{"id":4650,"date":"2008-08-09T17:41:03","date_gmt":"2008-08-10T01:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/08\/09\/georgia-on-my-mind\/"},"modified":"2008-08-09T17:41:03","modified_gmt":"2008-08-10T01:00:51","slug":"georgia-on-my-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4650","title":{"rendered":"Georgia On My Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Look, I’ll be honest: I have no idea what exactly is going on in South Ossetia<\/a>, or who’s wearing the black or white hat in this skirmish. I do know that Georgia is absolutely nuts to engage in a war with Russia, which has an army roughly a billion times stronger than the Georgian one, not to mention a large nuclear arsenal. I’d think it was insanely stupid for the U.S. or China to tangle with Russia; even a victory would come with a very high price. Georgia will be lucky to survive with its independence intact.<\/p>\n

That said, Georgia has been close to the U.S. in recent years, supporting our invasion of Iraq militarily, and we’ve been discussing letting them into NATO (although frankly, that seems like a really bad idea right now). We have very good reason to try to defend Georgian independence from Russia, altough maybe we also have good reason to treat South Ossetian independence as a fait accompli.<\/p>\n

Regardless, I will say this: both candidates for president issued a statement about the war going on in South Ossetia, and their responses<\/a> to the incident pretty much sums up the difference in the two men. Obama said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war. \u00a0Georgia\u2019s territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pretty reasonable, right in line with the realistic approach to foregn policy that Obama has embraced. We don’t have a good hammer here, and frankly, our interests are best-served by this conflict coming to a swift resolution. Calling on both sides to cease hostilities and talk to each other is really the only thing a sane person could advocate, which is why John McCain is not saying it<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The government of Georgia has called for a cease-fire and for a resumption of direct talks on South Ossetia with international mediators. The U.S. should immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to call on Russia to reverse course. The US should immediately work with the EU and the OSCE to put diplomatic pressure on Russia to reverse this perilous course it has chosen. We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council to assess Georgia\u2019s security and review measures NATO can take to contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation. Finally, the international community needs to establish a truly independent and neutral peacekeeping force in South Ossetia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s great. And while we’re at it, maybe we can dispatch Iron Man to blow up the Soviet tanks, and have Czechoslovakia dispatch their fleet of invisible boat-mobiles.<\/p>\n

Look, I’m all for taking this to the UN — I mean, that’s what the UN is for. But Russia has a veto on the Security Council, so any UN-backed resolution is going to need Russian approval. Putting diplomatic pressure on Russia is unlikely to accomplish much, other than angering Russia. And going to NATO to start discussing how we can get engaged in military action on the Russian border is, to put it very charitably, incredibly reckless and absolutely insane, and should disqualify McCain for president.<\/p>\n

NATO has no place in this discussion, and the EU’s role is, at best, to offer to work to broker a peace deal between Russia and Georgia. Russia, after all, was in South Ossetia under CIS authority; Georgia is very much in their sphere of influence. We may like Georgia just fine, and hope that they get through this conflict, but let’s be honest: the Russians are going to do what the Russians are going to do. We’re not going to be able to bully them, and we sure as hell aren’t going to be able to scare them. If we are going to get the best outcome for American interests in this conflict, the only tool that we have to use is diplomacy. It’s not as fun as playing with tanks, but it’s got the advantage of maybe working, and at the very least, not making things worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Look, I’ll be honest: I have no idea what exactly is going on in South Ossetia, or who’s wearing the black or white hat in this skirmish. I do know that Georgia is absolutely nuts to engage in a war … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservative-zaniness-right-wingers-etc","category-international-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}