Obama’s Foreign Engagement Scorecard

STATESMAN President Obama brokered a climate agreement in Copenhagen Friday.




He must have the skill and personality needed for brokering compromises. Much of the world does look to the US for leadership, but it is a challenge to translate that to practical results.

If there is a one-word handle that fits the conduct of foreign relations in Barack Obama’s first year as president, it is “engagement.” The Obama administration has engaged with Iran, Russia, Burma, Sudan, North Korea. “Engagement” sounds harmless — something any sensible administration would do (though the Bush administration apparently did far less of it).

But what, in fact, does President Obama have to show for “engagement” itself? And how do you keep score? He has just emerged from Copenhagen having brokered an agreement, however modest, on climate change. Does that count?

There is difficulty in measuring progress, yet less than a year has passed since he took office. It seems very early to make judgments. Of course, that does not stop pundits from doing so.

To some conservatives, engagement thus sounds like a euphemism for “appeasement.” Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues, “There is a perception around the world that Obama is proceeding on bended knee to our enemies, and they’re rebuffing us contemptuously.”

How does this pundit know what perceptions there are "around the world"?

Iran is both the most important, and the most passionately disputed, case. Engagement here would seem to have been a failure — but only if you take the policy wholly at face value. One senior administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record says that while the offer of engagement was “never just an instrument or a ploy,” and remains on the table, the very public effort to exhaust all available means of persuasion has helped move Europe, Russia and China toward a tougher stance.

Perhaps, then, the ultimate measure of the success of the engagement policy will be the extent to which the good will President Obama has generated will tip the balance in the hard bargaining before his administration — over assistance from allies in Afghanistan, over new approaches to the Middle East and the international economic structure, and, most immediately, in the struggle to reach a meaningful agreement on how to slow global warming — an issue where the global good collides with the most basic questions of national interest. The credit Mr. Obama has earned will have to stretch a very long way.

Scaling back Reagan’s starry vision

The new plan that President Obama laid out for a missile shield against Iran on Thursday turns Ronald Reagan’s vision of a Star Wars system on its head: Rather than focusing first on protecting the continental United States, it shifts the immediate effort to defending Europe and the Middle East.

It is a long way from the impermeable shield that President Reagan described in glowing terms in 1983, an announcement that turned into a diplomatic triumph even while it was a technological flop. Ever since, missile defense has always been more about international politics than about new military technology.

That's the rub of it: Reagan said it would be a magnificent technological wonder that would make the US safe from all missiles, but it has never been built. That is so typical of Reagan and Reaganisms: tell it, make it sound great, and ignore the fact that it is untrue (also known as a lie).

That standoff has fed the conviction inside the White House that the Iranian threat needs to be countered. But officials argued Thursday that the faster, and surer, way to accomplish that goal was to scrap Mr. Bush’s plan, which would have based antimissile batteries too far from Iran to be useful against short- and medium-range missiles, and put them closer to Tehran.

Mr. Obama’s critics argue that while Iran is rightly a major focus of missile defense, it is not the only one, and that in dismantling the Bush plan, the new president is undercutting American allies.

“I fear the administration’s decision will do just that,” Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival in last year’s presidential election, said Thursday, adding that the decision came “at a time when Eastern European nations are increasingly wary of renewed Russian adventurism.”

Russian adventurism, such as it is, as in its standoff with Georgia, isn't much,

But Mr. Obama is betting that over time he can assuage bruised feelings in Europe. And he is betting that his credibility will rise in the Middle East, where he can now argue that the American missile shield will defend both Israel and the Arab states, notably Saudi Arabia and Egypt. There are signs that all of them may be interested in nuclear capabilities of their own — especially if they believe that the United States will not stand up to Iran.

Realpolitik.

So Mr. Obama faces the same challenge as Mr. Reagan: Winning the argument that his version of missile defense is workable — or at least workable enough to be a potent political weapon.

Making the primary aim of the missile system political.

Shielded

The decision, which he announced this morning after completing a six-month review of the program, removes the biggest obstacle in U.S.-Russian relations—a step that could clear the way for cooperative measures on a wide range of international issues—without scrapping the general idea of some sort of "missile shield" for Europe.

Conservatives in the US and Poland are howling. But this isn't a decision made by the President in a vacuum.

Bush came up with the plan to put 10 anti-missile interceptors and radars on Czech and Polish soil in 2007, and the Russians have been clamoring about it ever since. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Bush of trying to upset the balance of power.

10 interceptors aren't much, but their symbolism meant something to both sides.

Bush's top officials, including his (and now Obama's) defense secretary, Robert Gates, tried to persuade Putin that such fears had no basis. The interceptors would be configured to shoot down missiles launched by Iran, not by Russia. And in any case, a mere 10 interceptors were hardly a counterweight to the thousands of offensive missiles in Russia's nuclear arsenal.

How conservative Republicans can howl against President Obama, given that Secretary Gates is a carry-over from the previous Administration is something they choose to ignore. Facts do not drive their arguments, but only serve as a launching pad to criticize anything, and everything, the President does.

The argument was correct but also beside the point. The Russians were worried not so much about what 10 interceptors could do but rather about what they represented—a U.S. military foothold in the heart of Eastern Europe.

Russia did not like Poland becoming part of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

The anti-missile weapons that Bush wanted to put in the Czech Republic and Poland were the same weapons that he was installing, as part of the larger missile-defense program, in Fort Greely, Alaska. These weapons, known as GBI (for Ground-Based Interceptors), are huge multi-staged rockets, about the size of Minuteman ICBMs, and, like them, are deployed in blast-resistant, underground silos—literally dug and hardened into the soil. The GBI complex in Alaska is spread out across 600 acres and includes a large X-Band radar system and 200 military personnel, as well as a security presence along the surrounding roads.

NATO member countries:
Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Rep, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal,Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States

Russia has long been nervous about the expansion of NATO into its former imperial realm. The prospect of a large, fixed military installation in this realm—not quite a nuclear weapon (the GBI carries a "kill vehicle" that smashes into its target rather than a nuclear warhead) but, still, a weapon related to the U.S. nuclear program—was going a step too far.

Russia is certainly shown to be weak by NATO's expansion (even Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are members), but it does retain some influence and power.

When Obama met with Putin and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in July, the missile-defense plan still rankled; the Russian leaders said that they liked the new American president's words (the "reset button" and so forth), but they were still waiting for his deeds. Obama's announcement this morning constitutes a substantial deed.

Secretary Gates, in a follow-up press conference, emphasized that, contrary to a Wall Street Journal headline, Obama was not "scrapping missile defense in Europe." Rather, he was adjusting the program. Rather than building huge, fixed GBI complexes in Eastern Europe, he would buy more small, mobile SM-3 missiles and place them, initially, on the U.S. Navy's Aegis cruisers.

The Journal never lets mere facts get in the way of its right-wing agenda, its slanting of news to emphasize an anti-Obama view.

At some point, no earlier than 2015, the SM-3s might also be deployed on ground bases in northern or southern Europe, "in consultation with allies," Gates said, "starting with Poland and the Czech Republic." (Notice: He didn't say the anti-missile missiles might be based in those two countries—though that's not out of the question—only that those countries would be the first consulted on the matter. A more likely base, if Iranian missiles are the concern, would be Turkey, though Gates didn't say that, either.)

Matters are postponed for six years, a large window of time when much can get done.

The SM-3s are capable of shooting down short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, unlike the GBI, which is designed to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles. But Obama and Gates said this morning that this feature is appropriate, since recent intelligence indicates that Iran is making faster progress on developing shorter-range missiles and much slower progress on ICBMs.

In other words, Gates claimed, Obama's plan provides "a better missile-defense capability" for Europe—a plan that is more flexible, less vulnerable, and better suited to the actual threat than the plan that he himself advocated three years ago under President Bush.

Spin, baby, spin.

Is this true, or is it post-hoc rationalization? A bit of both.

Spin.

For one thing, Bush's plan to put GBI complexes in Poland and the Czech Republic was not meant to defend Europe. Rather, the initial discussions of a European missile-defense plan, in 2003-04, focused on using these weapons to shoot down missiles launched by Iran as they passed over Europe on their way to the United States. The interceptors could provide protection for some parts of Europe, but that wasn't the main intent.

So, yes, to the extent the SM-3s work, they would protect Europe more than Bush's plan would have. Whether they work—whether they really can shoot down ballistic missiles—is another question. Certainly, short-range missiles are easier to shoot down than ICBMs: they travel more slowly, their trajectory is easier to track, their warheads are smaller, meaning there's less room for decoys or other devices to throw off the missile-defense system's radar.

In some ways, though, the question hardly matters. Obama has made little secret of his skepticism about the missile-defense program as it existed under the Bush administration. He has said, in past speeches, that he would support a missile-defense program if it proved effective in tests, knowing full well that the program—the larger program, involving the GBI complexes—has performed rather poorly in tests. (The SM-3s have done better against short-range missiles, though little information has been released about the precise design of those tests.)

Obama also clearly wants to revive relations with Russia—a goal that he and many of his advisers view as critical to the success of his broader policies to fight global terrorism and to curb nuclear proliferation. The plan to put missile defenses in Eastern Europe was seen by the Russians as a threat, an attitude that isn't unreasonable from their point of view. It seems silly to throw a wrench in this relationship—and thus sharply reduce the chance of success in these vital areas—in order to preserve a missile-defense system that doesn't seem likely to work anyway.

However, it is impolitic—it risks rousing accusations of being "soft on defense" or worse—for any president (or most senators and House members) to say out loud that missile defense isn't likely to work and that, therefore, the program should be scrapped. (I'm not saying that Obama thinks this; I'm saying only that if he does think this, he couldn't say it.)

Obama's plan—scuttling the GBI complexes in Eastern Europe and instead putting more SM-3s on Aegis cruisers, which can be put in the Mediterranean or anywhere—manages to undercut the Russians' rationale for continuing their intransigence while, at the same time, it assures the Europeans that the United States will continue to provide a defense against missile attacks, that it will in fact do so more quickly and effectively than the original plan would have.

Still, two questions remain to be answered.

First, what will Obama do to provide special reassurances to the Czech Republic and Poland? To the extent that their people fear a resurgent Russia's aggression (and, given the history, such fears aren't out of line), those big, fixed GBI complexes would have been a tangible token of American commitment to their defense. The NATO treaty's obligations are one thing, and hardly trivial, but the presence of a strategic asset, like a missile-defense complex, would guarantee full protection from—and therefore stand as a potent deterrent to—an attack or intimidation by Russia.

This doesn't mean the United States should install the complexes, whether in Poland and the Czech Republic or in any other country that desires a security umbrella. The Turks were disappointed in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy dismantled the 15 Jupiter nuclear missiles that had recently been deployed there. (It was a secret at the time, but he did this as part of the deal with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to end the Cuban missile crisis.) He assured the Turks that a new Polaris submarine, armed with 16 nuclear missiles, would be stationed in the Mediterranean instead. To the Turks, this wasn't the same thing: A Polaris could move away, a Jupiter couldn't. But surely Kennedy did the right thing. Those 15 Jupiters weren't worth risking war with the Soviet Union, and the Polaris was a much less vulnerable, and therefore more effective, deterrent.

At least in the current case with the Czechs and the Poles, the GBI complexes haven't yet been built: Obama isn't dismantling anything; he's merely saying that he's not moving forward with the previous president's plan, which was always controversial. Still, he should devise and offer some set of extra assurances.

The second question is more important: What will the Russians do now? They've cited the missile-defense plan as the main source of suspicion, the main obstacle to improved relations. Now that Obama has wiped it off the board, will Putin and Medvedev come around—or will they bring up some other reason, some other excuse, for remaining distant and occasionally hostile? It's in the Kremlin's court.

Russia and Ukraine in Intensifying Standoff

Russian seamen marched during a military parade in late July in Sevastopol, a port city in Ukraine where Russia has long maintained a naval base and much of the population has Russian ties.

Clinton's 'Defense Umbrella' Stirs Tensions

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, center, arrives in Phuket, Thailand, on Wednesday for the Asean meeting, amid human-rights concerns in Myanmar.








U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton caused waves in the Middle East during her visit to Southeast Asia, telling a Thai television program that Washington could extend a "defense umbrella" to protect its Arab allies if Iran succeeds in developing nuclear weapons.

Surround Iran with a nuclear threat to contain it. Sounds a rather familiar strategy: Soviet containment.

She also warned Southeast Asian nations about North Korea potentially exporting nuclear technology to their neighbor Myanmar, and sought the help of foreign ministers in ensuring North Korea's "irreversible denuclearization."

Myanmar with a nuclear capability?

But her comments on Iran left the impression among some Middle East diplomats Wednesday that the U.S. envisions having to find ways to defend its Persian Gulf allies from a nuclear-armed Iran -- rather than preventing Tehran from ever getting that far.

Well, it is not a new policy, goes the spin of a "senior U.S. official close to Mrs. Clinton."

But to some Middle East diplomats, the idea of a "defense umbrella" sounded like a nuclear shield reminiscent of the strategy Washington employed against the Soviet Union during the Cold War -- suggesting the Obama administration was contemplating the need to contain Iran's nuclear program, if it can't be eliminated.

Having an "if" option is prudent and responsible, but hinting at it publicly is something entirely different. For the Secretary to say so wasn't a slip, but an intended signal, a clear message.

Israel's minister of intelligence and atomic energy, Dan Meridor, told a military radio station that Mrs. Clinton's remarks indicated that the U.S. had "already come to terms with a nuclear Iran," he said, according to the Associated Press. "I think that's a mistake."

Israel will nto allow Iran to have a bomb; not if it can help it. Arab states, on the other hand, want the shield, and wwant Washington to be more aggressive.

"The danger in the statement [by Mrs. Clinton] is the implication that the defense umbrella will only be extended if or when Iran gains a nuclear capability," said the Arab official.

Don't want until it is a fact that Iran has a nuclear capacity; start now. Moscow, Beijing and Delhi may not go along with putting more pressure on Tehran. In fact, the recent instability in Iran is being cited as a reason to give Tehran more time to respond.

Meanwhile, U.S. and United Nations officials acknowledge that Tehran's nuclear activities continue unimpeded. Officials from the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, have reported that Tehran is moving close to amassing enough low-enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon, provided the material is processed further to weapons grade. Once Iran reaches this breakout capability, said U.S. and Middle East officials, the strategic balance in the Middle East could begin to shift and prompt other regional countries to pursue nuclear programs.

Thus, Russia, China and India are ready to accept Iran having a nuclear capability. Surely the first two want to prevent the US consolidating its hegemony in the region; perhaps India does, as well.

Star? Nyet.

No one was swooning as President Obama gave the graduation speech at the New Economic School in Moscow on Tuesday.















Michelle Obama with nurses at a college in Moscow on Tuesday. The Russian news media have not covered her every move.












Let other capitals go all weak-kneed when President Obama visits. Moscow has greeted Mr. Obama, who on Tuesday night concluded a two-day Russian-American summit meeting, as if he were just another dignitary passing through.

Crowds did not clamor for a glimpse of him. Headlines offered only glancing or flippant notice of his activities. Television programming was uninterrupted; devotees of the Russian Judge Judy had nothing to fear. Even many students and alumni of the Western-oriented business school where Mr. Obama gave the graduation address on Tuesday seemed merely respectful, but hardly enthralled.

Tom Malinowski, who was a speechwriter for Mr. Clinton, said Russian audiences were always the toughest to connect with.

East and West Pull on Moldova

A woman burned a portrait of Lenin after protesters took it from the Parliament building in Chisinau, Moldova, on April 7.


With a population of 4,320,748 (July 2009 est.), Moldova's ethnic makeup is:
Moldovan/Romanian 78.2%, Ukrainian 8.4%, Russian 5.8%, Gagauz 4.4%, Bulgarian 1.9%, other 1.3% (2004 census).








Both Romanian and Russian influences are felt in Moldova.

Say formaggio

Silvio likes to clown around, and Dmitri called Barack "my new comrade."

In Russian, сыр (cheese) C

Bobby Fischer Recalled

Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, pictured in 1971.













Last weekend a symposium on Bobby Fischer was held at the Marshall Chess Club in Greenwich Village. An audience of about 40 listened to a series of short presentations and exchanged memories and opinions about the late American world chess champion. The event was organized by Frank Brady, the club's president and the author of "Profile of a Prodigy," which was last updated in 1973 and remains the only serious biography of Fischer.




















Fischer was born 66 years ago this week in Chicago, but his family moved to Brooklyn when he was a small child. He learned to play chess at age 6, and by 13 he had proved his prodigious talent by winning the celebrated "Game of the Century" in which, playing the black pieces, he sacrificed his queen for an attack that yielded victory 24 moves later. The table on which this game was played, and which has remained in use at the Marshall club ever since, served as the speakers' podium for the symposium.

There was a movie in 1993 entitled Searching for Bobby Fischer. Plot (from IMDb): A prepubescent chess prodigy refuses to harden himself in order to become a champion like the famous but unlikable Bobby Fischer.

Soon Fischer became the youngest grandmaster in history and a candidate for the world championship. It took 14 years for him to break through and defeat Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in a 1972 match in Reykjavik, Iceland. At this point he was regarded as the greatest player of his age, and many still believe he was the greatest chess master of all time.

Despite all this, the fact remains that Fischer was the last great individualist in chess. Subsequent champions have had the support of entire teams of human and computer analysts, but Fischer did almost everything himself, from researching his opponents to preparing his openings to studying his adjourned games. It is inconceivable that such a feat could be repeated today. Perhaps the burden of taking on the chess world alone was simply too heavy for Bobby Fischer to bear.

He was always strange. As Winston Churchill said of Russia: It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

Chávez Allows West to Make Oil Bids as Prices Plunge

Social programs like food subsidies, which these women in Caracas picked up, are financed by Petróleos de Venezuela’s profits.

President Hugo Chávez is expected to put forth a referendum this year that would let him run for indefinite re-election.

Surprise! Well, he ain't stupid.

“If re-engaging with foreign oil companies is necessary to his political survival, then Chávez will do it,” said Roger Tissot, an authority on Venezuela’s oil industry at Gas Energy, a Brazilian consulting company focusing on Latin America. “He is a military man who understands losing a battle to win the war.”

Perhaps. Pragmatic, yes.

Venezuela also differs from top oil nations like Saudi Arabia and Mexico, where national oil companies have monopolies. Petróleos de Venezuela let private companies remain as minority partners after the nationalizations, despite Mr. Chávez’s often aggressive anticapitalist stance.

Watch what he does not what he says.

Moreover, foreign oil services companies like Halliburton, which has done business in Venezuela for 70 years, have even expanded their activities in the country as Petróleos de Venezuela grew more dependent on contractors to help extract oil from aging wells.

Even Halliburton is allowed into the socialist fatherland; how curious.

“In 10 years, not one major oil project has been built in Venezuela,” said the oilman, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “Chávez has left his so-called strategic partners out to dry, like the Chinese, who have been given the same treatment as Exxon.”

Well, they are both capitalists, no?

“Chávez is celebrating the demise of capitalism as this international crisis unfolds,” said Pedro Mario Burelli, a former board member of Petróleos de Venezuela. “But the irony is that capitalism actually fed his system in times of plenty,” he said. “That is something Chávez will discover the hard way.”

What's in a name

Shakespeare had Juliet say: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

In a story about Russia's oil woes, this item: The government is drawing up a list of the most significant enterprises that might need a bailout, Mr. Putin added. That would come on top of the more than $200 billion the Kremlin has already pledged to shore up the economy, and will cover a minimum of 1,500 firms. Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Klepach said on Thursday that the economy wouldn't grow again until the middle of next year.

What would Klepach be?

World Leaders Quick to Press Obama on Foreign Policy

President-elect Obama's telephone has been ringing. A lot.

The Russians want him to hold off installation of a missile defense shield in Poland. The Europeans want him to renounce the idea of “regime change” when it comes to Iran, while the Israelis want to be sure he doesn’t give Iran a pass when it comes to nuclear weapons.

Oh, and let’s not forget the Taliban, which issued a statement this week urging him to “put an end to all the policies being followed by his Opposition Party, the Republicans, and pull out U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.”

There’s a world of advice out there for President-elect Barack Obama. Within minutes of his election on Nov. 4, the calls from foreign governments began, Obama aides say, and they haven’t stopped.

Hey, guys, Bush is still President.

While the first telephone exchanges between Mr. Obama and foreign leaders were limited to pledges of future cooperation and invitations to visit, those leaders and their underlings have also been contacting Mr. Obama’s advisers and their surrogates with suggestions for how an Obama administration should conduct, and change, American foreign policy.

Suggestions? Can't a president-elect make up his own mind?

British and French officials are urging the Obama team to work on the atmospherics before sitting down to talk with Iran, out of concern that Mr. Obama’s pledge to open talks with Iran without preconditions won’t work unless it is delicately plotted.

Just how naive do they think he is?

Russia Warns of Missile Deployment

Tit-for-tat: following the US's move of putting missiles in Poland an Czech Republic, Russia announces its intention to put missiles in the Russian pocket between Latvia and Poland.

Park Avenue Diplomacy

Maureen Dowd can be tiresome, but she can also be brilliant. Here, she's brilliant.

I don’t agree with those muttering darkly that the picture of Gov. Sarah Palin with a perky smile and shapely gams posing with a pleased Henry Kissinger, famous for calling power the ultimate aphrodisiac, is a sign of the apocalypse. It isn’t even a sign of the apocalipstick.How the mighty 85-year-old Henry the K has fallen from his days chasing Jill St. John and running the world to his hour briefing of a 44-year-old Wasilla hockey mom who may end up running the world.

One can imagine how Dr. K felt: pleased he could get a 44 year0old women in skirts genuflecting to him. yet possibly also incredulous that life has come to this boob running for VP. Well, K did see Spiro Agnew.

After losing its moral superiority abroad with phony evidence for attacking Iraq, the U.S. has now lost its moral superiority in the financial arena. Once more, W. took the ball, carried it off the cliff and went biking. Doctor K prolonged the war in Vietnam to help Nixon get re-elected and then advised W. on Iraq that the only way to beat an insurgency and save face is to stick it out, no matter how many American kids and foreign civilians die.

Once a cynic, always a cynic.

(A senior Palin campaign aide told CBS News’s Scott Conroy that the governor’s foreign-policy experience was atmospheric, akin to the way someone from Miami might obtain a feel for Latin America. “It is very much being able to look off the tip of Alaska,” the aide said. “Metaphorically, I’m talking about.”)

Atmospheric? How much Russian atmosphere is there in Juneau?

Kissinger probably explained détente and Metternich to Palin, while she explained the Iditarod and moose carving to him. They talked Russia, which is relevant.

Metternich and moose; what a combination.

Republicans, who have won so many elections painting Democrats as socialists and pinkos, have now done so much irresponsible deregulating and deficit spending that they have to avoid fiscal Armageddon by turning America into a socialist, pinko society with nationalized financial institutions and a financial czar accountable to no one and no law.

Socialism is dead, and so is the free market. Power to the people!

Even if she blows off the First Amendment — and lets McCain’s Rove, Steve Schmidt, demonize the press even though she disdains women politicians who whine — Bill Clinton is still a fan. Besides talking about what a great man John McCain is on “The View” and “David Letterman,” Bill praised Palin at his Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York and will receive her there on Thursday.

Bubba gets around.

On “The View,” he said he understood that some women might vote for Palin on the basis of gender, even if it was against their economic interest. “You can’t tell someone else that the ground on which they make their voting decision is irrational,” he said primly. Well, actually you could, if you weren’t still sulking and plotting for 2012.

I began to get that feeling a week or so ago, when Bam's numbers were getting weak. I'd dismissed that, especially after Hill's convention speech, but I'm not dismissing that any longer.

Quote of the Day

Secretary Robert Gates: “At this point I should note that for the first time, both the United States secretary of state and secretary of defense have doctorates in Russian studies,” Mr. Gates said. “A fat lot of good that’s done us.”

Being book smart ain't done much good. Ditto having an MBA.

London looks at US politics

Those wicked cartoonists from the London Times strike again.

Georgia is the graveyard of America's unipolar world

More on W's legacy.

what is clear is that America's unipolar moment has passed - and the new world order heralded by Bush's father in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1991 is no more. The days when one power was able to bestride the globe like a colossus, enforcing its will in every continent, challenged only by popular movements for national independence and isolated "rogue states", are now over. For nearly two decades, while Russia sunk into "catastroika" and China built an economic powerhouse, the US has exercised unprecedented and unaccountable global power, arrogating to itself and its allies the right to invade and occupy other countries, untroubled by international law or institutions, sucking ever more states into the orbit of its voracious military alliance.

A fascinating article.

Bush Says Russia Must Stop ‘Bullying’ Georgia

This incident will be part of W's legacy.

Bush, Sending Aid, Demands That Moscow Withdraw

Enlarge This Image

Joao Silva for The New York Times

Russian soldiers traveled near the village of Orjosani, Georgia. More Photos »

This has the effect of more deeply involving the US in the ongoing war in Georgia. It is, to say the least, risky. It also fairly much guarantees that where the US wishes Russia's cooperation, primarily with Iran, that is now not going to happen. It is clearly a calculated move, calling Russia's bluff.

timedia

Slide Show

Convoys of Troops and Refugees

Map

The Question is: Why?

Just why did Russia unleash its mighty military machine on tiny Georgia? A geopolitical quiz.

Al-Jazeera has it this way: The heavy fighting between Russian and Georgian forces appears to have ended after the two sides agreed to an EU-backed ceasefire plan.

Now, Russia has about 140 million people, and the arsenal of a former, and nascent, super-power. Georgia has about 4.6 million people. [Dig: these are numbers from the CIA World fact Book, which likely means Big Brother is watching; do be careful.]

So, a former super-power wanting to assert its virility, up against a pup with less than 5 million people -- this is not a pissing contest between Georgia and Russia, but between Russia and and the US, and one has To hope that Condie Rice and W Bush got enough cojones to match up against Vlad Putin (not a bet I'd be glad to make).