sounds about right.

the very idea that obama thinks talk about nato membership for georgia is appropriate at this time has me very worried about the world. (especially since his supporters will just follow wherever he leads, defending his idiocy and attacking his critics.)

mccain's an absolutely terrifying war-mongering and saber rattling moron. but obama doesn't really instill much confidence as an alternative.

Well the insight is brilliant but I could have done without the namedropping -- as if having rich relatives has anything at all to do with her observations about Russia and Georgia.

Excellent post.

Georgia is a small country with a large and powerful neighbor. It is just a fact of life that any such country has to reach a modus vivendi with the powerful neighbor. But Georgia has probably been much more assertive and aggressive in its dealing with Russia than it would otherwise have been, because some Georgians have received the very mistaken impression over the past few years that tens of millions of American guardian angels are ready to fly in to save them if their actions ever precipitated any serious trouble.

What other conclusion could they draw when prominent Americans speak so loudly about a permanent revolution for democratic enlargement, one that seems to envision NATO membership for every European and Eurasian country except Russia? What else should they conclude when ideas for NATO expansion are thrown around by American policy-wonks and pundits in the most casual way, as though inviting a country into NATO is not much different than making a trade pact with that country, opening a satellite branch of an American college in their capital, or sending them a Welcome Wagon basket with an attached note signed “From your Friends, the West”?

But NATO isn’t just a garden club for Occidentophiles, or a box of free teeshirts to be shot into the crowd during a Cold War victory lap around the global stadium. It is a defensive alliance. We are now reminded that defensive alliances are very serious business indeed, and unless one perceives the defense of some particular foreign country as absolutely vital to one's own security, then one has no business entangling oneself with that country, and embroiling one's own security with that other country's security.

Americans believe the Cold War is over, and rightly so, since contemporary Russia poses no Soviet-style threat to the United States. Absent a threat of the sort the Soviet Union once posed, or was at least perceived as posing, very, very few Americans will have any interest in extending a security perimeter all the way out to some of Russia's next-door neighbors, like Georgia, and making potentially dangerous commitments to the security of remote countries in the Caucuses. That sucks for the Georgians, perhaps, but it is a fact of life that they just have to deal with.

Some lingering Cold War triumphalists from the Clinton era want NATO to be, in effect, an offensive alliance, providing the military muscle for some vaguely conceived ideological-economic world system expansion, tendentiously conceptualized as a struggle for western "democracy" against various evil eastern despots. I have to believe most Americans, to the extent they have an opinion at all on the matter, aren't deeply interested in this project. And they don't see the conflicts between Russians, Europeans and Americans in such grandiose ideological terms. The predictable hysterical pleas from expansionists about falling dominoes, appeasement and global ideological war aren't likely to be convincing in the current environment.

The Georgians miscalculated, because they might not have noticed that these grand strategic thinkers in America never really consulted ordinary Americans, and there is no reason to think that most Americans are interested in tying their security and military commitments to the disputes in the remote Caucuses. Such miscalculations cost lives, as we now see. Russia has also probably been much more aggressive with Georgia than it would otherwise have been, because they see Georgia as working with Washington to park a US military base right in their back yard. Perhaps the events of the past week will give the democratic expansionist party some pause in the future, when it comes to leading people on and encouraging them to deposit faith in far-fetched schemes and idle pillow-talk about unrealistic long-term commitments from foreign lovers.

Obama's statement on NATO membership for Georgia was almost up there with Obama's statement (and vote) on FISA. What is this guy thinking? This is a change in which I cannot believe. Will his supporters at TPM support him on this, too?

For once I agree with criticism of our administration. Comparisons with Czeckeslovakia, Munich, etc. are wrong and stupid. Comparisons with Chechnya are another matter and I wonder why they aren't made more often.

We already have wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, not to mention CIA insurgencies in Iran, Muslim China, The Philippines--and now it's back to the good ole USSR-- er, I mean Russia.

We also know that 2 out of 3 corporations don't pay Income taxes, and the rest of the rich rwefuse to serve in the military and hardly pay their share of taxes...

In other words, we are stretched beyond our means but our incorrigible leaders, Pentagon people and future leaders want us to soldier on.

What's on our horizon? Decline, of course. It's happened to the best of empires, even many of the worst. Read ther tea leaves fans--we're heading for a fall, er, decline.