Georgia on James Poulos’s Mind
John McCain likes to go in for ferociously anti-Russian rhetoric and has embraced silly anti-Russian ideas, so I wasn’t surprised to see that his rhetoric on the Russia-Georgia conflict involves strongly taking Tblisi’s side. I am, however, a bit curious to learn that he’s decided to make this a campaign issue, with national security adviser and former registered lobbyist for Georgia Randy Scheunemann condemning Barack Obama for moral equivalence. James Poulos is not impressed:
None of which means I don’t have a soft spot for Georgia, love their flag, or support the rule of law and representative government over fiat and autocracy. I do. Nor am I certain that Russia will stop attacking Georgia proper when it should, which as of this writing is today. Even more important, for American purposes, than determining the precise percentage by which Saakashvili is responsible for his own country’s woe is making clear that the McCain campaign’s attempt to cast foreign policy prudence as something only an idiot like Obama would consider is a serious blunder of epic proportions and an embarrassment to thinking people everywhere.
Now of course things get said on the campaign trail that aren’t necessarily indicative of how actual policy would be conducted. But as I’ve written before throughout the past ten years McCain and his supporters have fairly consistently articulated a foreign policy philosophy that seems actively hostile to the idea of prudence. David Brooks’ 1999 pro-McCain article “Politics and Patriotism: From Teddy Roosevelt to John McCain” worried “that we have become a nation obsessed with risk avoidance and safety” and cited McCain as the politician most likely to follow Roosevelt (NB: Eric Rauchway says Brooks and McCain misunderstand Roosevelt) in using “foreign-policy activism and patriotism as remedies for cultural threats he perceived at home.”
22 Responses to “Georgia on James Poulos’s Mind”
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August 10th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Seems to me it’s very stupid to make the Georgia-Russia crisis into a campaign issue, where all positions get boiled down to a five-second sound-bite and all nuance is trumped by phony tough-guy stances. Also, neither candidate can do anything till 2009 and the real question is what should be the U.S. position now and what’s our immediate response. It’s hard to tell if anything we can do will matter anyway, but if there’s any influence we might have it would help if we do not take sides with either Georgia or Russia. From what I’ve been reading there’s enough blame to go around. Our interest would be served if a settlement can be reached without further escalation of bloodshed. That might be out of our control, but it doesn’t hurt to have us call for diplomacy. Even though we don’t have a lot of credibility in regard to that right now, it’s probably the best we can do.
August 10th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Is anyone in the media ever going to point out McCain’s lobbyist problem?
August 10th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
1) If people are interested in the REAL News behind this war, they should try googling the phrase: “Caspian Sea” AND Oil AND Cheney
2) The BUsh Administration has been trying to dismember Russia’s soft underbelly for years — because of the Caspian Sea oil deposits. Something Dick Cheney was chasing back when he was CEO of Halliburton.
3) Of course, AMericans are the most stupid fucking people on the planet — so at least 50 million of our fellow citizens will think it’s a great idea to have John McCain send our kids die for Big Oil in the Caspian — just like Bush sent them to die for Big Oil in IRaq.
4) And Hell will freeze over before the lying shitheads at the Washington Post , New York Times or TV networks will so much as hint at the major US financial interests involved in this matter.
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