Outlining the McCain Doctrine

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, helped shape John McCain's approach to American foreign policy, the New York Times reports:

Senator John McCain arrived late at his Senate office on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just after the first plane hit the World Trade Center. “This is war,” he murmured to his aides. The sound of scrambling fighter planes rattled the windows, sending a tremor of panic through the room.

Within hours, Mr. McCain, the Vietnam War hero and famed straight talker of the 2000 Republican primary, had taken on a new role: the leading advocate of taking the American retaliation against Al Qaeda far beyond Afghanistan. In a marathon of television and radio appearances, Mr. McCain recited a short list of other countries said to support terrorism, invariably including Iraq, Iran and Syria.

“There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” Mr. McCain said the next morning on ABC News. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he added, on MSNBC. “I don’t think if you got bin Laden tomorrow that the threat has disappeared,” he said on CBS, pointing toward other countries in the Middle East.

Within a month he made clear his priority. “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. By Jan. 2, Mr. McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!”

Now, as Mr. McCain prepares to accept the Republican presidential nomination, his response to the attacks of Sept. 11 opens a window onto how he might approach the gravest responsibilities of a potential commander in chief. Like many, he immediately recalibrated his assessment of the unseen risks to America’s security. But he also began to suggest that he saw a new “opportunity” to deter other potential foes by punishing not only Al Qaeda but also Iraq.

“Just as Sept. 11 revolutionized our resolve to defeat our enemies, so has it brought into focus the opportunities we now have to secure and expand our freedom,” Mr. McCain told a NATO conference in Munich in early 2002, urging the Europeans to join what he portrayed as an all but certain assault on Saddam Hussein. “A better world is already emerging from the rubble.”

To his admirers, Mr. McCain’s tough response to Sept. 11 is at the heart of his appeal. They argue that he displayed the same decisiveness again last week in his swift calls to penalize Russia for its incursion into Georgia, in part by sending peacekeepers to police its border.

His critics charge that the emotion of Sept. 11 overwhelmed his former cool-eyed caution about deploying American troops without a clear national interest and a well-defined exit, turning him into a tool of the Bush administration in its push for a war to transform the region.

Read the whole thing, here. But check out one more quote that captures McCain's temperment:

He has made the principle that the exercise of military power sets the bargaining table for international relations a consistent theme of his career ever since, and in his 2002 memoir he wrote that one of his lifelong convictions was “the imperative that American power never retreat in response to an inferior adversary’s provocation.”

I've always like this about the man, which explains my support for McCain as soon as he threw his hat in the ring for the nomination.

For readers interested in more on the outlines of a "McCain Doctrine," see the Senator's speech last month at the American GI Forum in Denver, as well as his address to the New School in New York from May 2006, where McCain says:

As blessed as we are, no nation complacent in its greatness can long sustain it. We, too, must prove, as those who came before us proved, that a people free to act in their own interests, will perceive those interests in an enlightened way, will live as one nation, in a kinship of ideals, and make of our power and wealth a civilization for the ages, a civilization in which all people share in the promise and responsibilities of freedom.

Should we claim our rights and leave to others the duty to the ideals that protect them, whatever we gain for ourselves will be of little lasting value. It will build no monuments to virtue, claim no honored place in the memory of posterity, offer no worthy summons to the world. Success, wealth and celebrity gained and kept for private interest is a small thing. It makes us comfortable, eases the material hardships our children will bear, purchases a fleeting regard for our lives, yet not the self-respect that, in the end, matters most. But sacrifice for a cause greater than yourself, and you invest your life with the eminence of that cause, your self-respect assured.

We saw some of the McCain vision last night, at the Saddleback civil forum, which marked a clear and decisive victory for American ideals of greatness and moral clarity amid the current world situation.

The Randy Scheunemann Non-Controversy

Randy Scheunemann, who is John McCain's top foreign policy advisor, has been in the spotlight this last week due to his past lobbying ties to the Georgian government. Critics have alleged that Scheunemann's previous dealings have contributed to war in the Caucasus.

This morning's Los Angeles Times includes a feature story on Scheunemann, with the bottom line being that the revolving door between interest group work and campaign advising is non-controversial:

Ed Davis, director of research at Common Cause, said Scheunemann's move from lobbyist to advisor is common. Foreign governments, companies, labor unions and other organizations spent a record $2.8 billion to lobby for favorable policies in Washington last year, records show.

"Unfortunately, it's the way business is done," Davis said.

But Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, contended that it's unreasonable to ban paid experts from advising candidates. "If you rule out people who lobby, you probably rule out a lot of talent and connections," she said.

For critics, Scheunemann's case is less about conflict of interest than it is about his foreign policy positions as a hawk on national defense. He's seen as a key "neocon" who helped hoodwink the nation on the "disastrous" folly of war in Iraq.

The fact is that the Scheunemann story is small potatoes, and has been pumped up by war opponents hoping for an advantageous gotcha moment against the GOP.

The Gotcha Campaign

Mary McNamara argues that American politics is now all about "gotcha," the drama of hammering the candidates on their latest gaffes and missteps:

FOR DECADES, political pundits and voters alike have complained about the banality of the national conventions. Gone are the days when the party platforms really meant anything to anyone, when loyalties were bartered and policy deals hammered out in those iconic smoke-filled back rooms by men in wilting white shirts. Now it's just an office party of sorts, a series of scripted speeches and sound bytes signifying nothing. We are, after all, a nation that increasingly chooses its president based on that most ephemeral of factors -- personality.

So basically what we're looking for as we approach the conventions is some wonderful off-mike moment -- a backstage meltdown involving a Clinton perhaps, a racist comment from a McCain supporter, a wonderful/terrible political gaffe from either candidate. Something that would tell us all we really need to know without making us think too hard about the wars or the economy or our rapidly eroding education and healthcare infrastructures.

Something we can watch on YouTube and send to all our friends just like all the other news loops that have dominated this year's coverage.

Barack Obama's guns and religion comment. John McCain's Pakistan border mistake . Obama's rock star reception in Europe . McCain's golf cart incident. The greatest hits of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Paris Hilton video, the Obama fist bumps McCain's melanoma issues. The tire gauge controversy.

SO MUCH has been said about the media's handling of this campaign that it's almost embarrassing to address the topic. But after watching hours, days, weeks of it on television, the cry of anguish cannot be suppressed: For the love of all that is holy, how did one of the most important presidential races in history, between two men who embody such disparate political possibilities, wind up looking like a montage sequence in a Will Ferrell movie?

Read the rest of the article, here, but I think McNamara pretty much answers her query further down in the essay:

The gotcha moment isn't exactly new: It's been the holy grail of covering presidential politics since Richard Nixon broke out in a flop sweat during the first televised debates. Going, going, gone is the journalistic chivalry that kept Franklin Roosevelt's inability to walk and/or John F. Kennedy's promiscuity a well-known secret. Vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton lost his spot on the ticket when it was revealed he'd had electroshock treatments; Edmund Muskie was toast when he seemed to weep while denouncing attack ads aimed at his wife.

While such stories were anomalies, or sidebars, now they are the main event. Now, like the conventions, the entire campaign -- all those speeches and whistle stops, all those meetings with leaders and foreign heads of state -- is increasingly perceived as nothing but stagecraft. God, or truth, we are told, is found in the details, in odd little moments that if replayed often enough by every media outlet can't help but take on the air of political or personal revelation.

There's more to the story, of course, from technological change, to evolving standards of what's morally acceptable, to the lowest-common-demominator sound-byte media cycle. It's an empirical question as to whether gotcha politics has increased engagement and political knowledge, but if the trends toward 2008 being a "high interest election" hold up, all of the controversy and scandals may end up just part of history in the making.

McCain on Message at Saddleback Forum

As I've noted, Barack Obama missed a huge opportunity last night at Orange County's Saddleback Church. The political one-on-one talk with Reverend Rick Warren offered Obama the chance to speak directly to the American people and resassure the public that he's one them, that he cares about their issues in a direct personal way.

Instead, Obama took the path of least resistance, speaking from his head and not his heart, risking nothing, and thus failing to make the sale.

Chuck Todd, at NBC, makes the case that indeed, it was John McCain's night:

Obama spent more time trying to impress Warren (or to put another away) not offend Warren while McCain seemingly ignored Warren and decided he was talking to folks watching on TV. The McCain way of handling this forum is usually the winning way. Obama may have had more authentic moments but McCain was impressively on message.

This was a mistake Obama made a few times during the primary season. On one hand, it can make a moderator feel good when their subject actually tries to answer every question and take into account their opinions on a particular topic. And Obama's supporters will email me tonight and say this is what they love about him.

And yet, this reminded me of the many comparisons we made between Obama and Hillary Clinton. She was much more effective at answering questions in 90 seconds and always staying on message while Obama too easily allowed himself to get knocked off his talking points. Remember, Obama doesn't need to win over his supporters, he needs folks who are just now tuning in.

Take the VERY first question Warren posed to both candidates: who are three people you'll depend on for wisdom in the presidency. Obama seemed to answer this in a very personal way, talking about his wife and grandmother. McCain went right to this message, checking boxes on Iraq (Patraeus) and the economy (Whitman) for instance. Now, I'm betting Obama's answer came across as more authentic but McCain's was probably more effective with undecided swing voters.

The two answered the Supreme Court justice question VERY differently, with Obama seemingly trying to say a nice thing or two about justices he disagreed with, while McCain went right to pander mode in his answer. And yet, McCain's straightforward answer easily penetrated while Obama's did not.

Every Obama answer was certainly thoughtful enough but he seemed to want to explain himself too much and went out of his way not to offend folks who disagree with him.

Don't get me wrong, this will play well with some but McCain's directness and snappy answers that were on message allowed him to look commanding on that stage.

Basically, Obama won over Rick Warren, and McCain won over Main Street.

I noted earlier that Obama's abortion discussion would capture a lot of attention, and Captain Ed explains why, responding to Obama's other-worldly answer that the question of human rights for the unborn was above his pay grade:

First, the entire issue of abortion involves determining when a baby becomes a person. If Obama thinks this is above his pay grade, then he probably shouldn’t be running for political office. If a baby is a person at conception, then abortion is murder. If Obama doesn’t believe that abortion is murder, then he can’t believe in the personhood, the humanity, of an embryo or fetus — not unless he’s some kind of monster.

As President — even as Senator — Obama is expected to have an answer for this. Quite literally, there is no higher pay grade in the US government, and abortion is one of the issues he has to face. If he can’t face it, then he should go back to community organization and leave politics for people who can. John McCain had no trouble answering the same question. Obama dodged it — and for good reason: his answer would have exposed his radical views.

If pro-life advocacy is the litmus test for evangelicals, I can't see how Barack Obama - with his abortion advocacy - can cut into the GOP advantage with this constituency.

The other touchy issue last night, outside of national security, appears to be McCain's response to the income cut-off point defining who's rich. Whereas Obama came out to say those making $250,000 or more will see an income tax increase under his administration, McCain argued against an arbitrary cut off point determining who's wealthy.

Steve Benen, at the Carpetbagger Report, has the transcript of McCain's response:

Some of the richest people I’ve ever known in my life are the most unhappy. I think that rich is — should be defined by a home, a good job and education and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited. I don’t want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich. I don’t believe in class warfare or redistribution of the wealth. But I can tell you for example there are small businessmen and women who are working 16 hours a day, seven days a week that some people would classify as, quote, ‘rich,’ my friends, who want to raise their taxes and raise their payroll taxes. Let’s have — keep taxes low. Let’s give every family in America a $7,000 tax credit for every child they have. Let’s give them a $5,000 refundable tax credit to go out and get the health insurance of their choice. Let’s not have the government take over the health care system in America.

McCain also threw out an off-hand figure of $5 million . The number was clearly arbitrary, and offered in jest. Benen thinks this is a defining issue, however:

Just how out of touch is John McCain? On the one hand, he’s running ads talking about how “tough” times are “for the rest of us,” but on the other, McCain, one of Congress’ wealthiest members, thinks people who make millions of dollars a year aren’t quite rich, and he doesn’t want to bother them with taxes anyway.

If anything from last night comes back to bite McCain on the butt, it’s this.

The Politico seems to agree, but the notion that all Americans want to get rich - and that they should have that opportunity - is as traditional as apple pie.

How the question of tax fairness and wealth plays out will remain a key issue in the campaign, but fundamentally, while many folks are facing hard economic times, everyone should have the chance to make $250,000 or more, and be considered "rich," without being penalized for it.

Obama's Missed Opportunity at Saddleback Civil Forum

Ann Althouse notified folks today about Pastor Rick Warren's presidential forum, commenting on the format for Barack Obama and John McCain, that "if they aren't going to be on stage together, I'm not even going to watch." Althouse, being the ever-present online maven that she is, live-blogged the event anyway. It's a good thing too, because the meeting tonight at Orange County's Saddleback Church was one of the most compelling general election campaign telecasts in modern memory.

There's naturally going to be a few online gigabytes consumed tomorrow by analysis of the forum, and I may have additional observations then, but I thought I'd better make a couple of good points right now.

Some pre-event spin, for example, suggested that Reverend Warren was a poor host for the evening, either because his participation raised troubling questions of separation of church and state (an issue Ross Douthat pretty much put to rest), or because Warren was totally partial to the GOP worldview, raising some debate as to whether Obama should even be in attendance for the showcase. As it turned out, however, Warren was tremendously congenial to both candidates, and for Barack Obama, his performance at the Saddleback event amounted to an enormous missed opportunity to ease the uncertainty that many Americans have regarding the Illinois Senator's basic values and vision for the nation.

Many commentators will, of course, focus on Obama's statements on abortion: The Illinois Senator, when questioned on the beginning of life, responded with extreme deliberation, ducking the question by saying that the right to life was "above his my pay grade." McCain, on the other hand, without equivocation, responded that life begins at "the moment of conception."

But even deeper questions of national purpose were in play, and this is where the stark generational and moral differences of campaign '08 will be contested and resolved.

In a question that Obama should have seen as perfectly pitched for a national security home run, Reverend Warren asked if there was evil in the world, and if so, how should we respond? Obama answered in the affirmative, saying, indeed, there is evil in the world, for example, in Darfur, and in the crimes of America's inner-cities. Of course, there's no questioning the presence of evil in both of those examples, but with the United States at war, and the issue of America's response to terrorism and naked aggression continuing as key controversies in debate on foreign policy, Obama's failure to mention the September 11 attacks, or our ongoing campaigns against Islamist nihilism in Iraq and South Asia, serves as a stark confirmation of the suspected postmodern sensibilities in the Democratic candidate that have engendered questions in Americans looking for judgement and moral clarity on the world's existential issues. It was almost disheartenting, for example, to hear Obama preface his comments with a harsh dose of moral relativism, when he suggested that "a lot of evil has been perpetrated ... in the name of good" (which I interpreted as a underhanded jab at the cotroversies surrounding the current deployment of American military power).

Senator McCain, with great contrast, responded without hesitation, indicating that real evil indeed exists in the world, and we should defeat it. Americans were shocked by the brutality of terrorism in 2001, and our soldiers are fighting that scourge in Iraq right now. McCain said, "If I have to go to gates and hell and back, I will get Osama Bin Laden, " and he asked with great emphasis, that if the al Qaeda terrorists who strapped suicide belts on innocent Iraqi women - sending them to their deaths moments later in firestorms of killing - did not constitute the modern face of evil, what did?

Tonight's forum was not an insignificant preview of the post-Labor Day campaign. The Saddleback Church event demonstrated without a doubt that on the big issues of importance, from abortion rights, to the economy and education, to national security and the war on terror, John McCain's comfort on the issues and his unambigous straight-talk style will pose huge hurdles for the cerebral, hesitant, and postmodern candidacy of Barack Obama.

Antiwar Leftists and Unpatriotic Conservatives

One of the most amazing things surrounding debates over the Iraq war, and now also with Russia's invasion of Georgia, is the odd antiwar alliance between the extreme left and extreme right in American politics.

The coalition of antiwar left and right has recently been in the news with its "Strange Bedfellows" efforts seeking revenge against centrist Democrats who voted for FISA reauthorization in June. Recall, as well, a few years back Cindy Sheehan, the America-bashing antiwar activist, was found posting her attacks on alleged Bush administration warmongering at the homepage of Lew Rockwell, a widely recognized advocate of "right-wing libertarianism."

The latest example of this unprincipled extreme left-right alliance is in Newshogger's anti-neocon hysterics over Robert Kagan's new piece at the Weekly Standard. According to Newshoggers:

Eight years ago I would not have believed that I would ever think Pat Buchanan could be a voice of sanity. But as neocons like Robert Kagan can hardly contain their enthusiasm when they see an opportunity to fire up the cold war again it is Buchanan who comes across as sane. Now the neocons never did like the "War on Terror". Their attempts to turn it into a "real" war have for the most part been dismal failures. Over at LewRockwell.com Pat Buchanan describes how hypocritical the neocon's outrage over Russia's response to Saakashvili's blunder really is.

Buchanan, of course, is the publisher of the American Conservative, a down-market journal of paleoconservative ideology and leading purveyor of the left-right antiwar alliance. The magazine regularly features articles from prominent far-right Iraq oppenents such as historian Andrew Bacevich and political scientist Michael Desch.

In 2003, David Frum identified the far-right antiwar activists as "unpatriotic conservatives":

You may know the names of these antiwar conservatives. Some are famous: Patrick Buchanan and Robert Novak. Others are not: Llewellyn Rockwell, Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming, Scott McConnell, Justin Raimondo, Joe Sobran, Charley Reese, Jude Wanniski, Eric Margolis, and Taki Theodoracopulos.

The antiwar conservatives aren't satisfied merely to question the wisdom of an Iraq war. Questions are perfectly reasonable, indeed valuable. There is more than one way to wage the war on terror, and thoughtful people will naturally disagree about how best to do it, whether to focus on terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah or on states like Iraq and Iran; and if states, then which state first?

But the antiwar conservatives have gone far, far beyond the advocacy of alternative strategies. They have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation's enemies.

This left-right antiwar alliance seems impossible from the perspective of political theory.

Yet, if we recall that antiwar conservatives are essentially political reactionaries, found on the extreme right-wing fringe of the political continuum, their hostility to strong-state military power is understandable. Indeed, this anti-statism is where the radical left and reactionary right find common cause. Both elements seek far-reaching change, and some within each side advocate violence to bring about a fundamental transformation of political institutions. The left-right antiwar alliance can be understood, in a sense, by bending the straight-line left-right continuum up into a circle, which brings the two fringes, left and right, together as an anti-American bloc of radical-reactionary commonality.

The Newshoggers are well-know revolutionary socialists. They regularly cheer insurgent attacks on American forces in Iraq, and they routinely demonize neoconservatives who advocate mainstream foreign policy positions on war and peace. By forthrightly joining with the paleoconservative attacks on America's response to Russian aggression, they're furthering the left-right tradition of hating the Bush administration, the GOP, and the country.

Defense Contractors Get Boost from Russian War

The left-wing meme of neocon war in the Caucasus has yet to spin off into allegations of Bush administration war-profiteering (folks are still stuck on the Halliburton industrial-complex).

That may soon change. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Georgian crisis may give a big boost to U.S. weapons programs:

Russia's attack on Georgia has become an unexpected source of support for big U.S. weapons programs, including flashy fighter jets and high-tech destroyers, that have had to battle for funding this year because they appear obsolete for today's conflicts with insurgent opponents.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has spent much of the year attempting to rein in some of the military's most expensive and ambitious weapons systems -- like the $143 million F-22 Raptor jet -- because he thinks they are unsuitable for the lightly armed and hard-to-find militias, warlords and terrorist groups the U.S. faces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been opposed by an array of political interests and defense companies that want to preserve these multibillion-dollar programs and the jobs they create.

When Russia's invading forces choked roads into Georgia with columns of armored vehicles and struck targets from the air, it instantly bolstered the case being made by some that the Defense Department isn't taking the threat from Russia and China seriously enough. If the conflict in Georgia continues and intensifies, it could make it easier for defense companies to ensure the long-term funding of their big-ticket items.

For example, the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John Murtha, quickly seized on the Russia situation this week, saying that it indicates the Russians see the toll that operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are taking on the U.S. military.

"We've spent so many resources and so much attention on Iraq that we've lost sight of future threats down the road. The current conflict between Russia and Georgia is a perfect example," said Rep. Murtha during a recent visit to his district.

It looks like the antiwar types will have to protest Murtha as well as the evil BushCo regime (recall that Murtha's actually the king of defense pork on Capitol Hill).

The article mentions the widespread expectation of massive defense outlays for next-generation weaponry even under a Democratic administration next January:

Amid uncertainty about how the next administration will view any of these programs, defense-industry officials have been fighting hard to keep them moving forward - hoping they will at some point be so far along that they can't be killed or seriously curtailed. A common refrain has been that the next administration will realize how dangerous the world is once the commander in chief gets briefed on the myriad threats to U.S. interests.

It remains to be seen if a Barack Obama administration will be able to resist this "criminal war lobby," but at the least the focus on the "next generation" weapons for the military-industrial complex will keep the Chomsky-Moore-Klein activists busy with their endless anti-capitalist agitiation.

U.S.-Russia Tensions Evoke Cold War Imagery

Various commentators have evoked the U.S.-Soviet Cold War rivalry to characterize the heightening tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia's invasion of Georgia.

I commented on the issue in my previous essay, "The Neocons, Russia, and the Soviet Union," where I took issue with the left's attack on neoconservatives for allegedly provoking a a new "Cold War."

It turns out, however, that the mainstream media's picked up on the meme. This morning's Los Angeles Times ran a front-page article entitled, "U.S.-Russia Tensions Heighten Over Georgia Conflict":

With Russia still defying U.S. demands to pull its troops from Georgia, the short, one-sided fight over two small mountain provinces widened Thursday into the sharpest exchanges yet between Washington and Moscow, threatening to unravel the post-Cold War consensus between them.

As Washington dispatched humanitarian relief, but no military aid, to its Georgian allies, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned that unless Russian forces relented from their incursion into Georgia, "the U.S.-Russian relationship could be adversely affected for years to come."

Saturday's New York Times has also joined the chorus:

“The cold war is over,” President Bush declared Friday, but a new era of enmity between the United States and Russia has emerged nevertheless. It may not be as tense as the nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union, for now, but it could become as strained.

Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has shattered, perhaps irrevocably, the strategy of three successive presidential administrations to coax Russia into alliance with the West and integration into its institutions.

From Russia’s point of view, those efforts were never truly sincere or respectful of its own legitimate political and security interests. Those interests, it is now clear, are at odds with those of Europe and the United States.

As much as Mr. Bush has argued that the old characterizations of the cold war are no longer germane, he drew a new line at the White House on Friday morning between countries free and not free, and bluntly put Russia on the other side of it.

“With its actions in recent days Russia has damaged its credibility and its relations with the nations of the free world,” Mr. Bush said in his fourth stern statement on the conflict in five days, and the strongest to date. “Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century.”

Tensions are manifest already, and both sides have done their part to inflame them. The flare-up over an obscure territorial dispute in the Caucasus, one barely known to most Americans, has set off a series of tectonic shifts.

The United Nations Security Council has reverted to a cold-war-like stalemate, with American and Russian vetoes blocking meaningful action over Georgia and other issues. While the United States and Russia will continue to negotiate out of necessity, as the old superpowers did, cooperation and collaboration — however limited in the past few years — now appear even more remote over such issues as Iran’s nuclear program.

The Russian offensive — the first outside its territory since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 — has crystallized a realignment already taking place in Central and Eastern Europe, where the new members of NATO and the European Union have warned of the threat posed by a resurgent Russia. And it is already forcing a reassessment of American strategy toward Russia, as Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said on Thursday.

The United States and Poland, which spent months negotiating the basing of American antimissile interceptors on its territory, quickly completed the deal in the wake of Russia’s offensive. The administration dropped its opposition to sending Patriot missiles, which would defend the Polish site in case of any attack — presumably from Russia.

Poland's acceptance of the missile interceptor base triggered a bellicose response from Moscow, with Russian General Anatoly Nogovitsyn saying the U.S. deployment of missile defenses at the Russian perimeter marks a provocative esclation of tensions, threatening a Russian strike against the facilities.

This language is certainly reminiscent of earlier periods of U.S.-Soviet hostility, although a lot has changed in the nearly 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall: Russia no longer controls the East Bloc alliance. Moscow has been accepted into international institutions such as the G-8 grouping of leading economic powers. And the driving ideology of all-encompassing Marxist-Leninist global expansion no longer finds its home in the Kremlin.

While a new Cold War is unlikely, the ongoing crisis in the Caucasus does herald a return to multipolar military competition in the inter-state system, with Moscow's actions this last week reviving legitimate historical analogies to Russia's history of imperialist domination of the near abroad in Eastern Europe and South Asia.

The stakes are certainly high, for continued advances of Russian capabilities beyond Georgia could impinge on American assets and interests to the Persian Gulf region and beyond. But until we see some formation of contrasting alliance blocs with rigid commitments to the two major poles of a renewed bipolar system of world power, talk of a new "Cold War" is premature.

A Military Response to Russian Aggression in Georgia

Stuart Koehl suggests that Americans shouldn't be so quick to rule out a military response to Russian aggression in Georgia:

Conventional wisdom has rapidly hardened around the proposition that there is no practical military response to the Russian invasion of Georgia. In fact, if the Georgians were inclined to fight, there is quite a lot they could do militarily, and in a way that would not directly involve U.S. or NATO forces. To understand how this military option would work, some background is required.

Most people have been grossly exaggerating Russian military strength and prowess in this exercise, obviously one long in the planning, and actually involving relatively small forces. By all accounts, the Russian "58th Army" has invaded Georgian territory with about 500 tanks and an equal number of infantry fighting vehicles--the equivalent of roughly two armored divisions. That's pretty small beer, really, but adequate to handle a smaller Georgian army largely dispersed to deal with counter-guerrilla operations.

A close examination of video and photos of the Russian force also reveals top of the line equipment--late model T-80 and T-90 main battle tanks, and BMP-2 IFVs. Now, the Caucasus Military District is something of a backwater, home of Category II and Category III divisions, most of which are kept below strength and equipped with older systems, such as the T-72 MBT. On the other hand, the Category I divisions are kept close to Moscow and the western military districts, because that is where the main threat is perceived, and also because that's much better terrain for tank warfare. Obviously, the Russian army carefully transferred the forces for this operation from central Russia all the way to the Caucasus--in secret--and also accompanied the move with a comprehensive maskirovka intended to put us at our ease (e.g., Putin did go to the Olympic opening ceremonies, after all).

From this we can infer what most experts already know--that the Russian army, though still numerically large, has relatively few competent, deployable formations--there are the airborne divisions and the air assault brigades, and a few tank and motor-rifle divisions, but not much else. Similarly, the Russian air force doesn't have very many fully operational aircraft or deep reserves of fuel, spare parts and munitions. This invasion has probably eaten deeply into Russian operations and maintenance funding, to say nothing of its war reserve stockpiles of ordnance and equipment. Russia must have bet on a short and fairly bloodless war, because it cannot afford--militarily or politically--a protracted slog. Not only doesn't it have the equipment to do so, but it doesn't have enough highly trained troops to sustain heavy casualties. The Russian military consists of a small, diamond-hard point on the end of a wooden stick. If the point shatters or wears down, you are left fighting the stick. (It should be noted that Ralph Peters, writing in the New York Post, has been scathing in his assessment of the Russian army's performance in Georgia, so by Western standards even the best of the Russian army would be considered rather mediocre).

There's more at the link.

See also my earlier entry, "International Politics and Russia's Invasion of Georgia."

Swiftboating Jerome Corsi

How should conservatives react to Jerome Corsi, who has just released a sharp attack on Barack Obama in his new book, The Obama Nation?

Peter Wehner, a former member of the Bush administration's Office of Strategic Initiatives, makes the case against Corsi at Commentary:

Corsi’s approach to politics is both destructive and self-destructive. If Senator Obama loses, he should lose on the merits: his record in public life and his political philosophy. And while it’s legitimate to take into account Obama’s past associations with people like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright–especially for someone like Obama, about whom relatively little is known–it wrong and reckless to throw out unsubstantiated charges and smears against Senator Obama.

Conservatism has been an intellectual home to people like Burke and Buckley. The GOP is the party that gave us Lincoln and Reagan. It seems to me that its leaders ought to make it clear that they find what Dr. Corsi is doing to be both wrong and repellent. To have their movement and their party associated with such a figure would be a terrible thing and it will only help the cause of those who hold both the GOP and the conservative movement in contempt.

Wehner's one of my favorite conservative writers, but I think he's too quick to throw Corsi under the bus here.

I'm about a third of the way through The Obama Nation, and so far I've found the book to be interestingly fast-paced.

But Corsi's been in the news all this week, with stories attacking him at the New York Times, and the Washington Post, among other mainstream outlets, so I'm well-familiar with the author's past associations with the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, as well as some of the other allegations of Corsi's tin-foil hat extremism.

The attacks are disproportionate and misplaced. Much of what Corsi examines in-depth has been in the news for months, like Obama's false claim that he owes his life as an American to President John F. Kennedy. Indeed, Corsi has by now himself become as much an object of smears as has Barack Obama, as Mark Levin argues:

If you read the criticism of the Jerome Corsi book that is picking up speed in the liberal media, you will find much similarity and overlap. The Obama campaign's effort to feed talking points to the media is having some effect. However, it is also feeding curiosity about the author and the book, thereby helping to maintain strong sales.

It's too bad the same media that are so concerned about Corsi's background have been so reticent to do their own homework on Obama. After all, Corsi wrote a book, Obama seeks the presidency. The liberal media were slow to acknowledge the existence of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, and did so only after talk radio and bloggers would not let Obama escape his close relationship with both. The Chicago media did most of the heavy lifting respecting Obama's relationship with Tony Rezko. And there are many other miscreants and radicals who have played large roles in Obama's personal and professional life. But the liberal media are not interested in looking into most of it, have begrudgingly and superficially addressed it usually after the new media pressed it, and then downplayed it as "guilt by association" — with few exceptions. Not so with their reporting on Corsi. They want to know about anything he has ever said or written and his associations. In his case, they are determinative. And if he got a date wrong here and there in his book, or was otherwise mistaken in some minor way, the entirety of his book is discredited. We are "learning" more about Corsi than we learned about Obama prior to the all important Super Tuesday primaries.

It is not surprising that the media have chosen sides, but it remains frustrating. And this was a frustration of the Clinton campaign and will be for the McCain campaign. Meanwhile, the New York Times had no second thoughts about smearing John McCain on its front page with the thinnest of accusations inferring an affair and unethical lobbying activity. I think it can be said with some confidence that Corsi's standards are superior to those of the Times.

I think Roger Kimball has it about right here. And it should be emphasized that David Freddoso's excellent book on Obama has been all but ignored by the liberal media, but is well worth purchasing.

For more along these lines, see "Obama Goes Ballistic Over Corsi Best-Seller."

Also, Douglas Gibbs, who blogs at Political Pistachio, will be hosting Corsi for an interview tonight on his blog-talk radio program, Political Pistachio Radio. For Douglas' blog entry, see "Obama Nation Book by Jerome Corsi Draws Criticism - Corsi is my guest tonight on BTR."

The left has gone over the top in denouncing Corsi, so it sounds like a pretty good show.

Searching for Hate in the Blogosphere

Even before Arkansas Democratic Chairman Bill Gwatney succumbed to his gunshot wounds on Wednesday, the left-wing blogosphere lit-up with allegations that a right-wing extremist had shot another liberal.

For example, leftist bloggers were quick to allege, without the release of any details on the assailant's background or motive, that conservative "wingnuts" like Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin encouraged a "climate of hate" that provoked the extermination of liberals (recall just two weeks ago a gunman killed two at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, in Knoxville, Tennessee).

In an essay this week, Jonathan Bellman of the University of Northern Colorado, argued that the right has essentially declared open-season on the word "liberal" and anyone associated with it:

It has become what “Jew” was in Nazi Germany and “Communist” was during the Red Scare: something so threatening that it needn’t be explained or questioned. Right-wing high priests like Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have for a long time implied that “liberal” equals something like “seditious terrorist.” It is so ingrained now that we barely notice, or quietly agree.

As I've noted before, the left's propensity to see evil designs on liberals reflects their own ideological foundations in hatred, a secular demonology protective of the perceived purity of the liberal sensibilities.

It's thus interesting to note the dust-up online today over the discovery of death threats against "liberal traitors" on some conservative websites:

On Wednesday night, Fox "News'" Bill O'Reilly continued his dishonest and deceptive attacks on websites, such as Huffington Post and Daily Kos, which he misleadingly describes as "hate sites" featuring "vicious far-left attacks" as based on selective reader comments he's discovered posted on those sites.

In the latest of his continuing segments with "Internet Cop" Amanda Carpenter, of the rightwing website Townhall.com, O'Reilly pointed to a number of objectionable comments at the two sites, from "far-left kooks," before tepidly lauding both HuffPo and Daily Kos for having removed some of them, presumably after they were brought to the attention of site moderators.

"Where is that rocket propelled grenade launcher when you need one," O'Reilly displayed on a chyron, and then "Let's hope the dissidents aim is good!" Both of the quotes are purported to be from a "Blog Posting" at HuffPo, according to the Fox "News" graphic, posted in regard to a group of Iraq War Veterans who support the war effort....

But O'Reilly and Carpenter clearly have been protesting a bit too much, as it turns out Carpenter's own website is guilty of the same --- and even far worse --- "vicious" attacks, and potentially even illegal ones, including death threats issued against Barack Obama and "traitorous liberals."

Despite the mock outrage of the Fox rightwingers, The BRAD BLOG has been pointed, by a reader, to a number of out-and-out (and repeated) death threats issued by "bloggers" at Carpenter's own Townhall site.

The multiple threatening comments are posted on the Townhall blog of rightwing radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt, and include death threats against the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee, Barack Obama. They were posted on July 10th of this year at Townhall and, as of this posting on August 14th, still remain on the popular rightwing website which requires registration before commenters are allowed to post...

Picking up on this, Dave Neiwart, the leftosphere's premiere crusader against "pseudo-fascism," has denounced conservative hatred:

Two days ago, a gunman walked into the offices of the Democratic Party in Little Rock, Arkansas, and shot the state's chairman to death. The motives are still unclear, but it is starting increasingly to look like yet another case in which an unhinged wingnut decided to "take out" more liberals.

Two weeks ago, another gunman walked into a liberal Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee, and began shooting, killing one man and wounding several others before he was tackled. He had written a manifesto before the rampage indicating his belief that "all liberals should be killed." At his home, investigators found books attacking liberals by the likes of Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and ... Bill O'Reilly.

These issues have, of course, never been discussed on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program. O'Reilly has never even mentioned the fact that the Knoxville shooter read his books and evidently watched his show. Indeed, his show not only constantly demonizes liberals, O'Reilly frequently does so by accusing liberals of being the source of vicious hatemongering -- as he did Wednesday, in the segment above, in which he informs us that "the real haters in America are on the far left" -- even though the majority of the quotes they cite are from anonymous commenters and diarists, and in every case the host site has removed them.

But as BradBlog noticed, one need only go to the Townhall.com site that hosts of Amanda Carpenter, his guest in this segment, to find prime examples of right-wing hate directed at liberals -- and no apparent attempt made to remove them. A sample, from Hugh Hewitt's blog:

A day of reckoning approaches... (Why is it liberal traitors like Brob feel they have to resort to profanity to make points? Because they equate emotionalism with reality - "If I scream loud enough and make enough of a scene, I'll get my way". Ten-year-old potty-mouthed brats, all of them.)

And I said traitors intentionally. I know more than one military man and woman stationed overseas who cannot wait to rotate back once the job over there is done and complete the work of fighting all enemies foreign AND domestic, Posse Comitatus be damned, and hunt down the Copperheads in our midst.

Traitors, be afraid. Be very afraid.

There's plenty more, of course, where this came from. And you can always find similar sentiments at O'Reilly's site, where again no effort is ever made to remove such commentary.

But, I suppose, we "Nazis" on the left are responsible for this. Probably because we just always inspire these sentiments, so therefore it's our fault.

Let me be the first to put out the call, once again, for a complete cessation to the competitive demonization we see across the blogosphere. I'm not as naïve to think that we won't have mutual allegations of hatred, and certainly folks on both sides of the political spectrum engage in incitement to violence in the comment threads at untold numbers of blogs, but these attacks shouldn't be a part of our political dialogue.

I'll note, though, that Neiwart confuses those alleged as "Nazis" by some commentators with contemporary Marxist demonologists who have shunned divine grace to launch steady attacks against dead conservatives, most recently Jesse Helms and Tony Snow.

Moreover, whereas some right-wing blogs are polluted by the odd instances of extremism, like that cited at Townhall, it is not the explicit policy of conservatives to welcome hated-filled comments as original "content" at the website, as is the case with leftist blogs such as Daily Kos (see here and here).

Perhaps the left's permissive attitudes toward aggressive hatred on their blogs relates to the much higher propensity for leftist bloggers to pepper their attacks on "wingnuts" with vile obscenities (a recent Google content analysis found liberal bloggers to be more that 12 times as likely to use profanity in blogging than conservatives).

So, while we should all condemn attempts to inflict evil on the other, it's simply hypocritical and inaccurate for members of the left to mount unsubstantiated attacks on alleged conservative hate-filled killers while at the same time encouraging artistic license of such content demonology in the leftosphere.

The Neocons, Russia, and the Soviet Union

I'm surprised, frankly, at the ahistoricism of Andrew Sullivan and Josh Marshall.

These two guys are not only among the very top-tier bloggers on the scene, they are also Ph.D. recipients in political science and history, from Harvard and Brown respectively. Given such esteemed backgrounds, the apparent ignorance of these two on the continuities of Russian history as they relate to the current war in the Caucasus is stunning.

Sullivan, for example, wants to excoriate the "neocons" for what he perceives is their abuse of historical analogies:

It's very bizarre to read the neocons' speaking about Russia as if the Soviet Union were still in existence. Here's a classic slice of the mindset from Max Boot, who wants a third little war in the Caucasus:

It should be no surprise that Russian spokesmen are masters of the Big Lie–their Soviet predecessors practically invented the technique.

Condi Rice, who really should know better, said:

"This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed."

Yes, things have changed: the Soviet Union no longer exists. Wasn't the entire point of the Cold War that totalitarian expansionist states are different than authoritarian ones? Are we now going to elide this Kirkpatrick distinction when it comes to Russia? Putin is not a saint; and his attitude is Cheney-esque in his fondness for secrecy, brute force and contempt for international law. But he is not a communist and he is not attempting to take over the world. The West fought the Cold War based on this distinction. Why should we forget it now it's over?

Tagging along close behind is Marshall, who pumps up Sullivan with some big huzzahs for taking down the "neocon" warmongerers:

Andrew Sullivan, who's been on a tear on this story, has another good post on the bankrupt posturing of the neocons, jumping at the hopes of a new Cold War with the Russians, despite the lack of the ideological underpinnings on which we fought the first and any Russian global ambitions or capacity to fight it.

Marshall goes on to throw in a few more digs at the denizens of the American Enterprise Institute (a hothouse of neoconservative ideas), and he suggests that for people like Bill Bennett and Charles Krauthammer, the Georgian crisis is like an "80s era Gilligan's Island reunion flick."

The reality of anti-neoconservative fervor is well-recognized, but in the cases Sullivan and Marshall, their attacks exhibit a sense of irrationalism, almost an "acute paranoia" in reaction to neoconservative analyses of contempory security issues.

If we unpack the statements of Max Boot and Condoleezza Rice, for example, there's nothing particularly exceptional about them.

When Boot suggests today's Russians have mastered the "big lie" propaganda style of the old Soviet Union, he's essentially making a straightforward reference to the longstanding Kremlin practice of authoritarian control of political information for the external consumption of Moscow's antagonists.

Sullivan and Marshall's critique of Boot on this point is especially strange, since most observers of the Georgian war argue that Vladimir Putin - who was an internal security operative in the Soviet KGB's Fifth Directorate - has played a central role in Kremlin military policy, both before and after Dmitry Medvedev's accession to the Russian presidency. The undeflected similarities in Putin's personal role in the crisis - his personal embodiment of institutional path-dependence, from the Soviet era to the present - is astounding

Sullivan's jab at Rice is also highly ill-conceived, as the Secretary of State is a widely-respected expert on Soviet politics and foreign policy. Her reference to 1968 is to Moscow's crushing of Czechoslovakia's "Prague Spring," which was the shift toward a pro-democracy stance in the Czech communist regime, independent of Moscow, on the part of leader Alexander Dubček (and history records uncanny parallels between the Prague Spring in 1968 and the Georgian crisis of 2008, especially the similarities in the world corellation of forces, finding American power in both cases occupied in massive wars on the periphery - Vietnam and Iraq - which functioned to distract U.S. attention from the power-political machinations of the leaders in Moscow).

But beyond these points lies the larger historical context of current Russian international relations.

State power in Russia today reflects an amalgam of Soviet nostalgia and tsarist-era chauvinism. A key variable of concern is the role of Russian political culture dating back centuries. From Peter the Great to Joseph Stalin, leaders of the Russo-Soviet state emerged from a history of economic backwardness, cultural isolation from pivotal events in West (the Renaissance and Reformation), and the strategic vulnerability of Moscow's location along the great plains leading from Central Asia to Western Europe. Repeated wars and conquest subjugated ethnic Russia to external domination and enslavement. Threats of Western encirclement, from Napoleon to Hitler, contributed to a heightened need for psychological security in the Russian state, which in turn contributed to a widespread acceptance of authoritarianism in politics and the home.

Whereas Peter the Great sought to build Russia in the mold of the Western powers, attempting to import the most efffective state-building techniques to the nation (such as commercial and military organization), Stalin, at the height of World War Two - when the Soviets faced totalitarian defeat - appealed to the culture of Mother Russia, knowing that bland calls to defend Leninism would be less effective than the cultural glue of Great Russian Nationalism.

Thus, Moscow's politics in the post-Soviet era has returned in many respects to an earlier, tsarist-nationalist version of perceived strategic isolation and chauvinistic appeal. Indeed, Vladmir Putin's very popularity rests on his shrewd manipulation of popular Russian resentment at the loss of Moscow's previous great power status.

So, when prominent bloggers like Andrew Sullivan and Josh Marshall attack contemporary neoconservatives and GOP officials as hatching some newfangled AEI-style military gambit, it's evident that their goal is not careful analysis of realistic American reactions to genuine Russian brutality and hegemonic assertions, but to attack and delegitimize ideological opponents, amid an election where voters' perceptions of foreign policy experience and judgment may be decisive.

This neocon demonization might be expected among the lower-level hordes of the netroots, but these two are respected and award-winning mainstream journalists.

International Politics and Russia's Invasion of Georgia

Russia's invasion of Georgia, justified by Moscow as an incursion to defend South Ossetia separatists, has raised fundamental questions of great power politics and world order in late-Bush-era international relations.

The initial debate focused on locating the conflict's casus belli, and on questions of Georgian irrationality in launching a blitz on the breakaway rebels. Some have focused on U.S. responsibility for the war, arguing that America's broader policy on Georgia's accession to NATO provoked Moscow's aggression in the former Soviet republic. There's also been some allegations of a neoconservative election ploy to help the GOP in November - this the latest in the left's meme of alleging a "neocon" plot foisting endless wars of neo-imperial aggression on the world.

Along these lines this morning is Juan Cole's argument that the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq in 2003, combined with American foreign policy assertiveness, destroyed the global institutional order and raped the international rule of law:

An emboldened Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sarcastically likened Russia's actions to Bush's foreign policy...

Indeed, Putin's invoking Bush's Iraq adventure points directly to the way in which Bush has enabled other world powers to act impulsively. With his doctrine of preemptive warfare, Bush single-handedly tore down the architecture of post-World War II international law erected by the founders of the United Nations to ensure that rogue states did not go about launching wars of aggression the way Hitler had. While safeguarding minorities at risk is a praiseworthy goal, the U.N. Charter states that the Security Council must approve a war launched for this purpose or any other, excepting self-defense. No individual nation is authorized to wage aggressive war on a vigilante basis, as Bush did in Iraq or Russia is now doing in the Caucasus.

Cole is rehearsing the debate on the origins of the Iraq war, rehashing the claim that America's toppling of Saddam lacked international legitimacy. This is the "big lie" meme that's popular on the left (the dead giveaway is the Bush-Hitler analogy of naked "wars of aggression"). Recall, of course, that the U.S. acted in 2003 on a long series of U.N. Security Council resolutions dating from the 1991 Gulf War armistice. The U.S. and its allies launch Operation Iraqi Freedom within the parameters of international law, and the resistance at the U.N. Security Council in 2003 - especially among France and Russia - reflected interest-based opposition to American policy among the international system's middle powers.

But Cole's attention on international institutions deserves a closer look: What has happened within the so-called "architecture of international law" following the shock of renascent Russian revanchism?

Well, the U.N. Security Council is naturally stymied, as Moscow holds a veto as a permanent member. The Office of the U.N. Secretary General has condemed Russian aggression, but has passed the buck to France, saying it welcomes the earlier Paris-backed cease-fire agreement that Moscow had no intentions of observing. The EU, the most successful international institution to emerge on the European continent in the post-World War II era, is utterly divided, with the Franco-German founders only weakly criticizing Moscow for fear of an embargo on Russian oil supplies to Western Europe. Meanwhile, new EU members from the East - such as Poland and Estonia - are pushing for a more aggressive condemnation of Moscow that will signal a firm Western commitment to former East Bloc nations who don't doubt a reestablishment of the Russian yoke in Eastern Europe.

There's NATO to consider as well. Of all the post-1945 multilateral institutions, NATO embodies both the hopes and failures of the post-Cold War international order. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization began its history as a balance of power alliance. Its raison d'etre was to stop a Soviet Blitzkrieg invasion across the central plains of Europe, pushing its Warsaw Pact armored divisions through Poland to defeat American power in West Germany. With the expulsion of NATO forces bordering Eastern Europe, Moscow would consolidate its Western expansion, in the hope of expelling U.S. forces off the continent once and for all.

As time went by, NATO has been tranformed from a traditional security alliance to some confused-hybrid order falling between traditional collective security ("one for all, and all for one") and collective defense (a "collective security alliance" of increasing scope, with enlargement aspirations encompassing the nations of the former Soviet sphere of influence in the East). The recent proposals for Georgia's accession to NATO reflect the logical end-result of moving from a balance-of-power alliance checking Moscow's threat to the West to a continental-wide institutional arrangement predicated on some "new world order" of a Washington-Moscow condominium of interests. In other words, a post-Cold War "end of history" would see Moscow acquiesce to its former antagonists establishing a strategic beachhead on the Russian landing grounds in East Central Europe.

As the world has seen, however, Russia under Vladimir Putin has reprised the historic traditions of Great Russian Nationalism. Russia's incursion to restore hegemony in Georgia is the prerogative of a renascent great power pursuing its timeless interests in securing a sphere of control at its southern outposts. International institutions have so far been largely ineffective in stopping the Russion drive for mastery in Georgia.

Melik Kaylan, in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, laid out the big picture for Russian's designs in Georgia and beyond:

As we worry about another Russian imperialist adventure in Georgia, we shouldn't lose sight of the bigger picture either: To wit, Moscow has always had a clear strategic use for the Caucasus, one that concerns the U.S. today more than ever.

Having overestimated the power of the Soviet Union in its last years, we have consistently underestimated the ambitions of Russia since. Already, a great deal has been said about the implications of Russia's invasion for Ukraine, the Baltic States and Europe generally. But few have noticed the direct strategic threat of Moscow's action to U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Kremlin is not about to reignite the Cold War for the love of a few thousand Ossetians or even for its animosity toward five million Georgians. This is calculated strategic maneuvering. And make no mistake, it's about countering U.S. power at its furthest stretch with Moscow's power very close to home.

The pivotal geography of the Caucasus offers the Kremlin just such an opportunity. Look at a map, and the East-meets-West, North-meets-South vector lines of the region illustrate all too clearly how the drama now unfolding in the Caucasus casts Moscow's shadow all across Central Asia and down into the Middle East. In effect, we in the West are being challenged by Russian actions in Georgia to show that we have the nerve and the stamina to secure the gains not just of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but of the entire collapse of Soviet power.

Between Russia and Iran, in the lower Caucasus, sits a small wedge of independent soil - namely, the soil of Azerbaijan and Georgia combined. Through those two countries runs the immensely important Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which delivers precious oil circuitously from Azerbaijan to Turkey and out to the world. This is important not just because of the actual oil being delivered free of interference from Russia and Iran and the Middle East, but also for symbolic reasons. It says to the world that if any former Moscow colonies wish to sell their wares to the West directly, they have a right to do so, and the West will support that right. According to Georgian authorities, Russian warplanes have tried to demolish the Georgian leg of that pipeline several times in the last days. Their message cannot be clearer.

Besides their own pipeline, Georgia and Azerbaijan offer a fragile strategic conduit between the West and the "stans" of Central Asia -- including Afghanistan -- an area that the Soviets once controlled in toto. We should remember that an isolated Central Asia means an isolated Afghanistan. Look at the countries surrounding Afghanistan -- all former Soviet colonies, then Iran, then Pakistan.

The natural resources of Central Asia, from Turkmenistan's natural gas to Kazakhstan's abundant oil, cannot reach the West free of Russia and Iran except through that narrow conduit in the Caucasus. Moscow's former colonies in Central Asia are Afghanistan's most desirable trading partners. They are watching the strife in Georgia closely. It will tell them whether or not they will enter the world's free markets without a Russian chokehold on their future - or, whether they, and their economies, are doomed for the foreseeable future to remain colonies in all but name. And it won't be long before Moscow dictates to them exactly how to isolate Kabul. Moscow is perfectly aware, even if we are not, that choking off the bottleneck in the Caucasus gives Iran and Russia much say over our efforts in Afghanistan.

In Iraq too, the Kremlin's projection of power down through Georgia will soon be felt. Take another look at the map. If Russia is allowed to extend its reach southwards, as in Soviet times, down the Caucasus to Iran's borders, Moscow can support Iran in any showdown with the West. Iran, thus emboldened, will likely attempt to reassert itself in Iraq, Syria and, via Hezbollah, in Lebanon.

Seen from a macro-perspective, it is not "pure hype" to see the current crisis in the Caucasus as the predecessor to a longer round of violent skirmishes over the ultimate control of the South Asian strategic rimland.

This why the battle for Georgia today is a battle for the West tomorrow: "We are all Georgians" now, yet we are not without resources to stop Putin's hegemonic advance.

The manner and dispatch with these facts are apprehended among the various political actors, in the U.S. and abroad, tells us much about the nature and efficacy of the international architecture of law and order that so many are quick to tout.

Image Credit: Wall Street Journal

The Coming Minority-Majority

I discuss, every semester, the emergence, in roughly forty years, of a minority-majority demographic in the United States. By 2050 or so, non-white ethnic groups will compose a majority of the American population.

The New York Times reports on new Census data confirming the prediction (see chart here):

Ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the nation’s population in a little more than a generation, according to new Census Bureau projections, a transformation that is occurring faster than anticipated just a few years ago.

The census calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Four years ago, officials had projected the shift would come in 2050.

The main reason for the accelerating change is significantly higher birthrates among immigrants. Another factor is the influx of foreigners, rising from about 1.3 million annually today to more than 2 million a year by midcentury, according to projections based on current immigration policies.

“No other country has experienced such rapid racial and ethnic change,” said Mark Mather, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a research organization in Washington.

The latest figures, which are being released on Thursday, are predicated on current and historical trends, which can be thrown awry by several variables, including prospective overhauls of immigration policies and sudden increases in refugees.

A decade ago, census demographers estimated that the nation’s population, which topped 300 million in 2006, would not surpass 400 million until sometime after midcentury. Now, they are projecting that the population will top 400 million in 2039 and reach 439 million in 2050.

So-called minorities, the Census Bureau projects, will constitute a majority of the nation’s children under 18 by 2023 and of working-age Americans by 2039.

For the first time, both the number and the proportion of non-Hispanic whites, who now account for 66 percent of the population, will decline, starting around 2030. By 2050, their share will dip to 46 percent.

Higher mortality rates among older native-born white Americans and higher birthrates rates among immigrants and their children are already driving ethnic and racial disparities.

“A momentum is built into this as a result of past immigration,” said Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. “In the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, there were more Hispanic immigrants than births. This decade, there are more births than immigrants. Almost regardless of what you assume about future immigration, the country will be more Hispanic and Asian.”

With the Census Bureau forecasting even more immigrants, other demographers estimate that the proportion of foreign-born Americans, now about 12 percent, could surpass the 1910 historic high of nearly 15 percent by about 2025 and may approach 20 percent in 2050.

According to the new forecast, by 2050, the number of Hispanic people will nearly triple, to 133 million from 47 million, to account for 30 percent of Americans, compared with 15 percent today.

People who say they are Asian, with their ranks soaring to 41 million from 16 million, will make up more than 9 percent of the population, up from 5 percent.

More than three times as many people are expected to identify themselves as multiracial — 16 million, accounting for nearly 4 percent of the population.

The population of people who define themselves a black is projected to rise to 66 million from 41 million, but increase its overall share by barely two percentage points, to 15 percent.

“What’s happening now in terms of increasing diversity probably is unprecedented,” said Campbell Gibson, a retired census demographer.

Several states, including California and Texas, have already reached the point where members of minorities are in the majority.

“Within the conventional definition of race, of white, black, Asian, minority vs. non-minority, this is a big change,” said David G. Waddington, chief of the Census Bureau’s population projections branch.

All the projections are subject to changing cultural definitions. The share of Americans who identify themselves as white, regardless of their ethnicity, will remain largely unchanged, declining from less than 80 percent in 2010 to about 76 percent when the majority-minority benchmark is reached in 2042.

“The way people report race 20 or 30 years from now may be very different,” Dr. Waddington pointed out.

The Census Bureau’s projections are likely to fuel debates over immigration policy, overpopulation and the changing electorate, and recall earlier eras when the Irish, the Italians and Eastern European Jews were not universally considered as whites. As recently as the 1960s, Hispanic people were not counted separately by the census and Asian Indians were classified as white.

As noted in the article, California now has a minority-majority population. At first, some students are not sure of the implications of the national demographic shift, but when I note that California is currently the most diverse state, and that the Long Beach area - where my college is located - has been identified as the most diverse locality in the nation, the "coming" minority-majority doesn't seem so far off.