[Peace-discuss] Raimondo on U.S./Obama/Russia

[Brussel Morton K.]

November 10, 2008
The Russian Question
What's Obama's answer?

The Obama-oids aren't talking too much about foreign policy these  
days, although that was their candidate's ticket to the White House.  
Iraq was the winning issue that gave Obama's primary campaign the  
oomph it needed to oust the putative front-runner from her perch as  
the anointed one, but it fails to evoke the interest it once did on  
account of the rapid deterioration of the economy. It doesn't matter  
that the costs of the Iraq and Afghan wars amount to at least three  
more bank bailouts – and you can throw in what's left of the American  
auto industry for good measure.

For all the focus on domestic politics and economics, the rest of the  
world has a way of intruding without much regard for our schedule or  
context. The announcement of Obama's victory was still reverberating  
globally, amid a chorus of media-hyped hosannas, when Russian  
President Dmitry Medvedev made a speech in which Obama was not so  
much as alluded to: instead, the stern-faced successor to Vladimir  
Putin delivered a tongue-lashing in which he described the global  
financial crisis as having started as "a local extraordinary event in  
the U.S. markets," the result of "erroneous, egotistical, and  
sometimes even dangerous decisions by some members of the global  
community," i.e., the West. This was prefaced by a declaration that  
"to neutralize – if necessary – the anti-missile system, an Iskander  
missile system will be deployed in the Kaliningrad region. Naturally,  
we also consider using for the same purpose the resources of Russia's  
navy."

The "anti-missile system" Medvedev is here referring to is an  
untested and quite expensive new weapon being marketed to our Eastern  
European NATO partners, with huge profits for U.S. manufacturers. The  
old Committee to Expand NATO was basically a front for these  
interests. Their victory in getting the former Warsaw Pact admitted  
to the club was sweetened by the agreement to install the missile  
shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, which means billions for the  
U.S. arms industry, the only sector that's prospering in these hard  
times. It also marks the crowning provocation of a whole series of  
hostile acts aimed at the Kremlin, which Medvedev had no choice but  
to reply to in the way he did.

The Medvedev speech wasn't very good public relations, at least in  
the West, but the Russians are less concerned about what the  
editorial page of the Washington Post has to say on the subject than  
what to say to their own people as the West draws nearer to the  
Kremlin's very doorstep. Shielded behind a sophisticated, albeit  
untested, anti-missile system, NATO forces stationed in Poland could  
take out Moscow in minutes. No Russian government can permit that  
condition to long endure.

What we know of Obama's views on Russia are not encouraging. In his  
infomercial, he vowed to "curb Russian aggression." This was a  
reference to the Russo-Georgian war, which John McCain made the  
signature issue of his foreign policy stance, and Obama joined with  
the Republican candidate in condemning Russian "aggression."

Except, as the New York Times and other sources report, it was the  
Georgians who were the aggressors, invading the rebel province of  
Ossetia just hours after Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili went  
on television to declare a cease-fire. The Ossetians went to bed  
thinking they had nothing to worry about. They woke up, a few hours  
later, to a full-scale invasion of their country. The residents of  
Tskhinvali, the Ossetian capital, were subjected to a full-scale  
military assault. As the BBC reports:

"The BBC has discovered evidence that Georgia may have committed war  
crimes in its attack on its breakaway region of South Ossetia in  
August. Eyewitnesses have described how its tanks fired directly into  
an apartment block, and how civilians were shot at as they tried to  
escape the fighting."

Human Rights Watch, which led the way in downplaying attacks on  
civilians by the Georgian military, has apparently recanted its  
previous pronouncements and now avers that 300 to 400 dead is a  
"useful starting point." Tanks fired directly into apartment  
complexes, often aiming for the basements – where civilians were  
likely to hide.

The Georgian lobby's carefully orchestrated media campaign to spin  
the Georgian invasion as a heroic act of self-defense is now coming  
completely unraveled. OSCE monitors, assigned to watch the volatile  
region, report that the Georgians fired first – and that the alleged  
"shelling" of Georgian villages that was supposed to have provoked  
the all-out Georgian assault on a civilian target did not in fact  
occur. Ryan Grist, the senior military officer in the OSCE group,  
testified:

"It was clear to me that the [Georgian] attack was completely  
indiscriminate and disproportionate to any, if indeed there had been  
any, provocation. The attack was clearly, in my mind, an  
indiscriminate attack on the town, as a town."

Grist, a former British Army captain, "resigned from the OSCE shortly  
afterwards," reports the Times of London. No doubt his bosses were  
less than delighted with what he had to report, and they must have  
been even less thrilled with what Stephen Young, a former RAF wing  
commander and Grist's fellow OSCE monitor, had to add:

"If there had been heavy shelling in areas that Georgia claimed were  
shelled, then our people would have heard it, and they didn't. They  
heard only occasional small-arms fire."

The conventional wisdom about the Russo-Georgian conflict has been  
blown to smithereens, and this points up a problem with the incoming  
administration illustrated in a recent New York Times piece entitled  
"Want A Security Post? Say Nothing." Everybody and their brother –  
including some Republicans – wants a national security post in Obama  
World, but the price is that potential recruits to the new  
administration stayed mum on the Russian question, or indeed  
"anything that might get them into trouble." The piece, by Helene  
Cooper, went on to say:

"Take the Russian invasion of Georgia, for example, an action that  
raised all sorts of complicated questions. But in Congress, at  
universities, and at research institutes, would-be Democratic  
secretaries of state and national security advisers sought to  
navigate that potential minefield by following the same cautious  
script. They condemned Russia (without proposing specific  
punishment). They proclaimed heartfelt support for President Mikheil  
Saakashvili of Georgia, the congressional darling (without any  
questioning whether he was culpable in inviting the attacks). And  
they publicly voiced strong backing for Georgia's entry into NATO, a  
possibility that most of these same foreign policy experts  
acknowledge privately is as likely as a warm winter in Moscow."

Obama is going to have to make a decision on the Russian question  
fairly early, because Moscow is taking the initiative, in the case of  
the missile shield. NATO expansion, the Georgian issue, and the whole  
strategy pursued by the Bush administration, which amounted to the  
encirclement of Russia: these issues will not wait. The overly  
cautious demeanor that is already taking shape as the signature style  
of the incoming administration is a worrying sign that this isn't  
about "change," it's about mindless orthodoxy.

~ Justin Raimondo
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