Crisis in Georgia
The following guest post is from Dan Conley, a former speechwriter for Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.
While most of America is distracted with the Olympics and the Edwards scandal, the world is inching closer to a massive, destructive war between Russia and Georgia, one that could possibly draw in Ukraine as well. So far, the domestic political implications of this conflict have been minimal, but the actions of both campaigns raise troubling questions about how either Senator would perform as Commander in Chief.
For Barack Obama, the problem is foreign policy incoherence. Obama has become a willing pawn of foreign policy experts -- to the point that he's embraced Georgia's entry into NATO without understanding the full implications of that strategy. As we now see, embracing Georgia in NATO means a willingness to defend that country in a war against Russia. Yet Obama's response has been all over the map, matching consensus global opinion. At first, he blamed both Georgia and Russia, then called for Russia to withdraw, now he's demanding an immediate cease fire. Events are in the saddle and Obama is going along for the ride -- this matches President Bush's approach to the crisis, and that's not a good thing.
For John McCain, the problem isn't coherence, it's bellicosity. McCain has been the strongest global voice behind Georgia since the shooting began. The problem is, when does the McCain tough rhetoric end and World War III begin? The McCain team will argue that the only way to deter Russia, Iran and other global aggressors from taking actions like this is to stand up to them forcefully, with credibility. The problem is the second half of that equation -- with U.S. troops in Iraq and even Georgia unsure how to get their 2,000 Iraqi troops back home in time to make a difference, how exactly would the U.S. help Georgia in this conflict, short of starting an all-out war with the second biggest nuclear power? At this moment, the U.S. has no credible way to threaten Russia. So unless McCain is willing to get the U.S. in the middle of every armed conflict on earth -- giving new definition to his promise of "more wars" -- a McCain Presidency would mean that we're at least going to enter a new age of foreign policy brinkmanship that will demand a military sufficient to fight these battles. That means either getting out of Iraq or reinstating a draft, because the military today is incapable of matching McCain's rhetoric.
One final point: yesterday, one Georgia official claimed that Russian jets targeted the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which carries roughly one percent of the world's oil to Turkey, bypassing Russian ports. The strike, if it actually happened, was unsuccessful. There has been no independent confirmation of the attack and considering how easy it's been for Iraqi insurgents to knock out pipelines over the last five years, one would assume that if Russia really wanted this pipeline out of service, it would be blown to bits by now. Yet despite the dubious nature of these reports, the Drudge Report threw up a headline this morning entitled The Pipeline War and now every American news source has followed their lead. All based on one man's unconfirmed report. Such is the ridiculous state of American news coverage in 2008 and another reason why the oil futures markets have become completely insane this year.
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