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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Putin for US president - more than ever |
| 2008-08-12 |
| By Spengler If Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were president of the United States, would Iran try to build a nuclear bomb? Would Pakistan provide covert aid to al-Qaeda? Would Hugo Chavez train terrorists in Venezuela? Would leftover nationalities with delusions of grandeur provoke the great powers? Just ask Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, who now wishes he never tried to put his 4 million countrymen into strategic play. In January I urged Americans to draft the Russian leader to succeed George W Bush (Putin for president of the United States, January 8, 2008). Putin's swift and decisive action in Georgia reflects precisely the sort of decisiveness that America requires. Thanks to Putin, the world has become a much safer place. By intervening in Georgia, Russia has demonstrated that the great powers of the world have nothing to fight about. Russia has wiped the floor with a putative US ally, and apart from a bad case of cream pie on the face, America has lost nothing. The United States and the European community will do nothing to help Georgia, and nothing of substance to penalize the Russian Federation. Contrary to the hyperventilation of policy analysts on American news shows, the West has no vital interests in Georgia. It would be convenient from Washington's vantage point for oil to flow from the Caspian Sea via Georgia to the Black Sea, to be sure, but nothing that occurs in Georgia will have a measurable impact on American energy security. It is humiliating for the US to watch the Russians thrash a prospective ally, but not harmful, for Georgia never should have been an ally in the first place. The lack of consequences of Russia's incursion is a noteworthy fact, for never before in the history of the world has the world's economic and military power resided in countries whose fundamental interests do not conflict in any important way. The US enthused over Georgia's ambitions to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and encouraged Saakashvili to overplay his hand. Once it became clear that Russia would not tolerate a NATO member on its southern border, however, Washington had nothing to say about the matter, because no fundamental American interests were at stake. Washington looks all the sillier for its failure to anticipate a Russian action that Moscow signaled months in advance. After the US and its main European allies recognized the independence of Kosovo from Serbia in February 2008, Russia warned that this action set a precedent for other prospective secessions, notably South Ossetia. There is no longer any reason to put up with the tantrums of long-redundant tribes. If 3.7 million ethnic Georgians have the right to break away from the 142 million population of the Russian Federation, why shouldn't the 100,000 Ossetians living in Georgia break away and form their own state as well? Most of them have acquired Russian passports and want nothing to do with the Georgians. The Ossetians have spoken their variant of Persian for more than a millennium and had their own kingdom during the Middle Ages. If the West is going to put itself at risk for 3.8 million ethnic Georgians, roughly the population of Los Angeles, or 5.4 million Tibetans, or 2 million Albanian Muslims in Kosovo, why shouldn't Russia take risks for the South Ossetians, not to mention the 100,000 Abkhaz speakers in Georgia's secessionist Black Sea province? Once the infinite regress of ethnic logic gets into motion, there is no good reason not to pull the world apart like taffy. Forget the Kosovo Albanians, the South Ossetians, the Abkhazians, Saakashvili and the Dalai Lama. These are relics of an older world that might deserve their own theme park, but not their own state. Precisely what are 3.8 million freedom-loving Georgians supposed to contribute to American strategic interests with its US$2 billion a year of exports consisting (according to the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook) of "scrap metal, wine, mineral water, ores, vehicles, fruits and nuts"? Georgia's hope was to lever its geographical position on the Russia border by making itself useful to the American military. If it had not been for America's insistence on installing a gang of trigger-happy pimps and drug-pushers in Kosovo, Russia might have responded less ferociously to the flea bites on its southern border. Make no mistake: the American-sponsored Kosovo regime is the dirtiest anywhere in postwar history. Writing in the Spiegel magazine website last April 24 , Walter Mayr described Kosovo as "a country ruled by corruption and organized crime". For example, Mayr reports, Ramush Haradinaj is a former KLA commander who later became prime minister of UN-administered Kosovo. His indictment in The Hague consisted of 37 charges, including murder, torture, rape and the expulsion of Serbs, Albanians and gypsies in the weeks following the end of the war in 1999. Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor of the UN War Crimes Tribunal, called him a "gangster in uniform". He returned to Kosovo this spring, after his acquittal on April 3. [1] America's wag-the-dog war against Serbia in 1999 over alleged ethnic cleansing of Muslim Albanians in Kosovo won the undeserved support of Republicans as well as Democrats, to the extent that too many people on all sides of Washington politics risked their reputation to admit that the whole business was a stupid mistake. Washington has simply dug itself in deeper, joined at the hip to a government less savory than any banana republic dictatorship that enjoyed American favor at the depths of the Cold War (See The inconvenient Serbs, Asia Times Online, April 17, 2007.) America remains so committed to the myth of moderate Islam that it is prepared to invent it. Kosovo, like the Turkey of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, supposedly embodies a moderate, Sufi-derived brand of Islam that will foster an American partnership with the Muslim world. The US intelligence community knows perfectly well that the networks that traffic prostitutes through Albania into Italy and the rest of Europe also move narcotics, weapons and terrorists from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Grozny in Chechnya to Tirana in Albania and Pristina in Kosovo. The Russians know better. As I wrote in my January 8 endorsement of Putin for president of the United States: Putin understands how to exercise power. Unlike Iraq, the restive Muslim province of Chechnya now nestles comfortably in Putin's palm, albeit with about half the people it had a decade ago. Russian troops killed between 35,000 and 100,000 civilians in the first Chechen war of 1994-96, and half a million were driven from their homes, totaling about half the population. But that is not what pacified Chechnya. Putin bribed and bullied Chechen clans to do Russia's dirty work for it, showing himself a master at the game of divide-and-conquer. Working from a position of weakness, Russia's president is the closest the modern world comes to the insidious strategic genius of a Cardinal Richelieu. That is the sort of strategic thinking America needs. Half the world's population now resides in the world's three largest countries, namely China, India and the United States. These are not multi-ethnic, but rather supra-ethnic states, whose identity transcends tribe and nationality. There is no "clash of civilizations", for Confucian, Hindu, American and Orthodox civilization cannot find grounds for a clash. As for the European community, its global ambitions succumbed to geriatric disease a generation ago. The number of flashpoints for violence in the world has grown in inverse proportion to their importance. The world is full of undead tribes with delusions of grandeur, and soon-to-be-extinct peoples who rather would go out with a bang than a whimper. The supra-ethnic states of the world have a common interest in containing the mischief that might be made by the losers. China, which has an annoying terrorist problem in its Westernmost province, has plenty of reason to help suppress Muslim separatists. Unfortunately, modern weapons technology makes it possible for a spoiler state to inflict a disproportionate amount of damage. China recognized this when it cooperated with the United States to defuse the North Korean nuclear problem. The most visible prospective spoiler in the pack remains Iran. If America wants to recover from its humiliation in the Caucasus, it might, for example, conduct an air raid against Iran's nuclear facilities, and justify it with the same sort of reasoning that Russia invoked in Georgia. Contrary to surface impressions, Moscow wouldn't mind a bit |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #22 Phil, Ajaria, don't think so. They may try to stir it, but it would not help much going in, the cost/benefit ratio would not be that desirable and it may make Turks too edgy. |
| Posted by: Spike Uniter 2008-08-12 23:35 |
| #21 What Russia wants is control of access to Caspian Basin oil and gas. To that end they will retain control of a slice of Georgia, probably along the coast. Using Ajaria as a pretext |
| Posted by: phil_b 2008-08-12 23:08 |
| #20 MILPOL DIALECTICISM-PRAGMATISM > NOT WINNING = NOT LOSING. We should consider that the RUSSIAN BEAR may be attempting to carve out a place of slumber recuper + security inside the PAN-EURO CAVE IN CASE OF FUTURE COLLAPSE AND DEFEAT AGZ THE CHINESE DRAGON + NUKULAR ISLAMIST CAMEL/HORSE-ZILLA IN ASIA. When any large animal lays down to sleep and slumber, smaller animals have to get out of the way or get crushed in the mass, correct??? IOW, RUSSIA MAY BE CLEARING OUT ITS "BACK 40" ON THE POTENTIAL FUTURE DAY IT MAY NEED TO DE FACTO JOIN AND INTEGRATE WID EUROPE IN ITS OWN SELF-DEFENSE AND NATIONAL PRESERVATION??? KEEP BUYING THAT POPCORN, PEOPLE! |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-08-12 21:39 |
| #19 JF: Actually the Chinese claim to Tibet is based on the Tibetan tribute paid to the Mongols and the Manchu (who also ruled China). A bit like the US claiming India, since both were ruled by the British It goes beyond that. Han Chinese consider China the successor state to the Qing empire, since the Han do control the rump Manchu state in what is now Northeast China (which was formerly Manchukuo under Japanese rule for a while). I suppose the US or India might have a plausible claim to the British empire if they had overrun the British Isles. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-08-12 19:55 |
| #18 Actually the Chinese claim to Tibet is based on the Tibetan tribute paid to the Mongols and the Manchu (who also ruled China). A bit like the US claiming India, since both were ruled by the British |
| Posted by: john frum 2008-08-12 17:07 |
| #17 Of the 19th century 'pan' movements, the Pan-Germanic one was killed in the smoldering ruins of 1945 at great cost. The Pan-Slavic movement is still among us and will create further pain and suffering because it won't go away without a similar payment in human sacrifice. The best long term plan would be to start talking up the greatness of the Yuan Dynasty and its historical claims to borders and territories, to include the Golden Horde. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-08-12 17:02 |
| #16 We now return you to the days of "Holy Mother Russia and all the little russias!" |
| Posted by: borgboy 2008-08-12 16:50 |
| #15 Georgia on my mind... This little country has juiced up the loyal readers of this blog like nothing else I've seen. Hold on a sec while I make some more popcorn. |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2008-08-12 16:00 |
| #14 "Spengler may be good at relating the twists and turns that led to the present situation" I see no particular evidence that this is in fact the case. |
| Posted by: superstitiousGalitizianer 2008-08-12 15:54 |
| #13 In January I urged Americans to draft the Russian leader to succeed George W Bush (Putin for president of the United States, January 8, 2008). Because Americans like being an expansionist imperial power. Spengler may be good at relating the twists and turns that led to the present situation, but he really needs to re-read deTocqueville, this time striving manfully to grasp how Americans differ from whatever he is, and how that influences our national choices at home and abroad. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-08-12 15:50 |
| #12 Zoia Aprasidze, another woman who fled, said not enough attention was being paid to the plight of villagers in Abkhazia while most of the media and political focus was on places like the city of Gori, which became a target of heavy Russian bombardment after Georgia launched an assault on another separatist region, South Ossetia. "We don't know what's going on and why the Russians did this to us. They said they were defending Ossetians. Who are they defending here?" she said. "If the Russians say they're defending the civilian population, why don't they care about Kodori Gorge?" that this is about the South Ossetians is a lie. A bald faced lie. |
| Posted by: superstitiousGalitizianer 2008-08-12 15:36 |
| #11 "US and Poland agree on missles." Will Russia invade Poland next? |
| Posted by: DK70 the Scantily Clad7177 2008-08-12 15:30 |
| #10 Saakashvili still in power. Poland and US reach agreement on missiles. Russia out of G8. Russia no entry to WTO. Putin, smart man, not. |
| Posted by: superstitiousGalitizianer 2008-08-12 14:21 |
| #9 And to the above might be added - Russian vassals traditionally end up becoming Russian provinces (much like Chinese vassals end up becoming Chinese provinces). Are we ready to acquiesce to an ever-expanding Imperial Russia? |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-08-12 13:59 |
| #8 Excellent quotes from a Journal article: George F. Kennan, the diplomat and historian, had it right. To him is attributed a very apropos aphorism: "Russia can have at its borders only vassals or enemies." But the issue runs a lot deeper as of 8/8: What are Russia's borders? Will it be satisfied with Georgia? As Prince Gorchakov, Russian chancellor, put it in 1864, in the midst of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus: "The greatest difficulty is to know when to stop." |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-08-12 13:57 |
| #7 "You have balls, I like balls". -Terrorist From Durka-Durkastan- -Team America- |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-08-12 13:45 |
| #6 WS - aggressive tyrants always look clever on the way up. Bonaparte did, Hitler did, Slobo and Saddam did. Its only after theyre dead that we see what failures they were. Why are you lumping the emperor in with all of those madmen? He could become both a bulwark against the Islamofascists _and_ a great help in rejuvenating France out of its current stupor and putting it back on the path towards its former glory, if only the British would stop repeating these lies that he died in exile and let him return. |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2008-08-12 13:42 |
| #5 Spengler hits the spot on occasion, but misfires just as often. His take on Kosovo is wrong. Michael Totten went to Kosovo and reported on what he saw. And what he saw was like no other Muslim country he's ever been - in a good way - not Turkey, not Iraq, not Lebanon, etc. Besides Uncle Sam did not go to Kosovo to annex it - he went there to set it free. The Russians are looking to annex* South Ossetia and Abkhazia, not set them free. The correct comparison is to the German annexation of the Sudetenland, not Kosovo. * Putin can prove me wrong by having them declare independence and apply for UN membership, while stationing Russian troops inside to protect them from Georgia. But then again, that would defeat the point of Russian intervention, which was to annex them to Imperial Russia. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-08-12 13:35 |
| #4 WE: All the hot air expended here, does not understand nor appreciate Russian nationalism. Actually, I fully understand the Imperial Russian mentality. The only question here is whether the Russians think they have the leeway to annex Georgia. Spengler's compatriot, Putin, may find that having bombers approach foreign coasts and fleets is one thing, but actually attacking them is quite another. The problem for Russia today is that China is economically resurgent with serious territorial claims against Russia and its buffer state (against China) Mongolia. Today, China's economy is almost three times the size of Russia's economy. In twenty years, Russia's economy might be a fifth of China's economy, given the fact that Russia is a natural resource extraction economy not unlike Saudi Arabia's - with limited growth prospects except as it relates to commodity price and demand rises. Assuming Chinese defense spending remains on its present growth rate, I would expect China to have more nukes than Russia by then - and perhaps a missile defense system. The real problem for Russia is how they will hang on to their Far Eastern provinces. Perhaps Putin's strategy is the one that the Turks and Huns on China's western borders (then much more constricted than today) adopted in antiquity - flee Chinese military power and attack Europe. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-08-12 13:21 |
| #3 WS - aggressive tyrants always look clever on the way up. Bonaparte did, Hitler did, Slobo and Saddam did. Its only after theyre dead that we see what failures they were. |
| Posted by: superstitiousGalitizianer 2008-08-12 13:11 |
| #2 I disagree profoundly with the above, among other things its false comparison to Kosovo, its misreadign of the strategic import of what happened in Georgia, its incorrect belief that this is over and Russia will not pay a cost. I dont have time to respond in detail. I will point out one glaring inaccuracy. He says we went into Kosovo to save Muslim Albanians from being ethnically cleansed. That is false. We went in to keep Albanians from being ethnically cleansed. Period. The Serb ethnic cleansing campaign did NOT make a distinction between muslim Albanians, Christian Albanians, or atheist Albanians. The implication that it did, repeated ad nauseum, is part of an ex post propaganda campaign to paint the Albanians as Jihadis and to make the Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing appear as somehow part of the war on terror. Given an error of that magnitude, and one so in keeping with a certain mindset, I dont think theres any need to respond in more detail, or to give the quotes which span from Joe Biden and the editorial pages of the WaPo and NYT to Victor Davis Hanson and Michael Ledeen and the Weekly Standard, to show why this is a profound misreading. |
| Posted by: superstitiousGalitizianer 2008-08-12 13:08 |
| #1 John thanks for posting this. Spengler elucidates just what I would have said were I as capable. He's got the take on Puty just right. When he went to the ranch in Texas, he knew Bush was a sucker. When he met Rice, he could barely contain his mirth and derision. When he went to Kennebunkport, he realized there were two numbskulls in the family. I thought Putin would act on Kosovo, but he kept his powder dry. But on the borders of Russia, he has no reservations. All the hot air expended here, does not understand nor appreciate Russian nationalism. It existed long before the commies appeared, and it beats strong in every Russian heart. Putin deals in realities as they exist, not banalities and horseshit like the fogheads in the EU. I used to be fluent in Russian and have read scores of their novels, papers, etc. Can't do it well now, as I'm out of practice, but I have gained an understanding of their thinking over literally centuries. It hasn't changed. |
| Posted by: Woozle Elmeter 2700 2008-08-12 12:50 |