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Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Pat Buchanan: Realism with Russia
As Russia attempts to soft balance against the United States (as realist scholar and Ron Paul foreign policy adviser Robert Pape calls it) by palling up with Chavez, and Cuba in response to America wanting a missile shield in Poland and Georgia and Ukraine in NATO, it might help us all out to read this column by Pat Buchanan yesterday calling for a reassessment of national interests. Buchanan vividly writes in "Meeting Medvedev Half-Way":
Opportunity also presents itself with the official report of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on the August war. According to The New York Times, the OSCE found, consistent with Moscow’s claims, that Georgia “attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.”
Russia’s response — running the Georgian Army out of South Ossetia, occupying Abkhazia and recognizing both as independent nations — may seem disproportionate and excessive. But, contrary to John (”We are all Georgians now!”) McCain, Moscow has a compelling case that Georgia’s Mikhail Saakashvili started the fire...
Medvedev is now on a four-nation Latin tour with stops in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and Fidel Castro’s Cuba. But this seems more like diplomatic tit-for-tat for high-profile U.S. visits to Tbilisi and other ex-Soviet republics than laying the groundwork for some anti-American alliance.
For, just as for Washington the relationship with Moscow is far more crucial than any tie to Tbilisi, so Moscow’s tie to Washington is surely far more crucial to Russia than any tie to Caracas or Havana.
America has no purpose poking the Russian bear - idealistic or realistic. From a moral point of view, Georgia committed immense war crimes - as documented by Amnesty International - in the war against Russia this summer. Georgia is also not exactly an American style liberal democracy, just last month Saakashvili fired on protesters, and the two seceding republics did not want any part of Georgian rule anyway. From a power politics point of view, Russia can't exactly destroy the United States nor will it probably go to war with us, but it does have enough chips on the world stage to sufficiently cause us major problems. Now is not the time to restart a Cold War, we need all of the friends we can get, and America's national interests lie in having a friendly relationship with Russia.
As a final point, how do we truly expect Russia to respond? If China had invaded Mexico, it would be an American national security threat. This would cause immense pain to the United States who would then try to use its bargaining chips to convince China not to come in to its sphere of influence. This is the same exact thing. While American ambitions to stand with "democracy" and against "aggression" have meritorious, let us remember that the world is not clear-cut and black and white as we think. All sides have guilty, bloody hands, and we don't have a dog in this fight. Utopian social engineering by government doesn't work - especially in foreign policy. We can never make the world perfect, and sometimes attempts to make the world perfect end up making it worse and less peaceful. That's the dose of conservative Niebuhrian realism we need.
(Crossposted at AbuHatem.com)
Posted by Omar Abu Hatem on November 26, 2008 | Permalink
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Comments
Sigh, Georgia did not committ war crimes - South Ossetians set upon Georgian peacekeepers, all concocted by the statist Putin regime. And pleas quote someone credible, not major Hitler revisionist Pat Buchanan. That guy is off his rocker.
Posted by: Faramir | 2008-11-26 1:45:46 PM
As the above commentator noted, Buchanan is hardly a credible source on foreign policy. He's anti-semitic, anti-Israeli, and an apologist for Hitler.
I agree that we can't support democracy everywhere and that interventions can be counter-productive. But do you really think it is in the best interest of the west to let Putin's aggression go unchecked?
For a discussion of this issue by intelligent adults, check out this exchange between Bob Wright and Bob Kagan:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/16085
BTW, Neibuhr was a cold warrior.
Oh, and "meritable" is not a word.
Posted by: Craig | 2008-11-26 3:54:30 PM
As the above commentator noted, Buchanan is hardly a credible source on foreign policy. He's anti-semitic, anti-Israeli, and an apologist for Hitler.
Posted by: Craig | 26-Nov-08 3:54:30 PM
Buchanan's foreign policy position has been consistent for the 50 years. He puts the interests of the US first. He despises the neo-cons who generally speaking don't put America's interests first, and that's where the "anti-semitic, anti-Israeli, and an apologist for Hitler" language comes from. If I was an American I'd prefer to follow Buchanan's foreign policy that the neo-cons foreign policy.
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-11-26 4:26:58 PM
Thanks for the comments. First and foremost, if you dislike Pat Buchanan, you can find the same basic argument concerning realism with Russia from Robert Pape, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Christopher Layne and other realists. So lets discuss the issue, instead of the names.
Niebuhr was a cold warrior, but Niebuhr also understood and wrote that the American intention shouldn't be to spread democracy to the Soviet Union. In one essay, "The Anglo Saxon Destiny and Responsibility" Niebuhr argues that American leadership of the world would be extremely unjust because American values and virtues would arrogantly blind us to our flaws. He said that it is just not possible for the world to have American leadership without injustice. Contrast this to Bob Kagan and Bill Kristol's arguments about "Benevolent Hegemony" which even Henry Kissinger said were moronic in his "Does America Need a Foreign Policy?"
The aggression was both Georgian and Russian. Check out Georgia's former ambassador saying that Georgia started the war:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/26/georgia-started-russiange_n_146666.html
And Amnesty International blaming both sides for war crimes:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/counting-civilian-cost-Georgia-Russia-conflict-20081118
You make a good about not "leaving Putin's aggression unchecked" yet as long as Putin understands not to pass the red line of more vital security interests to Europe and the United States, there is no need for America to worry. And even if Russia had invaded a vital European security interest, it is highly likely that France, the UK, and the rest of the EU, which have much stronger combined defense spending than Russia, would balance against the Russian threat. It is a question of vital security interests.
Abkhazia and South Ossetia are two small provinces. Imagine them being a part of NATO. America would have to then fight in a war against Russia, according to NATO's charter, and we either would have not done that - thus destroying NATO's deterrence - or been involved in a costly and unnecessary war against Russia. For what? Two provinces. Would the deaths and military and economic destruction that came out of a NATO versus Russia war be worth the price of two small provinces? Not to mention that there are significant amounts of people in both provinces who don't want to be part of Georgia.
And thank you concerning "meritable" - I will change it to meritorious.
Posted by: Omar Abu Hatem | 2008-11-26 4:29:58 PM
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