H.D.S. Greenway of the Boston Globe accuses Robert Kagan of having a “frozen worldview.” Why? Because the “McCain guru” apparently disagrees with the notion that “human nature can be curbed and modified, and nations do change.” Kagan certainly doesn’t need me to defend him, but there are several points in Greenway’s piece that require clarification.
In defending realists, Greenway writes:
I know of no realists who believe that diplomacy is always sufficient without being backed up by potential force.
And I know of no serious critics of realists who accuse them of not believing this. More ridiculous, however, is the following assertion:
As for Russia, it cannot be excused for its lunge into Georgia, but it was the US-trained Georgian Army that upset the status quo in South Ossetia. Nations, like human beings, can feel threatened and lash out when attacked, but hostility is not an immutable trait.
If that’s not an “excuse” for Russia’s invasion of Georgia, I don’t know what is. Never mind the lie that Georgia “upset the status quo in South Ossetia.” And never mind the fact that the status quo–the presence of Russian “peacekeepers” in sovereign Georgian territory–was unjustified. How is it that mighty Russia felt “threatened” by tiny Georgia’s actions? And while “hostility” intrinsically “is not an immutable trait” in a country’s foreign policy, it is as long as that government is authoritarian, as Russia is today under Dmitri Medvedev and Vladimir Putin.
And then there’s this little bit of moral equivalence:
It would do no harm to recognize that Russia has an interest in what happens in the countries along its southern flank as does the United States on this continent.
The only “interest” Russia has in Georgia and its “near abroad” is stoking ethnic rivalries and undermining democratically-elected governments that wish to free themselves of Russian bullying. Its relationship with countries in the region is hardly comparable to that of the United States, which has friendly bonds with every country in the Western hemisphere that is democratic and embraces open markets.
Greenway closes with:
It is the dependence on military power, and the bluster of the neoconservatives, that has weakened America’s ability to achieve its goals, and it would be misguided indeed if this were to continue beyond the life of the present administration.
The “bluster of the neoconservatives”? Were Nancy Pelosi and Bill Clinton “blustering” when they railed against the “Butchers of Beijing?” That it’s only “neoconservatives” who use moral language in describing geopolitics is a falsehood. But it’s a rhetorically useful one when a Republican administration happens to be in power. Does Greenway believe that there is something an Obama administration will be able to say that will suddenly make the Russians good faith actors on the international stage? Or that will convince the Iranian regime to end its nuclear program? Highly doubtful. So what then, H.D.S?
