World War III, anyone? Palin echoes McCain

Sarah Palin suggested in her first public discussion of world affairs on ABC with Charlie Gibson tonight that the U.S. should quickly make Georgia a NATO ally and then be prepared to go to war with Russia in case of further Russian-Georgian conflict:

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

This simple syllogism needs to be viewed in the context of McCain's longstanding adventurism and provocation in Georgia.

McCain has for years urged that Georgia's membership in NATO be fast-tracked, notwithstanding that NATO's rules call for aspiring members to settle territorial disputes before they can be provided with membership "action plans." Since its civil war in 1991-1992, Georgia has insisted that full sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia is essential to its territorial integrity, though vast majorities in both regions do not want to be part of Georgia. McCain, schooled by his lobbyist-advisor Randy Scheunemann, who has taken over $800,000 in lobbying fees from the Georgian government since 2001, has offered unequivocal support for Georgia's claims to complete sovereignty over those regions.

In August 2006, McCain visited Georgia and added a visit to South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoiti. He was disappointed to hear from Kokoiti that "The people of South Ossetia see their future within the Russian Federation." Back in Tbilisi, McCain proclaimed, "Your country is a friend of America, and is worthy to become a NATO member," adding "Putin will never be president on Georgian territory" -- a statement literally true now that Putin is prime minister rather than President, but essentially belied today by South Ossetia's eager move into the Russian bear's embrace. On the same trip, McCain and other senators flew in a helicopter with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili over South Ossetian airspace -- and were fired upon by the South Ossetians.

In Georgia as in other global hot spots, McCain has been more aggressive and confrontational than the Bush Administration. Anatol Lieven Lieven, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, noted McCain's provocative role in his prescient essay "War in the Caucasus?" -- published in October 2006:

The Bush administration has repeatedly assured the Kremlin that it is putting heavy pressure on Saakashvili’s government not to attack the breakaway regions. Yet Moscow can’t help but see a contradiction. Exhibit A is the fact that the United States continues to arm and train Georgian forces. Moreover, Russians see Georgian adventurism as encouraged by less restrained U.S. politicians, such as John McCain and other senators who visited Georgia in recent months and expressed strong support for Georgian aspirations. McCain’s helicopter allegedly came under fire as it flew over South Ossetia.

Vladimir Putin's recent assertion that the Bush Administration urged Saakashivili to invade South Ossetia in order to help John McCain get elected was doubtless a cynical and paranoid overstatement. But McCain's constant provocations fuel Russian paranoia; his election would bring that paranoia to fever pitch. In February 2008, Interfax relayed Russian official thinking in the voice of one Sergei Markov:

The U.S. and Russian political analysts wonder why McCain hates Russia so much. There are different assumptions here. Some believe he cannot come over his wounds suffered in Vietnam, for which he blames the Soviet Union. McCain is the last Cold War warrior. Despite the fact that neither the USSR nor this war exist any longer, he is continuing it.

One does not have to condone Russia's disproportionate force in Georgia or its continuing effort to unseat Saakashvili to recognize that there were two sides to that conflict -- and that the idiotic Saakashvili gave the Russians rhetorical and moral cover by attacking first. But McCain recognizes no such nuance. In his telling, Georgia is simply "a wonderful little country...one of the earliest Christian nations" -- now "suffering terribly" under unprovoked Russian aggression. Palin echoed this simplified morality play today, asserting, "For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable."

Was Russia's deep incursion into Georgian territory "unacceptable"? Yes. Was it "unprovoked"? No. Did Russia provoke the provocation? Probably. But it's McCain's way in this election cycle to keep things comic-book simple -- in fact to lie relentlessly to make things simple.

Georgia is not the only theater in which McCain has exceeded all other public figures in belligerence. On multiple occasions, he's advocated risking war in North Korea. In 1999, he criticized Clinton's "prevent defense" even as he acknowledged that the "firmer response" he called for "might have triggered a war." In 2003, he urged the Bush Administration to impose strict sanctions and a blockade -- again stating openly that he was ready for all-out war:

But if we fail to achieve the international cooperation necessary to end this threat, then the countries int he region should know with certainty that while they may risk their own populations, the United States will do whatever it must to guarantee the security of the American people. And spare us the usual lectures about American unilateralism. We would prefer the company of North Korea's neighbors, but we will make do without it if we must ("Rogue State Rollback, January 20, 2003 - recently removed from McCain's Senate website).

McCain may in fact prove a grave risk to world peace. In addition to coming out in favor of war with Iraq within weeks of 9/11, he has advocated providing Taiwan with a missile shield, blockading North Korea, bombing Iran (in jest, right?), and imposing an investment blockade on Russia after Putin jailed oligarch Khodorkovsky in 2003.

Sarah Palin, if she accepts her pastor's teaching, believes literally in Armageddon. John McCain seems willing, even eager, to risk it.

McCain finds a Christian Crusade in Georgia's misfortune

Among the great disgusting moments in U.S. presidential campaign history, ring up John McCain recasting the Russian invasion of Georgia as a religious war in last night's Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency, hosted by megapastor Pastor Rick Warren. In a great pandering mush, McCain managed to fuse democratic evangelicalism with Christian evangelicalism in a fairy tale version of the current catastrophe (excuse the caps; that's how the available transcript is formatted):

I'M VERY SADDENED HERE TO BE WITH YOU AND TALK ABOUT A RUSSIA REEMERGENCE IN THE CENTURIES OLD AMBITION OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE TO DOMINATE THAT PART OF THE WORLD. KILLINGS, MURDER, VILLAGES ARE BEING BURNED. PEOPLE ARE BEING WANTONLY EJECTED FROM THEIR HOMES. LATEST FIGURE IS FROM HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION IS 118,000 PEOPLE FROM THAT SMALL COUNTRY. IT WAS ONE OF THE EARLIEST CHRISTIAN NATIONS. THE KING OF THEN GEORGIA IN THE THIRD CENTURY CONVERTED TO CHRISTIANITY. YOU GO TO GEORGIA AND YOU SEE THESE OLD CHURCHES THAT GO BACK TO THE FOURTH AND FIFTH CENTURY. IN FACT THE PRESIDENT SAAKZSHVILI IS A MAN WHO IS EDUCATED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ON A SCHOLARSHIP. HE WENT BACK TO GEORGIA AND WITH OTHER YOUNG PEOPLE WHO HAD ALSO RECEIVED AN EDUCATION THEY ACHIEVED A REVOLUTION THEY HAD DEMOCRACY PROSPERITY AND A GREAT ALSO NATION AND NOW THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING IN THERE IN AN ACT OF AGGRESSION AND WE HAVE TO NOT ONLY BRING ABOUT CEASE FIRE BUT WE HAVE TO HAVE HONORED ONE OF THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF ANY NATION AND THAT IS TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY. WE MUST RESPECT THE ENTIRE TERRITORY OF RUSSIA -- EXCUSE ME -- THE RUSSIANS MUST RESPECT THE ENTIRE TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY OF GEORGIA AND THERE'S ONLY 4 MILLION PEOPLE IN GEORGIA MY FRIENDS. I'VE BEEN THERE. IT'S A BEAUTIFUL LITTLE COUNTRY THEY ARE WONDERFUL PEOPLE. THEY ARE SUFFERING TERRIBLY NOW (my emphasis).

Never mind that Georgia's current nominal territory was cobbled together by none other but Stalin, and so its "territorial integrity" supports about as much social cohesion as that Yugoslavia or Iraq. Never mind that vast majorities in South Ossetia and Abkhazia no more want to be part of Georgia than Georgia wants to be part of Greater Russia. (Yes, the situation is complicated; Georgians were ethnnically cleansed from Abkhazia in the early '90s, and Russian proxies largely run both provinces. But McCain doesn't do nuance.) Never mind that that young western-educated paragon Saakashvili - who held up McCain as a political model for himself shortly after his election* -- recklessly started the current war with an invasion and bombardment of South Ossetia.

What is the relevance of Georgia's status as "one of the earliest Christian nations"? Is that a simple pander to an Evangelical audience - we have to take care of one of our own? Pander yes, simple no. In McCain's comic-book historical narrative, there's a straight line from Christianity to democracy; arrayed on the other side are the Godless communists and autocratic Muslims. Unfortunately he can't tie Russia to radical Islam (though maybe Russia is less Christian than Georgia, since Christianity didn't come to Russia till around 1000?), but in his universe the Russians are still Godless communists. And the U.S. can return to the simple imagined moral clarity of Ronald Reagan's "evil empire" stance early in his presidency:

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES HAS THE GREATEST ASSET IS THE BULLY PULPIT. THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND I GO BACK AGAIN TO RONALD REAGAN HE WENT TO THE BERLIN WALL AND SAID TAKE DOWN THIS WALL. CALLED THEM AN EVIL EMPIRE. MANY SAID DON'T, DON'T ANTAGONIZE THE RUSSIANS OR DON'T CAUSE A CONFRONTATION WITH THE SOVIET UNION. HE STOOD FOR WHAT HE BELIEVED AND HE SAID WHAT HE BELIEVED AND HE SAID THAT TO THOSE PEOPLE WHO WERE THEN CAPTIVE NATIONS THE DAY WILL COME WHEN YOU WILL KNOW FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY AND THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF MAN. OUR JUDEO CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES DICTATE THAT WE DO WHAT WE CAN TO HELP PEOPLE WHO ARE PRESSED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD AND I WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU THAT I STILL THINK THAT EVEN IN THE WORSE PLACES IN THE WORLD TODAY IN THE DARKEST CORNERS LITTLE COUNTRIES LIKE BELARUS, THEY STILL HARBOR THIS HOPE AND DREAM SOME DAY TO BE LIKE US AND HAVE FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY AND WE HAVE OUR FLAWS AND WE HAVE OUR FAILINGS AND WE TALK ABOUT THEM ALL THE TIME AND WE SHOULD, BUT WE REMAIN MY FRIENDS THE MOST UNUSUAL EXPERIMENT IN HISTORY AND I'M PRIVILEGED TO SPEND EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE IN IT. I KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE WITHOUT IT.

Never mind that the revered Reagan negotiated over many years with Gorbachev, establishing trust over time, supporting his reforms within the Soviet Union, and proceeding with caution and tact as communism unraveled in Eastern Europe. In the aureate glow of McCain's nostalgia, Reagan simply shouted ant the Wall came tumbling down.

My friends (as McCain loves to say), this is dangerous stuff. McCain for years has advocated kicking Russia out of the G-8. He continues to promote the fantasy of a League of Democracies (Judeo-Christian democracies?) as a way to undercut the global influence of Russia and China. For years, he's championed Georgia's admiission into NATO and egged Saakashvili on in his quest to restore "terrotorial integrity" to Georgia; indeed, he's as responsible as anyone other than Saakashvili himself for the current debacle. A few days ago he even suggested, in a somewhat muted way, that NATO should consider sending troops to Georgia.

McCain is by this point a more extreme historical fabulist than George W. Bush himself. He is indeed likely, as Patrick Buchanan warned us with a laugh, to "make Cheney look like Gandhi."

* Saakashvili, Nov. 30, 2003, quoted by Peter Baker in The Washington Post: "I was really raised on American democracy, not only my studies but much more," he said. "JFK is my political idol." In modern terms, he patterns himself after another American politician. "For me, the closest thing in terms of political orientation is John McCain," the renegade Republican senator from Arizona.