Two fairly big stories today, neither of which is getting much coverage in the blogosphere or even the MSM beyond the NYT, FT and WaPo:

1.  The government of Sri Lanka has announced that it has captured the LTTE capital of Kilinochchi.  If true, this would be a huge victory for the government, and may mark the beginning of the end of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s de facto control over a chunk of northern Sri Lanka.  That’s potentially good news,as there probably isn’t a worse group out there when it comes to propagating terror — they are, after all, the folks who perfected suicide bombing.

A couple of caveats, however.  First, I doubt, that a military victory by the government will end LTTE suicide bombings — in fact, the Tigers launched one against the Sri Lankan Air Force headquarters in Colombo only hours after the President announced the capture of Kilinochchi.

Second, the government offensive has, by some accounts, displaced more than 200,000 Sri Lankans, primarily Tamils.  That’s not exactly going to endear them to the current government or make reconciliation possible.  In addition, the government offensive is making it harder and harder for these folks to find refuge — it’s almost as if the government is planning to push them into the sea.

Third, there is growing evidence that the government has engaged in disappearances and other abuses.  No matter how valid the government’s objections to the LTTE’s policies and practices may be, it does not justify the wholesale violation of human rights.  It also needs to make sure that any final victory does not unleash reprisal attacks against the minority Tamil community, the vast majority of which are law-abiding citizens.

2.  Russia — or more accurately, Gazprom, the government-controlled natural gas company — once again has cut off deliveries of natural gas to Ukraine after the latter refused to agree to a massive price increase.  Gazprom is claiming that it ended deliveries because Ukraine wasn’t paying its bills, and the Ukrainian government is saying that Russia refuses to pay to transship its gas across Ukraine.

The good news is that Ukraine claims to have enough reserves to make it through the winter, meaning that this won’t turn into a significant crisis — at least in terms of whether Ukrainians can survive the winter.

Three things to watch here.  First, it’s not clear whether this is an opening move by Russia to try to bring Ukraine back into its orbit (not in the Soviet meaning of the word, but rather as a client state in the old 19th Century balance of power meaning).  Russia has made clear its dissatisfaction with the status quo — in particular Ukraine’s efforts to join NATO.  The move therefore may be a warning shot that Russia will not tolerate closer Ukraine-NATO relations.

Second, when Russia took a similar step in 2006, EU member states freaked out, as much of their natural gas supplies come from Russia, and some via Ukraine.  In addition, the cut-off reduced pipeline pressure across the grid, slowing deliveries.  This time around, however, EU member states appear not to be as concerned.  In fact, sympathy for Ukraine (particularly after the Russia-Georgia war) and the cratering of energy prices across the globe may combine to make the EU response much more measured this time around.

That gets to my third point:  this may in the end backfire for Russia.  Its ability to use its oil and gas reserves to promote its foreign policy objectives has declined as precipitously as gas and oil prices.  And the decline in revenue is creating additional problems.  Ukraine is not Georgia.  Despite its fractious politics, it’s unlikely to be dumb enough to precipitate a conflict with Russia or weak enough to lose one badly.  Russia should be careful not to embarass itself with policies that it cannot enforce through either its economic or military capabilities.

A personal note:  I have spent quite a bit of time in both Sri Lanka and Ukraine.  One is among my favorite places in the world — in fact, Molly and I honeymooned there.  The other is probably the one place I wouldn’t visit again — in fact, it’s the one place where I was strip-searched.  I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out which is which.

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I just watched the Palin interview again.  If you haven’t seen it, here it is in its entirety.  For the purposes of this post, please pay particular attention to the section on Russia, which begins at 3:25 and ends at 4:50:

Here’s the key part:

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.

Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but…

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.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to — especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

If I and everyone else heard/read her correctly, she just suggested that a) Georgia should be part of NATO, and b) were Russia to invade again, other NATO members should go to war with Russia.

To say that those comments are staggeringly naive and dangerous would be a vast understatement.

First of all, let’s put her comments into historical perspective.  Here is a list of countries that the Soviet Union and its primary successor, Russia, have invaded since 1920, excluding the “Great Patriotic War” (Russia’s name for World War II between the June 1941 German invasion and 1945):

• Poland (1920)
• Poland  (1939)
• Finland (1939)
• Estonia (1940)
• Latvia (1940)
• Lithuania (1940)
• Hungary (1956)
• Czechoslovakia (1968)
• Afghanistan (1979)
• Georgia (2008)

In addition, the Soviet Union annexed parts of a number of countries during or after World War II:

• Moldova (from Romania)
• Eastern Poland (first taken in 1939 and then ratified at Yalta as part of the decision to shift Poland westwards)
• Subcarpathian Ruthenia (Czechoslovakia)
• Konigsberg (Germany — later renamed Kaliningrad Oblast)

After the Second World War, Soviet troops occupied a number of countries, most of which became part of the Comintern and later Warsaw Pact.  The exceptions were northern Iran, Austria, and (after 1948) Yugoslavia.

Now here’s a list of American Presidents who threatened war with the Soviet Union and/or Russia as a result of these invasions, all of which violated international law.

There aren’t any.

Not Roosevelt or Truman.

Not JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Not Reagan.

Not even Dubya.

Palin has moved into territory that no President or Presidential candidate (not even Goldwater in 1964) has ever ventured.  The only time anyone has said something this bad is in 1968, when Curtis LeMay, upon being named George Wallace’s VP candidate, said that he would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons.

I don’t think that comparisons to “Bombs Away” LeMay — who was the model for Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove — were what John McCain was hoping for in selecting the Sarahnator.

Let’s draw a flowchart showing where Sarah Palin’s policy could lead us.

Georgia joins NATO → Russia attacks Georgia → Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which says an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all NATO members → NATO declares war on Russia → nuclear war.

Ilan Goldenberg over at Democracy Arsenal highlights just how dangerous this kind of talk is:

No sane American or European leader would ever ever ever give an answer like that.  You do not get into hypotheticals about nuclear war.  You just don’t.

Palin references the Cold War.  The only reason the Cold War stayed cold is because our leaders understood the stakes of getting things wrong and saying things that could lead to catastrophic nuclear war.  During the Cuban Missile Crisis every word, every public statement, and any message that the Kennedy administration sent to the Soviets was checked, double checked, and triple checked to make sure it was sending precisely the right signal.

This is what you are forced to do when you have thousands of nuclear weapons and so does your opponent. The stakes are simply too high.  And yet there is a nominee for the Vice Presidency of the United States who may one day have her hand on the button and she is casually talking about potential catastrophic nuclear war.

To be fair, both Obama and McCain believe that Georgia should join NATO.  But neither of them — not even John McCain — has ever said, suggested, or even hinted that the United States would go to war with Russia over Georgia.

Let me be clear here.  The problem isn’t that Sarah Palin is crazy.  She’s not.  The problem is that she is in no way prepared to answer basic questions on foreign policy in a way that doesn’t make her look crazy.  And that means she is not prepared to be Vice President or President.  She might be someday, but not right now.

To put this all in perspective, let me contrast the process the McCain campaign used to prepare Sarah Palin for these interviews and the process used by the State Department to prepare its officials for Congressional testimony.

Assistant Secretaries of State are usually people who have spent years (if not decades) becoming experts on the particular area or subject matter that they now oversee on behalf of the State Department.  They usually know their stuff.  But when they go to testify before Congress on one small part of their portfolio, they get a two inch-thick briefing book with every possible question they might get, along with answers consistent with U.S. Government policy.  Those answers have been vetted by everyone in the building who plays a role in determining policy.  The Assistant Secretaries also spend hours in what are known as “murder boards,” where their staffmembers pepper them with the questions and then critique their answers until they get it right.

Assistant Secretaries of State:  weeks and hours of intensive, hands-on preparation for a narrow topic, undertaken by someone who already is an expert on a topic.

Sarah Palin:  At most two weeks of probably not very intensive preparation (given all the speeches and appearances since she was announced, it didn’t leave much study time) to prepare answers to every possible question on every possible subject under the sun, by someone with little or no foreign policy experience.  She was expected to come out of this less-than-rigorous process prepared to provide short, simple answers to easy questions on topics about which she had never thought.

And people wonder why she did so badly?

It turned out that Charlie Gibson, the McCain’s first choice for a first interview, wasn’t prepared to roll over like they expected.  So when Gibson pursued a line of questioning in any depth, Palin ran out of sound bites. When that happened, she  had to improvise.  She had to make stuff up when she doesn’t have the experience or background to do so knowledgeably.

A more experienced politician would have had the wisdom in such a situation to avoid talking about war.  But Palin is not experienced.  She doesn’t understand the consequences of straying from the playbook.  As a result, she committed a McCain Administration to a course that could lead directly to nuclear war.  And chances are, given the McCain campaign’s recent refusal to backtrack on anything, it’s highly unlikely that the Senator would do the smart thing, which would be to issue a clarification.

In the end, however, we should judge not Sarah Palin, but John McCain.  His choice of her was thoughtless, reckless, and fundamentally unwise.   Such lapses in judgment demonstrate his manifest unsuitability to be President.

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Go at it people, but please, please, please:  whatever you do, don’t invoke Article Five of the NATO treaty.

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I’m still trying to get my mind around Palin’s comments on Russia, Georgia, NATO and war.  I promise more in the morning, but right now I’m too fried to think straight.

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The last two weeks have been nuts, what with the Clinton and Obama speeches, Hurricane Sarah, and all other things political.  And things are unlikely to slow down anytime soon, given the fact that the election is only sixty days away.

While Americans focused on the conventions (and Hurricane Gustav), world events didn’t just grind to a halt.  Over the past two weeks, there have been a number of important developments that are not only important in their own right but also may have a significant impact on the next President’s ability to govern.

Over the next few days, I’m going to try to highlight someJ of them.  Let’s start with Russia-Georgia.

In the past two weeks, the Russia-Georgia conflict has increasingly turned into a proxy (cold) war between the United States and the Russian Federation.  Russian President Medvedev has demonstrated a particular affection for Bushian bluster, making grandiose nationalistic statements about reestablishing a Russian sphere of influence that were meant as much for internal consumption as for global politics.  Meanwhile, the Bush Administration has taken several steps to bind the United States even more closely to the fate of Georgia — including a pledge of more than $1 billion in new (non-military) foreign assistance and a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney.

John McCain’s protestations notwithstanding, most Americans still do not understand what is going on or why the conflict is relevant to their lives.

For all the jokes about Cheney being sent out of the country during the Convention, the reality is that his trip was deadly serious, designed to show the Russians that the United States would not be cowed in the face of its aggression.  But it also showed Cheney’s unbelievably blinkered view of the world:  in the end, the reason the U.S. is backing Georgia is because of the latter’s decision to send troops to Iraq.

The Administration’s actions are going to make it much harder for the next President to pursue a more rational, interests-based policy while at the same time defending Georgian sovereignty.  Of course, if McCain is President, that will not be a problem.

The bottom line:  this has become a game of low-intensity chicken, with both sides acting like 12-year-old boys.  And neither side really cares to behave like adults.  Georgia, which is largely (though not entirely) the victim here, is stuck in the middle, with little hope of serious support from the West or complete withdrawal of Russian forces.  The real fear is that some further incident will cause one side or the other to ratchet up the rhetoric in a way that we’re suddenly looking at Bosnia 1914 all over again — except this time, it will be with thousands upon thousands of nukes on both sides.

For those interested in the specifics, you can find a straightforward report on the events of the past two weeks after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Earlier this week I blogged on five issues to watch while the Olympics and Presidential election hogged the spotlight.  Somehow I missed the one other issue that has now become a major story:  a rapidly escalating conflict between Georgia and Russia over control of Georgian breakaway province South Ossetia.

This is not good.  In fact, this could get really really bad: a nuclear armed state has gone to war against a small state ostensibly allied with the West.  And of course, with the Russians holding a veto, the UN Security Council can’t do a thing.

My instinct is that Georgia is hoping against hope that their close friendship with the United States and its efforts to join NATO will lead to strong support from the West.  I doubt it.  Given the choice between supporting Georgia and risking a rift with Russia and sitting on its hands, I have no doubts that Bush will choose the latter.

American Footprints has a good summary and set of links here.

Map:  BBC, via American Footprints

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