Thursday, November 20, 2008

Kristof on Georgia, Russia, and Obama

November 20, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist

Obama, Misha and the Bear

TBILISI, Georgia

A wounded, angry bear is loose north of here, and it has people terrified.

The bear has ravaged this lovely country, a booming capitalist enclave that worships America, relies on a much-praised flat tax and has uprooted corruption almost overnight (in part by firing every traffic cop in the country).

A main road here is named for President George W. Bush, who visited in 2005. Everybody studies English, sometimes in the local McDonald’s franchises, and people seem bewildered at Western doubts about their behavior toward the Russians.

“We thought we had escaped them, and they came back and raped us,” said Alexander Rondeli, who runs a think tank in Tbilisi. “And people in the West are saying we have to tell them to be our guest.”

The architect of today’s Georgia is Mikheil Saakashvili. Misha, as he is universally known, is young, brilliant, charismatic, American-educated and staffs his government with people like him. You get the sense that any given Georgian cabinet official is about half the age and double the I.Q. of his or her American equivalent.

Now with Georgians mauled by the bear in the brief August war, they desperately want to join NATO for protection, and one of the few things that Barack Obama and John McCain agreed on in the campaign was to oblige by continuing the process of admitting Georgia into NATO.

In fact, that’s an awful idea. President-elect Obama needs a new approach to Russia if we want to avoid a new cold war, and we also need to get over our crush on Misha.

Look carefully and you see that Georgia isn’t quite the shining beacon of democracy that Americans sometimes believe.

“Journalists are basically forbidden from telling real stories,” said Sopho Mosidze, a television journalist. “If you watch Russian TV or Georgian TV, it’s the same. It’s government propaganda.”

Ms. Mosidze is bitter partly because the station she was working at a year ago was stormed by special forces carrying guns while she was anchoring a news show. She said that troops cut off the signal and then beat up some of the journalists. The channel soon was reborn as a pro-government station. Indeed, today all nationally broadcast TV stations are in effect controlled by the government.

Then there is the Georgian War of August. It’s still not clear exactly how the war started, but what is certain is that Misha’s narrative — an unprovoked Russian invasion that forced Georgian troops to try to defend their territory — is nonsense.

The most likely explanation is that Misha, tired of continuous Russian provocations and emboldened by American support, saw a chance to recover territories that Russians were nibbling on. That was spectacularly reckless, and as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented, the Georgian Army (along with Russia’s) fired cluster bombs that harmed civilians.

“It was possible to avoid this war,” said Nino Burjanadze, a former close ally of Misha who last month formed an opposition party to challenge him. “Because of miscalculation, my country was involved in a war it was clear that it would lose.”

Russia took advantage of the war on the territory of one of Georgia’s breakaway republics to invade Georgia proper, and, if it hadn’t been for forceful American and European protests, Russian troops might well have overrun Tbilisi.

Since then, the United States has announced a $1 billion package of aid for Georgia. We should remember that military assistance would be a waste, for Georgia’s Army will never be strong enough to deter Russia. In contrast, trade and investment give Georgia international economic weight and probably help discourage a Russian invasion.

Note to Mr. Obama: It would be a nightmare to have our troops tethered through NATO to Misha. In any case, Georgia doesn’t obviously qualify for NATO membership since it doesn’t control its full territory, while the talk about NATO pushes all the wrong Russian nationalist buttons.

“NATO is not Georgia’s future,” said Amy Denman, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia. “Georgia’s future is economic growth. If they can continue the economic growth cycle they’re on, they’re safe.”

Because Russia behaves irresponsibly — including its latest disgraceful threat to base missiles near Poland — the temptation in the Obama administration will be to continue with NATO expansion and perhaps even with the ill-advised missile system for Europe. (We have so many better ways to spend money!) Instead, let’s engage Russia as we engage China — while still bluntly calling Russia on its uncivilized behavior.

Poking badly behaved bears is no substitute for sober diplomacy. We don’t want Barack to be another Misha.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Chomsky on the 2008 US Election (from October)



Chomsky actually surprised me a bit here by stating quite clearly that there IS a difference between Democrats and Republicans. While he stopped well short of a whole-hearted endorsement of Obama, he still urged people to vote against McCain. He cites the difference on health care in particular, and makes some excellent points about the marked differences between 2004 and 2008.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Et Tu, Fox?



Courtesy Talking Points Memo: "Here's Cameron telling Fox's Shep Smith that while trying to prep Palin for her interviews, McCain's staffers supposedly learned that Palin thought Africa was a country rather than a continent and didn't know what countries were signatories to NAFTA. And there's still more ..."

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Newsweek Tidbits and Thoughts on The Day After

Obviously pleased with the outcome last night. I started to post something last night, but couldn't come up with anything profound... not surprising, I suppose. I'm a little more reassured about living in the United States now. Turns out that the majority of us can ignore idiotic implications about "past radical associations" and the laughable charges about being a socialist.

Just because a Democrat has been elected does not mean that I think all is right with the world, everything will be fine, and that I will be happy with everything that the Obama Administration does. I'm cautiously optimistic, but there will be the inevitable disappointments.

The early indications are that Rahm Emanuel will be offered the position of Chief of Staff. I'm willing to be persuaded, but this might be his first mistake. Emanuel worked for Bill Clinton's White House and was responsible for pushing NAFTA and other not-so-liberal policies. Not a great sign. He knows the House of Representatives well and would push back against Pelosi if needed, but I guess we'll just have to see.

Many people have said that Larry Summers will be picked as the new Treasury Secretary, and I'm not so sure about that either. I'd favor Bob Reich, former Secretary of Labor, but he probably won't get it. I don't think it would ever be offered to someone like economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman - whose columns I often link to here - although I don't really see why not.

Like many others, I'm very curious what the first priorities will be, or whether there will be a flurry of activity on all fronts. The wheels are certainly greased with the expanded Democratic majority, so hopefully the right things will get done quickly. Congressional Dems want to pass a stimulus package, but I don't think we need more small checks mailed to everyone. I think they should work on the infrastructure improvements that Obama promised - upgrading roads and bridges, hopefully a focus on a better and broader rail system that isn't so confined to the east coast, as well as broadband lines for rural communities.

I'm not overly encouraged about the prospects of any kind of education reform/progress. The rhetoric seemed in line with the status quo during the campaign. This has become more obvious to me as a vital issue since I've decided to enter the field.

Environmental initiatives need to be put into place within the first year - otherwise everything could conceivably fall back with a Republican congressional victory in 2010. Things are only getting further and further out of hand, and I haven't seen much to demonstrate Obama's focus on the issue. Perhaps he simply wasn't spending much time on it because it wasn't big issue with voters, but climate change is likely the most pressing crisis... it's just that the pace of the pressing is too slow for people to notice when their minds are on the economic downturn.

Obama's main interest seems to be in foreign policy. I don't recall hearing much from Obama on the subject of missle defense, but I'm very interested to see how he feels about what the Russian president had to say today/yesterday on the subject. His first statement about the Russian/Georgian situation was much more measured and careful than McCain's simplistic (and wrong) posturing, but then Obama came nearer to the ignorance of McCain/Scheunemann's position (that it was all 'Russian aggression'). Hopefully he'll be able to back off from that now that he's not campaigning (he was obviously worried about being seen as weak or "appeasing" Russia). Most people who have read anything about the conflict know that it's a hell of a lot more complicated than what McCain was telling Americans, especially his "We're all Georgians today" load of crap.

Pakistan and Afghanistan will be the most problematic, and could overshadow everything else if there is another attack in this country. If you want to know what the US faces, I would recommend reading this or watching this as an introduction.

I'd love to play analyst for a bit longer, but I have so much work that I've neglected... and now I have to get ready for class.

I congratulate Barack Obama and wish him the best of luck.