but what if Putin is now the one courting conflict? what response should we have? alliance at the cost of how many client states? you can't just say 'be nice to Russia' without an idea of where the line should be drawn, what actions should provoke what consequences, etc.

Scheunemann, here, is courting conflict, and as McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, that's a pretty good indicator for how a McCain administration would look.

THIS is courting conflict:

Cheney is saying again today:

ROME (AP) 9/9/08 - Vice President Dick Cheney insisted Tuesday that Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected, after Russia announced it would keep a military presence in two Georgian breakaway provinces and moved to establish diplomatic ties with them.

Cheney said the international community was united in condemning Russia's military action in Georgia and "its unilateral efforts to alter by force of arms Georgia's internationally recognized boundaries."

"The international community supports the independence and territorial integrity of Georgia and calls for the peaceful resolution of this dispute based on good-faith discussions among the parties," Cheney said, after holding talks with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi in Rome.

Cheney's looking for allies to do something even more stupid than sending the US fleet into the Black Sea, but the statements alone are reminicent of the triggers that set of WWI.

McCain and team are just following along behind the Bush/Cheney elephant, eating any elephant dung that gets dropped along the way.

mmmmm dung sandwich.

"you can't just say 'be nice to Russia' without an idea of where the line should be drawn, what actions should provoke what consequences, etc."

If you want to go to war with Russia over South Ossetia, I'm sure there are paramilitary units that would love to have you.

Leave me and my country's military out of it. We've got enough quasi-imperialist warmongering going on right now.

THIS is the exact example that shows the difference in foreign policy approach between McCain and Obama.

Although, I have to disagree slightly with you Jim. The quote you post would sound just as reasonable coming out of Biden as it would McCain. In other words, its perfectly reasonable to call for Russian to pull back to internationally recognized boundaries. Of course, I agree with you on Cheney's motivations to do so...

It's perfectly understandable that Obamanoughts would want to appease leftwing dictatorships, but Russia too? Perchance they forget that the Bear has foolishly cast off its audacious dreams of a scientific socialist peace-loving paradise and has reverted to the Bushist fascism it had pursued before its bright awakening under the Bolsheviki.

A sound, multilateral policy to discourage Russian expansionism and human rights abuses need not include reckless maneuvers such as sending warships into the Black Sea (thanks, W), but should include some disincentives for Russian aggression. Lines ought to be drawn somewhere, as Jamie says. Perhaps Obama's sagacious, hardnosed foreign policy would mean offering to return Alaska to the Ruskies? After all, the state is cursed with atavistic moose-slayers who have been nothing but trouble for the Obamanoughts. Perhaps we should hand California back to our tsarist opponents as well? Oh, one forgets that Obama foreign policy has designated the Golden State a present to the Republic of Mexico.

Very, very, very little of foreign policy has to do with how leaders interact with each other. Bush and Putin got along like gangbusters. A major problem with the current adminstration is how they insist on making foreign policy personal.

You say, “When Kushner offhandedly describes China and Russia as allies, Scheunemann instantly snaps back that ‘Russia and China are obviously not allies.’” I’m assuming that you find it disturbing to say that these countries are not allies. But I find it disturbing that you can be disturbed by this. I find it disturbing that anyone can “offhandedly” make such an egregious error and assume that his interlocutor is some wild warmonger if he disagrees. We have absolutely nothing historical, political, or economic in common with these countries. What we do have are a set of interests that can be compatible with them, or not, depending on the issue at hand. That’s why we have diplomats. To call them “allies” is to engage in dangerous wishful thinking.

Then you quote Sheunemann on Russia with disapproval: “They are trying to create a past historical era—not the Soviet Union, but the tsarist empire. Putin doesn’t want the 20th century, he wants the 19th century, and he’s been quite explicit about his goals. And to blame the victim for the actions of the aggressor shows a fundamental misunderstanding about what happens when aggression goes unpunished. It emboldens aggressors.”

Well, where’s the error here? Putin has been explicit about his goals and they are to assert Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. This sphere was built by the czars but it was maintained by Lenin and expanded by Stalin. That’s the geopolitics of it. Just that fact alone makes your disparaging treatment of Scheunemann seem out of touch. Lenin, with all his hatred for czarism, recreated the czarist empire because of the realities of geopolitics. Whatever else he was, Lenin was no fool.

And why isn’t this reassuring? I find it reassuring that the candidate can recognize the realities of geopolitics, don’t you? I don’t find it reassuring that a candidate ignores these realities or that he believes that we can all just learn to get along if we play nice. I find that disturbing.

Although it’s trivial to say that no specific conflict is inevitable, it’s just as trivial to say that conflict, in general, is. Why? It’s because expanding a states’ sphere of influence is related to the security of the state itself. Why is that? It’s because power abhors a vacuum. This means that we can decline to expand, but that only gives other states more opportunity to do so. A president cannot assume that these other states have benign intentions because they most likely do not, if history is any guide. The president’s job is to protect the country. A president must know that if anyone’s going to expand their sphere of influence, inevitably, it better be us.

Just to preempt your jumping down my throat: I don’t believe we should bomb Russia, or anyone else. I know that war is the last resort of diplomacy and that we’ve hardly exhausted the first resorts with them. But we have to know that we’re not allies to have any realistic expectation of protecting our interests against their expansionism.

In the case of Russia, a little clear-eyed geopolitics would have prevented today’s conflict. This goes back to our humiliation of them in the Kosovo conflict in the 90s. They were down, so why twist the knife in such a way? We’d have to have known that they’d want some payback once they were able. Then, why would we continue this behavior by making Kosovar independence a wedge issue? Where’s the sense in that? That practically guaranteed what Putin’s response would be. Why couldn’t we just trade them Kosovo for Iran? I’m certain that Russia would love to abandon Iran if we gave them a reason to do so? Then, we’d have a buffer against Iran (Iraq), a place at the table in the Middle East in general, and yes, we’d have expanded our influence into a volatile and violent region. Sounds like a win-win situation to me and no one has to assume that we’re allies with Russia when plainly we’re not.

None of this happened because of McCain, of course. Now he’s looking at a dangerous situation he’s likely to inherit. If he’s displaying an understanding of geopolitics here, in this quote, then that’s a good thing, in my mind. If he thought that we could just talk to them and promise stuff so that they’d back off asserting their interests in their traditional sphere of influence, I’d call that misguided and dangerous. No one, not even you, Ezra, gives anything up for a promise.

What a load of crap. If the US adopted this philosophy we'd all be dead or enslaved. How does one reach out to find common ground with the nuts who lead Al Queda, North Korea, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. Using the past fighting between France and Britain's in-bred monarchies has nothing to do with today's situation. What foolish drivel

It goes without saying that all options are on the table with Russia. Which include war!

Or, um, would include war, if we weren't at the two-war limit already. But all options are on the table! It may be possible to convince either the the Taliban or the Iraqi insurgency to consider a pause in our ongoing victories over them (surely they must be fatigued after all these years of defeat) while we prosecute a similarly convincing and victorious military campaign against Russia of some indefinite duration.

Until we do, clear-eyed realism demands that we communicate to Russia its obligation to respect internationally recognized boundaries. Further, we must do so by means which take advantage of every bit of leverage we possess!

Yes, craven pacifists and others of their ilk may shrink from it. But only by deploying the most forceful measure at our disposal - the dreaded Strongly Worded Letter - will the brute Russian bear be made to understand the limits beyond which the United States will not be pushed.

This goes back to our humiliation of them in the Kosovo conflict in the 90s. They were down, so why twist the knife in such a way? We’d have to have known that they’d want some payback once they were able.

But didn't doing so represent a limitation on Russian influence? Better that we assert our expanded influence than them, right?

Shouldn't your argument be that when they were down, we should have kept them down?

Also, according to your argument, the fact that "humiliated" them isn't relevant: "It’s because expanding a states’ sphere of influence is related to the security of the state itself."

If this is true, then had we avoided "humiliating" Russia - or to put it plainly for you, if we had been nice to them - this would have made no difference whatsoever. It would be central to Russia's security to expand their sphere of influence to the greatest possible extent, stopping only when they met effective opposition. Our being friendly to them wouldn't have mattered.

Why couldn’t we just trade them Kosovo for Iran?...Then, we’d have a buffer against Iran (Iraq), a place at the table in the Middle East in general, and yes, we’d have expanded our influence into a volatile and violent region.

Taking your view, they would not have made this trade precisely because it would have expanded our influence, which is by definition not in their security interests to allow.

Thanks for reading, social demo:

You're right, we did limit them in Kosovo, but we did it in their traditional zone, where they have interests and we don't. This could have led to keeping them down, if you want to put it that way, but a lot more would have been required than bombing Serbia. As it was, we inflicted a strategic loss on them and failed to follow it up. We didn't follow it up because it wasn't our policy to do so in Serbia. Our policy was to defend the human rights of Kosovo. Doing so got us involved in geopolitics with unintended consequences, which are happening now.

Of course their humiliation is relevant. I can't see any contradiction with the idea of expansionism at all. They were humiliated by being blocked by us in their own sphere of influence. We'd be humiliated if they blocked us in Latin America, for example.

Avoiding humiliating them is not the same as being nice to them. Russia's expansionism will meet effective opposition where our interests collide. They didn't in Kosovo.

Iran is not part of Russia's traditional sphere of influence; Kosovo is. Georgia is. We have interests in the Middle East that Russia doesn't. They have interests in Kosovo that we don't. So it's possible that our and Russia's interests could have been made compatible, given the right diplomacy. Russia could still do business in Iran without flooding the nation with weapons and supporting their nuclear program; we could still do business with Russia without threatening them with missile shields and so forth, because Iran would not have had nuclear weapons.

This way, our security interests are protected, and we expand; and vice versa.

Your previous post, sarcastic as it is, just emphasizes the mess we've gotten ourselves into by ignoring geopolitics.

To go back to my original critique of Klein's BS: if McCain understands the realities of geopolitics, then that's reassuring to me. If he thought he could write letters and resolutions to get concessions, then that would be disturbing.

Think about Obama's response: he called for restraint by both parties (or something like that). Is that reassuring to you? Can you imagine Putin snorting with contempt when he heard that? Can you imagine what Putin could do do Obama in Obama's future photo-op summit with him? This would be Vienna, 1961 writ large.

I don't think that Russia is a "brute" or anything like that. I think they're an immense nation with a thousand years of history. I think they'll live up to that history whether we like it or not. I'm saying that we have to cut some deals with them instead of going to war or writing UNSC resolutions that will never have any effect on anything. These deals would not be very pretty in terms of our self-image as the protector of the world's democratic aspirations, but that's just too bad. That's what happens when one uses politics instead of violence: one makes deals and compromises one's principles, if necessary, to protect one's true interests.