reminds me of the time in Vegas, not sober, when I wandered up to the $50.00 BackJack table… Black Jack to me was pals getting together and having fun over beers…

Two hands later, I was, in a very nice way, asked to leave, and try the $5.00 tables…I was pretty sure the others at the table wanted to kick my ass.

article. One critique of US Policy toward Russians is our recognizing an independant Kosovo, I think last year. I didn’t see why that was necessary or in the US interest, and since the Russians objected, why not, in that case, take that objection into account.?

Thank you!

I carry no brief for the Russians; they’re a nasty, brutish lot whether czarist, communist, or kleptocrat and, like some of our other “friends” will need about a thousand years of charm school before you’d actually want them at the table. That said, the thing that bothers me about our dealings with the Soviet irredenta is that I suspect we wouldn’t take very kindly to the Russians or Chinese cozying up with say, Sonora or Baja California and encouraging them to break away from Mexico and side ally with them. Or, worse yet, cozying up with the extant separatist movements in the US Southwest. We already know that this is a game that the old KGB well knows how to play here, and I’m not at all certain that what passes for the CIA these days knows how to play at all.

A lot to think about here. Every once in a great while, I read something that changes my whole way of looking at something, and this was one of those moments.

Can’t help but recall the out of print book on Gen Stilwell and his fight with the Air Force over the need for infantry to hold air bases in China when arguing against the people who argued about the use of an air force centric approach to combatting Japan in WW II
We can put down all types of hardware, but isn’t any use against someone bent on using infantry and related combat arms soldiers on the ground. The Russians are telling us what they will do and will anyone be prepared to prevent a war with Russia- I hated saying that cause it is becoming a more realistic thought.
Why are the Russians friends with the Iranians and not with the USA? Common perception of who is an enemy? The linked article has the best explanation of the Russian psyche anywhere.
I wouldn’t of said anything if I weren’t familiar with both games, as well as Risk.

That the soviets cant believe we would be so ‘stupid’ as to care about whether there is Freedom in the Ukraine…tells us all we need to know about the soviets.

I think recognizing the independence of Kosovo is asking for a Jihadist state in the middle of Europe, so I am not 100% behind US actions in the region.

However, Georgia and the Ukraine are critical to answering the question of whether Western-style governments will continue to expand, or whether things trend the other way.

People want to make all sorts of excuses for the Russians, and the pronouncements of useful idiots is unfortunately not newsworthy.

Time to start selling anti-tank weapons to all Wester countries in the former Eastern Block.

And the reason Americans keep using it is because whenever we use it we win. The South lost to the North because the North kept out producing them. Very few people question that the better tacticians fought for the South, even Yanks like me. Same thing applied in World War II where some Germans complained they literally ran out of shells before we ran out of Sherman tanks. It was unquestionably how we won in Africa, with the Germans running out of diesel to power their tanks. Even in pre-modern warfare, siege strategies were always about seizing resources so you could outlast your enemy. Personally I’d use the German game Settlers of Catan instead of Monopoly, but the effect is the same.

But there is also some sense in which I think all this talk somewhat unnecessarily raises the respectability of what is going on in Georgia. I think it really is a bit more like the schoolyard bully. Properly standing up to the bully will sometimes cause him to rethink what he is doing without needing to smack him down. Fail to do that and you encourage his tactics. Smack him down once and he never goes back to them, at least with respect to you. McCain’s statements on Georgia correspond to standing up to the bully, and I think make it clear he is willing to go to the smackdown if necessary. Obama fumbled as fully as Neville did in his time.

Do you think (assuming McCain wins) that the Russians would invade Tbilisi, Ukraine or any other nation in which US troops are on the ground, nation is in or has applied for NATO, and/or has SDI or other US weapon systems in alliance with us or has agreed to do so?

I don’t.

Doesn’t the notion that they might depend upon the now proven false premise soon after the invasion of Georgia that all of New Europe and the US would be intimidated?

We and they are not. We have troops in an airlift. USSR did not invade West Berlin after we put troops on the ground.

Russia’s army is a shell of what they had anyway, and I know they could technically take Tbilisi, they wouldn’t tripwire world war by killing American troops, and they couldn’t take and hold Ukraine or Poland, could they?

Even if they could, they won’t?

will they?

I say no.

I could be wrong.

Any idea who this “Spengler” clown is?

You have to be in the Dracula category of indecency to uncork a howler like this:

The West has two choices: draw a line in the sand around Ukraine, or trade it to the Russians for something more important.

Ukraine (like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, etc.) is an independent, sovereign nation. “We” have no business “trading” away other people’s countries any more than Chamberlain and his French counterpart did in Munich in 1938 (and remember how THAT turned out?). This harkens back to Sen. Schumer’s moronic op-ed in the WSJ back in June where he suggested that we agree to cede a “sphere over influence” over eastern Europe to the Kremlin in exchange for “help with Iran” – causing a deserved firestorm all over eastern Europe, and among US-based eastern-European-origin cultural organizations. Where the h*ll is he getting the attitude that he can “play God” with other peoples’ lives and freedoms????

But since “Spengler” has knotted up the rope, let’s let him hang himself:

My proposal is simple: Russia’s help in containing nuclear proliferation and terrorism in the Middle East is of infinitely greater import to the West than the dubious self-determination of Ukraine. The West should do its best to pretend that the “Orange” revolution of 2004 and 2005 never happened, and secure Russia’s assistance in the Iranian nuclear issue as well as energy security in return for an understanding of Russia’s existential requirements in the near abroad. Anyone who thinks this sounds cynical should spend a week in Kiev.

Well, unlike (I suspect) “Spengler,” I’m in Ukraine regularly and do spend quite a bit of time in places like Kyiv (that’s the Ukrainian name, sir) and other places. And unlike him, I actually have friends and colleagues who put their career prospects (and even their lives) at risk to get out and make the “Orange Revolution” happen. Now he just wants to tell them to go get stuffed about it all??

And if thinks this is such a grand idea, I’d challenge him to set up a podium on the Maydan in Kyiv and announce over the PA system that “we” are selling the Ukrainians back to the Russians for our own good and for the greater good of “the world” – and see what kind of reaction he gets.

He wants to run Molotov-Ribbentrop all over again, but on steroids. Perhaps he should visit Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland and ask what they thought of all that.

Let’s deliver “Spengler” to eastern Europe in person to make his proposal in public – and then start a betting pool on the largest piece of him that comes back in the cardboard box….

(Skanderbeg doesn’t get genuinely angry very often – enjoy it.)

Great piece.

So let me get this straight, there are many of thinking Americans who believe that we are going to go to war for Georgia? We have trouble convincing the country to go to war for our self defense, much less some small country that is of no strategic interest to us. We wonder why we have 9 trillion in debt and the Russians have 600 billion surplus, because we are running around the world sticking our noses and our money in places neither belong. Charity like self defense begins at home. McCain is talking tough, but he and no one with a brain will take on Russia over Georgia. I know we grew up playing risk, but life cannot be one constant war without bankruptcy – ask Rome.

Russia is not our enemy. They are a natural member of alliance against the true enemy.

… by highlighting the centrality of demographics in the strategy of Russia.

Russian nationalists are terrified. They see a looming existential threat. Some simple extrapolations a few decades into the future paint a grim picture for Russia: a declining population, an end to the oil boom, and rising powerful neighbors (China, Islam, the EU).

Russian nationalists look at ethnic Russians in the near abroad as a last gasp attempt to hold back the tide. And the big prize is Ukraine.

Russia hopes to someday reabsorb Ukraine. If it can’t get the whole of Ukraine it would settle for a partition and just take the ethnic Russian Eastern portion.

And failing that, it is in Russia’s interest to create chaos in the near abroad to entice ethnic Russians to move back to the motherland.

In the past, it was Russian strategy to seed its frontiers with ethnic Russians. But Russia no longer has the numbers to play that strategy. Increasingly Russian nationalists want to pull ethnic Russians back to the center that they feel is under threat by a booming Muslim population.

It does illustrate how important a large, growing, and unified population is to national power. America is fairly well situated on those grounds, the biggest medium term challenge being whether we can assimilate our Mexican immigrants.

Probably the single most important thing we can do to ensure American power in the next century is to make sure Mexican immigrants learn English. Subsidize English lessons, mandate English instruction — just flat out bribe ‘em if we have to. Whatever works. If the grandchildren of today’s Mexican immigrant speak English, we’ll be ok. If those same grandchildren are still Spanish-dominant in 2050, then America will face serious internal trouble — just as China will be seriously vying with us for global dominance.

Dying organisms and dying states do desperate things to survive.

Putin’s energetic response to Georgia is sending a message to all of Russia’s neighbors. When the leaders of the countries surrounding Russia appeared at a rally in the Georgian capital they clearly stated that they know that Georgia’s future is their future. I am sure Putin was not pleased that they had the courage to stand by the underdog, but they know that together they have chance of surviving.

But placing oneself in their shoes you wonder what they think of America and the West. When Russian troops invaded Georgia, Putin immediately left the Olympics and went to Russia’s command center. But Bush spent another three days rubbing shoulders with the volleyball and other teams.

I helped put together a bloggers call with a Georgian reporter last Friday. He was stationed outside of Gori. When asked what he thought of the American response he said it was 72 hours too late.

Then Bush went on vacation. Hardly, the proper actions of the Leader of the Free World.

For those interested in this issue there is a Facebook group Russia Out of the G8

Looks like I’ve missed the prime time for this thread but here is a conversation I would love to join in at some point. You make some excellent points.

I’ve kept a low profile here as late to stay out of the election stuff – I’m not sure the current tenor of Redstate needs a (usually) polite Dem apologist – but this is the sort of thing I always enjoy. The virtual beer is on me . Cheers.

Maybe we’ll talk more post-November.

The Glasgow Herald’s veteran political correspondent Iain McWhirter wonders wtf is wrong with America, that John McCain is actually level with Obama in the polls. A lot of Europeans are wondering the same thing.

It seems incredible, but as the Democrats gather in Denver to anoint Barack Obama, America could be on course to re-elect a Republican as their President. Not just any Republican either, but a belligerent 71-year-old who can’t remember how many houses he owns, would happily nuke Iran and whose answer to global warming is to drill for oil in environmentally sensitive areas off the coast of America which don’t even have much oil. But according to the polls, John McCain is drawing level with Barack Obama, and even pulling ahead.

Really, America is a strange, strange country. After a disastrous and illegal war, in which 4000 American soldiers have died, in the middle of an economic crisis largely caused by the investment houses that finance the Republican party, you would have thought it almost inconceivable that the Republicans could be re-elected. Could any political brand be more toxic? Has any party in history deserved to be thrown out at an election more than the Republicans in 2008?

… Yet enough American voters believe that John McCain might have the answers for him to become a serious contender. Which is scary. McCain is not an unknown quantity – he is a highly excitable politician with a notoriously short temper, who would bring his impetuous and confrontational style into American foreign policy. With the world entering a global economic slump, and old enmities raging in Europe, John McCain as President would be like a flamethrower in a fireworks factory.

It is scary – and Obama has to take a fair chunk of the blame. He’s seemed flat since the exhausting primary race (here’s hoping he does better at the convention) and although his campaign actually has a decent set of detailed policies, he’s been awful at articulating them. Good on the inspirational rhetoric, crap on getting down in the weeds and it’s left him looking like, as the right likes to put it, an “empty suit”. Maybe Biden will help there – even when I’ve disagreed with him on policy, Joe’s been adept at putting detailed policies into easy to swallow forms that don’t obscure that there is detail there.

But McWhirter points to the major reason a McCain presidency is scary:

I got an insight into the McCain worldview last week at the Edinburgh Book Festival in a session I did with Robert Kagan, McCain’s leading foreign affairs adviser, and author of The Return of History and the End of Dreams. The good news is that the war against terror is past tense, it seems, because he didn’t mention al Qaeda once. The bad news is that America might be about to revisit, not the cold war, but the era of nineteenth-century great power rivalry, which is how Kagan characterised the current state of international affairs.

He believes the great faultline is between America and an axis of authoritarianism represented by China and Russia. There is a new era of geopolitical confrontation, according to Kagan, as Russia re-arms and China builds the biggest army in the world. America has to step up.“The future international order will be shaped,” he says, “by those who have the power and the collective will to shape it.” No prizes for guessing whether John McCain is up to the military challenge. Europe, which Kagan dismissed as an irrelevant entity in the new world of hard power, would get trampled in the rush.

That’s basically an admission from Kagan that a McCain foreign policy would consist entirely of looking for reasons to fight with Russia and China.

The neocons finally have their wet dream. No longer do they have to hype up a bunch of ragtag misfits hanging out in Pakistan’s wilds or an “existential threat” from Iran that is anything but. They’ve got an enemy worthy of their ideology, their notion that America shows itself best when in a war for its very existence. They want to take on the two largest rival military powers in the world, both at once. And they don’t want to do it by diplomacy, containment or any of that other pantywaist stuff. Oh no – they’re want to use “hard power’ – that’s a euphemism for war, folks – and they believe McCain is just the angry old duffer they can lead by the nose into providing it.

“Scary” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Completely batshit insane would be better. In case anyone doesn’t remember, the era of nineteenth-century great power rivalry led directly to the Great War and WW2, the first of which began over a tiny incident that lit the fuse on the powderkeg. How comforting is it to know that, under a McCain presidency, the neocons would actively go looking for a new spark?

NOTE: Another reason the United States to regain creditibiity in the world and clearly John McCain isn’t that person.

Long gone. They rarely hang around to defend the mess they make. More fun to brag about their inevitable blamming to their fellow travelers.

Same juvenile prank as ringing doorbells in the middle of the night and running when all the lights come on.

Well, I for one am for sending American troops to Georgia to do battle with the Russians. We have over 10 battle hardened divisions in Iraq that could be sent north a few hundred miles to Tbilisi. Air wings out of Rammstein and Incirlik could provide air support. The Mediterranean Sixth Fleet could provide naval support along with an amphibious force of Marines.

If the REMFs in DC would grow some cajones, we could send those Russian cockroaches scurrying back across the Caucausus mountains from whence they came. Russia won’t risk escalating the war to a nuclear exchange unless their territorial integrity is threatened and they are facing complete defeat. Therefore, so long as our stay on the south side of the Caucausus mountains, Russia won’t escalate the war to a nuclear exchange.

A friend claimed that the weaponry of Stealth bombers would allow us to deliver some well-aimed kabooms at Russian (I almost wrote Soviet) bases from outside Russian territory.

Sure sounds good!

Why not? The risk is that they would demolish and annex Georgia in retaliation.

Would the U.S. be ready to take it to the next level? And which level would that be?

I would love to help the Georgians directly also, but I do not see the support right now among the population for doing that.

I would love to see the mess in Darfur/the Sudan cleaned up as well, but…