From the Washington Post, “A Path to Peace in the Caucasus” by Mikhail Gorbachev Even Gorbachev, a.k.a. Russia’s Jimmy Carter, is flush with militaristic pride based on Putin’s Georgia adventure.
“Legitimate interests?” There’s a wonderfully squishy term for an expansionist wannabe hegemon to toss about. Speaking of Gorbachev’s terms of art, what of his reference to a Georgian “blitzkrieg?” My goodness, illusions die hard. One would have figured the olive branch extending Gorbachev to be the last guy to play the Hitler card. The fact that the Georgians are the ones doing the goose-stepping in Gorby’s fanciful scenario wonderfully illustrates how we’ll have to agree to disagree with the Bear on this one. Speaking of illusions dying hard, was it only a few short weeks ago when Barack Obama spoke in Germany and soothed the planet with a lullaby about the world coming together as one? Most of us dismissed the speech as a particularly banal collection of tediously utopian clichés. Some of us (okay – me) also pointed out Obama’s factitious rendering of history, especially his childlike retooling of the Berlin Airlift as a stirring example of the good that can be accomplished when the world unites. The lesson of the Berlin Airlift was of course no such thing. The lesson was that American resolve and military wherewithal could counter the Soviet lust for conquest. Throughout this campaign, Obama has shown a desperate desire to believe that as president he’ll be able to solve virtually any crisis by whispering sweet nothings into our malefactors’ ears. His euphemism for this approach has been “tough, principled diplomacy.” Tough, principled diplomacy is indeed a swell thing, but the first part of the equation – the “tough” part” – is impossible unless it’s supported by the credible prospect of force. In the real world as opposed to Obama’s fantasy world, blood and iron sadly matter a lot more than soft power and rhetoric. Besides, one has to wonder whether the concept of “tough, principled diplomacy” is about to join Jeremiah Wright under the Obama campaign bus. Obama’a most recent statement on the crisis included the plea “for Georgia and Russia to show restraint.” Such “evenhandedness” in the face of unilateral atrocities sounds neither tough nor principled.
