17 thoughts on “The US talks tough : Russia tells US to take a walk”

1. McCain’s bellicose rhetoric, as Georgia’s chief U.S. lobbyist whispers in his ear, points up a pattern at the heart of neoconservative foreign policy and raises alarm over McCain’s ability to conduct foreign policy if he is elected president. Matt Welch writes in Reason Online, in an article subtitled Exaggerating threats is a feature, not a bug:

   The problems with their approach should be evident by now, but are worth repeating. Perpetually exaggerating threats leads to, well, perpetual exaggerations, whether about a bad guy’s wickedness or a good guy’s virtue. On such faulty edifices are constructed unnecessary wars, those most murderous of foreign policy mistakes. In October 2001, McCain, a longtime Iraq hawk, told David Letterman that “some of this anthrax may-and I emphasize may-have come from Iraq.” And the senator has long been a supporter of disgraced Iraqi National Congress schemer Ahmad Chalabi.

   So take care when the would-be commander in chief says “we are all Georgians” (a rhetorical flourish made goofy by the fact that not all Georgians are even Georgians). McCain may indeed have a usable, just-add-water approach to Russia (consider that his calls to kick Russia out of the G8 went from being crazy-sounding to a distinct possibility within a few short months), but after nearly seven years of seeing a McCain-lite foreign policy in practice, our burden of proof should shift back to the boys who perpetually cry wolf.

   Matt Yglesias picks up the thread and brands McCain for what he’s demonstrating, A Hysteria-Based Foreign Policy:

   In short, not only is Russia on the march beyond Tbilisi to Ukraine, Finland, and substantial swathes of Poland but that’s not even the transcendent issue of our time. And North Korea’s nuclear program is “the greatest challenge to U.S. security and world stability today” but that’s not the transcendent issue of our time. And Islamism is the transcendent issue of our time, but not a serious international crisis or an especially great challenge to U.S. security and world stability. Now of course there’s no way to make sense of that, because it’s not supposed to make any kind of sense. McCain just thinks that overreacting is the right reaction to everything. It’s a hysteria-based foreign policy.

   Max Bergman brings it full circle, examining how McCain’s celebrity on the TV pundit circuit has rewarded him over the years for the crisp one-liners, the alarming rhetoric. It’s why the press loves McCain — and why voters should be very, very concerned about putting McCain in charge of U.S. foreign and military policy:

   The big concern with a McCain presidency – a concern which I am surprised has not been vocalized more fully – is that the U.S. will lurch from crisis to crisis, confrontation to confrontation, whether it be with Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. The danger is that McCain’s pundit-like rhetoric will entrap the U.S. in descending spiral of foreign policy brinksmanship. Just think about the very likely scenario of McCain giving Iran/Russia a rhetorical ultimatum and Iran/Russia ignoring it. Now we are stuck – either we lose face by not following through on our threats or we follow through and go to war.  We can’t afford such a reckless approach after the last eight years. For the next eight we need a president not a pundit.

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2. …the picture of mean ol’Russia randomly assimilating a neighor, borg-ike (not Bjorn, those dudes from ST-TNG).

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   1. …not that hor who neighs.

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3. Russia has informed Norway that it plans to suspend all military ties with NATO

   that this is only the first step. Will Russia eventually end ties with all NATO countries all together? Will they then “persuade” their satellite countries to do the same? This very well could be the beginning stages of another cold war… if not a looming hot one.  

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   1. I’ll ask it here again. If Russia attacks Poland for housing our missle defense shield like it has been posturing today, doesn’t that mean World War III? If not Nuclear, then some sort of shooting taking place between NATO guns and Russian ones. Poland is a NATO member, and therefore we are bound by treaty to defend her if she is attacked. Sounds like we were worried about China, but we should’ve been more concerned with Russia.

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      1. I don’t see it happening. The threat often times is more powerful than the execution.
         
         This is a typical chess maxim.

         The Russians are very resourceful and tough people. They still represent the only military power on earth that could destoy the USA.

         The Bush administration’s policies of economic weakness (massive borrowing giving economic and political leverage to natural opponents)coupled with an encircle the bear policies of the neocons has lead to a dangerous position in which the the effort to establish a permanent American empire has invited Russian aggression.

         It isn’t worth WWIII and Bush should be out of office before this crisis would ensue.

         Both candidates are far superior to Bush in pursuing diplomatic resolutions.
         

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         1. The Russians are…the only military power on earth that could destoy the USA.

            I’m pretty sure China has one or two nukes lying around somewhere.

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            1. By that metric, France, North Korea or Pakistan could “destroy the USA.” Good thing that would be insufficient.

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               1. They don’t have enough. China would lose a nuclear war to both the USA and Russia.

                  They might take out few cities. That would be it.

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                  1. sorry , should have posted under redstateblues

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                     1. but they have a lot. At least 20 long-range ICBMs. Those alone would be enough to destroy every major US city.

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                        1. Well without any missile defense, early warning or attacks on their sites, I suppose that’s true.  

                           I guess I’m arguing poorly. Nobody wins a nuclear war. I’ll cede the point.

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      2. THat’s why they won’t do it.  Russia has enough ICBMs to wipe us all out, but unlike the Iranians, that’s not an option for them.  If it stays conventional, we’d crush them just with air power.  Even with the new oil money, Russia is hurting economically and militarily.

         They’re not going to overtly attack Poland, and we’re not going to defend Georgia with military power.  

         It’s one of the reasons they felt secure in throwing their weight around, and it has nothing to do with Iraq.  At all.  Nada.

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         1. it has nothing to do with Iraq.  At all.  Nada.

            BUT, because of the invasion of Iraq, our position as moral leader has been diminished greatly. 6 years ago, the Russians would have never dreamed of acting this brazenly towards a sovereign nation. Unfortunately we have already taken the step of pre-emptively invading a sovereign country, and therefore we have lost the moral high ground. Putin can laugh in our faces and posture towards war, but we can’t do anything about it.

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            1. The Russians have acted brazenly toward other nations for five hundred years.  Especially under the past leadership of Putin’s buddies.  

               Here’s a really interesting report from Totten, who’s in Tbilisi.

               The Russian soldiers called him and asked where he was going, if he was going to the American side.”

               “The Russians said this to him?” I said.

               “My husband said he was going to see his family,” she said. “And the Russians said again, ‘Are you going to the American side?'”

               “So the Russians view you as the American side, even though there are no Americans here.”

               “Yes,” she said. “Because our way is for democracy.”

               It’s very complicated, but some things related to the Russians and true totalitarianism are very simple.

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               1. Even without the Iraq excuse (which is only close to the same thing if you’re an idiot with no sense of perspective or history), they’d be using the more obvious and closely-related Kosovo excuse.  

                  And let me add that by my calculations, this would be World War V (the Cold War and it’s hotter proxy wars was 3, and the current war between the West and the resurgent Caliphate is 4).

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               2. Even without the Iraq excuse (which is only close to the same thing if you’re an idiot with no sense of perspective or history), they’d be using the more obvious and closely-related Kosovo excuse.  

                  And let me add that by my calculations, this would be World War V (the Cold War and it’s hotter proxy wars was 3, and the current war between the West and the resurgent Caliphate is 4).

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