For some time, the Wayne and Garth school of Obama punditry (“We’re not worthy!”) was in fashion to explain why Obama was apparently not living up to expectations. He was too intellectual for us and wouldn’t play the usual partisan games. He was beyond our base nationalistic allegiances. “A sort of a god” was, like the real one, shrouded in mystery and beyond the ability of mere mortals to fully appreciate.
Now along comes a Politico column by Lisa Lerer explaining that the real issue is that we expect too much from the One. At Copenhagen:
But it will be almost impossible for Obama not to disappoint the world when he arrives here next week — in large part because the world keeps ratcheting up the expectations on him. When Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that it was declaring global warming a danger to human health, the administration might have hoped it was merely providing a catalyst — a sense of U.S. commitment — on the first day of two weeks of talks here. But leaders from the United Nations and the European Union insist that the EPA endangerment finding is something bigger — proof positive that Obama must have another rabbit to pull from his hat.
“Another rabbit”? I must have missed the Middle East peace accord, the agreement by Iran to give up its nukes, or some other small-mammal miracle. For Obama, of course, has yet to accomplish much of anything, either internationally or domestically (which is why, regarding the latter, we see Son of Stimulus in the works, which now brings guffaws from Jon Stewart).
But the American media and international elites are, if nothing else, dogged in their desire to help Obama succeed — both have invested so much in raising expectations to the dizzying heights they now decry. So now those expectations must be lowered:
Of course, no one expects this round of talks to lead directly to an actual treaty — a more realistic goal is a political agreement that might lead to a treaty down the road. But even that goal seems elusive, with a draft text from Danish negotiators sparking a minirevolt Tuesday from developing nations who say it would give too much power to rich countries. Some experts attributed the draft to a desire to accommodate the United States in the talks. “My sense is that the Danish text is an expression of a tactical mistake; they tried to make an agreement or a proposal that fit with what they believed was the American position,” said Kim Carstensen, leader of World Wildlife Fund’s global climate initiative.
The American people are slowly figuring out that there is no there there. He is, as Lisa Schiffren aptly describes, an “inexperienced, excessively ideological, and weak man who is naïve about the world and uncomfortable exercising American power during a time of war.” And while it is becoming increasingly obvious that he is “not an exceptional, or even particularly competent, leader … because so many politicians, interest groups and factions have an interest in his continued presence, no one is ready to reveal the man behind the curtain just yet.”
Far better, then, to decry the “expectations” of mere mortals than to hold Obama to account for his own actions and failures. Instead, he seems to be making the expectations game worse (“instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante”) and has done nothing to ”restore science to its rightful place.” Well, that would entail restoring him to his rightful place within the cosmic order. And there’s no sign that he or his followers are ready for that.
totally. because we definately aren’t overextended as it is.
don’t bother including potential costs, that takes the fun away
http://www.lewrockwell.com/murphy/murphy132.html
when cost isn’t a factor, anything make sense!
lester, we may be overextended now, but the cost will be so much higher if we do not stop Russian expansionism at this time. The West was not willing to pay any cost to stop Hitler when he remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria, or took the Sudetenland. As history records, about 75 million people lost their lives in World War II. Sometimes, there are just no easy solutions.
I agree with Gordon. You can’t fret about the cost of action without acknowledging that the cost of INaction is likely to be much greater, and dearer.
There are differences between the current situation of Russia-Abkhazia-South Ossetia, and the Third Reich and the Anschluss in Austria. The biggest difference is that Russia is not Nazi Germany, which was a unified, motivated, fast-arming, high-functioning state with a coherent strategic plan.
Russia is not that. We need not believe anything unduly optimistic about Putin to recognize that Russia is in neither the position nor the shape to behave like the Third Reich, and provoke a world war through an expanding ring of invasions. That’s never been Russia’s M.O. anyway. Russia has enough trouble governing herself, and did even in Soviet days. Her foreign forays tend to be small, by proxy, and/or a tremendous drain on her resources, for no gain. It took the collaboration of the Western Allies, in WWII, for the USSR to end up with so much of Eastern Europe. Even Stalinist Russia could never have accomplished that alone.
Abkhazia and South Ossetia have both expressed a desire to be reunited with Moscow, with some form of independent status within the Commonwealth, and Abkhazia in particular has a longstanding, historical assertion of independence to make it clear that her desire to “break away” from Georgia is not a mere convenience for Russia. Russia is being opportunistic here, taking advantage of a genuine situation, not one she has single-handedly fomented or manufactured for her advantage.
Europe in general, and Turkey in particular, have reasons to care about the outcome of this, even though I truly doubt that Russia’s emboldenment by the partition of Georgia would generate a rapid timeline toward further concrete predation, a la Hitler. The big Baku-Ceyhan pipeline that runs through Georgia and into Turkey lies 12 miles from the Abkhaz regional border, at its closest point. Russia expects to gain additional Black Sea basing rights in perpetuam with Abkhazian membership in the CIS. These facts bother Georgia and Turkey (and Ukraine), and ought to concern European oil customers.
Whether the US has a stake in enforcing the currently recognized borders of Georgia, which the Abkhaz have always disputed (since before the break-up of the Ottoman empire), is less certain. To get more closely involved in this conflict, we need to at least figure out what our principal national priorities are. Are we making it US policy that the existing borders of Georgia are sacred to us — and thereby declaring a political affiliation in the conflict? Is our policy based rather on opposing whatever Russia wants, in Central Asia? The theory being that if Russia wants it, it will be bad for any affected populations? Are we acting because we don’t wish to see Russia cement further militarily-useful concessions on the Black Sea coast, and inch closer to that pipeline Moscow got so torqued about a few years ago?
And the big question: to stop any of this, what are we willing to do? Are we prepared to garrison Georgia, and accept the consequence of becoming targets for the Abkhaz separatists, as well as Georgia’s Muslim terrorists — who might well be armed by, respectively, Russia and Iran? We can’t suppress the Abkhaz any other way than by sitting on top of them. Georgian membership in NATO won’t induce Abkhaz separatists to stop insisting on their independence.
We should assuredly be more proactive and forward-leaning in this, as in many situations. But leaping in with a vague idea of blocking Russia would be walking into a gunfight unarmed, and without a plan.
J. E. Dyer, thanks for the info and the good questions.
As mentioned in my original posting, I believe the people in Abkhazia and South Ossetia have a right to decide their own fate. And the price for Georgia’s admission to NATO may well be allowing these two regions to become independent or join Russia after referenda. Nonetheless, we cannot allow Russia to determine the issue on its own, as it is now attempting to do. Although Russia may not be the Third Reich or even the Soviet Union, it is not going to stop its meddling once it has broken up Georgia.
Our national interest is not necessarily maintaining Georgia’s present borders. It is making sure that Russia does not think adventurism is cost-free. As I mentioned previously, we will have to be prepared to undertake the obligation of defending Georgia.
It’s not 1938 and we don’t need a “Groundhog Day” geostrategy.
Europe will not, and NATO (including us) cannot defend Georgia, especially against Kosovo-like nibbling based on dissenting ethnic groups. Nor is defense of Georgia, as beautiful as it is and as charming as its people may be, remotely within the interests of the United States. It would be as if Russia treated te invasions of Grenada and Panama each as a casus bellin.
There are actions short of war we might take if Russia invaded Georgia proper. Such an invasion seems remote, but after the invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Serbia, we might be hard-put to complain.
Even Rome could not hold Mesopotamia against the Parthians, and so retrenched. Even if you’re an interventionist by conviction and temperament, this one requires sober discernment.
The above may be a bit unclear. By “Groundhog Day” I mean looking at contemporary international politics as a repetitive recurrence of 1938, and at anyone who is not maximally confrontational at all times as an umbrella-toting toff.
Grumpy, yes, this is not yet 1938. Perhaps it’s 1931, but “1938″ is surely coming down the road. Although this is a new century, human nature has not changed in the intervening years.
And to continue your 1930s theme, Sudetenland, like Georgia, is a far off place. Sometimes you have to defend remote areas. Why? It is not the territory that counts–it is the mentality of aggressors that is important.
so your excuse for wanting to get us in the middle of ANOTHER group of peoples who have been warring which each other since before we even existed as a nation is that if we don’t it will somehow cost us more in the future.
how about we don’t get involved now OR in the future?
If you are so concerned for humanity, we have tens of millions of people right here at home who are living below the poverty line.
lester, in today’s world there is no running away. I don’t like that any more than you, but there it is.
Gordon — I do wish we were more thoughtfully proactive on this, as you do, but I think we have to break the bonds of outdated paradigms. I don’t see real, particular analogies to 1930s Europe in this situation, although warnings about unwillingness to interdict adventurism early are always valid in the abstract. But I do see something else.
There’s way too much to discuss on this subject for a single post, but I would boil down what I think the US interest in Central Asia is to this: preventing Russia and radical Islam from an alliance of convenience. Such an alliance would tip the balance in the growing danger to Europe’s flank, menace the worldwide trade access through and to the Middle East that is maintained by the Pax Americana, and accelerate the drumbeat of regionalist, ideological authoritarianism advancing on independent, outlier nations like India and Israel.
If we “go,” in Central Asia, we need to have a purpose larger than defending Georgia. That one won’t sustain our will for very long. Russia will not requite our pessimism Hollywood-style, by mimicking Nazi Germany; I don’t think that the analogy holds up well enough to justify “defending the Sudetenland.” In my view, what we need to look to is the real potential for Russia to position herself as radical Islam’s best friend; to thereby squeeze the doughty, but rather unsanitary Central Asian republics between them; and to hold Europe hostage not only to oil but to the subtle demographic threat.
The US should not take the approach of defending outposts, as isolated political projects, in an area where the strategy needed is to act as a growing wedge. I know Grumpy and lester will disagree with all this, but I’m convinced that, as in Vietnam, formulating our strategy in Central Asia in limited defensive terms would prove unworkable. We will tire of the game of imposing costs on Russia long before she does, especially in her back yard. We need to go in with a positive vision, if we go.
Lester, let’s say you live down the street from a particularly pushy neighbor X. One day, he decides to start breaking into cars that park across the street from his house, but you ignore it. As long as he’s not breaking into your car! Eventually, neighbor X starts breaking into houses. But again, it’s at the far end of the street, so you don’t mind. To help him out, he persuades a few of the other residents on the street to help him in his burglaries, for a cut of the loot. After a while, the neighborhood begins to get more dangerous. Doors are locked and windows are shuttered. Many houses stand vacant as people move to safer neighborhoods.
But there is one house left way down at the far end of the street from neighbor X. It hasn’t been robbed yet, so it’s owner has kept to himself, telling himself that it was none of his business. But now, it’s the only house left, with no neighbors to turn to for help. This is your house.
You might have stopped the neighbor when he was breaking into cars at his end of the street. You might have even stopped him when he was burglarizing homes.
But now he runs the entire street. And it’s too late.
grim- analogies are the weakest way to make an argument.
the world isn’t a street and russia isn’t breaking in to any cars.
gordon- you’re right we can’t run. YOU are the one running TOWARDS the problem areas. militant islam is bad, lets GO GET IN THEIR FACE. russia is expanding lets THROW OUR WEIGHT AROUND.
why? how does a kid from rural illinois benfit by our spending money to influence these areas. wouldn’t it be better to take that money and put it back into the economy and do what we can to maintain prosperity here?
we aren’t running from anything. we are running to many things. we can’t afford it, we have no right to do it, and it most certainly does not make us any safer.
more to the point, our currency, the dollar, is a sad shadow of it’s formeer self. eurozone has a bigger economy than us now.
we aren’t the america of the 80′s and 90′s. we have little weight to throw around. i already know people who have split for asia and elsewhere due to being fed up with our massive welfare/warfare state. interventionism is killing this country.
J. E. Dyer, thanks for your comment, which is certainly thought-provoking and well-reasoned.
I don’t see ourselves as defending outposts as much as continuing to extend the protection of the Atlantic Alliance to democracies that wish to join. Protecting representative governance would seem to be our minimum responsibilty, especially when we have the means to do so: NATO. The institutional mechanisms are there, so Georgia, though far from us, is no longer an outpost in the traditional sense of the word. Georgia already lives on the alliance’s doorstep.
As I have mentioned, I have no trouble extending NATO membership to Russia, but only when it qualifies–in other words, when it commits itself to democratization. Until then, I believe we should protect Russia’s neighbors from its coercive actions. This is not a policy for the 1930s–it is an approach for this time of resurgent authoritarianism.
lester, you are assuming that militant Islam has attacked us because we have gotten them upset. I suspect that, short of converting to their faith, there is nothing we could have done or can do to stay clear of its jihadists and fanatics. After all, Islamic terrorists have attacked more than just Americans during the past few years.
Gordon Chang is probably right about NATO’s recent cold shouldering of Georgia having emboldened Russia.
However, it is a mistake for us and NATO to overextend ourselves and accept commitments we are unable to uphold, if challenged.
The real problem is that Europe is weak militarily. Even a police action like Afghanistan stresses it. And the politics of the Continent won’t allow that to be changed. A military alliance where only one member is able and willing to fight, has its PR uses, but that is not enough.
Conceivably the answer is an East European, Turko-Caucasian Common Market with a military dimensions, where the US is an associate member.
nacl, the East European, Turko-Caucasian Common Market is intriguing. Do you have any more thoughts about this? With NATO divided, it may be time for a new alliance structure.
nacl – you get at the fundamental issue, which is what NATO is for. Since the demise of the USSR, we haven’t decided that yet. NATO was never originally intended to harness the strong to the weak for the weak’s benefit, but to unite the strong and stronger in common cause against a great enemy.
NATO’s post-Soviet expansion has been careful and slow so far, not yet providing an inadvertent answer to the question of “why NATO?” NATO has subsumed only the proximate and defensible. Even the admission of Ukraine wouldn’t really demand a full accounting of what NATO exists for, although it would provoke the Russians well beyond previous NATO accessions.
But admitting Georgia would do exactly that. There is no natural or historical basis for “extending the protection of NATO” to the Caucasus. It’s a hazardous, expeditionary commitment that requires a strategy and objective, a revised mission for NATO. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it. What I AM saying is that extending the protection of Western guarantees outside the West, and seeking to impose costs on Russia for adventurism, are the defensive, reactionary purposes that bogged down the containment policy of the Cold War. It’s the purposes themselves that are unworkable. They always sound good at first. But they don’t constitute an actual end state for which a coherent strategy can be developed.
It’s not enough to counter Russia’s grand plan. We have to come in with one of our own. In the case of Georgia, that means redefining NATO.
J. E. Dyer, countering Russian adventurism was NATO’s original mission. So why shouldn’t it continue to be its mission today?
gordon-
1. it’s called blowback. yes, believe it or not, our sanctions on iraq, arming of israel, and ogeneral interference in the middle east is why we are being targeted by them today. They are driving us out the same way they drove the commies out of afghanistan. Did the mujahadeen follow them back to russia? no, they set their sites on the next target, us.
2 . NATO was countering communism’s “adventurism” it was not some ethnic thing involving people of russian descent. Vladamir Putin had twice bush’s approval rating.
it shuoldn’t continue this mission today because that mission is OVER. and considering communisms inherent economic defects, it was scarcely necassary. google “economic calculation problem”. the communists were doomed from the wrod go.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html
^#164 with a bullet. who’s gonna pay the world back for YOUR adventurism brother gordon?
Gordon – Actually, NATO’s mission was to defend its member states. which formed a natural geographic bloc, against Soviet Russia. NATO never countered Soviet Russian adventurism in the sense of, say, trying to block Russia in south or east Asia, in the Middle East, in Africa, or in Latin America. That was a US, not a NATO, policy.
In 1949 the common interest of Western Europe and North America in mutual defense against Soviet Russia was obvious. Obtaining both Greece and Turkey as members improved NATO’s defensive position.
You no doubt remember the editorial angst over NATO’s role in the Balkans, starting in the early 1990s, and how the mission of NATO was being subtly transformed — some analysts said NATO needed to explicitly rewrite its mission, while others insisted that dealing with generic instability on NATO borders WAS a means of mutual self-defense. There was never an explicit resolution of how the Balkan operations fit into NATO’s mission.
Then NATO was invoked again for the regime-change of Afghanistan, following the jihadist attack on a NATO member. Again without substantially rewriting its mission statement, NATO members responded. Stepping up to the plate is a good thing, and NATO spends a lot of time on counterterrorism now, as it should.
NATO also expanded to contiguous nations that used to be in the Warsaw Pact, and in each case, the benefit has been mutual: the new members receive NATO guarantees, and as with Greece and Turkey, their membership improves NATO’s defensive position, and adds forces. Even Ukraine could be admitted on that basis (although Russia would find it intolerable).
But Georgia doesn’t improve NATO’s defensive position. Georgia becomes a vulnerability for NATO, a detached piece of territory that is easy and cheap for Russia to hold at risk. Unlike, say, Poland or Croatia, Georgia is a place where Russia could reasonably contemplate action that might suck NATO into a fight on RUSSIA’s terms.
Again, I stress that this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t add Georgia to NATO. But it does mean we shouldn’t do it without explicitly reconsidering what NATO is for, and agreeing on our reasons for this particular expansion.
Reflexively extending defensive “protection,” without a larger, positive objective, was the root of our problem in Vietnam: it drove all the strategic and tactical failures there. I would be very concerned about NATO expanding its defensive perimeter on such a basis. That way lies great danger. Merely trying to block Russian adventurism will suck us further and further into a maelstrom on Russia’s agenda, which cannot produce success. If we extend defensive protection to Georgia, we need to have our own vision for Central Asia, and be pursuing that vision with a coherent strategy — not just reacting to Russia.
Great discussion, BTW. There’s a lot of good stuff here.
lester, unwarranted American meddling in the Middle East has led to problems to be sure, but today’s terrorism against us has little or nothing to do with these actions.
Moreover, the larger question is whether American involvement has been justified. I think it would be good if you told us what was wrong with our enforcement of the U.N.-imposed Iraq sanctions. Or our support of democratic Israel.
J. E. Dyer, I can agree with your general thesis about NATO although I think that, as it confronts today’s challenges, the members will effectively determine the organization’s mission.
There is much to be said for your argument about not going beyond defensible borders, but sometimes we need to make exceptions. In Georgia’s case, I find it hard to ignore an especially egregious challenge to a young democracy. Protecting nations that want to join the West is, in my view, what NATO is for. Sometimes, history does not allow us to pick the locations where we must make a stand.
“I think it would be good if you told us what was wrong with our enforcement of the U.N.-imposed Iraq sanctions.”
ya allah are you serious? what was wrong with hundreds of thousands of children dying?
we are the US, not the UN. I could care less what the UN says or does. what american cares about the UN????
“Or our support of democratic Israel.”
because it is not “ours” it is our govenrments.
the constitution says they are to provide for the general welfare, meaning the overall welfare, not specific welfares. israel is a strategic liability and we are endangered for our governments support of it.
“unwarranted American meddling in the Middle East has led to problems to be sure…”
mohammad atta wrote his last will and testament the night of the first qana massacre. that document become viable on 9/11/01. they were over here because we were over there.
you are saying blowback exists but it doesn’t matter? if it didn’t matter it wouldn’t be blowback.
Gordon Chang and J. E. Dyer:
The point of any alliance is that all its members benefits from its success. Each contributes as little as it can get away with, for as much as it can take away.
Nasser had accurately said, early in the Cold War, the road to Riyadh runs through Tel Aviv. An implicit US/Israel alliance kept the Soviet’s Arab clients from seizing the Gulf’s oil fields. Outnumbered and surrounded, Israel remained viable through America’s political support. The US secured a strategic region without deploying a single GI, by means of the IDF.
NATO was more expensive. It required hundreds of thousands of GIs and 1/3 of Washington’s defense budget. But it allowed America to put a lid on Soviet ambitions, and Europe was able to escape the shroud of the Iron Curtain.
Nowadays Europe sees no need to contribute to or be grateful for what the US does in any case in its own interests, like safeguarding western access to the M/E oil. Indeed, Europe increasingly sees itself as a superior civilization, with a healthier currency, nobler values, its own interests, in short a power-block in competition with the US. As such it often does nothing to help and much to hinder US efforts, as against Saddam, as against Iran.
The relationship between Europe and the US is no longer symbiotic. Europe, in its behavior towards the US, has become mischievous, irresponsible. America must find allies whose interests it shares and can assist but who are genuinely willing, like Israel, to go to bat and defend themselves.
Georgia is such a country, and also some of its neighbors in the Caucasus. Beyond them there are Turkic people all along the southern periphery of Russia. Ankara is not going to be admitted into the EU, but with its relatively advanced economy it could become the locomotive of that region’s own common market, with a military component supported by the US. Iraq might possibly be drawn in. Arab oil money could fuel such a development. The Ottomans for centuries ran the M/E and contained the Russian empire.
During the Cold War the US contributed its nuclear umbrella and Europe’s stake was that it constituted the potential battlefield.
just once I’d like to see mr chang or another hawk evaluate the possible costs of a military action on our country and our economy.
lester, the costs of military action would be extremely high. The cost of inaction would be even higher.
nacl, I think you just supplied the mission statement that J.E. Dyer wanted.