Unexpected pleasure — kinda
An excellent discussion of the Georgia situation at, of all places, The New Republic. For my money, Leon Wieseltier has the right of it, although judging from John Judis’s response, they aren’t all that far apart:
But it is not Judis’s bill of particulars that amazes me so much as his general argument. I have heard it before, when I was a puppy. Judis appears actually to believe that Russia is–how shall I put it? I’ll try the old way–expanding because it feels encircled. He writes plangently of “older Russian fears of encirclement.” His quick picture of Putin’s actions across Russia’s border portrays a completely reactive man. What else was Putin to do? We pushed him into Georgia! And then there is the use of that word “simply.” As in: “For McCain, it’s simply a product of Vladimir Putin’s evil intentions.” That little word does a lot of business. Coming from an intellectual, it is one of the cruelest insults. As in: For Judis, it’s simply a product of Western behavior. Not nice, right? And the insult to Judis is of course greater than the insult to McCain. For McCain always thinks simply, doesn’t he? I mean, he supported the war in Iraq. But for Judis, and all the other liberals who have sagely grasped the limits of American force and the blandishments of soft power and the danger of flying too close to the sun–they pride themselves upon their complexity. They are not simply anything.
There is a large historical and even philosophical matter at stake here. It has to do with the analysis of the motives of America’s rivals and enemies. Briefly, I see no reason almost ever to reduce their actions to our actions. Yes, history is a bramble of causes and effects, direct and indirect, and our policies have consequences; but still our rivals and our enemies are autonomous historical agents. They have beliefs and interests and desires and fears that we did not give them, or provide the occasion for them to get. Is there anything at all that we know about Vladimir Putin, about his background or his worldview or his career or his way with power, that makes his invasion of Georgia surprising? Putin champions a particular vision of Russia and a particular vision of Russia in the world. That vision is indigenous to himself and to the political culture over which he presides. It is a primary fact of the contemporary world. Not even the presidency of Barack Obama will rid him of it. You see, he does not wish to be rid of it.
Of course, this being the New Republic (and especially apparent in certain of the comments to Wieseltier’s post), the whole mess is really ultimately about Chimpy McHitlerBurton and Iraq, you see. Also, as far as certain of the America-loving patriots posting there are concerned, there is no moral or intellectual distinction whatever to be made — none — between the US and Russia, between the Iraq war and this one, between our posture towards Iran and Russia’s towards Georgia. But then you knew all that was coming, right?
Maybe somebody will come along and mention the tragic effect of global warming and its part in all this, too.
(Via The Other AP)
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