MCCAIN: GEORGIA CONFLICT IS THE ‘FIRST SERIOUS CRISIS INTERNATIONALLY SINCE THE END OF THE COLD WAR.’
By Damozel

The Moderate Voice
August 15th, 2008

I am becoming quite worried about McCain.

RockRichard at VetVoice says bluntly:

Forget about Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and REAL Al-Qaeda. That
isn’t a major conflict. Let’s not dwell too much on figuring out this
Iraq problem. It isn’t an international crisis. And maybe he was just
having a "senior moment" and completely forgot about the Gulf War,
apartheid, and genocide in Darfur, Rwanda and the Balkans.

If you are reading this and are currently deployed or about to deploy
which at the current OPTEMPO should include anyone who is active duty,
keep that chin up. Its not like this is a crisis or anything. And
if you’re a loved one of someone who made the ultimate sacrifice,
remember that Senator McCain seems to think that your loved one died
for something so trivial that it doesn’t even break the "crisis"
threshold.

Andrew Sullivan asks:

What if Obama had said this?…. It’s this kind of emotional hyperbole
that should worry people about McCain in the White House. He’s a
drama queen on these issues. With a finger on the trigger.

Michael Stickings writes:

[McCain is] providing yet more evidence — and it’s really piling up
— that he is not the straight-talking maverick with international
relations expertise…but a dim-witted buffoon who actually knows very
little about the world and who is prepared to do and say anything to
score political points….

Let’s face it, McCain has no clue what to do about the conflict in
Georgia. His message, however, is this: "It’s the Cold War all over
again! I was there! I get it! Russia is the Evil Empire! I know what
to do! Vote for me!"

And this is what really bothers me.

McCain is exploiting an extremely serious situation that will affect
US and Russian relations for years to come in order to score political
points. And they called Barack Obama "presumptuous"? Consider this
(from The Washington Post):

Standing behind a lectern in Michigan this week, with two trusted
senators ready to do his bidding, John McCain seemed to forget for
a moment that he was only running for president.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili says he talks to McCain, a
personal friend, several times a day. McCain’s top foreign policy
adviser, Randy Scheunemann, was until recently a paid lobbyist
for Georgia’s government. McCain also announced this week that
two of his closest allies, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and
Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), would travel to Georgia’s capital of
Tbilisi on his behalf, after a similar journey by Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice.

The extent of McCain’s involvement in the military conflict in Georgia
appears remarkable among presidential candidates, who traditionally
have kept some distance from unfolding crises out of deference to
whoever is occupying the White House. The episode also follows months
of sustained GOP criticism of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, who was
accused of acting too presidential for, among other things, briefly
adopting a campaign seal and taking a trip abroad that included a
huge rally in Berlin. (WaPo)

Obama made a speech and shook hands with a couple of people. He
also apparently stirred up the Iraqis and got all that discussion
going about withdrawal deadlines. He was criticized for meddling in
foreign policy.

But this is several notches further up the meddling scale. My
colleague remarked:

John McCain says he is speaking on the phone every day to Georgia’s
President…. Doesn’t Bush mind?….. I’d mind. For once I kind of
admire Bush’s restraint.

I’d be like, "Dude? Excuse me; I believe I am still the president
here?"

For all the Cold War comparisons I’m seeing, the situation in Georgia
involves other factors (such as the argument of the separatist enclaves
within Georgia and the matter of the Georgian president’s initial
attack on South Ossetia). Nobody’s hands are completely clean with
respect to the factors which initiated the conflict. A nuanced response
is needed in dealing with Georgia’s territorial integrity and with the
people within its borders. The bad blood goes back hundreds of years.

On August 11, The Christian Science Monitor published an article by
Professor Charles King of Georgetown University. (Professor King is
professor of international affairs in the Edmund A. Walsh School of
Foreign Service at Georgetown University…and the author of "The
Ghost of Freedom: A History of The Caucasus.") He wrote:

Russia illegally attacked Georgia and imperiled a small and feeble
neighbor. But by dispatching his own ill-prepared military to resolve a
secessionist dispute by force, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili
has managed to lead his country down the path of a disastrous and
ultimately self-defeating war….

[T]his is not a repeat of the Soviet Union’s aggressive behavior of
the last century. So far at least, Russia’s aims have been clear:
to oust Georgian forces from the territory of South Ossetia,
one of two secessionist enclaves in Georgia, and to chasten a
Saakashvili government that Russia perceives as hot-headed and
unpredictable.Regardless of the conflict’s origins, the West must
continue to act diplomatically to push Georgia and Russia back to the
pre-attacks status quo. The United States should make it clear that
Saakashvili has seriously miscalculated the meaning of his partnership
with Washington, and that Georgia and Russia must step back before
they do irreparable damage to their relations with the US, NATO,
and the European Union.

The attack on South Ossetia, along with Russia’s inexcusable reaction,
have pushed both sides down the road toward all-out war – a war that
could ignite a host of other territorial and ethnic disputes in the
Caucasus as a whole. (CSM)

He also wrote:

Like the Balkans in the 1990s, the central problems of this region are
about the dark politics of ethnic revival and territorial struggle. The
region is home to scores of brewing border disputes and dreams of
nationalist homelands….

Farther afield, other secessionist entities and recognized governments
in neighboring countries – from Nagorno-Karabakh to Chechnya – are
eyeing the situation. The outcome of the Russo-Georgian struggle
will determine whether these other disputes move toward peace or
once again produce the barbaric warfare and streams of refugees that
defined the Caucasus more than a decade ago.

For Georgia, this war has been a disastrous miscalculation. South
Ossetia and Abkhazia are now completely lost. It is almost impossible
to imagine a scenario under which these places – home to perhaps
200,000 people – would ever consent to coming back into a Georgian
state they perceive as an aggressor. (CSM)

Calling out Russia for its inexcusable opportunism (and previous
meddling in the separatist movements with the exact intention of
stirring up this sort of trouble) or even–if it is possible–punishing
them for it is not going to solve Georgia’s internal problems. The
separatist enclaves have not been under Georgia’s control since
the Nineties. Rightly or wrongly, they do not acknowledge Georgia’s
sovereignty over them or their territories.

The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford has reported: "Many Ossetians I met both in
Tskhinvali and in the main refugee camp in Russia are furious about
what has happened to their city.

"They are very clear who they blame: Georgia’s President Mikhail
Saakashvili, who sent troops to re-take control of this breakaway
region."

Human Rights Watch concluded after an on-the-ground inspection:
"Witness accounts and the timing of the damage would point to Georgian
fire accounting for much of the damage described [in Tskhinvali]." (BBC
News)

The Bush administration is working with the EU to resolve the
situation. Bush has told the Russians to get out now.

McCain needs to let them get on with it. But will McCain, who seems,
as Sullivan says, to be caught up in the drama, who claims close
friendship with the Georgian president, and who said "We are all
Georgians," simply exacerbate the situation? On August 13, The New
York Times wrote:

Despite Western governments’ public statements of support for
Saakashvili, some Western diplomats now privately say that the Georgian
leadership or military made a serious and possibly criminal mistake
last week by launching a massive barrage against the South Ossetian
capital of Tskhinvali, which inevitably led to major civilian deaths
and casualties.

Russian officials have said 2,000 people were killed in the Georgian
offensive, a figure that has not been confirmed independently. But
it is indisputable that large numbers of civilians were killed in
and around Tskhinvali. (Reuters)

What I’d really like to see is for McCain to disengage from any actual
meddling at this juncture. He should step away from the phone and
recall his two envoys.

I’m sure McCain means well. But in a situation like this, good
intentions count for very little.

At Obsidian Wings, Dr. Hilzoy says:

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.

In reality, the Russia-Georgia dispute involved a tiny ethnic enclave
with deep historical ties to Russia that resides in a tiny post-Soviet
Union country. If Russia wanted to re-conquer Eastern Europe, it’s
an odd place to start.

But rather than seeing the situation as the complicated mix of history
and ideology that it is, McCain sees it as a reaffirmation of the Cold
War worldview that informs his foreign policy. A man who wears red
glasses sees everything as red. And so, it his pre-existing assumptions
(and not the facts) that are driving his response….

if the Georgia crisis had happened on President McCain’s watch,
these assumptions could similarly lead to some bad results. The worst
result of all of course would be military entanglement. But even if
McCain wasn’t quite that dumb, he could needlessly antagonize Russia,
who remains (for good or bad) a key and nuclear-powered partner on a
whole host of transnational issues and crises. That’s not to say that
we shouldn’t speak up against an overbroad military response. But the
response needs to be proportional. Citing disapproval (even strong
disapproval) is one thing — "we are all Georgians" is quite another.

Mankind managed to survive the first Cold War without destroying
itself. I’d prefer not to have another roll of the dice just to show
how hairy-chested we are. (Obsidian Wings)

This isn’t about acquiring foreign policy cred; civilian lives are
at stake all over Georgia. Like all civilians everywhere, they’re
inevitably pawns in a larger international chess game. But they
shouldn’t be pawns in the American presidential election as well.