Resurgent Declinism in International Relations

Robert Lieber, at World Affairs, offers an essential rebuttal to the resurgent thesis of American decline in international relations theory.

Lieber notes that claims of America's relative international decline have ideological foundations, usually gaining popularity amid periods of robust assertions of power in American foreign affairs. As with past episodes, today's arguments of American decline ignore the realities of the balance of world power, and thus undestimate the endurance of U.S. preponderance:

Is America finished? Respected public intellectuals, think tank theorists, and members of the media elite seem to think so. The scare headline in a recent New York Times Magazine cover story by Parag Khanna titled “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony” asks, “Who Shrunk the Superpower?” Almost daily, learned authors proclaim The End of the American Era, as the title of a 2002 book by Charles Kupchan put it, and instruct us that the rise of China and India, the reawakening of Putin’s Russia, and the expansion of the European Union signal a profound shift in geopolitical power that will retire once and for all the burden of American Exceptionalism. America has become an “enfeebled” superpower, according to Fareed Zakaria in his book, The Post-American World, which concedes that, while the U.S. will not recede from the world stage anytime soon, “Just as the rest of the world is opening up, America is closing down.” With barely contained satisfaction, a French foreign minister says of America’s standing, “The magic is over . . . It will never be as it was before.”

The United States does contend with serious problems at home and abroad, but these prophecies of doom, which spread like a computer virus, hardly reflect a rational appraisal of where we stand. Moreover, it is not too difficult to see the ghosts of declinism past in the current rush to pen America’s epitaph. Gloomsayers have been with us, after all, since this country’s founding....

It was in the 1970s that declinism began to take on its modern features, following America’s buffeting by oil shocks and deep recessions, a humiliating withdrawal from Vietnam, victories by Soviet-backed regimes or insurgent movements in Africa, Central America, and Southeast Asia, and revolution in Iran along with the seizure of the U.S. embassy there. A 1970 book by Andrew Hacker also announced The End of the American Era. At the end of the decade, Jimmy Carter seemed to give a presidential stamp of approval to Hacker’s diagnosis when he used concerns about a flagging American economy, inflation, recession, and unemployment as talking points in his famous “malaise” speech calling for diminished national expectations.

By the early 1980s, declinism had become a form of historical chic. In 1987, David Calleo’s Beyond American Hegemony summoned the U.S. to come to terms with a more pluralistic world. In the same year, Paul Kennedy published what at the time was greeted as the summa theologica of the declinist movement—The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, in which the author implied that the cycle of rise and decline experienced in the past by the empires of Spain and Great Britain could now be discerned in the “imperial overstretch” of the United States. But Kennedy had bought in at the top: within two years of his pessimistic prediction, the Cold War ended with the Soviet Union in collapse, the Japanese economic miracle entering a trough of its own, and U.S. competitiveness and job creation far outpacing its European and Asian competitors.

Theories of America’s obsolescence aspire to the status of science. But cycles of declinism tend to have a political subtext and, however impeccable the historical methodology that generates them seems to be, they often function as ideology by other means. During the 1980s, for instance, these critiques mostly emanated from the left and focused on Reaganomics and the defense buildup. By contrast, in the Clinton era, right-of-center and realist warnings were directed against the notion of America as an “indispensable nation” whose writ required it to nation-build and spread human rights. Likewise, much of today’s resurgent declinism is propelled not only by arguments over real-world events, but also by a fierce reaction against the Bush presidency—a reaction tainted by partisanship, hyperbole, ahistoricism, and a misunderstanding of the fundamentals that underpin the robustness and staying power of the United States.

Lieber continues with a discussion of the elements of America's continued international preeminence.

The U.S. military, despite the strains of current deployments, is not likely to be surpassed in capabilities or readiness by any other major Western power, and America's autocratic peer competitors in Moscow and Beijing face internal challenges (Russia) or regional balancing (China) that will limit the ability of those states to pose a major challenge to continued American dominance.

Economically, the U.S. remains the engine of world economic prosperity. Beijing, which holds trillions in U.S. treasury securities, won't risk a run on the United States for risk of appreciating its own currency, and pricing its exports out of the American market.

In Europe, nationalist tendencies in the major continental states will continue to prohibit the emergence of a centralized European superpower rivaling America's global presence.

Read the whole thing, here.

Lieber also discusses threats internal to the United States, like cultural decline or unrestrained ethnic diversity, but none of these provide a compelling alternative to the basic history of assimilation and social regeneration supporting America's unrivaled world leadership:

Other countries understand the unique nature of American power—if not wholly selfless, not entirely selfish, either—and its role in underpinning global stability and maintaining a decent world order. This helps to explain why Europe, India, Japan and much of East Asia, and important countries of the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America have no use for schemes to balance against the United States. Most would rather do business with America or be shielded by it.

In the end, then, this country’s structural advantages matter much more than economic cycles, trade imbalances, or surging and receding tides of anti-Americanism. These advantages include America’s size, wealth, human and material resources, military strength, competitiveness, and liberal political and economic traditions, but also a remarkable flexibility, dynamism, and capacity for reinvention. Neither the rise of important regional powers, nor a globalized world economy, nor “imperial overstretch,” nor domestic weaknesses seem likely to negate these advantages in ways the declinists anticipate, often with a fervor that makes their diagnoses and prescriptions resemble a species of wish fulfillment.

See also, Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, World Out of Balance:International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy.

Obama's Abortion Extremism

Today's front-page Los Angeles Times features a strangely-titled article on abortion politics in the presidential campaign, "McCain and Obama Try to Navigate the Politics of Abortion."

It's an odd-sounding piece, in the case of John McCain, at least, as the Arizona Senator's hardly struggling to find a voice on reproductive health issues. McCain's clarity on abortion, for example, at Saturday's Saddleback civil forum offered a striking contrast to Barack Obama's all-encompassing effort to avoid alienating anyone concerned about the right to life.

Indeed, following his appearance with Pastor Rick Warren, Obama's abortion stance (stances?) is turning out to be a major campaign liabliity.

As a number of outlets have reported, Obama has taken what are considered "extreme" positions on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, the name of proposed Illinois legislation that would have prohibited the destruction of fetuses born alive but not yet viable.

Nice Deb has the video from Jill Stanek, who lays out Obama's dishonesty on live infant abortions:

Building on Stanek's disussion is David Freddosso, who lays out the case against Obama's "life lies" with the precision of a courtroom prosecutor:

In 2001, Senator Barack Obama was the only member of the Illinois senate to speak against a bill that would have recognized premature abortion survivors as “persons.” The bill was in response to a Chicago-area hospital that was leaving such babies to die. Obama voted “present” on the bill after denouncing it. It passed the state Senate but died in a state house committee.

In 2003, a similar bill came before Obama’s health committee. He voted against it. But this time, the legislation was slightly different. This latter version was identical to the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which by then had already passed the U.S. Senate unanimously (with a hearty endorsement even from abortion advocate Sen. Barbara Boxer) and had been signed into law by President Bush.

Sen. Obama is currently misleading people about what he voted against, specifically claiming that the bill he voted against in his committee lacked “neutrality” language on Roe v. Wade. The bill did contain this language. He even participated in the unanimous vote to put it in.

Obama’s work against the bill to protect premature babies represents one of two times in his political career, along with his speech against the Iraq war, that he really stuck out his neck for something that might hurt him politically. Unlike his Iraq speech, Obama is deeply embarrassed about this one — so embarrassed that he is offering a demonstrable falsehood in explanation for his actions. Fortunately, the documents showing the truth are now available.

At the end of last week, Obama gave an interview to CBN’s David Brody in which he repeated the false claim that the born-alive bills he worked, spoke, and voted against on this topic between 2001 and 2003 would have negatively affected Roe v. Wade. This has always been untrue, but, until last week, it appeared to be a debatable point that depended on one’s interpretation of the bill language. Every single version of the bill was neutral on Roe. Each one affected only babies already born, not ones in the womb.

But in 2003, in the health committee which he chaired, Obama voted against a version of the bill that contained the specific “neutrality” language — redundant language affirming that the bill only applied to infants already born and granted no rights to the unborn. You can visit the Illinois legislature’s website here to see the language of the “Senate Amendment 1,” which was added in a unanimous 10-0 vote in the committee before Obama helped kill it.

See the post for the language of the proposed legislation. Freddosso notes that the Illinois version ended up being identical to the U.S. government's Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which was signed into law in 2002 by president George W. Bush.

Obama claimed this week that he has fully supported efforts to protect infants born as a result of induced-abortions. However, both Jill Stanek and David Freddosso demonstrate these claims as bald-face lies.

McCain and Obama remain tied in public opinion polls, but as news of Obama's abortion extremism gets increasing attention, the survival of Democratic presidential hopes will also need protection.

See Nice Deb for additional videos of Obama's lies and obfuscations.

Catholic League Takes Issue With Offensive Lefty Blogs

I've spent a good amount of time laying out a theory of the secular demonology common among lefty bloggers. Part of this project has been to offer comparisons of crude profanity widely available across the leftosphere.

Thus, I'm not surprised that the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has identifed as "offensive" a number of left-wing blogs that have been credentialed by the Democratic National Committee:

Over 120 blogs have been credentialed as members of the media for the Democratic National Convention; those who have received credentials are allowed to cover the Convention at the Pepsi Center. While most of them offer legitimate commentary, some do not.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue is protesting two of the blogs:

“The list of credentialed blogs include radical sites like The Daily Kos. Worse are blogs that feature anti-Catholic and obscene material. The two most offensive are Bitch Ph.D. and Towleroad.

“On the home page of Bitch Ph.D. there is a picture of two children: one of them is shown flashing his middle finger. Today’s lead post, which was written August 17, is called ‘Jesus Christ.’ It begins with, ‘I’m a really crappy Catholic who hasn’t been to mass in ages because most parishes around here ‘will’ insist on being aggressively anti-abortion….’ The writer then objects to some children’s toys on the grounds that they are more offensive than desecrating the Eucharist. The toys are actually balloons that have been made to depict Jesus in various poses, including a crucified Christ; one of these images shows Jesus with a penis. Several who commented on this image made patently obscene comments.

“Towleroad describes itself as ‘A Site with Homosexual Tendencies.’ Accordingly, it shows men in jock straps and underwear. It also has a post on Pope Benedict XVI that takes him to task for wearing a cape with ermine. Some of those who commented on this described the pope in a vile and profane way.

“Both of these blogs should be cut immediately from the list of credentialed sites. Neither functions as a responsible media outlet and both offend Catholics, as well as others. To allow them access to the Democratic National Convention sends a message to Catholics they will not forget. We look for Leah Daughtry, CEO of the Convention, to nix them ASAP.”

I can't dismiss the sense of schadenfreude at Bitch Ph.D.'s selection, as I've been singled out by that outfit for my "racism" in denouncing the black cult of victimology.

I've never heard of "Toweleroad," although by the looks of it I can understand the Catholic League's objection.

What's interesting is the affirmation of the Catholic League's concerns, as evidenced by a look at some of the lefty responses attacking the organization's president, Bill Donohue:

How dare there be gays on the internet! Amazingly, Donahue lists the jock strap photos before citing an allegedly offensive post about the Pope. No one who isn't a closeted homosexual would be so distressed about unapologetic displays of homosexuality. You should just come out of the closet, Bill. We'll accept you for who you are.

The Carpetbagger Report asks:

Did the Catholic League go through all 120 blogs, looking for something that would offend them so they could do this press release? By the looks of it, I’m pretty sure they did.

I'd bet they didn't have to view more than a quarter of these before finding some objectionable material.

Still, the issue for me is not that they should be banned, but how well they represent Democratic Party base? I'm pretty sure they do.

Ignominy Strikes Obama Camp in Saddleback Aftermath

I've never seen anything like it.

The latest controversy has it that Barack Obama did so poorly at Saturday's Saddleback civil forum that left-wing commentators and members of the Obama entourage have made allegations of cheating against John McCain. I first saw the story at Newsbusters, which noted that NBC's Andrea Mitchell suggested to her colleague the possibility of McCain cheating by overhearing Pastor Rick Warren's interview with Obama. Betsy Newmark responded to the Newsbusters piece:

These guys are so full of themselves and their guy's miraculous abilities that they can't imagine John McCain would actually come off as more forceful and prepared than Obama. So they have started whispering that McCain, with his superhuman powers, somehow escaped the "cone of silence" to overhear the questions.

Mitchell also seems to be missing how illuminating that whispered accusation is. They're at the same time revealing how badly they think their guy did; how impossible it seems to them that their guy could do worse than the old guy; and how little they think of Rick Warren and the Saddleback Church.

I wonder if they even realize how insulting to Rick Warren that accusation is. They're basically saying that the respected pastor allowed one of the guys to cheat. And that John McCain, who knows something about honor, went along with that cheating. And that Pastor Warren has perpetuated a cheat on the American people by saying that McCain couldn't hear the questions ahead of time.

The New York Times also covers the controversy, but indicates ultimately that McCain did not overhear Obama speaking (the sequence of interviews was decided by coin toss).

Michael Goldfarb puts all of this in perspective:

Now we know why the Obama campaign has been so reluctant to put their candidate on the same stage as John McCain. The difference between the two last night was striking. While Senator Obama punted on questions of great importance to the American people, and sidestepped even simple questions about whether the United States must defeat evil, John McCain offered the straight talk voters expect of a candidate for President. Senator McCain's responses reflected his long record of bipartisanship, the anecdotes accumulated from a lifetime of service to this country, and the depth of his experience on matters of national security.

The Obama campaign, shocked that John McCain would have the temerity to upstage their celebrity candidate on national television, is now struggling to find an explanation. According to Andrea Mitchell's reporting earlier today on Meet the Press, the only explanation the Obama campaign could come up with was foul play:

“The Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because what they are putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well-prepared.”

The facts are that Senator McCain was in a motorcade led by the United States Secret Service and held in a green room with no broadcast feed. If the Obama campaign really believes that Senator McCain had some unfair advantage, our offer of weekly town hall forums remains on the table - anyplace, anytime.

Obama backers must be absolutely freaking that their man is barely treading water in public opinion (the race was tied at 44 percent as of Friday).

I've read the spin across the leftosphere all weekend, which suggested McCain couldn't answer a straight question at Saddleback Church. But if the latest allegations of dishonesty are any indicator, it was Obama who was stumped, and it's now perfectly clear who really took home the trophy on Saturday.

Responding to the Russian Challenge

It's by now clear that for all the chest-thumping over Russian aggression in Georgia, the immediate risk of great power escalation is remote: Russia is a nuclear-state, the U.S. has major military operations currently underway in Afghansitan and Iraq, and Moscow may engage in self-restraint to consolidate its power short of larger international condemnation.

That being the case, I'm intrigued by the diplomatic advice offered by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security advisor under former President Jimmy Carter:

The West needs to respond to Russia's aggression in a clear and determined manner. That doesn't mean with force. Nor should it fall into a new cold war with Russia. But the West, particularly the U.S., should continue to mobilize the international community to condemn Russia's behavior....

It is premature to specify what precise measures the West should adopt. But Russia must be made to understand that it is in danger of becoming ostracized internationally. This should be a matter of considerable concern to Russia's new business élite, who are increasingly vulnerable to global financial pressure. Russia's powerful oligarchs have hundreds of billions of dollars in Western bank accounts. They would stand to lose a great deal in the event of a Cold War–style standoff that could conceivably result, at some stage, in the West's freezing of such holdings.

At some point, the West should consider the Olympic option. If the issue of Georgia's territorial integrity is not adequately resolved (by, for example, the deployment in South Ossetia and Abkhazia of a truly independent international security force replacing Russian troops), the U.S. should contemplate withdrawing from the 2014 Winter Games, to be held in the Russian city of Sochi, next to the violated Georgia's frontier. There is a precedent for this. I was part of the Carter Administration when we brandished the Olympic torch as a symbolic weapon in 1980, pulling out of the Summer Games in Moscow after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union had planned a propaganda show reminiscent of Hitler's 1936 Olympics in Berlin. America's boycott delivered a body blow to President Leonid Brezhnev and his communist system and prevented Moscow from enjoying a world-class triumph.

Reading this, it's frankly no surprise that Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul during President Carter's watch in 1979.

2014 is still some time away, but if the U.S. wanted to bring about a new Cold War, what better way than to revive the Olympic tradition of boycotting Russia's games? Maybe a President Obama will don a cardigan and ask Americans to turn down the thermostat to 68 degrees as well. Meanwhile, Americans could watch Russian tanks roll from Tsbilisi to Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan, not to mention Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Moscow could place a strategic stranglehold on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which sends crude oil supplies to Southeastern Europe, and it could begin to incorporate the former Muslim republics at the southern Russia periphery back into Moscow's sovereign control.

All of this, while remote, is a reminder that U.S. diplomacy and soft-power may be limited in meeting the rising challenges of great power politics. Ideas and institutions may take us part of the way in managing the rise of revanchist autocracies, but at some point preserving the autonomy of nations of the democratic West may require not just the exertion of neoliberal "confidence-building measures" (or boycotts), but hard military capabilities as well.

These considerations give added urgency to the debate in the U.S. over the redeployment of American troops from Iraq. Perhaps a debate over "permanent bases" in the Middle East and South Asia might not be such a bad thing after all?

The Limits of American Power in the Caucasus

Michael Dobbs offers a balanced, big-picture analysis of American capabilities and interests vis-à-vis Russia's military action against Georgia (via Duck of Minerva). Putin is not Hitler, and Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili is not Thomas Jefferson:

When it comes to apportioning blame for the latest flare-up in the Caucasus, there's plenty to go around. The Russians were clearly itching for a fight, but the behavior of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has been erratic and provocative. The United States may have stoked the conflict by encouraging Saakashvili to believe that he enjoyed American protection, when the West's ability to impose its will in this part of the world is actually quite limited.

Let us examine the role played by the three main parties.

Georgia. Saakashvili's image in the West, and particularly in the United States, is that of the great "democrat," the leader of the "Rose Revolution" who spearheaded a popular uprising against former American favorite Eduard Shevardnadze in November 2003. It is true that he has won two reasonably free elections, but he has also displayed some autocratic tendencies: He sent riot police to crush an opposition protest in Tbilisi last November and shuttered an opposition television station.

While the United States views Saakashvili as a pro-Western modernizer, a large part of his political appeal in Georgia has stemmed from his promise to reunify Georgia by bringing the secessionist provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia under central control. He has presented himself as the successor to the medieval Georgian king David the Builder and promised that the country will regain its lost territories by the time he leaves office, by one means or another. American commentators tend to overlook the fact that Georgian democracy is inextricably intertwined with Georgian nationalism.

The restoration of Georgia's traditional borders is an understandable goal for a Georgian leader, but it is a much lower priority for the West, particularly if it involves armed conflict with Russia. Based on their previous experience with Georgian rule, Ossetians and Abkhazians have perfectly valid reasons to oppose reunification with Georgia, even if it means throwing in their lot with the Russians.

It is unclear how the simmering tensions between Georgia and South Ossetia came to the boil this month. The Georgians say that they were provoked by the shelling of Georgian villages from Ossetian-controlled territory. While this may well be the case, the Georgian response was disproportionate. On the night of Aug. 7 and into Aug. 8, Saakashvili ordered an artillery barrage against Tskhinvali and sent an armored column to occupy the town. He apparently hoped that Western support would protect Georgia from major Russian retaliation, even though Russian "peacekeepers" were almost certainly killed or wounded in the Georgian assault.

It was a huge miscalculation. Russian Prime minister Vladimir Putin (and let there be no doubt that he is calling the shots in Moscow despite having handed over the presidency to his protege, Dmitri Medvedev) now had the ideal pretext for settling scores with the uppity Georgians. Rather than simply restoring the status quo ante, Russian troops moved into Georgia proper, cutting the main east-west highway at Gori and attacking various military bases.

Saakashvili's decision to gamble everything on a lightning grab for Tskhinvali brings to mind the comment of the 19th-century French statesman Talleyrand: "It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake."

Russia. Putin and Medvedev have defended their incursion into Georgia as motivated by a desire to stop the "genocide" of Ossetians by Georgians. It is difficult to take their moral outrage very seriously. There is a striking contrast between Russian support for the right of Ossetian self-determination in Georgia and the brutal suppression of Chechens who were trying to exercise that very same right within the boundaries of Russia.

Playing one ethnic group against another in the Caucasus has been standard Russian policy ever since czarist times. It is the ideal wedge issue for the Kremlin, particularly in the case of a state such as Georgia, which is made up of several different nationalities. It would be virtually impossible for South Ossetia to survive as an autonomous entity without Russian support. Putin's government has issued passports to Ossetians and secured the appointment of Russians to key positions in Tskhinvali.

The Russian incursion into Georgia proper has been even more "disproportionate" -- in President Bush's phrase -- than the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali. The Russians have made no secret of their wish to replace Saakashvili with a more compliant leader. Russian military targets included the Black Sea port of Poti -- more than 100 miles from South Ossetia.

The real goal of Kremlin strategy is to reassert Russian influence in a part of the world that has been regarded, by czars and commissars alike, as Russia's backyard. Russian leaders bitterly resented the eastward expansion of NATO to include Poland and the Baltic states -- with Ukraine and Georgia next on the list -- but were unable to do very much about it as long as America was strong and Russia was weak. Now the tables are turning for the first time since the collapse of communism in 1991, and Putin is seizing the moment.

If Putin is smart, he will refrain from occupying Georgia proper, a step that would further alarm the West and unite Georgians against Russia. A better tactic would be to wait for Georgians themselves to turn against Saakashvili. The precedent here is what happened to Gamsakhurdia, who was overthrown in January 1992 by the same militia forces he had sent into South Ossetia a year earlier.

The United States. The Bush administration has been sending mixed messages to its Georgian friends. U.S. officials insist that they did not give the green light to Saakashvili for his attack on South Ossetia. At the same time, however, the United States has championed NATO membership for Georgia, sent military advisers to bolster the Georgian army and demanded the restoration of Georgian territorial integrity. American support might well have emboldened Saakashvili as he was considering how to respond to the "provocations" from South Ossetia.

Now the United States has ended up in a situation in the Caucasus where the Georgian tail is wagging the NATO dog. We were unable to control Saakashvili or to lend him effective assistance when his country was invaded. One lesson is that we need to be very careful in extending NATO membership, or even the promise of membership, to countries that we have neither the will nor the ability to defend.

In the meantime, American leaders have paid little attention to Russian diplomatic concerns, both inside the former borders of the Soviet Union and farther abroad. The Bush administration unilaterally abrogated the 1972 anti-missile defense treaty and ignored Putin when he objected to Kosovo independence on the grounds that it would set a dangerous precedent. It is difficult to explain why Kosovo should have the right to unilaterally declare its independence from Serbia, while the same right should be denied to places such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The bottom line is that the United States is overextended militarily, diplomatically and economically. Even hawks such as Vice President Cheney, who have been vociferously denouncing Putin's actions in Georgia, have no stomach for a military conflict with Moscow. The United States is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and needs Russian support in the coming trial of strength with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

Instead of speaking softly and wielding a big stick, as Teddy Roosevelt recommended, the American policeman has been loudly lecturing the rest of the world while waving an increasingly unimpressive baton. The events of the past few days serve as a reminder that our ideological ambitions have greatly exceeded our military reach, particularly in areas such as the Caucasus, which is of only peripheral importance to the United States but of vital interest to Russia.

While I agree that American power is limited in affecting outcomes in the Georgian crisis through hard power alone, I disagree that the extension of Russian hegemony and nationalism to its old southern frontier represents a "peripheral" matter for American national security.

Russia power is now impinging on the upper-tier of the Middle East, and the Caucasus is already home to some of the world's most abundant petroleum resources.

The U.S. has maintained strategic interests in the region for decades. While a resort to force is not likely, American presidents have not written-off the region as inconsequential to international security concerns.

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.