A New Cold War Does Not Benefit Obama

Listen to Joseph Biden closely tonight. How will he discuss the U.S. stance against Russian neo-imperialism? He will predictably say how we must stand behind our Georgian allies and boost humanitarian aid there -- typical touchy-feely Democrat stuff. But will he frame what lies ahead for U.S.-Russian relations in the same blood-curdling, Brezhnev-era language as the neocon hardliners on the right? Will he dare drop the c-bomb?

Russia experts, especially those nesting in right-wing think tanks, love nothing more than to talk about a new cold war. It's the topic that launched a thousand Washington brown bags (Many an inbox groans from invitations to events with hackneyed titles like "A New Cold War?", where inevitably Bush's looked-into-Putin's-soul comment gets mentioned as the most important thing to happen in U.S.-Russian relations since Khrushchev removed his right shoe and threatened to bury us).

Russia could not have timed its invasion of Georgia any better for the Republicans. Surely they were smirking when they read of its incursion into Gori and thinking: This only helps McCain! He can now say, See? I told you we can't trust these rascally Russians. Let's give them the heave-ho from the G-8, put the kibosh on their WTO prospects, and keep Jackson-Vanik on the books. Let's also accelerate that missile shield in the fields of Poland (even if it's supposedly aimed at, uhum, Iran and not Russia).

With Iraq fading from the front pages, enter Russia stage-right. Notice how little neocons seem to mention terrorists and that amorphous war we have been waging. They have set their sights on a more traditional foe: Russia. The right will drop phrases like a "new cold war" not because there is in fact a new cold war (there's not) but because it benefits McCain. A new cold war demands somebody who will stand up to Russia, a cold warrior with white hair, not somebody who will coddle dictators and dare note the nuances of the Georgian conflict (never mind that Georgia invaded South Ossetia first, not Russia). "The same Republican neocons who fabricated the reasons for going to war in Iraq are back, and now they have been paid to trigger a new cold war with Russia that benefits John McCain," Tom Hayden correctly noted in The Nation. "These are dangerous, expensive unwinnable games being played with American lives to benefit Republican politicians and their oil company friends."

Biden, who was just in Georgia, should not fall into the Republicans' trap. I can already imagine Randy Scheunemann (whose large paycheck from the Georgia he long ago cashed) and his band of attack dogs are just drooling to slam the vice presidential candidate's less-than-Churchillean stance against Moscow.

McCain likes to say that Obama is willing to lose a war (in Iraq) to win a campaign. Interestingly, it appears that McCain is willing to start a new cold war to win a campaign.

Comments

[Patr1ot]

Alienating Russia and engaing in beligerent rhetoric by the Obama team serves nothing but play to the need to sound equally tough as the McSames. For Joe Biden who is known to be a windbag to say "we will hold Russia accountable" is silly and naive at best. The Russian have shown that they hold the ace in this poker game and noamount of bluffing or uping the ante willchange the facts on the ground. They have effectively and swiftky delivered a tit for tat for our ill advised recognition of Kosovo, and now it is time for us tolet the dust settle.

Both Russia and the US have mutual interests that can best be served through cooperation, mutual respect and collaboration on fish that are much bigger to fry. Protecting a pseudo democratic nation like Georgia, a banan republic at best and a two bit politicial amateur like Shakashvili should not override the bigger objectives of Russia, Western Europe or the US.

[navy62802]

First of all, to hell with who a cold war benefits. It benefits NO ONE, especially the American people. With nuclear weapons in the picture, we should seek peace at nearly all costs. Secondly, the failed attempt to mediate the Russian aggression says more about our failed foreign policy than anything. It shows us that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have reduced us to a point where we have few bargaining chips...no leverage on an international scale, against the major countries of the world.

[confuseddemocrat]

It is the winning strategy... The republicans have been using scare tactics since Nixon. The Republican strategy is based on creating a boogeyman that is a "hair trigger away" from harming America. The Republicans portray themselves as tough and the democrats as "pinko cowards" who are anti-God, anti-military, anti-American defeatists.

First the boogeyman was the communists and the evil empire (which was true), then it was the "islamic terrorists" and the axis of evil, now it is the Russians and the Islamic terrorists together.

I am still waiting to see how the Chinese will fit in this formula.

I suspect; though China presents the greatest longterm threat, that the Republicans will ignore them because too many republican cronies have business dealings with this country...not to mention that China owns half of our debt/securities.

[JPHR]

Bush rather sours international relations than letting McCain loose the election.

[MalleusMaleficarum]

Right as rain -- McCain is more than willing to restart the Cold War to give him a ghost of a chance to win the election. Problem, it will backfire if Obama and his minions play their cards with any degree of rationality -- ie. by attacking any attempt to ratchet up the military pressure on Russia. In fact, what the MSM has not covered is that the Georgians were the aggressors. Saakashvili -- a Bush-Cheney puppet installed by the neocon National Endowment for Democracy -- attacked the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali and literally hundreds of innocent civilians were massacred. Then and only then, the Russians struck back. That is when the US-MSM picks up the story so as not confuse the docile American public with the facts. Factoid One: Cindy McCain is in Georgia today on a humanitarian mission. Factoid Two: Dick Cheney goes to Georgia next week during the Republican National Convention. Factoid Three: McCain will paint Obama-Biden as weak on national security and advocate the relaunch of US - Russia conflict as Cold War II - The Sequel.

[Rule Of Law]

As an election year stunt meant to polarize voters here and motivate the Red State war mongers to once again vote Republican--thus ensuring the feeding frenzy of the MIC--Russia's moves have all the spontaneity of a morning bowel movement.

How many times do we need to see this before we wake up to the fact that these boys all eat lunch at the same table on the playground?

A new cold war....

That would be about as accurate as the last cold war--Which is to say, if you have a proven money maker, Go with it!

[sino53]

Georgia did not start this war. The Russians have been stirring up trouble in South Ossetia literally for months, to provoke a Georgian crackdown. Russia had prepared a strike force of 3 armored divisions and massed them on the Georgian border. That didn't happen overnight. That buildup took at least a month or two.

This is exactly the same playbook as in the 1930s: Provoke trouble in a neighboring country and then use that as a pretext to invade the place on the pretext of "restoring order."

Whether you agree or disagree with McCain, don't let Putin off the hook on this one. He's the one who has been bombing Georgia, sending in the tanks, the bombers and the short-range ballistic missiles. Not McCain.

We can disagree with how McCain wants to handle it. But let's not give the impression that we think Putin did the right thing. He didn't. It was an act of naked aggression on his part.

[Herekitty]

Unlike Bush's "act of naked aggression"?

[Rule Of Law]

Your almost right--Georgia did not, nor did Russia, start this little war.

Goldman-Sachs, The FED, the Bank of England, Morgan, Bush, Medvedev and all the power brokers out at the Bohemian Grove started this war. And it's time that people took the care to learn about how wars are really started, by whom and to what end.

And the answer is always money. Just follow the money.

[JPHR]

About Georgia'a claim, Wikipedia (Ossetia, Georgia) gives:

Only for a few years there has been a democratic Georgia: Democratic Republic of Georgia (DRG) (1918"1921). Before that:it is rather murky with shifting borders and divisions, but as that age goes definitely not too democratic.
Of course you have the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (1921"1991), part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics too, but unity from that period does not constitute a legitimate claim at least in the eyes of the West.
So either one refers to Georgia 1918-1921 or to after 1991 which refers to a Georgia without Ossetia and Abkhazia. Honestly a claim from Georgia dating back to 1918-1921 cannot carry much weight in the face of a clear wish to self determination.

After the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 and the following quite bloody Georgia-Ossetia war, Ossetia came under a peacekeeping mission from 1992 onwards. Now 16 years later Georgia initiates military action to reclaim Ossetia encouraged by Bush supplying training, armament and support for NATO membership. Wisely NATO did not accept that and NATO (France, Germany) is clearly not willing to follow Bush's lead now.

So:
1) no legitimate claim
2) Russia probably did the right thing by simply restoring the preexisting situation.

And then McCain: "We are all (paid by) Georgians now" further exciting a situation already rife with ethnic tensions. That's experience but alas not in international relations, more the intercept/kill reflex of a pilot.

[Insearchoftruth]

"Willing to start a war to win a campaign". Absolutely brilliant! I hope the Dem's have enough sense to use this. It's a winner.

[jhNY]

As Georgia unwisely listened to the rhetorical bad-assing of Cheney apparatchiks and McCain's lobbyist-campaign staffer and thus was handed its ass in a minute flat once they started shooting at a Russian barracks in South Ossetia, perhaps the assertion here, that Russia attacked Georgia, should be reworded until it is representative of what actually happened.

The formerly great republic of the US has been financialized and sold into debt service for perpetuity, which being a heck of a bleak future, causes dreamers of both parties to look toward a distracting war with dewy-eyed hope as an opportunity for all of us to forget the troubles here at home, and in the process, by harnessing the energies of so many young people to do great destructive things overseas, we might just diffuse some of the social tensions that arise out of chronic underemployment and unbridled inflation. It's called fascism folks, a shell game in which the most aggressive fighters for social change, the righteous young, are misdirected toward a foreign enemy while their social betters wear flag pins at the golf course, cheat on their taxes and exhort the poor to send their children to an early death in a war designed to preserve the class structure at home, where all dissent is treason.

But yeah, I'm joining the author to say: new cold war= bad idea.

[mommadona]

If you don't realize that this Georgian thing was started by Bush FOR THE VERY REASON OF THE ELECTIONS...you have NOT been paying attention.

Georgia is the Poster Child for McCain's INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE - a bizarre group paid for with YOUR tax dollars to put the neo-con WetDream of Pax Americana and constant war into full swing.

CONSTANT WAR MEANS CONSTANT $$$$$$$$ FLOW TO THE MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS.

War make Moola for McCain's crowd.

Both the IRI.ORG AND NED need to be SHUT DOWN.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Republican_Institute

[Whipsmart13]

Earth to Matilda...the Cold War really never ended...one side just ran out of money. However, with the high price of energy and their willingness to tap into their natural resources, Russia is back and has become a major player again with the constant influx of energy dollars. Instead of a large army, Russia has an "on/off" switch for natural gas/oil into large portions of Europe and it is the threat of "off" that has elevated Russia back into a power position globally.

[frenchamerican]

Well , I am amazed how naive again the media is describing the situation in Georgia !
Yes ,Georgia started but do you think Saakachivili would have started the hostilities without some encouraging words from Washington ? of course the Russians were ready ,but can you really blame them .... lets imagine how we would react to some military alliance with Russia and Mexico ?
I thought Bush could do no more harm ,this time it's me who was naive what about a third war since we are so good at it !
Putin is so happy to show the world how strong Russia is , but it's scaring the rest of eastern Europe which is changing her mind about joining OTAN ,no more hesitation !
Well, all this is not so bad for Bush is getting what he wanted a stronger and bigger OTAN and an other international crisis just in time for to reelect a republican .....
Fear is the best ally of Carl Rove !

[MajorKong]

A new Cold War doesn't benefit anyone. We just didn't go broke as quickly as the Russians last time around.

[RobynMc]

A new Cold War is not good for AMERICA!

[RS]

Since we're speaking of the Cold War, here's a "Daffy-nishon"--also known as "Not Found in Webster's Dictionary":

Cold War -- Snowball fight. :-)

[rgersmrk]

"Russia could not have timed its invasion of Georgia any better for the Republicans."

Actually Georgia started the hostilities. Let's not distort the facts like the Republicans like to do. Right now Obama needs to focus on hammering McCain and the Republicans on the economy and do it nonstop. It's the number one issues on everyone's mind right now and the McCain camp doesn't know how to handle it.