"This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government, and get away with it."While Russia has adopted the more traditional and pragmatic international strategy of trying to ensure neighboring states are either weak or friendly and has given up trying to convert the world to communism, the United States has now become a slave to ideology. The U.S. seeks to spread and sustain democracy around the globe, by force if necessary, and has military bases in many nations to facilitate this goal. Ironically enough, while using violence to effect radical social and political change may be new to U.S. foreign policy, it was an idea warmly embraced by Leon Trotsky, one of the creators of the Soviet state, back in 1917.
- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Aug. 14, 2008
What convinced Saakashvili that attacking South Ossetia made sense? That the United States had just completed joint maneuvers with the Georgian army and was paying 40 percent of Georgia's military budget? That Georgia had strong links to Israel, which had contractors in the country training Georgia's ground forces and upgrading its air force? That George Bush had come to Tbilisi in May of 2005 and said, "And as you build a free and democratic Georgia, the American people will stand with you … the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia must be respected by all nations"? That Georgia had Sen. John McCain's principal foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann on its payroll?Before any American president goes abroad and promises grandly that "the American people will stand with you," he ought to consider what military and political consequences might proceed from his pledge. He ought to ask himself whether he is implicitly committing the United States to come to the aid of a nutjob like Saakashvili, whose attack on Russian forces will undoubtedly establish itself as the new gold standard of recklessness.
Read further the article by John Taylor here.
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