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Jewish World Review August 13, 2008 / 12 Menachem-Av 5768 Georgia should be on their minds By Jonathan Tobin
Invasion illustrates the need to see the world as it is, not as we would like it to be
The upshot was that during the Olympic fortnight the vast majority of
Americans would join the rest of the world in obsessing about sports
that they only pretend to care about for two weeks out of every four
years. Nobody, we were told, could or should even try to make news
during this time period because we would all be too busy gobbling up
details about such riveting spectacles as synchronized swimming and
team handball.
But apparently, Vladimir Putin didn't get that memo.
Instead of heading to a beach to chill out like Barack Obama or going
to a State Fair for photo-ops with overgrown pigs like John McCain, the
Russian leader apparently thought this would be an excellent time to
play his country's traditional favorite sport: invading and subverting
the governments of its smaller neighbors.
That was bad news for Georgia, one of the small independent republics
in the Caucasus that gained its independence in the aftermath of the
collapse of the Soviet empire. Though most Americans were, and probably
still are, uncertain about the location of this country or anything
about it (other, that is, than in the fact that it has the same name as
an American state), the attack on pro-Western and democratic Georgia
was something that they should care very much about.
IRAQ HANGOVER
Despite the evident change for the better in the Iraq war, most
Americans are still too turned off by the unpopular conflict in that
country to be willing to get too worked up about any other far away
place. Few seem to think even the prospect of a nuclear Iran is worth
fighting about. So why expect anyone here to switch away from watching
swimming or fencing to a discussion of the plight of Georgians whose
borders are being overrun and cities bombed?
There's no denying that it's a complicated conflict that can be reduced
to a tit-for-tat exchange of accusations about whose independence is
being trampled: Georgia or the breakaway republics inside its borders
that the Russians have used as a pretext to squash a democratic
pro-Western government?
There's more than enough hypocrisy about the principle of
self-determination to go around. People here who thought NATO's war to
create a Greater Albania via an independent Kosovo carved out of a
beastly Serbian regime back in 1999 was a fine thing are now exercised
about Putin's attempt to do the same to a far more presentable Georgian
government.
Such ironies abound in international politics. Russians who care about
the integrity of Abkhazia and Ossetia cheered as their army raped
Chechnya. Similarly, those who think a terrorist-led Palestinian people
have an inalienable right to create a 22nd Arab Islamic state at
Israel's expense don't think the far more numerous Kurds are entitled
to one.
But let's not kid ourselves. Putin has taken advantage of a Bush
administration that was slow to see the danger from the rise of this
former KGB agent whose drive to authoritarian power has been fueled by
inflated oil prices. The re-emergence of an aggressive Russia is a
threat not only to its independent and democratic neighbors like
Ukraine and Georgia, but to the peace of Europe.
However misguided the democratic government of Georgia might have been
in some respects, Bush must step up now and use what leverage we have
left to make it clear to the Russians that they will pay a price for
their behavior. Taking away their membership in the G8 is one possible
penalty that might impress the prestige-obsessed Russians that they've
made a mistake.
But as hapless as the administration's bumbling approach to this crisis
might be, just as discouraging is the general indifference of the
public and the chattering classes to the plight of Georgia. While Bush
famously erred when he claimed to have looked into the eyes of Putin
and saw his soul, Putin has made no such mistake about the current
political climate in the United States. He thinks the Iraq hangover
we're still reeling from means that we haven't the stomach to resist
him even on a symbolic level, and he's probably right.
Indeed, the reaction of many of our so-called wise men to the invasion
of Georgia was fear of being forced into a new Cold War with Russia
rather than in the consequences of a revived Russian imperialism.
NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT
So it is was not much of a surprise to find that Klein viewed concern
about Russia as being nothing to get worked up over. In a bizarre
twist, the fact that Georgia actually is a thriving democracy devoted
to free-market principles may be helping to turn off those who have
come to associate the spread of democracy with the hated neocons and
see any policy associated with its defense as inherently wrong.
Others who want to ignore Georgia's plight tell us, in a strange echo
of leftist Cold War polemics, that Russia's evil deeds are merely
reactions to Western overreaching. But Putin's policy has nothing to do
with Kosovo or NATO, and everything to do with his cherished agenda of
reconstituting the empire of the tsars and the commissars.
The need to play down Georgia is similar to the impulses to return to a
Sept. 10 mentality about Islamist terrorism or to brand those who urge
action on Iran's apocalyptic threats of a new Holocaust as
war-mongering neocon alarmists. These misguided positions all stem from
a desire to see the world as we would like it to be, not as it is.
The antidote to these fallacies isn't the sort of faux "realism" that
is merely a cover for appeasement of evil promoted by a failed
foreign-policy establishment. Nor is it mere talk about diplomacy from
those whose grasp of the issues is shaky.
As American politics reawakens later this month from its
Olympic-induced slumber, it would be prudent for more of us to remember
that the ability to think clearly and act decisive
ly about this sort of
a crisis is the most important thing we need in our next president, no
matter what his name or party affiliation might be.
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JWR contributor Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
Let him know what you think by clicking here.
© 2007, Jonathan Tobin
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