Matthew Yglesias » The Limits of Bluster

Aug 11th, 2008 at 7:33 pm

The Limits of Bluster

Fred Kaplan, always worth reading, dives deeper into the issue of what was Shakashvili thinking and concludes that, basically, his big mistake was taking George W. Bush seriously:

It’s heartbreaking, but even more infuriating, to read so many Georgians quoted in the New York Times—officials, soldiers, and citizens—wondering when the United States is coming to their rescue. It’s infuriating because it’s clear that Bush did everything to encourage them to believe that he would. When Bush (properly) pushed for Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, Putin warned that he would do the same for pro-Russian secessionists elsewhere, by which he could only have meant Georgia’s separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin had taken drastic steps in earlier disputes over those regions—for instance, embargoing all trade with Georgia—with an implicit threat that he could inflict far greater punishment. Yet Bush continued to entice Saakashvili with weapons, training, and talk of entry into NATO. Of course the Georgians believed that if they got into a firefight with Russia, the Americans would bail them out.

This highlights, I think, some of the limits of the kind of bluff-and-bluster approach to foreign policy that seems popular among conservatives these days. Or, rather, it highlights the fact that popular as bluster-based policymaking is on the American right it can have some extremely high costs and that, tragically, a large proportion of those costs can wind up being borne by the people who were nominally supposed to be the beneficiaries.

Comments
56

56 Responses to “The Limits of Bluster”

tatere Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
but that’s what makes it popular. the costs are not born by the blusterer, but by the blustered, and who cares what happens to a bunch of foreigners anyway? besides, when things go wrong, you know that it is always the Democrats’ fault.
blah Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
I hope Taiwan is paying attention.
cmholm Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Bush *is* bailing Shakasvili to a degree, by flying a battalion of fully equipped Georgian soldiers back from Iraq.

But, I think the Georgians figured they’d manage this one on their own. Keep in mind that South Ossetia has fewer than 70,000 people, a small enough minority to either fit back into Georgia, or (to be a cold SOB) push into the North, where they could settle on all that land they took/were given from the Ingush. They may have thought, it worked for the Croats, why not them?

If Putin really wanted to do with Ossetia and Abkhazia what we’ve done with Kosovo, and make them independent, that’d fit right into the MY manifesto: why hang onto a sub-state that doesn’t want to play ball? But, that’s not what Putin meant, and everyone knows he meant incorporation into the Russian Federation as autonomous republics (provinces).
Quiddity Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
There are parallels to the 1956 Hungarian uprising. VOA was instrumental in giving the Hungarians the impression that if they broke with the Soviet Union, they’d get help from the west.

Didn’t happen.
McGuff Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
It should be fairly obvious that trashing Georgia is only Putin’s secondary objective.

Humiliating Bush is his primary point.
John Emerson Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
I wonder what Shakasvili will think when he sees Bush flirting with beach volleyball players, and sitting with Putin at the Olympics, at the very moment when Shakasvili was losing a war he had cleared with the Americans. There’s no way we didn’t know what he planned to do, and no way he didn’t think we were behind him.
beowulf888 Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Good discussion over at Crooked Timber. But they seem to be blaming this whole mess on Matt Y for caving into Putin

http://crookedtimber.org/2008/08/11/territorial-integrity-norms/
TW Andrews Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
It may be true that Shakashvili was mislead by Bush, but it’s not exactly a secret that we’ve already got one war that we’re fighting, and that the American public isn’t eager to enter into another. If Shakashvili wanted to provoke the Russians, he should have at least waited to see if crazy John was going to be elected who I’m sure would have loved an excuse to get into a land war with Russia…
Brad Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Once again, careful analysis by liberals reveals that it’s all America’s fault.
Royko Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Of course the Georgians believed that if they got into a firefight with Russia, the Americans would bail them out.

I’m sorry, but the incompetence of the Bush administration aside, believing that the US is going to get involved in a firefight with Russia in Georgia is crazy. Even if our administration was idiotic enough to give them assurances, Saakashvili would be more stupid for believing them.
Kurzbein Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
As bad as things have gotten in Georgia, it’s hard for me to muster too much sympathy for Shakasvili. He strikes me as pretty naive. Either that, or he got very bad advice from his advisors or exercised bad judgment.
Thomas Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Brad has it right.

This is just idiotic. How is it that Putin had an accurate read on the situation? How is that the Georgians believed one thing and the Russians another, all based on the same public acts?

I’m afraid that Fred and Matt are hopeless. This, unfortunately, is the sort of thing that passes as expertise among liberals.
Kurzbein Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I see Royko beat me to it.

When you try to explain Shakasvili’s error, I think you have to consider the type of person likely to rise to power in a young democracy. By definition it’s not someone with any geopolitical experience, and it might not be someone with any governing experience at all. Those are pretty big liabilities, and they may explain why Shakasvili seems to have been more vulnerable to the bluster from the US.
daveNYC Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Bush *is* bailing Shakasvili to a degree, by flying a battalion of fully equipped Georgian soldiers back from Iraq.

Being flown out of Iraq to go fight the Russian army? Luck doesn’t get much worse than that.

How is it that Putin had an accurate read on the situation?

Because he’s not a dumbass? Europe can’t mess with him or he’ll turn off their gas. We can’t mess with him because we don’t have the forces to make a credible threat and he knows we aren’t willing to go to war over this. It’s not that important, and we don’t have the resources.
James Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
As much as junior would like to separate himself from his father, senior did the same thing to the Kurds in Iraq. Father encouraged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam with the implied but wrong notion that US would support them and junior encouraged the same for the Georgians and gave the Georgians the same amount of support. Like father like son.
rapier Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
This whole thing is a dream come true for the GOP and McCain. It wasn’t just luck either. In mid July we participated with the Georgians in some military exercises and on 8/8 the Georgians went on an offensive in one of the regions. Surprise surprise, the Russians did exactly what they said they were going to do.

I only wonder if Putin and Bush were smirking at each other during their little meeting. It’s a win win situation for both of the politically. I’ll guess Bush wasn’t smirking because he isn’t aware enough of what’s going on. There were surely smirks galore in the VP’s office however.
Don Williams Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
1) Given past defense relationships, Georgia appears to expect ISRAEL to also come to it’s aid — as Richard noted in an earlier thread, the Georgia Defense Minister is an ex-Israeli and Israel has been providing military training and weapons.

2) Probably for the reason I mentioned earlier: Georgia is the narrow corridor by which Caspian Sea oil can be moved out of Central Asia past Russia and Iran — and the terminus of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline appears like it is going to be Israel’s Ashkalon-Eliat pipeline and a big oil tanker facility on Israel’s Red Sea port of Eliat.

3) Which explains why Israel Lobby sock puppets/Neocons like Bill Kristol are going apeshit — Russia’s invasion is derailing this very lucrative gravy train.

4) But given that Israel is also leaving Georgia hung out to dry, the Neocons might want to rethink those “Munich” metaphors.
Monty Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
To some extent this reminds of Pappy Bush encouraging Kurdish rebels to rise up against Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of Gulf War 1. They did, and were crushed by Hussein:

On February 15, 1991, George H. W. Bush was heard by Iraqis on the Voice of America radio saying:
“ “There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations’ resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.”

The Kurdish uprising collapsed even more quickly than it began. After ousting the peshmerga from Kirkuk on March 29, the Iraqi army rolled into Dahuk and Irbil on March 30, Zakho on April 1, and Sulaymaniyah, the last important town held by the rebels, over the next two days.

In the South, the government (aided by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, an Iraq-based militant organization of Iranian exiles) had quelled all but scattered resistance by the end of March. On April 5, 1991, Iraq’s ruling Revolutionary Command Council announced “the complete crushing of acts of sedition, sabotage, and rioting in all towns of Iraq.”

The death toll was high throughout the country. The rebels had killed Baathist officials in many Southern cities. In response, thousands of unarmed civilians were killed by indiscriminate fire from loyalist tanks, artillery guns, and helicopters. Later, when security forces rolled into the cities, they detained and summarily executed people at random using the policy of collective responsibility.

The violence was heaviest in Southern Iraq, where a smaller portion of the local population had fled than in Kurdish areas (owing partly to the danger of escaping through the South’s flat, exposed terrain). In 2005, the new Iraqi government estimated at least 100,000 Shia, and possibly 180,000, died in the 1991 repression.[6] Those who remained in the South were at the mercy of advancing government troops, who went through neighborhoods, summarily executing hundreds of young men and rounding up thousands of others, many of whom were never seen again alive.
Kurzbein Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Because he’s not a dumbass? Europe can’t mess with him or he’ll turn off their gas. We can’t mess with him because we don’t have the forces to make a credible threat and he knows we aren’t willing to go to war over this. It’s not that important, and we don’t have the resources.

Maybe, but what was so complicated about this situation? A small country attacks the military of one of the biggest, most powerful countries in the world. How would you expect Putin and Russia to respond? The real question is why you’d initiate such an attack. It might not be all America’s fault, but what else explains what’s happened?
Don Williams Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Re James’s comment “Father encouraged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam with the implied but wrong notion that US would support them and junior encouraged the same for the Georgians and gave the Georgians the same amount of support. Like father like son.”
————
Oh, it gets better than that. A few months ago, George W invited the Turks to INVADE Iraq and exterminate some Kurdish freedom fighters ..er “terrorists”. Named the Kurdistan Workers Party aka PKK. See http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2008-02-27-iraq-kurds_N.htm

A few days ago, Chevron’s Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan huge oil pipeline was shut down for 5 weeks by sabotage/bombs. That sure made CHeney’s pacemaker skip a beat. (To see why, Google “Caspian Sea oil” and Cheney )

Group claiming credit for blowing up the pipeline? PKK
See http://www.panarmenian.net/news/eng/?nid=26855

But they did it because they hate our freedom.
Anthony Damiani Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
I’m less swift to blame Bush here. With our military being bogged down to the point of uselessness, and with our policy for the better part of sixty years equating “shooting war with Russia” and “nuclear Armageddon” — I don’t think there could have been any reasonable expectation of American military intervention.

Did they wargame this at ALL?
Craig Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Unless we’re actually prepared to send in the Marines and go to war with Russia, all the schoolyard bullies can ultimately do is echo the sentiments of Dean Acheson in the Cuban Missile Crisis: “By that time we hope cooler heads will prevail and people will talk.”

Idiots.
Reality Man Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
This is just idiotic. How is it that Putin had an accurate read on the situation? How is that the Georgians believed one thing and the Russians another, all based on the same public acts?

I’m guessing Bush doesn’t e-mail his private conversation with Georgia’s president to Putin. Also, Putin may be evil, but he is not retarded or at least not as retarded Shakashvili.
Dan Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Did they wargame this at ALL?

Even more important: don’t they have ANY intelligence capability? The Russians were all over Georgia’s ass FAST. Georgians move into S. Ossetia…bang! Two days later there’s Russian tank regiments all over everywhere. Nobody noticed the 20,000 Russian troops just hanging out at the Georgian border, armed and ready? You don’t need spy satellites for that, just look out the damn window.
r€nato Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
I wonder what Shakasvili will think when he sees Bush flirting with beach volleyball players, and sitting with Putin at the Olympics, at the very moment when Shakasvili was losing a war he had cleared with the Americans.

You don’t need to wonder; just ask anybody who’s from New Orleans. Or, ask Saddam, who thought he had cleared his little Kuwaiti war with daddy Bush.
perry Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Right wrong or indifferent, WE are the ones talking about the relative viability of Russia’s neighbors; their hope and aspirations. If the shoe were on the other foot and the Russians were advocating and supporting the aspirations of our less supportive neighbor’s (Cuba for example) we would certainly all be up in arms. And rightfully so.

The real absurdity of Kagan (WSJ today) and his fellow NeoCon’s position is their failure to recognize that we were the ones who went into Iraq in the spirit of the Great Game. Now, like the bully who runs home to his momma when the tables are turned, they should remember Mama’s soothing words: Don’t start something you can’t finish, tough guy.
Mike Meyer Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Call Pelosi @1-202-225-0100 DEMAND IMPEACHMENT.
cmholm Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Even more important: don’t they have ANY intelligence capability? The Russians were all over Georgia’s ass FAST. Georgians move into S. Ossetia…bang! Two days later there’s Russian tank regiments all over everywhere. Nobody noticed the 20,000 Russian troops just hanging out at the Georgian border, armed and ready? You don’t need spy satellites for that, just look out the damn window.

The Russians aren’t quite done in Chechnya, so the north slope of the Caucasus has a reasonably large garrison handy. Ergo, the importance of closing the tunnel from North Ossetia, which the Georgians failed to do. It was a high stakes gambit, and they screwed the pooch by not pinching off south Ossetia, bypassing the provincial capital.
NewsNag Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Ya know, the Always-(Far)-Right-Republicans have been in charge of US foreign policy for almost eight years now. It can authoritatively and safely be proclaimed now that the Republicans blew this one big time. They’ve been building up Georgia militarily and stroking its little nation ego, cultivating it as a thorn in the side of Russia, essentially playing checkers while Russia plays chess as usual. So, yes, neonutcases, the liberals are right on this one. Bush and Cheney, idiots extraordinaire in the real nuances of public life, got played like the fools they are, one-note cowardly jackals again sacrificing someone else on the altar of their deficient little egos. Typical of rightwing trolls on this or any other site to ignore the pain of others to try to shuck the buck somewhere else. The real belly of the beast is this White House West Wing.
Ed Marshall Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Ergo, the importance of closing the tunnel from North Ossetia

I don’t think that would have stopped a damn thing. Russia would have just rolled through Georgia proper. The reaction wouldn’t have been an iota different. If they had to do it, not one damn thing would have changed.

You would have had a bunch of loud-ass idiots selling wolf tickets either way. That’s what we got out of this. Quite frankly, we would have been better off with people a bit more forthcoming and not selling wolf-tickets who would tell Georgia that no way in hell was a NATO war for some backwater Russian provinces in the offing. Unfortunately, they don’t exist domestically. McCain offers a different sort of dick waving but nothing that would actually make a believer out of anyone. If he was serious he’d be a dangerous idiot trying to pull the world down on his shoulders.
Mr Blifil Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Conservative don’t think in terms of people benefitting from their policies. The programs are assessed for success or failure based on how much the people formulating the policies were able to benefit personally. Everything else is guts or gravy.
Ragout Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Even if the Georgians were deluded enough to believe that the US would do much of anything, just how quickly did they expect us to act? Within 5 years would probably be a reasonable expectation, given recent history in x-Yugoslavia. Maybe we could begin bombing within a few weeks (though against serious anti-aircraft defenses, I doubt it) but even that seems like it would be too late.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 12:34 am
MY:
You better read Atrios.
tom f Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 12:56 am
NewsNag @ #29:

No one blew it. Playing the Great Game (and often losing) is far superior to not playing. Enabling, stoking, inflating, and simply declaring national security crises is deeply gratifying for nationalist-imperialist-authoritarian politicians and their large and influential intellectual and industrial clique. It legitimizes the national security state. It makes “Very Serious People” indulge in their “Very Seriousness”.

Emotionally, it distracts from the aching search for love and wholeness that is the human condition. Most of us do that with entertainment, sex, a good job (if we’re lucky), alcohol and drugs (if we’re not) but imagine accomplishing the distraction while inflating your own egoistic self-importance!

A new cold war, a Global War on Terror, the Red menace: its all partially-manufactured antidemocratic legitimation for keeping the population artificially dependent on a metaphorical father figure in Washington. And its all deliciously fulfilling for the Village elite.
Robert Waldmann Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 1:13 am
“I talk loud but carry a small stick” — George Bush
Loneoak Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 1:30 am
If they couldn’t bluster what would they do?
bob h Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 6:39 am
As the Georgians were being overrun, Bush was in Beijing signing the backside of a female volleyball player.
matt Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Folks expect you to back it up when you talk about taking down Russia or bombing people “back to the Stone Age.”

http://www.political-buzz.com/
Fermion the Clown Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 9:02 am
I think the interesting point is nailed by tartere in comment #1.

IIRC Karen Hughes argues that fundamentalism is born of a deep fear of the world, and a deep insecurity about one’s ability to deal with social change. The fundamentalist retreats into hisrher own little world of received Truth. When presented with evidence that contradicts this received Truth, the fundie lashes out at the challenger. Because Truth just is, after all.. Truth is beyond evidence.

I think this pretty much describes the Dubya/McCain/neo-con conservative mindset during the past 7 years. They’ve retreated so far into a mindless set of received beliefs that they don’t actually reason thru the consequences of their actions. (Cue snark about effete intellectuals and a preference for ignorance/Real Man behavior.) They know what’s right, and if the consequences of their actions isn’t to their liking, that doesn’t mean that their actions were wrong or counterproductive, it’s evidence that either the Dems (”Satan”) undercut them, or that they just didn’t show enough determination (the Green Lantern theory aka the Tinkerbelle theory.)

Or you can imagine them as alpha apes beating their chests and hollering loudly in the jungle.

I don’t think of it as bluff because ‘bluff’ suggests that there’s a strategery behind the behavior, as in poker. It’s just bluster, pure and simple. Loud noises, signifying nothing.
Grand Moff Texan Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 9:39 am
We say:

It’s infuriating because it’s clear that Bush did everything to encourage them to believe that he would. When Bush (properly) pushed for Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, Putin warned that he would do the same for pro-Russian secessionists elsewhere, by which he could only have meant Georgia’s separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin had taken drastic steps in earlier disputes over those regions—for instance, embargoing all trade with Georgia—with an implicit threat that he could inflict far greater punishment. Yet Bush continued to entice Saakashvili with weapons, training, and talk of entry into NATO.

They hear:

Once again, careful analysis by liberals reveals that it’s all America’s fault.

Once again, careful analysis by people who actually think for a living shows that conservatives are fucking morons.
.
Grand Moff Texan Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 9:40 am
How is it that Putin had an accurate read on the situation?

Because he won.

How is that the Georgians believed one thing and the Russians another, all based on the same public acts?

Because they’re different fucking countries, you moron.
.
Grand Moff Texan Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Re James’s comment “Father encouraged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam

Or you could compare this Bush fuckup to Bush’s twin fuckups of:
1. encouraging Fatah to hold elections when they knew they would lose, and then
2. encouraging Fatah to launch a civil war, in which it also lost its ass.

According to Dahlan, it was Bush who had pushed legislative elections in the Palestinian territories in January 2006, despite warnings that Fatah was not ready. After Hamas—whose 1988 charter committed it to the goal of driving Israel into the sea—won control of the parliament, Bush made another, deadlier miscalculation.

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

Once again, for anyone in the room still stupid enough to be a conservative, that’s “Bush,” and not “America.” They are different words because they are different things.
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Matt Yglesias

The Limits of Bluster

56 Responses to “The Limits of Bluster”

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