Living in the Post-American World
Although violence in the Caucuses is nothing new, there’s something disconcerting about Russia’s invasion (or defense of its nationals) in Georgia. Georgia isn’t another Chechnya – it’s an American ally that has 120 DoD advisors and 1200 troops in Iraq. The US pushed for NATO membership at the summit in Bucharest last year. Bush visited there to huge crowds and adoration in 2005 – hell, the airport road is named after him. And still, Russia has been able to invade the country, bomb its cities and the US can’t do a thing.
One response to this glaring example of American weakness is the Washington Post’s. The ardent interventionists are huffing and puffing about how Russia is just looking to crush a small, poor country for the hell of it. This is very much in keeping with the Kagan view of the world, where due to authoritarianism, Russia is inevitably expansionist and will not care about international norms, UN resolutions or calls for a cease fire. This view of the world is partially correct – Russia is strong, expansionist and doesn’t care much for foreigners telling it what to do in its Near Abroad. But where Kagan, the Post, John McCain et al get it wrong is in seeing Russia’s behavior as connected to its authoritarianism. Putin and Medvedev are incredibly popular, Russians want to expand and want to be seen as strong. So there’s a certain amount of inevitability about Russia protecting and expanding into those parts of the world that were cleaved away from it at a time of extreme weakness. Not only does South Ossetia have Russian speakers, with Russian passports who want to be part of Russian North Ossetia, but Georgia itself was part of the Russian empire for some 200 years. Stalin was born there, many Soviet leaders hailed from Georgia and there’s probably a nontrivial number of Georgians who aren’t particularly interested in roughing it out in a tiny state of their own. In short, things are much, much more complicated than “Russia bad! Georgia good! Democracy good! Authoritarianism bad!”
Much of this extreme and distorting rhetoric covers up a essential reality of the situation: no matter how mendacious we judge Russia to be, there’s basically nothing we can do. America is no longer a globe trotting hegemon who can protect all of its allies from any other nation. Russia, due to political centralization and oil money, is now able to take its place back as a great power. The world of the early 1990s, even up through the 90s and early 00s, where America could dictate what happened in the Caucuses and Eastern Europe, where they could oversee the carving up and cleaving of Russia, are over. And no amount of complaining and demonizing by the Post or Robert Kagan will do much to change that essential fact. Welcome to the Post-American World.
LINKS: Robert Farley, as always
Alex Massie has a bunch of links and good commentary.
James Traub has the best backgrounder on the conflict
And Daniel Larison has some good stuff.
Massie also links us to the Guardian editorial on the manner, which basically sums up my views on the whole matter, “This is not about plucky Georgian democrats versus Russian tyrants. The players in this drama are more devious than that.”
PS – If this Daily Telegraph story is true and the US gave the greenlight for Georgia’s actions in South Ossetia, someone in the State Department needs to be bitch slapped…repeatedly.
