Neocon Train To Georgia

by digby

It would appear that the Russian crisis is winding down. I guess Putin proved that you don’t want to mess with Moscow. (Maybe Bush really did see into his soul — and saw himself.)

Whether or not the US encouraged or discouraged both parties remains obscure. This article, (which dday also links in his discussion below) indicates that some members of the Bush administration are putting out the word that they didn’t encourage Georgia, but rather discouraged them — and anyway, they thought Russia would only “crack a few heads” in Osettia, and that would be that. Others continue to to believe that the US was encouraging Georgia with promises of support. As with so many things in the Bush administration the truth will emerge sometime down the road and it will probably be even worse than the current speculation.

But one thing seems to me to be a sure thing. Yesterday, I wrote that whatever the cause of the crisis and whatever the US involvement, you could see the outlines of a neocon propaganda program taking place before our eyes. And here we go:

Robert Kagan: War in Georgia is just Putin’s first step

The details of who did what to precipitate Russia’s war against Georgia are not very important. Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama.

The events of the past week will be remembered that way, too. This war did not begin because of a miscalculation by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. It is a war that Moscow has been attempting to provoke for some time. The man who once called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century” has re-established a virtual czarist rule in Russia and is trying to restore the country to its once-dominant role in Eurasia and the world. Armed with wealth from oil and gas; holding a near-monopoly over the energy supply to Europe; with a million soldiers, thousands of nuclear warheads and the world’s third-largest military budget, Vladimir Putin believes that now is the time to make his move.

[…]

Putin has been determined to stop and, if possible, reverse the pro-Western trend on his borders. He seeks not only to prevent Georgia and Ukraine from joining NATO but also to bring them under Russian control. Beyond that, he seeks to carve out a zone of influence within NATO, with a lesser security status for countries along Russia’s strategic flanks. That is the primary motive behind Moscow’s opposition to U.S. missile defense programs in Poland and the Czech Republic.

His war against Georgia is part of this grand strategy. Putin cares no more about a few thousand South Ossetians than he does about Kosovo’s Serbs. Claims of pan-Slavic sympathy are pretexts designed to fan Russian great-power nationalism at home and to expand Russia’s power abroad.

Unfortunately, such tactics always seem to work. While Russian bombers attack Georgian ports and bases, Europeans and Americans, including very senior officials in the Bush administration, blame the West for pushing Russia too hard on too many issues.

[…]

Diplomats in Europe and Washington believe Saakashvili made a mistake by sending troops to South Ossetia last week. Perhaps. But his truly monumental mistake was to be president of a small, mostly democratic and adamantly pro-Western nation on the border of Putin’s Russia.

Historians will come to view Aug. 8, 2008, as a turning point no less significant than Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell.

Russia’s attack on sovereign Georgian territory marked the official return of history, indeed to an almost 19th-century style of great-power competition, complete with virulent nationalisms, battles for resources, struggles over spheres of influence and territory, and even — though it shocks our 21st-century sensibilities — the use of military power to obtain geopolitical objectives. Yes, we will continue to have globalization, economic interdependence, the European Union and other efforts to build a more perfect international order.

But these will compete with and at times be overwhelmed by the harsh realities of international life that have endured since time immemorial. The next president had better be ready.

Can you feel his excitement at the idea of fighting the Russians again? These are worthy enemies, unlike that pissant Saddam or those half-assed terrorists. Why if we play our cards right we can have WWXXIVII (we must be up to that by now, right?) with both Russia and China, just like their adolescent wet dreams.

The neocons think very long term and always rigidly refuse to change their analysis no matter what the facts or circumstances dictate. Even the fall of the Soviet Union wasn’t enough to change their view, not really. Everyone remembers that in 1992, Paul Wolfowitz famously wrote a defense document that reemerged as the neocon PNAC manifesto “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” That original document contained a plan to repel a Russian military assault on a former republic:

Senior Defense Department officials have said the document will be issued by Defense Secretary Cheney this month. According to a Feb. 18 memorandum from Mr. Wolfowitz’s deputy, Dale A. Vesser, the policy guidance will be issued with a set of “illustrative” scenarios for possible future foreign conflicts that might draw United States military forces into combat.

These scenarios, issued separately to the military services on Feb. 4, were detailed in a New York Times article last month. They postulated regional wars against Iraq and North Korea, as well as a Russian assault on Lithuania and smaller military contingencies that United States forces might confront in the future.

I believe that this event in Georgia will become the crucible for the long awaited Russian portion of their program. If John McCain becomes president he will be happy to lead the charge, despite the fact that he has not been a traditional neocon. For him, all wars are good, but as a conservative, fighting the evil empire was his life’s most important work. As he’s shown in this crisis, he is happy to be as bellicose and as aggressive as any neocon would ever want.

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