The EU Concedes to Russia

I take no pride in being right about Russia, at least not today. European Union French President M. Nicholas Sarkozy said in a statement to Moscow on Friday that Russia must withdraw its troops from Georgia proper and Georgia must withdraw its troops to military bases no later than October 1, 2008. Russian peacekeeping (his words, emphasis added) troops would be replaced by 200 UNOMIG (United Nations Observer Missions in Georgia) and OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) international observers. The UNOMIG and OSCE observers will investigate in Georgia proper only and Russian troops will be allowed to remain in South Ossetia and Abkhazia as per the September 12, 2008 agreement reached between Sarkozy and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.

It was a deferential move for the economic superpower to cede these sizeable regions of the Georgian State to Russia. It is frankly, reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain's concession of Czechoslovakia to Germany in 1938. Except that, to Paraphrase Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, if Russia had meant to capture Tbilisi, their forces could have done so in as little as four hours (given how they steamrolled over them in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, I doubt he was exaggerating).

Clearly, taking over Georgia proper was not one of their aims. Had this been the case, it is unlikely that the Russian strategy would have focused so heavily on expelling Georgian troops from the breakaway regions with such intensity - if at all. Given their air superiority over Georgia, they could have easily razed Tbilisi to the ground in a matter of hours and had Georgian President Mikheil Sakaashvili in custody in a matter of days.

Why did the EU not define Georgian territorial integrity to include the breakaway regions? If my more conservative readers can stomach it, I would like to indulge in some educated speculation. Surely, the EU watched the United States, as did Russia, when their friend and ally, Mikheil Sakaashvili, called for their military assistance and received only weak reprimands aimed at Russia from President Bush and Senator McCain, and most recently, either an inadvertent or a veiled threat from Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Sakaashvili, clearly unimpressed with Senator McCain's empty threats, called him out. Though aid has been sent to Georgia, American sabres - though rattled - remain firmly in their scabbards.

There was a very good reason that the French and the English engaged in a policy of appeasement with Germany in the 1930s: they didn't want a Second World War. The first had been horrible. The machine age had unleased horrible weaponry, munitions that disfigured soldiers so profoundly that it found its expression in a new genre of feature-length films in the twenties: horror. But if the thought of another mechanized war with Germany was horrifying to England and France, staring down the business end of the Russian nuclear arsenal must have them in a solid state of panic.

If the EU has any grasp of the history of the past two decades, a few facts are doubtlessly, not lost on them. First, the United States military doesn't move at lightning speed. That's not a bad thing. Operation Desert Shield prepared our troops well for Operation Desert Storm - it only took them four months. But Russia was able to mobilize within hours, and defeat American and Israeli-trained (and armed) Georgian troops within five days. Further, in his candidacy for President, John McCain (who is ahead according to Gallup Polls, as of Sunday) has resisted talk of withdrawing from Iraq. George Bush's drawdown is still 8,000 troops heavier than pre-surge levels. And even Barack Obama's strategy for withdrawal ties up our forces in Iraq until 2010. There simply is no plan on the table that allows the United States the ability to spare the military personnel necessary to honor NATO in the event of a Russian invasion, no matter what.

That leaves the threat of American interceptor missiles, one that has Putin aiming nukes at Europe (again) and negotiating for Western real estate with Castro (again) and Chavez to park ICBMs closer to the US (again). It is also a threat that makes it in Russia's best interests to take advantage of Europe while the United States is busy elsewhere.

So who in NATO will stand up to Russia, should they decide to play rough? The British are still strong, but they can't take on Russia alone. Their greatest advantage - naval power - would do little against a nation that is (and whose neighbors are) mostly landlocked. US troops in Europe have been cut by half (to around 25,000) since 2006. The French haven't had a strong military since Napoleon, and Sarkozy's concessions to Russia speak volumes about the EU's attitudes toward Russia. Finally, Georgia already had been promised membership with the EU at the time of the conflict; clearly Sakaashvili was counting on that when he rolled the dice on forcing South Ossetia and Abkazia back into the fold. But no one came to his rescue.

Whether this was because the EU recognized they were being used in his game with Russia or simply realized that Georgia simply wasn't worth the risks inherent in going to war with a re-vitalized Russia, no one in NATO - outside the United States - even breathed the word war. And if it were simply a matter of the United States being busy elsewhere, it would have been enough for the EU to flinch. But there is a lot more going on in the United States than two foreign occupations.

The U.S. banking system, which has been built up primarily through an assembly-line mortgage system, drove housing values to inflate as much as 300%. The bubble, of course, burst. Indy Mac in California suffered a 1929-style run-on-a-bank: the Fed took over. Bear Sterns Cos. collapsed: the Fed loaned JPMorgan and Chase the money to buy them out at a bargain basement interest rate. Then Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had to be bailed out. Friday, Lehman wanted the same deal Bear Sterns got; the Fed told them they were on their own.

Which tells us the well is running dry. What we know of modern warfare is that it requires a strong economy. The Big War turned the United States - temporarily - into a socialist country. We mobilized for war: women went to work in munitions factories and young men joined, or were drafted, into the military. Rationing was imposed. By the end of it, soldiers came home, dreading the poverty of the Great Depression, and were shocked to find a revitalized economy.

Times have changed. War doesn't create new jobs anymore; corporations, beholden to their investors to maximize profits, either outsource or build outside of the United States. The Keynesian economic policies that hauled us out of the Great Depression required government investment into the economy, and while the movement to "privatize" as much of the government as possible is certainly attractive to the free market purists, the long term evidence isn't promising.

Certainly the EU is aware of the US's economic woes. The bailout of Freddie and Fannie is little more than band-aid on a compound fracture. At least one economist (Michael Hudson) has indicated that the bailout exists solely to prevent the two mortgage giants from collapsing - and taking the economy with it - prior to the elections in November. Further, Michael Hudson alleges that these bailouts will protect Bush supporters from something that anyone responsible for a fraction of this destruction would inevitably face: prison. So if Angela Merkel (who, incidentally, is opposed to Ukraine and Georgia obtaining NATO membership) and Nicholas Sarkozy are at all forward thinking and aware in the present, the US isn't looking so healthy. And given the EU's dependency on Russia for oil and natural gas, the old NATO alliance may not seem so important to them lately.

Just Because you're Paranoid (Part II)

Who in his right mind would broker a highly-publicized arms deal that is so obviously an about-face from our 17-year long policy of diplomacy with Russia?

Following their PR disaster in Georgia, Russia is finally ready to pull back their forces. This all comes on the heels of Condoleeza Rice's diplomatic mission to Poland and the Czech Republic, in which she secured Poland's agreement to host American intercepter missiles, as well as other American arms. Russia has warned the United States that such a step will retard Washington's relationship with Moscow.

While Western press sources have reported that the Georgian army was equipped and trained by the United States, there has been no report about the weapons and training provided by Israel. Though Tel Aviv has denied direct government sponsorship of the Georgian Military, it has admitted to approval by the Ministry of Defense for private businesses to sell arms and provide training to the Georgian military. This makes Syria's offer to buy Russian arms and sponsor Russian defense missiles particularly tempting for Moscow. And Syria isn't alone. Venezuela is also courting Russia for arms and Putin would like nothing better than a prime Western-hemisphere real estate upon which to station defense missiles: welcome to the Cuban Missile Crises, Part Deux.

It is, sadly, deja vu all over again.

That George Walker Bush's presidency has been characterized by his patent unwilling-ness to learn from history should come as news to no one who has read William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; we have been able to do little more than stand on the sidelines, shaking our heads, as the Bushies led us down the same, horrifying path of extreme nationalistism that Hitler took Germany. What no one needs book reference to understand is the idea that, with the Presidential elections rapidly approaching, America now runs the risk of repeating the Cuban Missile Crisis - this time with George W. Bush and (arguably) Vladimir Putin at the helm instead of Kennedy and Khruzchev.

It is important to remember that, while Kennedy is remembered a hero in the U.S. because of his actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was a nail in the coffin of Khruzchev's political carreer. Agreeing to pull the missiles out of Cuba, only to find out later that the missiles America pulled out of Turkey were obsolete, made a fool of Russia. While it is clear that America under George Walker Bush seems incapable of learning from its history, isn't it too much to hope that Vladimir Putin, former KGB chief, did not learn from the fall of Nikita Khruzchev?

It is unthinkable that, with the clock ticking on his Presidency, George W. Bush would begin an escalation against a newly-elected Dmitri Medvedev and a politically-entrenched Putin. Does he really mean to place the new American President in the type of position that Kennedy was in, or is this simply the latest move in the Bush "Permanent Campain," having seized on means for the GOP - or himself - to stay in power?

Yes, I'm afraid I am raising the phantom of a Bush dictatorship. It is not the first time in our history that a leader has used a crisis, such as the one that appears to be eminent with Russia, to stay in power. And though it is possible that the purpose of this escalation with Russia is to strengthen John McCain's appeal, it is unlikely that McCain's inability to manage the press has been lost on Mr. Bush. Senator McCain often becomes flustered when asked difficult questions by the press (e.g. how many houses he has, which side of an issue he is on, etc.). As foolish as Bush has been throughout his tenure in the White House, would he honestly put THE BUTTON the hands of someone who needs "to consult [his] staff" to find out how many houses he owns?

The escalation toward a new arms-race with Russia, therefore, is evidence of one of two things: either Bush aims to be the first American dictator or he's even dumber than we thought.

A Letter to Prime Minister Kaczinski of Poland

Dear Prime Minister Kazcinski,

I understand that the meeting between yourself and Dr. Rice was productive - in a manner of speaking.

About that; Dr. Rice is currently serving a President that won't be in office for much longer (we hope). You see, a lot of us are happy to see Mr. Bush's backside - and it's not because he's wearing sweatpants with the word "juicy" stitched on the seat. After stripping us of most of our civil rights, failing to provide any kind of aid to the city of New Orleans and getting us entrenched in Iraq, there's not many of us willing to give him a favorable job reference.

Come to think of it, we probably should have guessed that a C-student from Yale with two failed businesses under his belt might not be the safest bet for POTUS. Then there was all of that time he spent on vacation his first year in office. You might have heard we're at war on two fronts, and, well . . . he's taken a sum-total of a year off during that time. I don't want to speak ill of him or anything, but Mr. Bush is what we here in the States call lazy.

I'll say this for him though: he does tend to get his way. With three simple letters (WMD) he managed to convince the House, the Senate and the American People to take complete leave of their senses. It's my understanding that one of your contemporaries, one Mr. Mikheil Saakashvili, took pot-shots at South Ossetia with assurances that if Mr. Medvedev shoved, Mr. Bush would give him sound thrashing he deserved. Only it didn't quite work out that way.

What happened was that Mevedev gave Saakashvili what amounted to a political wedgie; and not just any political wedgie: to put things in perspective, he had Saakashvili's briefs over the poor bastard's head, yelling at him, "Govorish' dyadya, Misha! Govorish' dyadya!" After the proctologist was finished picking the last of the double-weave cotton from Mr. Saakashvili's rectum, your Georgian associate called Mr. Bush and his good friend Senator McCain out on their promises for that "sound thrashing" of Russia.

Long story short, their response was to send a woman. Now, Dr. Rice is a smart woman, she's an expert on Russia . . . and this where I have to ask you, Prime Minister Kazcinski, do you have a good sense of humor? See, over here in America, sometimes when bullies are bored, they convince guys who normally get sand kicked in their faces to pick a fight with a rival bully. I have to tell you, having done this myself, it's a hoot. Hey . . . yeah you. You see that jerk over there? He thinks he's tough. You should go mess with him. Hurt you? Oh, no. He won't hurt you. Besides, if he does start thumping on you, don't worry: I have your back.

I gotta tell you, it just never gets old.

Anyway, we were talking about Dr. Rice. Yeah . . . um, as a smart woman who knows Russia, she kind of left a few things out. First, there's that whole, he thinks he's tough thing: the guy we're talking about is Russia; the bear doesn't have to think he's tough, he just is. If you want to find out just how tough, be my guest - it's your anus. Then there's that whole missile defense system: see, that's kinda like the you should go mess with him thing; It's gonna piss Russia off, and Russia's not exactly known for pulling their punches. Finally, there's that don't worry, I have your back thing: come on, dude! You don't actually believe that, right? Not after they left ol' Mikey's butt flapping in the wind (I mean, 'cause if you do, there's this bridge in New York - a so-weet investment for a nation like yours that needs a little extra income).

Anyway, good luck with Russia.

You're going to need it.

Update: (8-23-08) I don't mean to say I told you so, Prime minister, but . . . you get the idea. Following your highly publicized deal with Dr. Rice, Russia began talks of its own with Syria. The Western Media is, of course, trying to spin this (or simply not report it) so that Russia winds up being the bad guy. But can we possibly expect them to "lie supinely upon [their] backs, clinging to the delusive phantom of hope" that the U.S, with the aid of you hosting these interceptor missiles, might not achieve nuclear hegemony over them for the first time since Russia detonation its own atomic bomb?

Congratulations, sir. You may go down in history one day as the stooge who helped America start World War III.