Matt Yglesias

29 Responses to “France?”

1. RoboticGhost Says:
   August 13th, 2008 at 11:24 am

   Seems appropriate. After all, this is the guy who invaded Iraq to get Al Qaeda which was based in Afghanistan/ Pakistan. He probably goes to Chinese restaurants to get tacos.

2. MattF Says:
   August 13th, 2008 at 11:25 am

   I suspect that Mme. Rice’s advice was ‘Anywhere but Tbilisi’.

3. expat Says:
   August 13th, 2008 at 11:33 am

   The French are the ones who brokered the cease-fire. So it makes sense

4. RB-Chicago Says:
   August 13th, 2008 at 11:34 am

   She needs some new shoes….

   With a brain as powerful as hers she can be in two places at once….

   Breathtaking how stupid these folks are…

5. Gabriel Says:
   August 13th, 2008 at 11:35 am

   Look, she interrupted her vacation to deal with this. So she’s pretty much got to go somewhere where she fit in some decent shopping in between failed negotiations.

6. jamie Says:
   August 13th, 2008 at 11:35 am

   what expat said. plus, georgia isn’t really safe right now…

7. Luke Says:
   August 13th, 2008 at 11:37 am

   Well, since Sarkozy’s on a hell of a peacemaking roll, maybe she’s been sent there to learn a thing or two.

   The American status as primary global mediator is incredibly precarious at the moment.

8. southpaw Says:
   August 13th, 2008 at 11:37 am

   What expat said, and she’s going to Tblisi after Paris.

   Are you trying to pull a Jonah Goldberg here, Yglesias? It doesn’t suit you.

9. Dan Kervick Says:
   August 13th, 2008 at 11:39 am

   Well, the US is in no position to take the diplomatic lead in ending the conflict in Georgia while it has troops engaged in a notoriously unprovoked, disastrously lethal and dubiously legal foreign intervention in Iraq. The French have been out front diplomatically in recent days, which makes some sense since they can point to a slightly more consistent recent respect for established state borders.

10. g. powell Says:
    August 13th, 2008 at 11:47 am

    yes, Rice is going to Tblisi next so that she can talk to the Russians.

11. Princess Sparkle Pony Says:
    August 13th, 2008 at 11:48 am

    It looks like after her shopping trip, she is heading to Georgia after all.

12. burning flock Says:
    August 13th, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    It makes perfect sense. Sarkozy’s EU president right now & leading the foreign diplomatic corps.

13. Hedley Lamarr Says:
    August 13th, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    August is a big sale month in the Paris stores.

14. kert Says:
    August 13th, 2008 at 12:49 pm

    WTH, did you all miss the announcement that its going to be US military naval and air force delivering humanitarian aid ? Anybody wants to guess Putins reaction to that ?
    The C-17 is supposedly en route .. i would not want to be amongst the crew there.

15. Matthew G. Saroff Says:
    August 13th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

    Hmmm….so she decided to cut her holiday short…

16. CParis Says:
    August 13th, 2008 at 1:59 pm

    Why all the hate? At least she’s on the right continent. Given the Bu$h administration’s general lack of brainpower, she might have gone to Thailand or Australia instead.

17. Richard Steven Hack Says:
    August 13th, 2008 at 7:00 pm

    Rice is going to France because France is run by a neocon, yet France opposed Georgia’s admission to NATO. The whole point of this exercise is to get Georgia into NATO.

    Read this:

    Splits Emerge Within EU
    http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/itsonlyfair/wsj00.html

    “This is clearly part of a bigger game, which is the expansion of NATO,” Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in an interview. “Today Georgia’s entry [into NATO] is more complicated,” he said. “It doesn’t behoove us to pit ourselves against Russia. Russia is a strategic partner.”

    Europe was split down the same lines at the last summit of NATO leaders in April, when Germany, France and some other Western European countries blocked a push by the U.S., with support from East European leaders, to give Georgia and Ukraine a so-called membership action plan, which would have been a significant step toward joining NATO.

    NATO foreign ministers are due to review the alliance’s stance in December. Diplomats and analysts say the war in Georgia will probably make skeptical European governments even less inviting towards Georgia and Ukraine than before, for fear of being sucked into a dangerous confrontation with Russia by unpredictable allies.

    “In the minds of the Western European countries, Georgia has been rash” in trying to take control of South Ossetia through military force, said Sergio Romano, a former Italian ambassador to NATO and Moscow. “This will harden attitudes” in France, Germany and Italy.

    European countries voiced their support on Monday for French-led diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting and get Russia and Georgia to the negotiating table. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who holds the EU’s rotating presidency, was due to visit Moscow and Tbilisi Tuesday to mediate between the two sides.

    French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner met Mr. Saakashvili to discuss an EU plan that calls for an immediate cease-fire, medical access to victims and the withdrawal of both Russian and Georgian troops from the disputed region.

    But analysts say the EU has little leverage to secure a quick cease-fire if Moscow prefers to press its military advantage. “We have very limited tools to convince Russia to stop the use of force,” says Thomas Gomart, Russia analyst at the French Institute of International Relations.

    Europe has also sacrificed influence by effectively telling Georgia it can’t join NATO until its territorial disputes are resolved, analysts say, because Moscow has every incentive to keep Georgia’s conflict with its Russian-backed separatist regions simmering.

    Since the end of the Cold War, Western Europe has held out the dual offer of joining the EU and NATO as a carrot for former Communist countries looking to become Western-style democracies with market economies. That policy is increasingly running up against hard-nosed rejection from Russia, which has long resented Western encroachment in its former sphere of influence.

    The Georgian crisis is “a big game-changer,” says Tomas Valasek, an analyst at the Centre for European Reform, a London think tank. “EU foreign policy has worked on the basis that if we hold out the prospect of membership, the world around the EU will eventually change in the EU’s image. That vision is under threat.”

    The West’s response to the war exposes its division into three camps on how to handle Russia, says Markus Kaim, head of security policy research at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. The U.S. sees Russia as a strategic rival, Western Europe sees it as a strategic partner and Eastern Europe sees it as a threat, he says.

    December is Bush and Cheney’s last chance to move NATO up to Russia’s borders and seize control of the oil region.

18. Richard Steven Hack Says:
    August 13th, 2008 at 7:02 pm

    BTW, if Matt actually kept up with events like a pundit is supposed to, he might have known why Rice is going to France. It’s not rocket science.

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