A Bear of a Blog

I apologize in advance. This blog is going to be long. I am going to use the Russia-Georgia conflict as the basis for what our future foreign policy should be.

To begin, America is losing a lot of face with the conflict in Iraq and the semi-depression of the summer. On July 3, President Medvedev of Russia spoke about a conversation he had with Henry Paulson Jr. (our Secretary of the Treasury) and said that the United States 'had other things to worry about' than complaining about Russia's apparent lack of human rights and democracy. This began a string of articles that popped to my attention throughout the summer. In Al-Ahram, a weekly journal out of Egypt similar to Time, there was an article about the diplomacy methods of Joeseph Nye. The thesis raised by this former US assistant secretary of defence and former dean of Harvard University's John Kennedy School of Government is that there is a difference between hard power and soft power, both of those being terms he coined. Hard power is monetary and military force imposed on others and soft power is influencing and inviting others to join a movement or cause, perhaps for monetary or military gain.

Then it happened, on August 8 Russia invaded South Ossetia. Forbes wrote that Russia was showing that Georgia was not a safe point for oil and natural gas. Far more importantly, however, is that Russia showed that it can attack wherever it wants whenever it wants and there isn't much that anybody can do about it. If Nixon knew anything, it's that the only way to fight a nuclear power is with nuclear weapons. That's why Nixon didn't fight Russia. He also didn't use words like terror to describe Russia.

I don't know when everyone boarded the train of forgetfulness, but apparently everyone forgot that in most countries that have Prime Ministers the Prime Minister has most, if not all, of the power. All of a sudden Forbes reported that Putin showed who has the real power in Russia. You don't say. Leader of the only political party, former President, current Prime Minister, former KGB member, the guy who picked the current President, that Vladamir Putin? He has all the power in Russia? I wouldn't have guessed... oh wait, yes I did. Back when I read this article about Putin being the Prime Minister of the Russia-Belarus Alliance. I, in fact, can be quoted by my former room mate, Cecil Hatfield, as saying that if I were Putin I would attack Georgia in my quest to take back the old Soviet Union. That was six weeks before the attack. I know I'm not the smartest guy in the world so I couldn't possibly be the only person that thought of that. I didn't even know that Georgia had oil and gas lines.

Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., said that Russia needed to stop Russia's campaign of "targeting of civilians and campaign of terror as well as its destruction of in Georgia's infrastructure." Strong words from a strong man, Captain Insano. That's a quote from The Waterboy. Captain Insano in this particular case is George Bush speaking through his mouthpiece to the UN. This ties in with the first point of this rant, that the United States is hardly in any position to tell other countries that they can't invade another nation. Especially since Russia is saying that Georgia is systematically killing off South Ossetians and Abkhazians. Where else have I heard about a nation invading a foreign land to protect the rights of its citizens and overthrow a genocidal leader? Point made.

Then came the real icing on the cake. Russia removed its troops and recognized the independent governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. With this move it sought to make itself look like a liberator instead of invader and a savior instead of thief. If the United States would have done this in Iraq it would have worked with perfection. Even Sweden's Foreign Minister has called this maneuver a "direct violation of international law."


So how do we move forward? Delicately, to say the least. What the United States needs to recognize is that we are in a post-Soviet era, to quote an article in the Moscow Times. We can not treat the Russians like we did in the Cold War, like many assume John McCain would, and we also can't be too soft with them, like many assume Barack Obama would. We must not try to deal with Russia single-handedly. I hope everyone reading this is sitting down. We must work with China and Iran to let Russia know that they don't have a free ticket to break the rules. This means, of course, that we must be far more friendly to China and Iran. We must return to a position where Europe is steadfast in it's approval of us. We must do more to improve our position with continents like Africa and South America, the ones that are developing and violent. We must redevelop the soft power that we had so that when we need to use hard power, like we could in the case of Russia, we can have a reliable network of support from other nations so that Russia will find itself alone and powerless, which it isn't right now.

The pressure isn't all on us, however. Many are calling for action on Russia's part. Nobody wants another Cold War, not even Vladamir Putin. It has to work more diligently and patiently with us in the light of changing administrations. It has to be more diligent in its use of the UN Security Council in preventing us from doing things it views as undesirable.

Perhaps in the future it would be better if all parties involved didn't do anything rash over something as silly as a flat tire.