country militarily, U.S. officials said Monday. (...)

A "parade" of U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, visited Tbilisi to urge Saakashvili to avoid giving the Kremlin to act, a State Department officials said.

At the same time, U.S. officials said that they believed they had an understanding with Russia that any response to Georgian military action would be limited to South Ossetia.

"We knew they were going to go crack heads. We told them again and again not to do this," the State Department official said. "We thought we had an understanding with the Russians that any response would be South Ossetia-focused. Clearly it's not.""

And:

"In the five days since the simmering conflict between Russia and Georgia erupted into war, Bush administration officials have been adamant in asserting that they warned the government in Tbilisi not to let Moscow provoke it into a fight — and that they were surprised when their advice went unheeded. Right up until the hours before Georgia launched its attack late last week in South Ossetia, Washington’s top envoy for the region, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, and other administration officials were warning the Georgians not to allow the conflict to escalate. (...)

Officials at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon said that President Saakashvili did not officially inform the Bush administration in advance of his offensive — let alone ask for support. “The Georgians figured it was better to ask forgiveness later, but not ask for permission first,” said one administration official. “It was a decision on their part. They knew we would say ‘no.’ ”"

Since I trust these reports, especially McClatchy, it's worth asking: what possibilities are consistent with their being true? I can think of three:

(a) The officials quoted accurately describe the messages they sent to the Georgian government, but other members of our administration sent different, more supportive messages. This would be unthinkable in any well-run administration: government officials should not contradict or undermine official policy behind the scenes, but of all the cases in which they might do so, undermining an official position about whether or not we would support them if an invasion turned out badly is close to the worst.

However, nothing about this administration leads me to think that this could not have happened. In particular, some of the neoconservatives, and members of Dick Cheney's coterie, seem to me to be more than capable of doing something like this. If they did, they have blood on their hands.

(b) The officials quoted accurately describe the messages they sent to the Georgian government, and no conflicting messages were sent. However, the administration was not as clear as it might have been about the consequences of Georgia attacking South Ossetia. -- There are warnings and there are warnings. We could have given bland or mild warnings, without making it clear either that we felt strongly about this, or that if Georgia decided to attack South Ossetia, it would face very real and serious consequences (e.g., in terms of our support for Georgian NATO membership.) In this case, it's ineptitude rather than malice. But I'm not very happy with the idea of inept diplomats.

(c) The officials quoted accurately describe the messages they sent to the Georgian government, no other messages were sent, and those messages were absolutely clear and unambiguous, not just about our disapproval, but about consequences. However, Georgia went ahead anyways. -- In this case, we did all we could, and it wasn't enough.

If this is what happened, then as far as I am concerned, that should simply end any idea of Georgia becoming a member of NATO, at least as long as Saakashvili is in power. Obviously, I don't say this because I think that the US, or anyone else, should try to remove him from power, but because entering into a defensive alliance with someone is serious business, and it seems to me self-evident that we should not enter into defensive alliances with countries led by suicidally reckless people.

None of these three possibilities are good ones. I very much hope that some intrepid reporter is trying to figure out which is true.

Georgia: Quick Thoughts

by hilzoy

A few more random quick thoughts:

(1) As various people have pointed out, it is always and everywhere Munich in 1938, if you happen to be a neoconservative. It's the foreign policy equivalent of Groundhog Day.

(2) To those people who are suggesting that it's time to go to war for plucky Georgia: leaving aside the fact that getting into a shooting war with Russia over South Ossetia would be insane, with what troops are we supposed to do this?

One reason not to go to war in Iraq was that it meant that we would not be able to credibly threaten force anywhere else. I'm not a big fan of threatening war, generally, but I am a big fan of maintaining our freedom of action. And Iraq sacrificed a whole lot of it. When we decided to go to war in Iraq, we were basically deciding not to go to war for any Georgias that might arise.

Shorter me: you had one war available. You already used it up.

3 Even before this crisis, I found it extremely troubling that McCain's chief foreign policy advisor was a registered agent of a foreign government until this past March. I suppose I might have been less worried if the government in question had been one whose interests are largely in harmony with ours, and advocacy for whom basically meant keeping our friendship with that country strong. Luxembourg, maybe, or Denmark. But not Georgia.

Now, I really, really don't like it.

4 It's interesting how many of the people who have gotten all belligerent about Russia are the same people who told us that the war against Islamofascism was the defining struggle of our generation. If they really believed that, you might expect them to let Russia swallow up Georgia rather than let ourselves be distracted from the people they take to be our real mortal enemies, especially since Russia can be quite useful to us in the war on terror. Oddly enough, however, they aren't.

It's almost as though they weren't serious about the fight against terrorism being the defining struggle of our time; just uniformly belligerent.

5 Jonathan Foreman in the National Review:

"A depressingly consistent aspect of American foreign policy since the Korean War has been to let down peoples who fight for us, trust us, or depend on us. Remember the Montagnards of Vietnam who fought so valiantly with our Green Berets during the Indochina conflict? Most of them ended up dead or in reeducation camps and it was decades before the survivors were even given visas to come to the USA."

One possible solution to this: don't make promises you aren't prepared to keep. And don't support political candidates who do.

Obama And McCain On Georgia

by hilzoy

Yesterday, Jonathan Martin published a piece called: McCain prescient on Russia?

"When violence broke out in the Caucasus on Friday morning, John McCain quickly issued a statement that was far more strident toward the Russians than that of President Bush, Barack Obama and much of the West.

But, as Russian warplanes pounded Georgian targets far beyond South Ossetia this weekend, Bush, Obama and others have moved closer to McCain's initial position.

It has been a rough few weeks for McCain on the foreign policy front — paging Dr. Maliki — but he appears to have been ahead of the curve in his assessment that Moscow was the bad actor here."

This idea has been taken up by a lot of right-wing blogs. As far as I can tell, there are two basic versions of it.

First, Obama has changed his position, while McCain got it right at the outset:

"Now that he's had time to crib from McCain's paper, Obama has released a new statement that sounds a little more like someone who knows what the hell they are talking about and not some inexperienced 'citizen of the world'."

(See also here, here, here, etc.)

It's worth remembering when, exactly, Obama's and McCain's initial statements were issued: Friday morning. (Obama's doesn't give times -- McCain's is from 10:52am on Friday -- but this post by Ben Smith, which went up at 12:13pm on Friday, references both statements.) As of Friday morning, after some provocation that was probably Russian, Georgia had launched an assault on South Ossetia, in the course of which it flattened a city, and Russia was sending tanks and troops in in response. At that point, it was not at all clear that one side was more to blame than the other, though plainly both were in different ways at fault. Obama's and McCain's later statements were issued after a number of very significant later developments: Russia's bombing uncontested parts of Georgia, its sending troops into Abkhazia, etc. By this point, it had become clear that whatever Georgia had done initially, Russia's response had gone way beyond protecting its peacekeepers, repelling the Georgian attack, or anything for which a remotely colorable case might be made.

When things change, sometimes your view of them changes as well. This is not a sign of uncertainty, flip-flopping, or anything else. It's why it would have been a mistake to condemn Russian aggression in Georgia a week ago. John McCain is fond of reminding us that our Iraq policy should be responsive to facts on the ground. That doesn't just go for Iraq.

The second version is that even if Obama's change over time was responsive to changes in what was actually happening, John McCain should get points for seeing what Russia was up to first, and calling them on it. Ben Smith:

"McCain, though, went with his instinct and with a sense of moral clarity that seems to have been borne out by Russia's widening campaign."

Or, in the words of the redoubtable Ace:

"Apparently someone looked it up and told Obama whose side we are on."

To think about the merits of this version, I think we need to ask a couple of questions. First, was McCain's statement reasonable given what we knew on Friday morning? I think it was not. Second, is there any explanation other than prescience for McCain's having made it? Here I'll just quote Daniel Larison:

"So now McCain is trying to claim that he foresaw what Russia is currently doing in Georgia, when the only reason McCain “knew” what Russia would do is that he always assumes that Russians have the very worst motives and goals and then declares himself prescient when Russia does something objectionable. At least Smith’s use of the word instinct is correct–McCain is viscerally opposed to Russia, and so instinctively lurches to whatever the anti-Russian position is on any given issue."

***

Moreover: if we're going to talk about McCain's prescience, there's no obvious reason to consider only statements he made starting last Friday. It's worth noting that McCain supported allowing Georgia into NATO last February:

"Georgia and Ukraine have expressed their desire for a NATO Membership Action Plan. We should offer it to them at the summit."

Obama said:

"Whether Ukraine and Georgia ultimately join NATO will be a decision for the members of the alliance and the citizens of those countries, after a period of open and democratic debate. But they should receive our help and encouragement as they continue to develop ties to Atlantic and European institutions."

It's hard to overstate what a bad idea I think it would be to offer NATO membership to Georgia at this time. Allowing a country to join NATO isn't just some random 'screw you' gesture to Russia. It's entering into a military alliance, whereby we construe an attack on that country as if it were an attack on us. It means accepting a binding commitment to send our army to fight and die for that country. And we should never, ever enter into such a commitment lightly.

I supported expanding NATO to include Eastern European countries. I wanted to make that commitment to them, to ensure that the Iron Curtain would never again fall with them on the wrong side. But I think it would be madness to take the same view of Georgia. For one thing, if we're going to enter into a military alliance with some country, that country should not have ongoing territorial disputes with Russia. If it does, then unless we are willing to go to war with Russia over those territorial disputes, we have no business entering into a military alliance with that country. For another, that country should have a basically reasonable government -- the sort of government that would not do something completely stupid, like attacking a city garrisoned by the Russians. Moreover, its political system should give us confidence that this reasonable government is not a fluke.

Georgia fails on both counts. Consider this, from James Traub in the NYT:

"It’s a pretty safe bet that Georgia and Abkhazia will not resolve their conflict on their own. Both breakaway regions are quite willing to live with the Russian-enforced status quo, but even relatively moderate Georgian officials consider that status quo utterly unacceptable. When I asked Temuri Yacobashvili, a cultivated man who is one of the country’s leading art patrons, why Georgia couldn’t focus on the threat from Russia and let the Abkhaz have their de facto state, he said, “These are not two different things, because it’s not amputating hand, it’s amputating head, or heart. No Georgian president could survive if he gave up on Abkhazia.” And, he added, “if the international community by its inaction will not leave any other option for Georgia, then we have to make decision.”

If the West, that is, won’t induce Russia to stop using the border region as a pawn, Georgia will be left with no choice save war. And how will the West do that? Mr. Saakashvili suggests sanctions, like travel bans, on individual Russian leaders. When I posed the same question to Giga Bokeria, another confidante who is deputy minister for foreign affairs, he said, “If Russia ceases to be an empire.” These are not serious answers."

Sorry: those are answers that, to my mind, just disqualify a country from military alliance with the US. If entering a military alliance with Georgia means getting into a shooting war with Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, then you'd have to be crazy to get into that alliance.

But John McCain thought we should do that crazy thing. Imagine what this crisis would look like if he had had his way: if Georgia was not just a friend, but a country with which we had entered into a formal alliance, and to whose defense we had pledged ourselves.

But, one might ask, would Russia have invaded Georgia if it had been a member of NATO? There's no way to know. Personally, though, I'd rather not take that gamble.

***

One other point is also worth noting. If Georgia had been allowed to enter NATO, and if we and other NATO members were not absolutely committed to defending Georgia in a situation like this, then that would have been the end of NATO as a credible alliance. Even if we were absolutely committed to defending Georgia in a situation like this, NATO would have been finished as a credible alliance if other countries didn't believe that we were. And I'd rather not take that gamble either.

If John McCain wants to make this election turn on his Russia policy, that's a debate Obama should welcome. Because now the real risks he has been willing to expose us to are as clear as they could be.

What Did We Tell Georgia?

by hilzoy

If this is true, whoever is responsible should be banned from foreign policy for the rest of his or her natural life:

"Mr Saakashvilli may also have banked on support from his closest ally, US president George W Bush, whose administration is said to have given tacit support for a Georgian assault on South Ossetia in the believe that the territory could be recaptured within 48 hours."

And I suspect that it, or something like it, is likely to be true. Ask yourself this: would the Georgians not have given us any hint that they planned an assault on South Ossetia? I think that's really unlikely. In any case, if they didn't tip us off before getting into a shooting war with Russian troops (who were in South Ossetia as peacekeepers), that should, in my book, put paid to the idea of them as good potential allies.

If they did, what did we say in response? There are things we could have said that would have deterred any but the most completely suicidal Georgian leader. Saakashvili has been unbelievably reckless, but it would have been orders of magnitude more stupid to do what he did had we said, clearly and emphatically, not just that if he did this, he was on his own, but also that taking this step would seriously damage his relationship with us, and would put paid to his hopes of joining NATO in the foreseeable future.

Which is to say: we had a lot of leverage. It is hard to believe either that we didn't know this was going to happen, or that we used our leverage to prevent it. And that is inexcusable. Thousands of people are dead, the freedom of action of Russia's neighbors has been drastically reduced, and our own credibility, such as it was, has been badly damaged.

Again, just to preempt a predictable response: I am not saying it's all our fault. Russia and Georgia are independent actors, and their leaders are responsible for their decisions. But we are also responsible for ours, and if we knowingly encouraged, or even green-lighted, Saakashvili's actions, that is, to my mind, a piece of idiocy on a par with encouraging the Iraqi Shi'a to revolt after the Gulf War. We should not create expectations we are not prepared to meet.