|
The crisis in Georgia is forcing Americans to consider the propriety and efficacy of American power and influence abroad in a context which, for the first time in a while, involves our role in countering another nation's military aggression across sovereign borders besides Bush's own military expansionism in the Middle East. We have seen a variety of responses from the White House and the candidates who hope to assume the responsibility of the presidency.
All three parties -- Bush, Obama, and McCain -- have settled on hard-line responses directed at Russia, demanding they withdraw their invading forces immediately from Georgia's South Ossetia. But, at least initially, it was McCain's bellicose attempt to sound the toughest which made the other equally firm responses seem less demanding. They weren't. It just sounded that way.
All parties have postured as if Russia bears the most responsibility, and perhaps they do, even though the Georgian leadership certainly needs to account for their own actions which have allowed the Russians to claim they were provoked into defending the 'integrity' of their borders. It's just that there is no way that the West can or should tolerate the Russians tearing through these 'friendly' provinces with impunity.
In fact, that expectation of restraint by the Russians toward their 'independent' neighbor is what the U.S. has been counting on from the instance they decided to encourage and support the construction of the oil pipeline which runs through Georgia from Azerbaijan to Turkey. The expectation was that the West could have a potential control over the flow of oil out of the former Soviet state which supplies Russia's allies (like Bush's nemesis, China). That, undoubtedly, is what has the Bush administration so jazzed about the Russian military incursion.
There's got to be a great deal of frustration among those folks who thought controlling Russia's most profitable export outside of weapons sales was going to be as easy as propping up any compliant regime who shared our animosity toward the Russians. The regime in Georgia, though, handed the Russians a ready excuse with their military aggression in South Osssetia. Armed and equipped by the U.S., the Georgian military forces are being systematically dismantled by the invading Russian army as their irregular units ransack and loot as they advance inside of Georgia. The Russians have taken advantage of the Europeans' and the West's reluctance and foot-dragging in inviting Georgia under the NATO security umbrella.
That push by the U.S. to surround Russia with NATO cooperative states, like Poland and the Ukraine, has threatened Russia and forced them to find ways to desperately preserve whatever influence in their region that they can manage. The Bush regime sees the prospect of Russia's alliances with China and Iran as threats to the U.S. 'national security'. The administration would like nothing more than for Russia and China to be regarded as pariahs in the world community, especially now that their UN influence will likely be a determining factor in Bush's scheme to force even more action against Iran out of the U.N. Security Council. Bush and Cheney (and Rice) would be more than satisfied to isolate Russia, and China with a manufactured pall of suspicion and fear, making oil-producing nations reluctant to do business with Iran out of fear of U.S. retaliation and making existing deals with Iran appear sinister and threatening.
It suits the Bush regime's short term agenda to isolate Russia and China in hopes of forestalling the coming shift in energy resources away from the U.S. as Russia and China bargain for a bigger share of the world's oil, and have made multi-billion dollar deals with oil-rich Iran, to the consternation of the U.S. and their Saudi benefactors who are desperate to stifle the influence of the Iranian oil on the world market.
It's not been enough for the U.S. to illegally invade and occupy a sovereign nation in the face of Russian and Chinese objections, now the Bush regime is intent on pressing their aggression and military posturing against Russia and China's economic ally, Iran, to the point of destabilizing the balance of weaponry in Europe which had allowed the decades-old deescalation of tensions and relative peace to prevail. And, they want us to believe that the target of their own destabilizing aggression is the most pernicious threat.
Dick Cheney in Sydney in 2007, took it upon himself to complain about China's 'military buildup' and their shooting down of an old weather satellite. Cheney wasn't really concerned with any actual threat from China. He was just carrying water for his military industry benefactors, like Lockheed and Boeing who are shopping around Europe for governments willing to buy into their 'missile defense' protection scheme they've mapped out with the military industry executives who've infected the Bush regime even before his ascendance to office.
Cheney was well aware of efforts reported underway for years to sell missile defense systems in Central Europe which accelerated that year, including a deal with Britain's lame-duck, Blair, to take his country's defense dollars in return for the false security of hunkering his citizens underneath a U.S. missile 'umbrella', hiding from anticipated reprisals from Bush's continuing and increasing militarism.
The reasoning behind the Bush administration's planned deployment of these 'missile interceptors' to Europe has nothing at all to do with some Cold War threat from Russia or China, according to Secretary of State Condi Rice, who told reporters during a trip to Germany in February that, "There is no way that 10 interceptors in Poland and radar sites in the Czech Republic are a threat to Russia or that they are somehow going to diminish Russia's deterrent of thousands of warheads."
Even General Peter Pace, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said at the beginning of the year in Jakarta that he wouldn't directly tie China's satellite shooting to any threat. "We should not assume anything about the Chinese anti-satellite test (last month) other than they now have the capacity to shoot down a satellite," he told reporters.
What is it then which compels the U.S. State Dept. and the Pentagon to ramp up the peddling of these missile systems to these European countries, unsettling decades of peaceful cooperation with their communist neighbors? There is a familiar theme which accompanies this latest round of fearmongering militarism by the Bush regime. Secretary Rice spelled it out after claiming Russia had nothing to fear from the new, planned expansion of U.S. military influence in their backyard.
"I think everybody understands that with a growing Iranian missile threat," Rice said in Berlin"-- which is quite pronounced -- that there needs to be ways to deal with that problem, and, that we're talking about long lead times to be able to have a defensive counter to offensive missile threats," she said.
Problem with that assessment is that Iran has no intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the U.S. continent. Iran's longest range missile is the Shahab-3, which has a target radius of 620 miles. The Pentagon has been claiming for almost a decade that Iran is developing up to three new generations of the Shahab to increase its range. There is absolutely no evidence that Iran even possesses missiles threatening the U.S or has threatened the U.S. with missiles, yet, this entire escalation of concern which has supposedly prompted the Bush regime to step up the hawking of these dubious systems throughout Europe is predicated on their claims of an Iranian threat.
"There are no grounds for deploying the missile defense systems in Europe, Iran doesn't have any missiles with a range of 5,000 to 8,000 kilometers,'' Putin had said.
"One does not choose sites for missile defense out of the blue," Secretary of State Rice had said. "It's geometry and geography as to how you intercept a missile."
It's precisely that 'geometry and geography' which compelled Russia's Putin to respond that the U.S. is "filling Eastern Europe with new weapons," and to resort to tests of his country's new cruise missile and a new ballistic missile which is supposed to be capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads.
"If the U.S. nuclear potential extends across the European territory and threatens Russia, we will be obliged to take countermeasures,'' Putin told reporters in 2007. "Of course, we'll have to select new targets in Europe,'' he said.
Does this administration want a new cold war? They're angling for one. These brainless, unschooled megalomaniacs see a short term plus in their agenda to isolate Iran and those who would dare to trade with them. Putin threatened to withdraw from two arms control treaties if the U.S. went ahead with it's planned deployment of missiles to Poland and radar to the Czech Republic. The Russian military has, predictably, responded to the Bush regime's militarism by threatening to train their country's missiles on Poland. Gen Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, also warned that the Russia would pull out of a Cold War treaty restricting production of intermediate range missiles.
Putin responded earlier that year to the Bush regime's militarism with a 'Strangelove' type boast that "Russia . . . has tested missile systems that no one in the world has." ITAR-Tass, Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies quoted Putin as saying that, "These missile systems don't represent a response to a missile defense system, but they are immune to that. They are hypersonic and capable of changing their flight path."
Now it appears that Putin is intent on moving forward with his threat to escalate Russia's defenses in response to the threat he perceives from the U.S. missile defense systems that Poland agreed to receive and deploy.
"By hosting these missiles, Poland is making itself a target. This is 100 per cent certain," said Gen Anatoly Nogovitsin, deputy head of Russia's armed forces on Friday.
Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's NATO envoy amplified Nogovitsin's warning, complaining that, "Of course the missile defense system will be deployed, not against Iran but against the strategic potential of Russia."
Zealously pressing their campaign to cripple the Iranians by restricting their opportunities for trade, the Bush administration is, in effect, encouraging and initiating restrictions on the trade that Russia depends on with their Iranian partners. From Russia's intention to build two nuclear plants in Iran to the multi-billion dollar oil deals they've struck with the Iranian regime, every adverse action by the U.S. threatens to restrict Russia's ability to trade independently, outside of the control of the West. That economic control (through sanctions, embargoes, or isolation from trade groups and associations) is the only significant lever the West has in any effort to influence Russia's behavior, outside of the inconceivable prospect of confronting them militarily.
Restricted to those two options, the limits of America's ability to influence nations like Russia through coercion or force are more than evident. The Iraq invasion, overthrow, and occupation is the clearest, most visible example of those limits.
Certainly, it's well in line with the aims of most careful adversaries of Russia to aggressively yank on whatever chain they've forged in their attempts to normalize their trade relationships. Nations have correctly drawn Russia into the fold of economic cooperation, like their G8 membership, and, correctly, pulled back from those relationships when Russia acts in a way which threatens those and other interests of theirs.
But, it's worthwhile to reflect on where our relationship with Russia would be if they managed to exhaust, and we managed to sever, those economic ties which have provided us leverage. What would we be left with to influence Russia's behavior if they were able to independently manage their economic needs outside of our influence and control?
To a large extent, the Russians seem prepared to call that bluff. It's not as if they expect any sort of direct military coercion by the West to be considered or attempted to counter their opportunistic invasion. And, they're quite comfortable in their justifications for invading which mirror Bush's own excuses for invading sovereign Iraq on a trumped-up threat and occupying the country behind the false pretext of 'spreading democracy.'
Russia and Georgia signed a ceasefire agreement today, but Russia is insisting that South Ossetia needs their 'protection' and are, predictably, resisting giving back the territory they've seized. What's to stop the Russians from just sitting there? Economic sanctions? Expel them from the international arenas of cooperation which enticed and enabled Russia to emerge from their Cold War defensiveness and laid the foundation for disarmament and other security agreements?
Maybe it will come to all of that, but, consider what we're left with if we fail to forge the necessary links of diplomacy and cooperation with those in the region and without. There is no sane military option when it comes to directly influencing Russian behavior, and, if we can't contain their military aggression through diplomacy or sanction, the demands of the West will likely be as disregarded and ignored as Russia's objections to Bush's occupation of Iraq were.
The only way to achieve and maintain the necessary diplomatic relationships to successfully influence Russia's behavior is for the U.S. to return to a level of moral authority it had when we first began to draw Russia in, and that Bush has squandered with his opportunistic militarism. The only way to regain that authority is to affirm the most basic element of the democracy we pretend to support and defend abroad; the integrity of sovereign borders.
The first affirmation of that understanding of that moral authority will be the ending of the Iraq occupation. Without taking that initiative, it will be impossible for those we intend to lecture about respect for border integrity or sovereign authority to take us seriously.
Next, we will need to move to repair and rebuild those international relationships which have grown defensive and tepid in the face of Bush's unbridled aggression and ambition abroad. The world needs to be convinced that our nation does not so covet their land or their resources that we're willing to allow or support another bloody coup.
Finally, we need to re-order and prioritize our ambitions abroad to reflect our new, responsible, cooperative posture. Only then can we hope that any of our admonitions about restraint, cooperation, or peace and disarmament are heard.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
